Patricia Wentworth - Pilgrim’s Rest

He looked at her so blankly that, as on a previous occasion, she obliged with a translation.

“My advice was that you should allow your household to think that you had given up the idea of selling. You could, I imagine, ask the intending purchaser to give you a little time.”

He looked at her in a wretched kind of way.

“You mean I’m to tell lies about it. I’m no good at it.” He might have been confessing to being bad at sums.

Miss Silver coughed.

“It is very advisable, in view of your own safety.”

He repeated his former remark.

“I’m no good at it.”

“I am sorry about that. And now, Major Pilgrim, I would like to ask you a few questions about the Robbinses. I know that they have been here for thirty years. I want to know whether they have, or whether they think they have, any grounds for a grudge against you, or against your family.”

He was certainly discomposed, but there might have been more than one reason for that-surprise, offence, or just mere nervousness. What he said was,

“Why should they have?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“I do not know. I should like to be informed. Are you aware of any such grudge?”

He said, “No,” but might as well have left it unsaid, there was so little conviction in his tone. He may have been aware of this himself, for he followed it up with a vexed “What made you think of anything like that?”

“I have to think of motives, Major Pilgrim. You have told me that you think your life has been attempted. There must be a motive behind that. Neither you nor I can afford to say of anyone in this house that he or she is to be beyond suspicion or above enquiry. I believe the Robbinses had a daughter-”

“Mabel? How could she have anything to do with it? She’s been dead for years.”

“Miss Columba did not say that.”

“What did she say?”

“That the girl had got into trouble and run away, and her parents had been unable to trace her.”

He turned and stared out into the garden.

“Well, that’s true. And as it happened before the war, I can’t see any reason for digging it up now.”

Miss Silver gave a slight reproving cough.

“We are looking for a motive. If you do not wish to give me the information for which I am asking, I can no doubt obtain it elsewhere, but I would rather not do so.”

He said in an irritable voice,

“There isn’t the slightest necessity-I’ll tell you anything you want to know. It’s just that I don’t see why it’s got to be dug up. She used to be here in the house, you know. She was a jolly little kid. They sent her away to school, and she passed all sorts of examinations and got a very good job in Ledlington-lived there with an aunt and came back here for weekends. Then all of a sudden they found out-the Robbinses found out, or the aunt, I think it was the aunt-that she was going to have a child, and she ran away. I was up in Scotland with my regiment, and I didn’t hear about it till afterwards. It was in the summer of ’39, just before the war. The Robbinses were frightfully cut up. They tried to find her, but they couldn’t. That’s as far as Aunt Collie knows.”

“But there is something more? You said she was dead.”

He nodded. Now that he had got going he seemed to have lost his reluctance. He said,

“Yes. It was in the blitz-January ’41. I’d been down on leave. Robbins told me he’d heard that Mabel was in London. He said he was going to see her. We travelled up together. I had to go to the War Office, so I was staying with a chap I knew. There was a raid in the late afternoon. Getting on for midnight Robbins walked in looking ghastly, poor chap, and told me Mabel was dead. The baby was killed right out, but she lived to be taken to hospital, and he saw her there. He said he would have to tell his wife, but he didn’t want anyone else to know. He said they’d got over it and lived it down as much as they ever could, and it would rake it all up again. I could see his point. I said I thought my father ought to know, and he agreed with that, but we didn’t tell anyone else. I hope you won’t tell anyone. It would be very rough luck on the Robbinses if it was raked all up again now.”

Miss Silver looked at him gravely and said,

“I hope it may not be necessary to speak of it. But since you have told me so much, will you tell me who was responsible for Mabel Robbins’s disgrace?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do the Robbinses know?”

He gave her the same answer-“I don’t know.”

“Major Pilgrim, suspicion is not knowledge. Have you, or have they, no suspicion in the matter? It is not pleasant to have to ask you such a question, but I must do so. Had the Robbinses any reason to suspect a member of your family, or did they suspect anyone without perhaps having a reason at all? I do not suggest that there was a reason, but I must know whether such a suspicion existed.”

He turned a horrified face to her.

“What are you driving at? If you think-”

She put up a hand.

“Pray, Major Pilgrim-I think you must give me an answer. I will put my question again, and more plainly. Did the Robbinses suspect anyone?”

“I tell you I don’t know!”

“Did they suspect you?”

He swung round with an angry stare.

“Would they have stayed on if they had?”

She coughed.

“Perhaps-perhaps not. Did they suspect Mr. Jerome Pilgrim?”

“Why should they?”

“I do not know. Did they suspect Mr. Henry Clayton?”

Roger Pilgrim turned round and walked out of the room.

By three o’clock that afternoon the house was settling into silence. It was the Robbinses’ afternoon off. Lunch being at one, they could just get through in time to catch the Ledlington bus at two forty-five. Judy watched them depart, he in a black overcoat and bowler, she also in black, with a formidable trimmed hat which might once have had coloured flowers on it but was now given over to a waste of rusty ribbon bows and three dejected ostrich tips.

They were hardly out of sight, when Lona Day followed them in a fur coat and a bright green turban. She too was going to Ledlington. Jerome Pilgrim liked his books changed at least once a week, and she had shopping of her own to do as well.

Roger Pilgrim had gone for a ride, Miss Columba was in the greenhouse, Miss Janetta and Penny were resting, Miss Silver writing letters, and Gloria finishing the pots and pans in the scullery, when a tall woman walked down the street and rang the bell at Pilgrim’s Rest.

Judy knew who it must be before she opened the door. She saw good brown tweeds and a dark brown country hat. Between the brim and the coat collar a line of dark hair, a strong, well-modelled brow, and good grey eyes-in spite of which Lesley Freyne was a plain woman. The face was square, rather high on the cheekbones, rather heavy in the jaw, and the mouth too wide, too full. But when she spoke there was something that was attractive-a deep musical note in the voice, an honest, friendly look in the eyes.

“I think you must be Judy Elliot. I am Lesley Freyne. I have been wanting to meet you. Frank Abbott wrote and told me you were going to be a near neighbour.”

Judy took her to the morning-room, where they talked about Frank, about Penny, about Miss Freyne’s evacuees, reduced now to a mere ten.

“Nearly all little ones, and such dear children. I wonder if you would like to let your little Penny join them in the mornings. We have a little nursery school. Miss Brown who is helping me has all her certificates. I thought perhaps it would be a help to feel that she was off your hands and out of mischief whilst you were busy, and it would be company for her.”

Judy found herself accepting with so much relief that the feeling startled her. When they had talked a little more Lesley said,