Patricia Wentworth - Wicked Uncle

“Yes?”

“Well, the first I heard was him calling her by her Christian name. ‘Well, Linnet,’ he said, ‘I thought it would be you, but I had to make sure.’ Then he said to pull herself together. And she said, ‘I thought you were dead,’ and she called him Glen.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I can’t remember it all, but she was crying and saying why did he let her think he was dead. And he said, ‘I suppose you told Martin you were a widow?’ and she said she thought she was.”

“Do you mean-”

She nodded.

“It was as plain as plain-you couldn’t miss it. They’d been married, and he’d gone off and left her, and nine months after she’d married Mr. Oakley. Mr. Porlock, he kept talking about bigamy, and saying she’d broken the law and he hadn’t, and in the end he got her so she’d do anything he wanted. And what he wanted was for her to put Mr. Oakley’s dispatch-case out on the study window-sill. Mr. Oakley was expected down by tea-time. She was to put the case outside the window when he went to dress for dinner, and leave the window unlatched, so that everything could be put back and no one any the wiser. And in the end that’s what she agreed to.”

“Did she do it?”

“I couldn’t say, but if you want my opinion, she’d be too frightened not to. She’s easy frightened, and he’d got the whip hand-talking about putting her in the dock for bigamy, and Mr. Oakley putting her out in the street. Well, in my opinion she wouldn’t have dared not do what he told her.”

“Now look here-did she tell Mr. Oakley?”

“She wouldn’t do that-not if she’d any sense.”

“Why do you put it that way?”

“Because that’s the way Mr. Porlock put it-said he knew she couldn’t hold her tongue, but if she went crying to Mr. Oakley about it she’d find herself in the dock for bigamy.”

“So you don’t think she told him?”

“No, I don’t.”

“They didn’t have anything like the scene there’d have been if he’d found out she wasn’t really married to him?”

“No-nothing like that.” She hesitated. “Not unless it was just before they started for the dinner party. He came in when she was dressing, and I left them there. She might have said something then, or in the car.”

Lamb grunted.

“But you don’t know whether she did?”

“No, I had to go downstairs.”

When he had sent her away with instructions to say that the Chief Inspector would like to see Miss Brown, he turned to Frank Abbott and said in an expressionless voice,

“That gives Mr. Martin Oakley a pretty big motive.”

“If she told him.”

“We’ll know more about that when we’ve seen her.”

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.”