The Watersplash

CHAPTER XX

It was not until the evening that the first trickle from the now rushing stream of Greenings gossip reached Inspector Bury. He had taken statements from Edward Random and the Vicar, and from the Miss Blakes, but no one had thought of telling him that a work-party met at the Vicarage on Friday evenings, or that Miss Sims and Mrs. Stone were sponsoring a highly sensational rumour involving Edward Random. Inspector Bury was not a local man, and had only been a year or two at Embank, but his wife’s stepmother was a cousin of Miss Sims, and one of her uncles had married a distant connection of the Stones. The uncle had a flourishing confectionery business in Embank, and old Mrs. Stone came over twice in the week to pick up a good-sized basket of the left-overs. Saturday was one of her days, and she hadn’t kept her mouth shut. Mrs. Bury, who had called after dropping in to see her father and stepmother, was able to pass on what Miss Sims had said to them, and to garner what had been contributed by Mrs. Stone. She had both versions hot and spiced all ready for her husband when he came off duty. He received them first with a frown, and then with a burst of sarcastic laughter.

“Now, isn’t that the public all over! There I was on the spot for the best part of the morning, and could anyone tell me that the girl and young Random were supposed to be sweethearting, or breathe a word about their being heard quarrelling on the road, or his telling her off on the telephone? Of course they couldn’t-not one blessed word! But they could pay their bus fares into Embank and go whispering it round among their relations!”

Mrs. Bury tossed a pretty carroty head.

“Well, they’re my relations too!” she said.

He gave her a rather absent-minded kiss.

“Now, Lil, I’m not saying anything against your relations.”

There was a second and more vehement toss.

“And you’d better not!”

“Much as my place is worth,” he said good-humouredly. “Now look here, Lil, you know these people, and I don’t. How much of what they say is likely to be true, and how much is what you might call window-dressing put up to make you think there’s something behind it?”

They hadn’t been married very long, but she knew already when it wasn’t any good trying to tease him. She dropped her flirting manner and said soberly,

“Miss Sims is a talker all right, but she doesn’t make things up. If she says she heard that on the telephone, then she heard it. She’ll take an age to tell you a thing, but it will be true all right. She’s the kind that will keep you waiting till you’ve got the fidgets while she makes up her mind whether a thing happened at four o’clock or at five minutes past.”

“And this Mrs. Stone?”

“Well, she’s a perfectly horrid old woman,” said Lil frankly. “And no relation of mine, thank goodness! And only a far-off cousin of Aunt Ivy’s, if it comes to that. Some people wouldn’t take any notice of a family that’s gone down in the world like the Stones have, but Uncle Bert and Aunt Ivy are ever so good to her.”

“You say she’s a horrid old woman. The point is, does she tell the truth?”

“Well, I don’t know. She can pitch a tale all right-always coming round and making out she and her daughter are next door to starving. Goodness knows what she doesn’t get out of Uncle Bert and Aunt Ivy!”

With these sidelights on the characters of the prospective witnesses, he went over to Greenings bright and early on the Sunday morning. Both ladies stuck to their stories, and he certainly got the impression that they were telling the truth. For one thing, in neither case did the story differ from the version repeated to him by his wife. Miss Sims took a long time over hers. He had to hear exactly what she was doing when the telephone-bell rang, and all about the confinement case which had kept the doctor out and made him miss his surgery, together with her reasons for not taking a light into the study, and a good deal of corroborative detail as to how it was that she was able to see who was in the telephone-call-box, but in the end it came down to the words which Lil had repeated-“Edward-darling-I must see you-I really must! There’s something you ought to know!”

So far Miss Sims was in no doubt at all. Then it appeared her attention had been distracted by the sound of the doctor’s latchkey, and all she was sure of after that was that Mr. Edward was speaking to the poor girl very harsh indeed-“And the Doctor came in to his supper, so I couldn’t wait any more. You wouldn’t believe what it is with the meals in a doctor’s house- never knowing when they’ll be in, and everything to keep hot.”

Upon this favourite theme she could have said a great deal more, but she was not given the opportunity. She complained afterwards to Mrs. Alexander that people were always in a hurry these days-hardly gave you time to finish a sentence before they were off. “And I’m sure I’m sorry for poor Lil if he’s like that at home. She’s my Cousin Emily’s daughter, you know, and I wonder at her marrying into the police.”

The Inspector found Mrs. Stone in her garden. He had knocked twice on the front door, when she came shuffling round the corner of the house with the front of her skirt picked up to hold half a dozen apples which, she explained, had come down in the night-“And I have to wait to let them fall, for I can’t shake the tree, nor I can’t climb it, and no one to do it for me. My daughter’s a shocking invalid. Chronic, that’s what Dr. Croft calls her. And no appetite, but she fancies a bit of apple now and again.”

