Wicked Uncle

Chapter XXV

Miss Masterman was writing a letter. It began, “Dear Mr. Trower-” and it ended, “Yours sincerely, Agnes Masterman.” It was written in a firm, legible hand.

When she had signed her name she folded the sheet, put it in an envelope, and addressed it to Messrs. Trower and Wakefield, Solicitors. Then she put on her hat and the shabby fur coat and walked down the drive.

She came back in about twenty minutes. Mr. Masterman was knocking about the balls in the billiard-room. When he saw his sister come in, still in her outdoor things, he frowned and said,

“Where have you been?”

She came right up to the table before she answered him. Watching her come, he felt a growing uneasiness. When she said, “To post a letter,” the uneasiness became an absolute oppression. He wanted to ask her, “What letter?” but he held the words back. It wasn’t any concern of his, but she wrote so few letters-none at all since old Mabel Ledbury died. Why should she write to anyone now?

They stood there, not more than a yard apart, with that uneasiness of his between them. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. There was something hard about it, as if she had made up her mind and didn’t give a damn. He put down his cue and said,

“Hadn’t you better take your things off? It’s hot in here.”

She didn’t take any notice of that, just looked at him and said in quite an ordinary voice,

“I’ve written to Mr. Trower.”

“You’ve-what?”

“I’ve written to Mr. Trower to say that we’ve found another will.”

“Agnes-are you mad?”

“Oh, no. I told you I couldn’t go on. I said it was hidden in her biscuit-box-there won’t be any trouble about it. I told you I couldn’t go on.”

He said in a stunned voice, “You’re mad.”

Agnes Masterman shook her head.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I thought I’d better tell you what I’d done. Now I’m going to take my things off.”

Afterwards he was glad that Leonard Carroll chose this moment to drift into the room, obviously bored and wanting a game. Agnes walked out with the same detached air which she had worn throughout their brief encounter, and he had the satisfaction of beating young Carroll’s head off. Much better than having a row with Agnes. No use having a row if the letter was posted. They’d have to go through with it, but he would keep her to her offer about the fifty thousand. He’d be no worse off if he had it, and he’d be safe. If he had known how Agnes was going to carry on he would never have risked it at all. Women hadn’t the nerve for a bold stroke, and that was a fact.

Whilst the game of billiards was going on Justin went up to the Mill House.

“Put your hat on and come out,” he said.

Dorinda went away and came back again. They walked down the road towards the village in the late dusk of a damp, misty evening. Little curls of smoke came up out of the chimneys of the village houses to join the mist and thicken it. Here and there a lighted chink showed where a curtain had been drawn crookedly. There was a faint smell of rotted leaves-especially cabbage leaves-manure, and wood smoke.

Just short of the first house a lane went off between high hedgerows and overarching trees. Until they had turned into it neither of them had spoken. There was that feeling of there being too much to say, and an odd sense of being too much out in the open to say it. Here in the lane they were shut in-alone.

Justin spoke first.

“How are you getting on?”

She didn’t answer the question, but said quickly,

“The police came-”

“Did they see Mrs. Oakley?”

“No-Mr. Oakley wouldn’t let them. He said she wasn’t well enough. They’re coming back tomorrow. They saw the maid, and they saw me.”

“You’d better tell me about it.”

“They were very nice. I mean they didn’t make me feel nervous or anything. The Chief Inspector asked all the questions, and the other one wrote down what I said. And-oh, Justin, the very first thing he asked me was how long had I known Mr. Porlock.”

“What did you say?”

She had turned and was looking at him through the dusk. It was really almost dark here between the hedges and under the trees. He had sent her to put on a hat, but she had come down in her tweed coat bareheaded. The colour of the tweed was absorbed into all the other shades of brown and russet and auburn which belonged to drifted leaves, brown earth, and leafless boughs. Her hair had vanished too, melting into the shadow overhead. There remained visible just her face, robbed of its colour, almost of its features, like the faint first sketch of a face painted on a soft, dim background. The sunk lane gave an under-water quality to its own darkness. She seemed at once remote and near. He could touch her if he put out his hand, but at this moment it came to him to wonder whether he would reach her if he did.

The pause before she answered was momentary.

“I said I didn’t know him at all when we went there last night. Justin, it doesn’t seem as if it could be only last night- does it?” She caught her breath. “I’m sorry-it just came over me. Then I said when we came into the drawing-room I recognized him.”

“Oh, you told them that?”

She said in a voice which was suddenly very young,

“I thought I must. And I thought if I was going to, then I had better do it at once.”

“That’s all right. Go on.”

“Well, they asked a lot of questions. I told them his name was Glen Porteous when I knew him, and that he was Aunt Mary’s husband. And they asked when she died, and I said four years ago. So then they wanted to know whether there had been a divorce, and I said yes, she divorced him about seven years ago after he went away the last time, and that I hadn’t seen him since. They wanted to know whether I was sure that Gregory Porlock was Glen Porteous, and I said I was, and that he knew I had recognized him. He did, you know. You can always tell by the way anyone looks at you, and that was the way he looked at me. Well, after that they asked about the photograph I picked up off the nursery floor. I don’t know who told them about it. I said it was the twin of the one Aunt Mary had and I recognized it at once. And then they went back to that horrid business at the De Luxe Stores. And do you know what I think, Justin? I think the Wicked Uncle cooked that up to get me out of my job with the Oakleys. You see, he couldn’t count on my not recognizing him, and if he was going about being Gregory Porlock he wouldn’t want a bit of his past turning up and saying, ‘Oh, no-that’s Glen Porteous, and my Aunt Mary had to divorce him because he was an out and out bad lot.’ I mean, would he?”

“Probably not.”

“They seemed to know about Miss Silver. The young one got a sort of twinkly look when I told them how she talked to the manager at that horrid Stores. He said something that sounded like ‘She would!’ and the Chief Inspector went rather stiff and said that Miss Silver was very much respected at Scotland Yard. Oh, Justin, I do wish she was here!”

“What makes you say that?”

She caught her breath.

“It’s the Oakleys. Justin, I feel frightened about them. You know how she called out when she saw that he was dead? She called him Glen. She must have known him before he was Gregory Porlock. She wasn’t supposed to know him at all. There’s something frightening there. She does nothing but cry, and Mr. Oakley looks as if it was a funeral all the time. There’s something they’re both dreadfully afraid about. She’s afraid to tell him what it is, and he’s afraid to ask her. It’s grim.”

He said, “I don’t like your being there.”

“Oh, it isn’t that. I can’t help feeling sorry for them-even if-”

“What did you mean by that, Dorinda?”

She said almost inaudibly, “It frightens me.”

The thought which frightened her hung between them in the dark. A desperate hand striking a desperate blow. Perhaps a woman’s hand-perhaps a man’s-

She said with a little gasp,

“He was the sort of person who gets himself murdered.”