The Key

CHAPTER TEN

EVERYBODY CAME OUT of the hall rather as if they were coming away from a funeral. The ceremony being over, you could recognise your friends and converse with them, but in an appropriately subdued manner. Mrs Mottram’s manner could not, unfortunately, be called subdued even by the least candid friend. She was obviously excited, and the bright blue of her dress did nothing to disarm criticism. She rushed, positively rushed – the expression is Miss Doncaster’s – up to Mr Everton and kept him talking on the steps of the hall, her light high-pitched voice making everything she said plainly audible.

Miss Doncaster’s strictures were what might have been expected. She joined Miss Fell’s party for the short homeward walk, and she had no hesitation in stating that she considered Mrs Mottram’s behaviour brazen.

‘Pursuing – positively pursuing Mr Everton! Asking him at the top of her voice whether she had “done it nicely”! Exactly as if she had been taking part in a play instead of discharging a solemn and most unpleasant duty! I really cannot say what I think of her behaviour!’

Miss Sophy demurred. She was partial to the young. She liked Mrs Mottram, and she had no objection to her flirting with Mr Everton, whom she considered very well able to look after himself. She even liked the bright blue dress, which she thought gay and becoming, though of course not suitable to an inquest. She armed herself for the fracas which always ensued when you disagreed with Lucy Ellen.

‘My dear, you really have managed to say a good deal.’

Miss Doncaster looked down her long, thin nose.

‘If I stated my true opinion-’

Miss Sophy hastened to interrupt.

‘My dear, I shouldn’t. And do you know, I like Mrs Mottram. She is always so pleasant.’

Miss Doncaster snorted.

‘She hasn’t the brain of a hen!’

‘Perhaps not – but there are such a lot of clever people, and so few pleasant ones.’

They had arrived at the gate to the village street. Whatever Miss Doncaster might have replied was lost because Miss Sophy turned to put out a hand to Janice whom she had at that moment discovered to be just behind her with Garth.

‘Come to tea, my dear,’ she said. ‘I would ask you to lunch, but you know what it is – Florence would give notice. At least she wouldn’t really, because she has been with us for so many years, but she would talk about it, and that is almost as upsetting.’ She turned back again. ‘You may say what you like, Lucy Ellen, but Mrs Mottram was the only one of us to say straight away that she would take in an evacuee, though in the end she never got one.’

Irritation passed into cold rage. Miss Doncaster paled and stiffened.

‘If you imagine, Sophy-’ she began, but Miss Sophy made haste with an olive branch.

‘Now, Lucy Ellen, don’t let us quarrel. No one expects you to take in a child, with Mary Anne in the state she is. And I won’t say I didn’t beg Mrs Pratt not to put one in on me, because I did, and everyone knows it. But by the time the village had taken theirs, and Mr Everton and the Rector, there really were, quite providentially, none left over, otherwise it would have been my duty, and I hope I should have done it whether Florence and Mable gave notice or not.’

Garth and Janice walked side by side. They had hardly spoken. The feeling of having been at a funeral hung over them. They walked in silence as far as the corner. Here the road branched off on one side to the houses which faced the Green, and on the other something not much better than a track led through a straggle of cottages and beyond them to Prior’s End. They stopped and looked at each other.

‘You will come to tea?’

‘Yes.’

‘Look here, come out early and we’ll go for a walk. I want to talk to you – not in Aunt Sophy’s drawing-room. I’ll be at the stile by the Priory field at half-past two. Can you make it?’

She nodded.

‘I’ll ask for the afternoon off.’

They stood for a moment. There was at once too much and too little to say, and none of it could be said within earshot of half the village streaming home. She turned and went quickly away from him up the track.

Garth followed Miss Sophy and Miss Doncaster, who by now were safely discussing the best method of storing onions. Far in front of them, moving with a kind of restive energy, was the tall black figure of Miss Brown. As it turned in at the Rectory gate, Miss Sophy heaved a sigh.

‘Medora has felt it all very much.’

Miss Doncaster stiffened.

‘I hope we have all felt it, Sophy. But some of us were brought up to control our feelings. Miss Brown makes hers too conspicuous for my taste.’

Miss Sophy’s round blue eyes administered the reproach which for prudence sake she refrained from putting into words. Then, with a faint chill upon her voice, she went on talking about onions.

Arriving at the Rectory, and Miss Doncaster safely on her way to her own house and her afflicted sister, Garth grasped Miss Sophy by the arm, took her into the drawing-room, and shut the door.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘you remember last night?’

‘My dear boy-’

He shook the arm a little.

‘About the Pincott girl’s triplets – which one was it – Minnie?’

‘No dear – Eliza.’ She gazed at him out of eyes as blue and bewildered as a baby’s.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter. The point is this. You sent me to get the snapshot of them out of your bureau drawer – the left-hand top drawer.’

‘I don’t see-’

‘You will. Isn’t that the drawer where you keep the church key?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Well, it wasn’t there last night.’

Miss Sophy’s gaze was quite untroubled.

‘My dear, it must have been.’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘But my dear – it is always there except when Miss Brown is practising, and last night-’

‘She was playing the piano with her back to us – I know. And the key wasn’t in the drawer. There was nothing there except a clip of bills and the snapshot.’

Miss Sophy released herself, walked over to the bureau, and pulled out the small top drawer on the left. The clip of bills was there, the snapshot was there, and right on the top of Eliza and the triplets lay the fourth church key. Garth stared at it over her shoulder.

‘It wasn’t there last night, Aunt Sophy.’

She said, ‘It must have been,’ but she looked disturbed.

Garth put his arm round her.

‘Aunt Sophy, look! If it had been there last night, I couldn’t have helped seeing it. And if it had been there last night it wouldn’t be on the top of the snapshot now – the snapshot would be on top. I had it out, and I put it back, and the key wasn’t there. Someone has put it back since last night. That’s the only way it could be on the top of the photograph. Don’t you see?’

Something touched the blue of Miss Sophy’s eyes. They didn’t look blue any more, they looked frightened. She put out a hand which was not quite steady and shut the drawer. Then she said, ‘There is some mistake, my dear. I think we won’t talk about it any more.’