Vanishing Point

CHAPTER 6

Miss Silver was dispensing coffee in the flowered set which had been the Christmas present of a grateful client. The cups had a blue and gold border and little gay bunches of flowers, the saucers a similar border and an occasional scattered bloom. Frank Abbott, having duly admired them, enjoyed his coffee and awaited the moment to do this errand. Not in the house of any one of his numerous relations did he feel more at home than in Miss Maud Silver’s flat, with its rather bright peacock-blue curtains, its carpet in the same shade adorned by floral wreaths, its workmanlike desk, and the Victorian chairs with their frames of bright carved walnut and the upholstery which matched the curtains. The pictures looking down upon the scene were all old friends-reproductions of The Soul’s Awakening, The Stag at Bay, Hope, and The Black Brunswicker. Miss Silver herself, with her neatly netted fringe, her beaded shoes, the large gold locket which exhibited her parents’ initials in high relief and contained locks of their hair, might have stepped out of any family album before the twentieth century wars had shattered a Victorian and Edwardian world. In appearance, in manner, and tradition she was miraculously a survival. Even her dress, though lacking the sweeping folds of those earlier days, contrived to produce its own effect of being permanently out of date. The little net vest with its high boned collar suggested the nineties, and the stamp of the small dressmaker-“Ladies’ own materials made up”- provided every garment she wore with a family likeness to all those other garments fashioned laboriously in villages and back streets before the days when a gentlewoman could purchase or wear a ready-made dress.

Frank Abbott found amidst these surroundings a sense of security which he could not put into words. It was with reluctance that he set down his coffee-cup and returned to the world of crime.

“You do not happen to know anyone in Melbury, I suppose? Or do you?”

Miss Silver put her own cup down upon the coffee-tray before she replied. She had at times a way of contemplating a new subject with the kind of bright attention with which a bird may be seen to regard a problematical worm. This was one of those times. Frank received the very decided impression that Melbury was a worm, and that she was so regarding it. She repeated the name on a slight note of enquiry.

“Melbury?”

He nodded.

“Do you know anyone there?”

“Not precisely in Melbury. But why do you ask?”

“The Chief would be glad if you did.”

“My dear Frank!”

“He wants someone to feel the social pulse, not so much in Melbury itself as in the neighbouring village of Hazel Green.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”

This being her strongest expression of astonishment or concern, he was not surprised when she followed it with,

“This is really quite a coincidence.”

“Then you do know someone there?”

“I have an old schoolfellow in Hazel Green.”

“My dear Miss Silver!”

She lifted a flowered knitting-bag from the lower tier of the small table which supported the coffee-tray and, opening it, took out a pair of needles from which there depended a narrow strip of ribbing in an extremely pleasing shade. Little Josephine, her niece Ethel Burkett’s youngest child, was now approaching her sixth birthday. A twin set in this delightful cherry colour would be very becoming. It used to be the fashion to dress a fair child in nothing but blue, but in this matter she applauded the modern trend. As she pulled on the cherry-coloured ball and began to knit she amplified her previous remark.

“I had really quite lost sight of Marian. It is not always possible to keep up with one’s schoolfellows, and during my early days in the scholastic profession, I was very fully occupied, but as recently as last year I came across her again at the house of another old school friend, Cecilia Voycey. She had invited her to stay, and thought it would be pleasant to have a little reunion. Melling is not very far from Melbury, and I really was extremely pleased to see Marian again, though rather sadly changed. She married into an old county family. They owned what was quite a show place but successive death duties crippled the property, and during the war it was taken over by the government.”

Frank Abbott cocked an eyebrow and said,

“Not Dalling Grange?”

“That, I believe, is the name. The Merridews had been there for a long time, and it seems a pity. Marian is now a childless widow, and I think it is a relief to her to have a small manageable house and fewer responsibilities.”

“Could you go and stay with her?”

“She has invited me to do so.”

“Then listen.”

As he unfolded the tale of Maggie Bell, with its possible ramifications into the experiments now being carried on at Dalling Grange and the Air Ministry’s perturbation on the score of possible leakages of information, Miss Silver continued to knit. When he had finished she said gravely,

“There seems to be very little to go upon.”

Frank threw out a hand.

“Practically nothing. They appear to think there has been some leakage, but I don’t believe they are sure. It’s not unknown for two people to hit on the same idea in different countries and at about the same time, and if there is, or has been, a leakage, what is there to connect it with the disappearance of Maggie Bell? I don’t quite see what we are expected to do about it anyhow. The disappearance took place a year ago. We haven’t been told very much about the leakage, but I gather it is a good deal more recent. The fact remains that there is a pretty considerable flap going on, and it wouldn’t do any particular harm if you were to pay this visit to your friend Mrs. Merridew.”

She knitted in silence for some moments, and then began to ask questions.

“Maggie worked for this Miss Cunningham?”

“For four hours every morning-eight to twelve.”

“And the nephew, Nicholas Cunningham, is employed on research work at Dalling Grange?”

“Exactly.”

“And the other inmate of the house, Mr. Henry Cunningham-what does he do?”

“He is engaged upon a book dealing with the local moths and butterflies.”

“Has he ever published anything?”

“Not that I know of. One of these dawdling dilettante kind of chaps, I should think, with enough of a hobby to give him an excuse for being idle.”

“He has been living there with his sister for how long?”

“For the last three years. The Security people have been over his whole dossier, and it all sounds harmless enough. A bit of a rolling stone, but nothing against him. During the war he was in a Japanese prison camp, and his family had given him up for dead. Then one day he walked in, and has been there ever since. Naturally he has been suspect number one, but none of the ends tie up. On the face of it he is just an elderly drifter, not in very good health and glad to come home and slip back into his place in the family. Well, what am I to say to the Chief? I’m being sent down myself to stay with a cousin. He’s got a job as architect on the new Melbury housing estate. Are you going to come down and hold my hand?”

Miss Silver knitted to the end of her row. Then she said,

“I will write to Marian Merridew tonight.”