Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver Comes To Stay

“I only saw her once. She was very pretty.” It was said without rancour, yet they both remembered that one meeting, because it was after it that Elizabeth had said, “Are you in love with her, Carr?” They were here alone together in this very room, and when he looked away and couldn’t meet her eyes she had taken off her engagement ring and laid it down on the arm of the chair between them, and when he still had nothing to say she had gone out through the far door and up the old stair to her own room overhead. And he had let her go.

Five years ago, but it came back like yesterday. He said,

“Why did you let me go?”

“How could I keep you?”

“You didn’t try.”

“No-I didn’t try. I didn’t want to keep you if you wanted to go.”

He was silent, because he couldn’t say, “I didn’t want to go.” He had known Elizabeth all his life, and Marjory for three short weeks. At twenty-three it is the new, the unexpected, the unknown, which evokes romance. If the enchanted distance turns upon nearer view into a desert, you have only yourself to thank. Marjory hadn’t changed-he had always had to remind himself of that.

He found himself leaning forward, his hands between his knees, words coming at first jerkily and then with a rush.

“It wasn’t her fault, you know. I was damnable to live with-and the baby died-she hadn’t got anything. Money was tight. She’d been used to having a good time-lots of people to go about with. I couldn’t give her anything to make up for it. The flat was so cramped-she hated it. I was always away, and there wasn’t any money, and when I was there I was in a filthy temper. You can’t blame her.”

“What happened, Carr?”

“I was sent to Germany. I didn’t get demobbed till the end of that year. She never wrote much, and then she didn’t write at all. I got leave, and came home to find strangers in the flat. She’d let it. No one knew where she was. When I got home for good I tried to trace her. I took on the flat again, because I had to live somewhere and I’d got this job in a literary agency. A friend of mine started it-Jack Smithers. You remember, he was up at Oxford with me. He was crocked in the war, and got away with this business before the ugly rush.”

Elizabeth said, “Yes?”

He looked up at her for a moment.

“I had a sort of idea perhaps she would come back. Well, she did. It was a bitter cold January night. I got in just short of midnight, and there she was, huddled up on the divan. She must have been pretty well frozen, because she hadn’t any coat, only a thin suit. She’d got the eiderdown from the bedroom and put the electric fire on, and by the time I got in she was in a burning fever. I got a doctor, but she never had a chance. The swine she’d gone off with had left her penniless in France. She’d sold everything she had to get home. She told me that, but she wouldn’t tell me his name. She said she didn’t want me to kill him. After all he’d done to her-she talked when she was delirious, so I know-after all that she was mad about him still!”

Elizabeth ’s voice came into the silence.

“She might have been thinking about you.”

He laughed angrily.

“Then she wasn’t! She kept his photograph-that’s how I know, and that’s how I’ll find him some day. It was in the back of her compact under the bit of gauze that’s supposed to keep the powder in. I expect she thought nobody would find it there, but of course she didn’t know she was going to die.” His voice went harsh. “She wouldn’t have believed it if anyone had told her.”

Elizabeth said, “Poor Marjory!”

He nodded.

“I’ve kept that photograph-I’ll find him some time. It was just the head and shoulders cut out and the cardboard scraped down at the back to make it fit, so there’s no photographer’s name, but I’ll know him if I meet him.”

“People don’t go unpunished, Carr. Don’t try and play hangman. It’s not your line.”

“Isn’t it? I don’t know-”

There was a silence. Elizabeth let it gather round them. She was leaning back now, watching him between her dark lashes, her long thin hands resting quietly on the green stuff of her skirt. The cream sweater she wore with it came up high about her long throat. There was a small pearl in the lobe of either ear.

Presently Carr began to speak again.

“Fancy’s rather like her, you know. She’s been a mannequin. At the moment she’s a show-girl-out of a job. She’s worked very hard and she wants to get on. She hopes for a part in what she calls a regular play. I shouldn’t think there’s a chance in a million that she can act. She has to be rather careful about her vowels, because they pronounce them differently in Stepney where she grew up. I believe Mum and Dad still live there, and she wouldn’t dream of cutting loose, because she’s a nice girl and very fond of her family.”

“And just where do you come in?” said Elizabeth.

He looked up with a flash of rather bitter humour.

“She wants to get on, and she’s considering me as a stepping-stone.”

“Are you engaged?”

“I believe not.”

“Have you asked her to marry you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Carr, you must know!”

“Well, I don’t, and that’s a fact.”

She sat up suddenly, her eyes wide open, her hands clasped.

“You’ve been letting yourself drift and you don’t know where you’ve got to.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Carr, it’s suicidal! You don’t have to marry a girl you don’t care about.”

He said, “No.” And then, “It’s quite easy to drift that way when you don’t really care what happens. One gets lonely.”

Elizabeth said very quick and low, “It’s better to be lonely by yourself than to be lonely with somebody else.”

The pain in his eyes shocked her.

“Damnably true. I’ve tried it both ways, so I ought to know. But you see, that once-bitten-twice-shy business doesn’t work-you always think it’s going to be different next time.”

Elizabeth said with energy, “Carr, I could shake you! You’re talking nonsense and you know it. You did go honestly off the deep end about Marjory, but this time you don’t even pretend you care a snap of your fingers about this wretched girl.”

His old provoking smile flashed out.

“Darling, she isn’t a wretched girl. On the contrary, she’s a very nice girl, a perfectly good girl, and a devastatingly pretty one-platinum hair, sapphire eyes, lashes about half a yard long, and the traditional rose-leaf complexion. Wait till you see her!”

The tea-party went off as well as could be expected. Fancy had kicked a little.

“But who is this Elizabeth Moore? I’m sure I’ve never heard you speak about her. Does she keep a shop?”

“Her uncle does. He’s rather well known as a matter of fact. The Moores used to have a big country house out beyond Melling. Three of them were killed in the first world war, and the three lots of death duties smashed them. Jonathan was the fourth. When it came to everything being sold up, he said he’d have a shop and sell the things himself-that’s how he started. Elizabeth ’s father and mother are dead, so she lives with him.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s three years younger than I am.”

“But I don’t know how old you are.”

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“Then-she’s twenty-five?”

He burst out laughing.

“Bright girl! How do you do it? Come along-she’s got the kettle on.”

Mollified by the discovery that Elizabeth was well advanced towards middle age, Fancy followed him. She was ready for a cup of tea all right. Having your head in one of those drying machines made you ever so thirsty. She was still farther reassured at the sight of Elizabeth and the friendly shabby room. Miss Moore might be an old friend and all that, but no one could call her a beauty, and she wasn’t a bit smart. That skirt she had on-well, it wasn’t this year’s cut, nor last year’s neither. And the jumper, right high up to the neck and down to the wrists, not a bit smart. Yet almost at once she began to have a feeling that her own scarlet suit was a bit too daring. The feeling went on getting stronger until she could have burst into tears. She couldn’t say Miss Moore wasn’t pleasant, or that she and Carr did anything to make her feel like a stranger, but there it was, that’s what she felt like. They weren’t her sort. That was nonsense-she was as good as anyone, and much prettier and smarter than Elizabeth Moore. Silly to feel the way she did. Mum would say not to go fancying things. And then all of a sudden the feeling went and she was talking to Elizabeth about Mum and Dad, and how she’d got her first job-all that sort of thing, quite nice and comfortable.