Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver Comes To Stay

Henry came in cheerfully, put down a bundle of picture-papers-“Had them sent to me-thought you’d like to see them”-wouldn’t take coffee because he was on his way to see old Mrs. Wingfold at Hill Farm, wouldn’t sit down for the same reason, and ended by taking the cup which Rietta put into his hand and drinking from it standing up in front of the fire.

“She thinks she’s dying. Of course she isn’t. It happens about three times a month, but I must go or she might, and then I’d never forgive myself. You make the best coffee I know, Rietta.”

She smiled, her face softening. It is agreeable to be loved when the lover demands nothing except the privilege of worship, and she was very fond of Henry Ainger. He was, as she had once said, so very nearly an angel. Not that he looked like one, or like a parson either, in a pair of old grey flannel slacks, a thick white sweater, and a disreputable raincoat. Above it his rosy face, round blue eyes, and thick fair hair gave him rather the look of a schoolboy in spite of his forty-five years. In daylight you could see that there was a good deal of grey in the hair, but the look of youth would be there when he was ninety. He finished his coffee, had a second cup, and said goodnight.

At the door he turned.

“Mrs. Mayhew’s back early. I came out in the bus with her from Lenton. I thought she looked worried. I hope it isn’t Cyril again.”

Carr came back from the bookcase where he had been dallying.

“I saw Cyril Mayhew at the station. He came down on the same train that we did.”

Rietta held out a cup of coffee to him.

“Did you speak to him?”

“No-I was going to offer him a lift, but he slipped away.”

“He may not have been coming here. He doesn’t-” she paused and added, “officially.”

Carr raised his eyebrows.

“Anything the matter?”

She said, “Some trouble-I don’t want to rake it up.” She turned to Henry Ainger. “Mrs. Mayhew couldn’t have known he was coming, or she’d have met the train and they’d have come out together.”

“She might. I hope there’s nothing wrong. I was surprised to see her hurrying back like that on her evening out. Mayhew wasn’t with her.”

Rietta frowned a little.

“James Lessiter’s up at the House. I expect she felt she had to come back and give him something to eat. I don’t suppose he’s in the way of doing anything for himself.”

Henry agreed.

“I don’t suppose he is. He seems to have made a lot of money. There’s a picture of him in one of those papers. He’s just pulled off some big deal. I must see if I can get something out of him for the organ fund.”

The door slammed after him-the banging of doors was one of Henry’s less angelic habits-and almost at the same moment the telephone bell clamoured from the dining-room. As Rietta went to answer it she saw Carr stretch out his hand to the pile of picture-papers.

She shut both doors, picked up the receiver, and heard Catherine’s voice, blurred and shaken.

“Rietta-is it you?”

“Yes. What’s the matter? You sound-”

“If it was only sounding-” She broke off on a choked breath.

“Catherine, what is it?”

She was beginning to be seriously alarmed. None of this was like Catherine. She had known her for more than forty years, and she had never known her like this. When things went wrong Catherine passed by on the other side. Even Edward Welby’s death had always been presented as a lack of consideration on his part rather than an occasion for heartbreak. The ensuing financial stringency had not prevented her from acquiring mourning garments of a most expensive and becoming nature. Rietta had listened to her being reproachful, complacent, plaintive. This was something different.

“Rietta-it’s what we were talking about. He rang up- he’s found that damned memorandum. Aunt Mildred must have been out of her mind. It was written just before she died. You know how forgetful she was.”

“Was she?” Rietta’s tone was dry.

The line throbbed with Catherine’s indignation.

“You know she was! She forgot simply everything!”

“It’s no use your asking me to say that, because I can’t. What does the memorandum say?”

“It says the things were lent. She must have been mad!”

“Does it mention them by name?”

“Yes, it does. It’s completely and perfectly damnable. I can’t give them back-you know I can’t. And I believe he knows too. That’s what frightens me so much-he knows, and he’s enjoying it. He’s got a down on me, I’m sure I don’t know why. Rietta, he-he said he’d rung up Mr. Holderness.”

“Mr. Holderness won’t encourage him to make a scandal.”

“He won’t be able to stop him. Nobody ever could stop James when he’d made up his mind-you know that as well as I do. There’s only one thing-Rietta, if you went to him- if you told him his mother really didn’t remember things from one day to another-”

Rietta said harshly, “No.”

“Rietta-”

“No, Catherine, I won’t! And it wouldn’t be the least bit of good if I did-there’s Mr. Holderness, and the doctor, to say nothing of the Mayhews and Mrs. Fallow. Mrs. Lessiter knew perfectly well what she was doing, and you know it. I won’t tell lies about her.”

There was a dead silence. After it had gone on for a long minute Catherine said,

“Then anything that happens will be your fault. I’m desperate .”

As Rietta came back into the sitting-room she saw Carr Robertson on his feet. Her mind was full of her conversation with Catherine-what she had said, what Catherine had said, what James Lessiter might be going to do. And then she saw Carr’s face, and everything went. One of the papers which Henry Ainger had brought lay open across the table. He stood over it now, his hand on it, pointing, every muscle taut, eyes blazing from a colourless face. Fancy was leaning forward, frightened, her red mouth a little open.

Rietta came to him and said his name. When she touched his arm it felt like a bar of steel. She looked where the hand pointed and saw the photograph which Mrs. Lessiter had been so proud of-James as she had seen him last night at Catherine Welby’s.

In a voice that was just above a whisper Carr said,

“Is that James Lessiter?”

Rietta said, “Yes.”

Still in that dreadful quiet tone, he said,

“He’s the man I’ve been looking for. He’s the man who took Marjory away. I’ve got him now!”

“Carr-for God’s sake-”

He wrenched away from her hand and went striding out of the room. The door banged, the front door banged. The striding steps went down the flagged path, the gate clapped to.

Fancy said something, but Rietta didn’t wait to hear what it was. She caught up an old raincoat from the passage and ran out by the back door and through the garden to the gate which opened on the grounds of Melling House. She got her arms into the coat sleeves somehow and ran on. How many hundred times had James Lessiter waited for her just here in the shadow of the trees?

With the gate left open behind her she ran through the woodland and out upon the open ground beyond. Her feet knew every step of the way. There was light enough when memory held so bright a candle.

She struck through shrubs into the drive and stood there, quieting her breath to listen. If Carr was making for the House he must come this way. He could not have passed, because he had to follow two sides of the triangle while she had cut across its base. She listened, and heard her own breath, her own thudding pulses, and as these died down, all the little sounds which go by unnoticed in the day-leaf touching leaf in a light breeze, the faint rub of one twig against another, a bird stirring, some tiny creature moving in the undergrowth. There were no footsteps.