The Inspector said he fancied a bit of apple himself. He found Mrs. Stone just as ready to talk as Miss Sims had been. She opened the cottage door and showed him just how she had stood with the candle in her hand showing Miss Susan out.

“And the two of them coming up the road quarrelling something dreadful.”

“How do you mean, quarrelling? Could you hear what they said?”

“Not at the first of it I couldn’t. But you don’t need to have the words to know when people are quarrelling. Proper angry, that’s what he was, and Mr. Edward isn’t the one you’d like to get that way with you. I felt sorry for the pore girl even before I knowed who she was. And she was sorry for herself too, I can tell you that. Holding on to him with both her hands she was, and crying ever so. ‘Oh, Edward!’ she says, and calls him darling. And, ‘Don’t be so angry!’ she says, and, ‘I can’t bear it!’ And ‘It frightens me!’ she says. And no good Mrs. Alexander nor anyone else letting on that she hadn’t any call to be frightened. ‘That’s as may be,’ I told her, but she thought different. ‘You frighten me when you’re like that!’ was what I heard the pore girl say with my own ears. And he tells her to leave him alone. And Miss Susan Wayne heard it all, same as what I did. She had to make up a story about Miss Dean turning her ankle, but it wasn’t no ankle she was crying for, and you may take my word for that.”

At the south lodge he found Miss Susan Wayne. From the fact that she was wearing a hat he deduced that she was thinking of going to church. Well, he wouldn’t need to keep her long.

She took him into the drawing-room, which contained no more than a couple of the cats, and said she would tell Mrs. Random. “I think she is dressing for church.”

“As a matter of fact, Miss Wayne, it was you whom I wanted to see.”

“Yes?”

Stupid to feel nervous. Stupider still to show that she was nervous. And he had gone over to the window, so that she had to stand and face the light.

“Won’t you sit down?”

He said, “Thank you,” and chose the window-seat, which made things worse.

She took the arm of one of the big chairs. She had the light in her eyes. He could see their dark unusual grey and the fine grain of her skin. He could see whatever he wanted to see. She straightened her shoulders and folded her hands in her lap. “What is it, Inspector?”

“Well, Miss Wayne, I have a statement here from Mrs. Stone who lives in the end cottage before you come to the Vicarage. She says you were visiting her on Thursday evening. Do you remember what time it was when you left?”

“Oh, about a quarter past seven, I think. We have supper at half past, but it is always difficult to get away from Mrs. Stone. She likes to talk.”

“Yes, I have noticed that.” Bury’s tone was dry. “She has been talking to me. She says that when she was showing you out two people came up from the direction of the watersplash-Mr. Edward Random and Miss Clarice Dean. She says that they were quarrelling, and she has given me her version of what they said. I have come here to ask you for yours.”

He saw her colour change. She looked down at her hands. Her thoughts raced. If he had been talking to Mrs. Stone, then he knew everything that Mrs. Stone knew. It wouldn’t do any good for her to contradict it. Lies weren’t any good, really. She had a deep, quick instinct about that, and she was no good at them anyhow. She lifted her eyes to his face and said,

“It wasn’t exactly a quarrel.”

“Will you tell me just what you heard?”

She frowned a little. He saw that she was trying to remember.

“The voices at first-his voice-Edward Random’s-”

“You recognized it?”

“Oh, yes. I didn’t hear any words-only his voice.”

“Speaking loudly? Angrily?”

“Not loudly. He sounded-well, put out.”

“Yes? Go on.”

“The girl was Clarice Dean. You know that of course. She was-behaving very stupidly-making a fuss.”

“Will you explain what you mean by that?”

Susan’s fair skin had flushed.

“It sounds so horrid to say it when she is dead, but she was the sort of girl who likes to make everything into a scene. She dramatized herself, and she did her best to make other people play the kind of part she wanted them to play. She was having a pretty dull time with the Miss Blakes, and she was trying to get Edward Random to play up to her.”

“Is that what he told you, Miss Wayne?”

The flush deepened.

“It’s what I could see for myself. She was always ringing him up-trying to fix dates with him-that kind of thing.”

“Mr. Random told you that?”

He got an emphatic shake of the head.

“Of course not! He has been very busy taking over from Mr. Barr, and often very late coming home. If he was out, I had to answer the telephone. If he was in, Mrs. Random and I could hardly help hearing his side of the conversation. The telephone is in a little room at the back. He generally leaves the door open.”

He went back to the Thursday evening, taking her over what she had heard, putting Mrs. Stone’s statement to her for corroboration.

“Miss Dean was crying?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And clinging to him?”

“She was holding on to his arm.”

“Now, Miss Wayne, did you hear her use these words, ‘Edward-darling-don’t be so angry! I can’t bear it when you are like that! It frightens me!’?”

“It was that kind of thing. She was putting on an act. That was why he was angry. It was done for Mrs. Stone to hear.”

He went on with his questioning.