Patricia Wentworth - Wicked Uncle

Pearson broke off and looked in a deprecating manner at Miss Silver. “I don’t know whether you happened to notice, but Mr. Carroll has got a way of laughing. Not at all what I should call the thing-more like what you might call a snigger, if you know what I mean.”

Miss Silver knew exactly what he meant. She gathered that Carroll had sniggered at Mr. Oakley, and that Mr. Oakley’s reactions had been exactly what might have been expected, whereupon Mr. Carroll had not only repeated the offence, but had said in what Pearson could only describe as a nasty voice, “Oh, well, I thought you might be interested. The looker-on sees most of the game, you know. That’s what I’ve been telling the others. Of course I may have bored them, but I don’t somehow think that I did. No-I’m almost sure I didn’t. What a pity you and your wife weren’t there. You’d have been deeply interested, because, you see, I really did have a very good view of the hall when the lights came on, and a particularly good view of your wife. But of course, ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense.’ ”

Pearson’s pronunciation of the famous Garter motto was patriotic in the extreme. It is safe to say that the country of its origin would have made very little of it. Miss Silver, herself addicted to a British pronunciation of the French tongue, understood him perfectly.

“Pray continue, Mr. Pearson.”

“Well, there wasn’t much more. Mr. Oakley said, ‘Hold your tongue!’ and Mr. Carroll said, ‘Well, I’ve held it up to now, but that’s not to say I shall go on holding it!’ and he slammed down the receiver.”

“Dear me!” said Miss Silver.

Pearson looked complacent.

“That’s what I thought, madam. And it seemed to me that it would be a good thing to tell you-the Chief Inspector and Sergeant Abbott not being available, and not wishing to have it said that I kept anything back that might be useful to the police.”

“You did perfectly right,” said Miss Silver briskly. “How long ago did this conversation take place?”

“A matter of maybe five minutes or so. I had the locking-up to see to. By the time I got round to the front door Mr. Carroll was coming out of the study and going up to his room.”

He was thanked and dismissed.

About five minutes later Sergeant Abbott was told that he was wanted on the telephone, an instrument very inconveniently situated in the narrow entrance-hall of the Ram, to which hostelry he had accompanied his Chief with misgivings already abundantly justified. The Ram had four bedrooms, and all the beds were lumpy and smelt of beer, the food exemplified every sin of omission and commission which a cook can perpetrate, the beer was bad, and the telephone was in the hall. He had to disentangle the receiver from somebody else’s coat which reeked of shag.

Miss Silver’s voice came incongruously to his ear. First her slight cough, and then a prim “Hullo!” He said,

“Frank speaking.”

The primness persisted.

“I am extremely sorry to disturb you. I hope that you had not retired?”

“I’m putting it off as long as possible. I don’t know what they’ve used in the mattress. It’s not sharp enough for road-metal-I rather suspect mangelwurzels. I am covered with bucolic bruises.”

Miss Silver’s cough was hortatory.

“I am exceedingly uneasy.”

She had slipped into her British French.

“What’s up?”

“That very foolish young man Mr. Carroll is giving everyone to understand that he is in possession of some knowledge- evidence-I do not know what to call it. He pretends-” the word in French bears a more respectable meaning than in English-“he pretends to have seen something of an incriminating nature at the moment when the lights came on. I do not know if it is possible. He was certainly in occupation of a vantage-point- he may have seen something, or he may not. What troubles me is the possible consequence of this foolish boasting. It does not really signify whether there is any truth behind it. What does signify is that the murderer may believe that there is, and that he may act upon his belief. I am extremely uneasy.”

There was a slight pause. After which Frank said,

“What do you want me to do?”

“It would relieve my mind very much to have you in the house. I feel sure that Miss Brown would offer no objection.”

Sergeant Abbott said gravely,

“You know, this is bribery and corruption-Vi-springs instead of mangolds, and everything else to match. Well, I can put it up to the Chief-I don’t suppose he’ll mind. Will you hold on?”

Miss Silver held the line and meditated upon human nature- more particularly upon Mr. Carroll’s nature. She found it a far from pleasant subject. Considering the motives which might have prompted him in his folly, she dealt with such qualities as a sense of inferiority to be compensated by aggression, jealousy of others more fortunately placed-in which connection she recalled her favourite Lord Tennyson’s dictum, “Envy is the fume of little minds”-and, lastly and with great seriousness, the possibility that this cloud of words was in effect a smokescreen to cover his own guilt and blacken others with suspicion.

She was still occupied with these thoughts when Frank Abbott came back upon the line.

“All right-he hasn’t any objection. Just murmured a few sweet nothings about mountains out of mole-hills, and suggested that I was after the fleshpots. Well, it won’t take me more than five or six minutes. I’ll be right along.”

It was to take longer than that. Not because of the distance, since the Grange lay on the outskirts of the village, with no more than a quarter of a mile between its pillared gateway and the creaking sign which displayed a gold ram, rather tarnished, on a green field a good deal the worse for wear. Frank Abbott, walking briskly, passed the corner where the church with its squat Saxon tower crouched behind a row of monumental yews so black and solid that they might have been a wall, except that they were darker than any masonry could be. A hundred yards down the lane was the entrance to the Grange. He had a flashlight in the pocket of his overcoat, but he preferred not to use it. He had been country-reared, and knew how quickly the eye accommodates itself-after a few moments of blindness the skyline becomes evident, hedgerows can be discerned.

The grey pillars which marked the gateway to the Grange caught some of the diffused light from a cloud-covered moon. He passed between them, the gate being open, and heard, a long way off up the drive, the sound of running footsteps. He heard them, but no sooner had he done so than they ceased. It was as quick as that. He was left with the certainty that he had heard someone running. He shifted his suit-case to his left hand, got hold of his torch, and proceeded up the drive. It was a long drive, leafless trees overhead and dead flat fields on either side. There was a sharp double bend like an S, with a pond catching the light in one curve, and a mass of what looked like old holly-bushes in the other.

It was when he was opposite the hollies that, standing still to listen, he heard a twig snap and saw something move. In a moment his hand swung up with the torch. The beam picked out a man’s face-an arm thrown up to screen it. But not quite quickly enough. Frank Abbott called out “Oakley!” and Martin Oakley stood his ground.

“Who’s that?”

There was something in his voice-something curious, desperate.

Frank said, “Abbott,” and crossed the space between them.

“What’s up?”

Something very odd here. The man was breathing as if he had been running for his life. It was all he could do to get enough of that hard-caught breath to speak with, and then it was only a single word-a name.