Patricia Wentworth - Pilgrim’s Rest

He said, “Lizzie!” And then, “That’s not true, and you’ve no call to say it! Maybe I’ve done more than what you know-maybe I’ve done more than you’d have done yourself. There’s different ways of showing what you think of people.”

She said with a gush of tears,

“You forgot her birthday!”

A door banged at the end of the passage. Footsteps could be heard coming nearer. Regretfully, Miss Silver turned back, and presently met Gloria in her outdoor things.

She advanced the cup.

“I wonder if I could have a little boiling water. If it wouldn’t be a trouble. I don’t quite like to go into the kitchen-but if you-”

Gloria said, “Righty-ho!”-an expression which cost Miss Silver an inward shudder.

She took the cup, ran off with it, and brought it back full.

“Ever such a row going on in there,” she confided. “What’s the good of getting married if you’re going to quarrel like that? The p’lice in the house-that’s what’s upsetting them. He takes it out on her, and she takes it out on him. My mum’s proper upset, I can tell you. But there’s something exciting about it too, and I’d just as soon it wasn’t my afternoon off. Now if I’d wanted to get out early, ten to one I wouldn’t have been let, but just because there’s something going on everyone’s at me. Mr. Robbins, and Miss Columba, and Mrs. Robbins are all for getting me out of the way. My mum won’t half be surprised to see me so early.”

She clattered off down the passage and out by the back door, which she shut with a hearty bang.

Miss Silver, after emptying the cup down the pantry sink and leaving it on the drip-board, went across the hall to the study, where she set the door ajar and awaited developments. The time seemed long, the house was silent. Miss Janetta had declared herself quite prostrated, and Miss Day, with a much more demanding invalid than Captain Pilgrim on her hands, could be supposed to have those hands too full to allow of her coming downstairs. Where everyone else was, Miss Silver had no idea, but she had no desire for company.

When the silence was broken by the sound of tramping feet, she went out into the hall.

Randall March met her there, took her back into the study, and shut the door.

“Well,” he said-“you were right.”

“My dear Randall-how very shocking!”

It was perfectly genuine. It was not in her to feel complacency or triumph. She was most seriously and genuinely shocked.

He nodded.

“In the far cellar, behind those piled-up chairs. There’s a door to an inner cellar. The body was there, doubled up in a tin trunk. I suppose there’s no doubt that it is Henry Clayton.”

They stood looking at each other.

“Very shocking indeed,” said Miss Silver.

Randall March looked grim.

“Your hypothetical case has materialized. I take it your reconstruction just about fits the facts. Someone called Clayton back, invented a reason for getting him into the lift passage, and murdered him there. Subsequent proceedings as outlined by you. I’m collecting the knives out of those trophies and having the lift floor scraped-there may be some traces. The floor is, fortunately, bare board, but three years-” He threw up a hand, and then went on in a different tone. “I shall suggest to the Chief Constable that the Yard be asked to send Abbott down to represent them. They’ll want to be in at the death, and he was on the original enquiry into Clayton’s disappearance. There shouldn’t be any difficulty about fixing it up. And now I must get going on the telephone.”

Judy Elliot heard the trampling feet and stood a moment on the back stair by the bathroom door. A word came up to her here and there, and her hair rose on her head. Something had happened-something more. The words told her that, but they didn’t tell her what it was. She was left with a sense of horror and apprehension much greater than would have been produced by actual knowledge. Because as soon as you know a thing you can bring your reason to bear upon it, but the unknown takes you back to the cowering savage terrified by all the things he cannot understand.

The trampling ceased. She went down a few steps, and met Mrs. Robbins on the last of the stairs with a face as white as lard. They had hardly spoken before-no more than a good-morning here and there. The Robbinses hadn’t wanted her, and they made it felt. But now, with Mrs. Robbins holding to the rail and staring as if she had seen a ghost, Judy ran to her.

“What’s the matter-has anything happened?”

A hand came out and clutched her. She could feel the cold of it right through her overall.

“Mrs. Robbins-what is it? You’re ill!”

There was a faint movement of the head that said, “No.” The cold clutch persisted. The white lips moved.

“They’ve found Mr. Henry-”

Something like a small piece of ice slid down Judy’s spine. She hadn’t been a week at Pilgrim’s Rest without hearing from Gloria how Henry Clayton had walked out of this house on the eve of his wedding and never been heard of again. But that was three years ago. She couldn’t get her voice to work. When she forced it, it didn’t sound like hers at all. It said,

“He went away-”

Mrs. Robbins made that movement with her head again. She said in a whisper which Judy could only just hear,

“He were in the cellar all the time-he were dead and buried in an old tin trunk. And Alfred says it fare to serve him right. But I don’t care what he done, I wouldn’t want him buried thataway, not him nor no one, I don’t care what they done. But Alfred says it fare to serve him right.”

Judy was shocked through and through. The woman’s look, the terrible whispering voice, conveyed a sense of horror. The country accent, the turn of words, the manner of their delivery, all took her back to something simple, primitive, and dreadful. She didn’t know what to say.

Mrs. Robbins let go of her arm with a shudder and went on up the stairs. Judy heard the slow fall of her climbing feet, the heavy clap of a door on the attic floor. Her own knees were shaking when she came out on the corridor by her room. It was in her mind to go in there and pull herself together. People were murdered every day-you read about them in the papers. It wasn’t sense to go cold and sick inside and feel as if your legs were dangling loose like one of those jointed dolls which are threaded up on elastic and go limp when it begins to wear, just because Henry Clayton had been murdered three years ago.

As she stood there outside her own door, something twanged in her mind like a string being plucked on a fiddle, and something said in a small, clear voice with an edge to it, “Henry Clayton three years ago-and Roger Pilgrim yesterday. So the murderer is still in the house-and who will it be tomorrow?”

The red carpet down the middle of the corridor went all fuzzy at the edges and seemed to tilt. She put out her hand and caught at the doorpost to stop herself sliding down the tilt which would land her in Jerome Pilgrim’s bathroom. And just as she thought about that, and how surprised Lona Day would be, his bedroom door opened and he stood there beckoning to her.

She remembered that she was a housemaid, and the floor got back into the straight. He had his finger on his lips, so she didn’t speak, only walked rather carefully down the middle of the red carpet until she reached him, when he put a hand on her arm, pulled her in, and shut the door.

“What’s going on?”

What was a poor housemaid to do? If she’d known that telling lies to a nervous invalid was part of the job she’d have seen everyone at Jericho before she took it, because she never had been and never would be the slightest use at telling lies. Something in her got up and screamed with rage. Why should she have to tell lies? And what good did they do anyhow? Jerome would have to know.