Patricia Wentworth - Vanishing Point

Miss Silver was casting off. As the last cherry-coloured stitch dropped from the needles, she said,

“It has all been a terrible shock to her. I do not think she had many illusions about her brother. She knew him to be weak and drifting, but she had no suspicion that he was involved in a criminal enterprise, and no idea at all that the breach between him and Lydia Crewe was no more than a sham and that in reality he was seeing her constantly and was as much under her influence as he had ever been. His trial and all that must come out at it will be a very terrible experience for the poor woman.”

He hesitated for a moment. Then he said,

“Keep this to yourself. Selby’s for it, of course, but Cunningham isn’t at all likely to stand his trial. He has had some kind of a seizure. I gather he is not expected to come round. It would save his sister and young Cunningham if he didn’t. By the way, the Dalling Grange affair has been cleared up- the Security people let us know this morning. An attempt was made to frame Nicholas, and apparently he turned the tables. The real villain of the piece was Burlington ’s trusted private secretary, Brown. It’s the same old story-a minor indiscretion to start with, a glass too much, the temptation to magnify his own importance by appearing to be well informed. Then pressure, the threat of exposure, blackmail- the whole bag of tricks-you know how it goes. Fingerprints on a compromising letter which had been planted on Nicholas finally gave him away. When confronted with them Brown collapsed-one of Kipling’s ‘brittle intellectuals who crack beneath a strain’! So that is that. I hope you went to bed and slept this morning after being up all night?”

Miss Silver smiled.

“I was more pleasantly engaged.”

“And now what have you been up to?”

She laid her knitting-needles down upon little Josephine’s completed leggings.

“I attended a wedding. I was giving away the bride.”

“How extremely versatile! Who was it?”

“Rosamond Maxwell. Miss Crewe was sending Jenny away to school today, and Mr. Lester had persuaded Rosamond to consent to this sudden wedding in order that he might have the right to act for her in the matter. The two girls were entirely financially dependent on Miss Crewe. Owing to Jenny’s long period of invalidism following upon an accident, Rosamond had been unable to earn anything. The situation was, in fact, so difficult that an immediate marriage seemed to be the only solution. Mr. Lester asked me to be present because he felt that Rosamond should have some support, and they did not like to involve any of Miss Crewe’s friends in what she was bound to consider an affront.”

Frank whistled.

“Poor old Craig-he’s run into something!”

Miss Silver coughed reprovingly,

“I can assure you that he considers himself extremely fortunate to have won the love of so good and charming a girl. As Lord Tennyson so aptly says:

Frank sat up laughing.

“Oh, if it’s that way of it, there’s nothing more to say, is there! What is a mad murderous aunt or two when you and Lord Tennyson approve! She’s raving, so they won’t hang her anyhow. All that remains is to offer one’s felicitations, select a suitable gift, and hope for the best. It’s a mad world anyhow.”

Miss Silver smiled.

Craig, I must go back.”

She sat looking at him, all the bloom and radiance gone. It made him feel like an executioner. Twenty-four hours, and he had had to bring that tragic look to her face! Even the brief respite had been hard to achieve. The evening paper had to be suppressed, a chance taken with the possibility of some ghastly poster headline, some friendly encounter. Well, they had had their twenty-four hours. The arrival at his house, old Nan’s welcome, Jenny’s excitement, Rosamond’s quiet delight, the feeling that they had reached a place where all the things they had dreamed of would come true-And now, in the grey morning with rain beating on the windows and a cold wind blowing, he had had to tell her about Lydia Crewe.

He knew her so well that he had known what she would say. Now he heard her say it.

“Craig, I must go back.”

“My darling child!”

She put out her hands to him, and he took them.

“Oh, you ought to have told me before! You oughtn’t to have let me marry you!”

Her hands were strongly, warmly held.

“Darling, don’t be stupid! Now, will you just listen to me! You are about to produce all the old clichés, and I don’t want to hear them. Instead, you will listen to the voice of common sense. To start with, nowadays people stand or fall by what they do themselves. Nobody cares two hoots about their relations. Most people have one or two whom they don’t exactly brag about, you know. To go on with, no one is going to connect you and Jenny with Miss Crewe unless you make a point of it.”

A sudden colour came into her face.

“Craig, don’t you see I can’t just turn my back and pretend she doesn’t belong. She did take us in when we had nowhere to go, and she is a relation-my mother was a Crewe. I can’t walk out and say it’s got nothing to do with me. Someone must see about the legal part of it. I can’t just run away and let her think I don’t care. I must go back.”

He said,

“She won’t thank you.”

Rosamond pulled her hands away.

“What does that matter?”

He smiled suddenly.

“No it wouldn’t-to you. All right, darling, we’ll go back. Jenny can stay here with Nan. You don’t want to drag her into it, I suppose?”

“Oh, no!”

Jenny had no wish to return to Hazel Green. The things which had happened there were things she never meant to think about again. Neither now nor at any other time would she call back the hour when she had kneeled behind the stile which led into Vicarage Lane and watched the beam of a torch slide over something which lay upon the grass verge beyond-a long, dark something covered with sacking. She would never let herself think about the blue bead which she had found there. The dark hours were gone. The bead was gone. She didn’t care whether Aunt Lydia was mad, or whether she was in prison. The only thing she cared about was that she need never, never, never see her again. She had Craig for a brother, and this darling house to live in, and Nan, all comfortable and rosy and about two yards round the waist, to look after them. Nan was going to let her make an apple turn-over. She was nice.

Rosamond and Craig drove through the rain. He knew now he had always been sure that Rosamond would go back. She was gentle, but she was resolute. He laughed suddenly and said,

“You know, my sweet, what you’ve got is a strong, persevering Scottish conscience.”

“Do you mind very much?”

“I shall get used to it. One of my grandmothers was a Scot, which will help me to keep my end up.”

It was still raining when they drove up to Crewe House, to find the police in charge there.

Later in the day they were admitted to see Lydia Crewe. Rosamond had not Jenny’s gift of being able to shut the door upon what she did not choose to remember. The interview which followed was to haunt her-the bare room with its whitewashed walls and its smell of varnish-the long yellow table with Aunt Lydia at one end of it and herself and Craig at the other-the two policewomen who stood one at the door, and the other behind Aunt Lydia’s chair. Afterwards she was to remember with a shudder that there were two. At the time it gave her a vague sense of security. The mad incessant talking had stopped, but there might still be an outbreak of violence.