Patricia Wentworth - Vanishing Point

Fortunately, Marian had slept through the hours of the night without any suspicion that the front door was unlocked and her guest absent. By the time she awoke to these facts they could no longer be considered of the first importance. The arrest of Lydia Crewe, of Henry Cunningham, of that good-natured Mr. Selby, dominated everything.

“Oh, my dear Maud, those poor girls-what will they do! And Lucy! She will feel it quite dreadfully, poor thing! I must go to her! Poor Henry-it doesn’t seem possible! He was such a good-looking young man. Of course Lydia has always been strange. It isn’t really good for people to live in the past as she has done. After all, these old houses, and pictures, and furniture-they don’t matter as much as people do, and we oughtn’t let ourselves think so. But Lydia did-one couldn’t help seeing it. And whatever happened, she had to have her own way.”

Hazel Green buzzed with talk. But for once Florrie was not first with the news. She found Mrs. Merridew and Miss Silver already informed, and very little inclined to talk of what they knew. Mrs. Merridew’s, “It’s all very sad, Florrie, and I must hurry and get dressed so that I can go to Miss Cunningham,” was as much as she could get from her, and Miss Silver had taken her cup of tea into her own room and shut the door.

When Craig arrived Mrs. Merridew had already gone over to the Dower House and Miss Silver was ready. She waited until the village was behind them before giving him anything but a grave “Good-morning.” Then she said,

“How have they taken it, Mr. Lester?”

There was a touch of defiance in his answer.

“They don’t know.”

“You have told them nothing?”

He shook his head.

“Not a word. As soon as it began to get light I called through their window and told them to get dressed and come along. They didn’t ask any questions. I think there must have been some kind of a scene with Miss Crewe. Jenny looked odd. She wasn’t in her own room-she was in with Rosamond. I didn’t ask any questions either. I thought I’d leave well enough alone until we were married. Rosamond is perfectly capable of saying she can’t go through with it because that madwoman has been arrested. But once I’m her husband I’ll be able to deal with that, and with anything else that crops up. I don’t mind telling you I’m like a cat on hot bricks until I’ve got her safe.”

“Where have you taken them, Mr. Lester?”

“Well, I thought about my uncle’s house. Highly respectable and all that, but it would have made too much fuss. Elderly maid, nurse companion, everything going like clockwork-you know the sort of thing. It wouldn’t have done. So I took them to the Station Hotel-they’re used to people arriving by early trains. They’ll stay in their room-or at least I hope they will- until we come for them. I don’t think Jenny had had much sleep, and Rosamond would be trying to keep her quiet.”

Miss Silver sat silent and thoughtful. News flies fast in the country. The case was a sensational one. The arrested persons had been taken to Melbury to be charged. There might already be talk in an hotel, where the staff would be coming to work. The Melbury rubies would set tongues wagging. She hoped indeed that Rosamond Maxwell would remain in her room.

At Craig’s knock on the door Rosamond opened it. If he too had had misgivings, they were swept away. She was wearing the blue jumper in which she had come to tea with Mrs. Merridew. It wasn’t new, but it deepened the sapphire blue of her eyes. When she looked at Craig they were full of light.

He said, “Miss Silver has come to see us married,” and she turned at once and put out both her hands.

“How kind of you-how very, very kind!”

Jenny was feeling rather grand because she was wearing a skirt and jumper of Rosamond’s. Her own clothes were all up over her knees, and you can’t go to your sister’s wedding like that. These things weren’t new-none of their things were new-but she could feel the skirt swishing against her legs in a perfectly grown-up way, and though it was just rather a dull old tweed and the jumper was brown, they did show up her hair. Odd that when Miss Silver looked at her she should feel as if she wanted to cry.

They went down to the Register Office in Craig’s car. Jenny thought it was a very dull way to be married. Rosamond would have looked so nice in a long white dress with a train behind and a lovely floating veil. And Jenny would have been bridesmaid, in a white dress too, with a wreath of flowers on her hair. And an organ, and singing, and a lot of flowers in the church. Dull, that’s what this was, and all over whilst she was still thinking how nice the other sort of wedding would have been. She hadn’t really got as far as deciding whether she would have snowdrops and ivy leaves or grape hyacinths in her hair before the Registrar was saying, “Let me be the first to congratulate you, Mrs. Lester,” and it was all over.

Craig and Rosamond didn’t kiss. They looked at each other. There was something in the way they looked which gave Jenny a curious shaky feeling. It wasn’t flowers and a white dress and music that made a wedding romantic. It was something else- something which was between the two people who were marrying each other. And just for a moment when Craig looked at Rosamond and she looked back at him Jenny had seen it.

She never stops talking,” said Frank Abbott. “It’s pretty grim. They’ve got her in the Infirmary-she just goes on and on and on. Detailed accounts of everything for the last twenty years.”

Miss Silver sighed.

“An extremely shocking case,” she said.

It was the evening of a crowded day. They sat in the drawing-room at the White Cottage, Frank stretched out in the largest chair, Miss Silver primly upright with her knitting in her lap. Mrs. Merridew was still with Lucy Cunningham, and would remain there until she had seen her settled for the night. The coffee-tray stood at Frank’s elbow, and a pleasant fire burned upon the hearth. He said,

“The Chief Constable wouldn’t believe it, you know. Said she had gone off her head, and the whole thing was just a painful delusion. Even the sight of the Melbury rubies didn’t shake him. There had been Crewes at Crewe House for three hundred years, and so forth and so on. If there was a villain in the piece it would be Henry Cunningham. The Cunninghams, you see, have only been here about thirty years, and as to Selby, a mere chance-come Londoner, well naturally, he might be anything. Odd, you know, because he is quite an able man. But that sort of thing is died in the wool-the old county family can do no wrong.”

Little Josephine’s leggings were very nearly completed. There had been just enough of the cherry-coloured wool. She said,

“And pray, how did you convince him?”

Frank poured himself out another cup of coffee. He sugared it extravagantly.

“Well, you know, when she said that Maggie Bell’s body was in the old sand pit just off the road down the second lane to the left on the way to Melbury and it was there under a tangle of nettle and bramble, he had either got to credit her with second sight or come round to the idea that she had helped to put it there just as she said. She told us with a good deal of pride how she had intercepted Maggie on her way to the Hunts’s and got her into Selby’s car by saying there was something she wanted her to explain to Florrie’s mother. After which it was quite easy for Selby to knock her on the head, and so to the sand pit. Exit Maggie who, like the unfortunate Miss Holiday, had seen too much. Very regrettable, and a lot of trouble for Lydia Crewe. Henry had been careless enough to leave stolen diamonds lying about on his table when he went out of the room and returned to find Maggie looking at them. Naturally, after that there was only one thing to be done, and Selby and Lydia did it. I gather they didn’t tell Henry. All he did was to pack the stuff in his specimens.”