Patricia Wentworth - Pilgrim’s Rest

“What’s the good?”

Miss Silver looked at her with steady kindness.

“I must remind you of the remaining members of your family. You have a nephew who is a prisoner in Japanese hands. I understand that the estate now devolves upon him. If he survives to come home, and wishes to sell, is he to be the victim of another accident? If he does not survive, the estate will pass to Captain Jerome Pilgrim. If he decides to sell, is he to pay the same penalty?”

Not a muscle of Miss Columba’s face moved. Something flickered in her eyes. It was gone again in a flash. She said in a sort of deep mutter,

“It’s not that-how can it be that?”

“What other motive is there? Do you know of any?”

There was a negative movement of the head with its blown grey curls.

Miss Silver said very firmly,

“Someone is determined to prevent the sale of this property. No owner will be safe until this person’s identity is discovered.”

Miss Columba straightened up and moved away from the door. She said gruffly,

“The place belongs to Jack. He’s in Malaya. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

She went out of the room and up the stair.

Miss Silver pressed her lips together and reflected upon the shortcomings of her own sex. She would not have admitted these shortcomings to Chief Inspector Lamb, or to Superintendent March. She thought very highly of women, and hoped to be able to think more highly yet, but to credit them with any abstract passion for justice was beyond her.

She considered it probable that she would have to leave Pilgrim’s Rest with her work there only half done, and it went very much against the grain. Roger Pilgrim had engaged her professional services, and she had failed to save his life. He had gone against her advice, but she felt that she owed him a debt. And a much heavier one to that Justice which she served with a single mind.

Randall March had been in the house for well over an hour before he asked to see Miss Silver. It was no part of his plan to advertize an intimacy, nor did he wish to be presented with her opinions before he had had the opportunity to acquire some of his own. The study having been placed at his disposal, he sat there at the writing-table which had been used by at least three generations of Pilgrims, and looked, against a background of olive-green curtains and walls lined with unread books, much more like a country gentleman than a police officer. He might have been in the Army. The overhead light shone down on a tall, well set-up figure, good features, clear blue eyes, and naturally fair hair burned brown.

He got up to meet Miss Silver as she came in. She had a knitting-bag on her arm, and she wore an expression of gravity until she took his hand and smiled at him. Even in the presence of murder she retained the social amenities.

“My dear Randall! I hope you are well.”

No one could have looked at him and doubted it, but he produced a suitable reply.

“And your mother? I hope she has quite recovered from the cold she had before Christmas?”

“Oh, yes, quite, thank you.”

“And dear Margaret and Isabel? I hope you have good news of them?”

She had never allowed herself to have favourites in the schoolroom. The “dear” in front of his sisters’ names marked this unswerving impartiality. She would not have found it necessary to say “Dear Randall” if she had been speaking to Isabel or Margaret. She may have admitted to herself that the blue-eyed, fair-haired little boy with the angelic smile and a talent amounting to genius for resisting instruction was dearer to her than the two docile and intelligent little girls, but she would certainly never have admitted as much to anyone else. And so successfully had she overcome the little boy’s resistance that here he was, in his early forties, on the brink of becoming a Chief Constable. Even the presence of death in the house could not prevent her beaming upon him as he informed her that Margaret was in Cairo, her husband in Italy, and that Isabel had just received a commission in the A.T.S.

These preliminaries over, he gave her a chair and returned to his own, looking at her across the table and thinking how little she had changed-how little she ever changed. From fringe net to beaded shoes she remained intact and unique, a stable factor in a dissolving age.

Over Ethel Burkett’s jumper her needles began to click. Thirty-five years slid away. It might have been the same jumper, the same needles, the authentic Miss Silver of his childhood.

“My dear Randall, you are not attending.”

She hadn’t really said it, but at any moment she might. He hastened to forestall her by speaking himself.

“Well? What are you going to tell me?”

“What do you know already, Randall?”

He picked up one of the papers on the blotting-pad.

“Here it is, as far as I can make it out. Roger Pilgrim rode in the afternoon, came in late to tea, and hardly spoke to anyone. Somewhere before half past five he went up to this attic room to go through his father’s papers. I gather that they had been damaged in a fire about ten days ago, and what had been saved had been taken up to this empty room to be gone through. There were a couple of tin boxes more or less intact, and a lot of partly burned stuff from a bureau or a nest of drawers. Somewhere about half past five Robbins answered the door and let in Miss Lesley Freyne. She said Roger was expecting her and went straight up to the attic. She seems to be very intimate with the family. Isn’t there something I ought to remember about her?”

Miss Silver coughed.

“She was engaged to Henry Clayton. You will remember that he disappeared on the eve of their wedding.”

“Of course! Did they ever find out what had happened to him?”

She stopped knitting for a moment, let her eyes meet his, and said,

“No, Randall.”

He thought to himself, “I’m meant to make a note of that.” The needles were clicking again. He said,

“How people crop up! I remember the case. But the Yard was handling it-Henry being in the Ministry of Information and properly their pigeon. Frank Abbott was on it, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Well, to get back to Miss Freyne. It looks as if she was the last person to see Roger alive. She says he rang her up and asked her to come over because he thought she might be able to help him out over some of the damaged papers. His father was very fond of her and used to talk things over with her. She says they were sorting papers there for about three quarters of an hour. Then she looked at her watch, saw it was a quarter past six, and said she must go home and help put the children to bed-she’s got her house full of evacuees. She came downstairs and let herself out without seeing anyone to speak to. But as she crossed the bedroom corridor to the head of the stairs, she says Miss Day came out of Jerome’s room and into her own. They didn’t speak, and it’s the length of the corridor away. Miss Day says she was backwards and forwards between her own room and Jerome’s because he had had a bad turn during the night, and she never saw Miss Freyne. You may call that para one. Now we come to para two. Miss Judy Elliot says she was in the bathroom off the back stairs, washing out some things in the hand-basin. The door was half open, and she saw Robbins go up the stairs to the attic floor. Unfortunately she doesn’t know what time it was, except that it was after six, and before a quarter to seven, because the light was still good. Her feeling is that it was before half past six, but she is really very uncertain. Robbins says it was only just after six, and that he went up to his room for a handkerchief. He says he wasn’t there five minutes, and that Miss Elliot didn’t hear him come down because there’s another stair and he used that. He says he doesn’t know why-he just did.”