Patricia Wentworth - Pilgrim’s Rest

Both men leaned forward. Frank said,

“A letter to Henry?”

“I believe so. I believe that he made an attempt to destroy it by laying it on the hearth and setting light to it. If the window was open at the time, the draught would have taken it up the chimhey. Lodged against the damp brick-an unused chimney does become very damp-it did not continue to burn. The contents are quite legible.”

March put out a hand.

“Where is it?”

“I will get it.”

When she had left the room Frank Abbott gave March a quizzical look.

“She hadn’t made up her mind about letting you have it or she’d have brought it with her, so it can’t be plain evidence. There must be a snag somewhere, and I’m wondering what it is.”

March looked past him.

“Well, we shall know in a minute.”

It seemed longer than that before Miss Silver came back. She held edge upwards a piece of clean foolscap neatly folded in half. Laid out flat, it disclosed a sheet of writing-paper considerably discoloured by scorching. The top left-hand corner had been burned away. The paper had once been white. It was of a cheap quality and of the size which, doubled once, will fit the ordinary square envelope. So much could be seen at a glance. But as Frank came round to lean over March’s shoulder, a second glance informed him that his suspicion was correct, and that there certainly was a snag. To start with, if there ever had been a date it was gone. It may have been up in the left-hand top corner, or it may not, but the left-hand top corner wasn’t there. There was no heading. There was no form of address, and the writing, carried out in pencil, looked as if it had been done by a child of seven-the letters, the unformed capitals which such a child would make. Plain enough, but not easy to read because of the slight contrast between the pencil and the scorched page. By tilting the pad and getting it aslant to the overhead light March made the thing legible. It ran:

“I must see you again just this once more to say good-bye. You owe me that. As soon as it is safe. I shall be waiting. I must see you just once more. Burn this.”

After a pause he said,

“Well, well, are you prepared to place any particular construction on this letter-I suppose we’ve got to call it a letter?”

Miss Silver took this temperately.

“I should prefer to hear your own construction.”

With the remark that Henry was certainly a bit of a lad, Frank Abbott went back to his seat. March, conscious of anger and desirous of concealing it, looked hard at the paper and laid it down.

“It has neither address nor signature, the writing is disguised, and it bears no date. If Henry Clayton habitually occupied that room, there is some presumption that it had been sent to him, and that he tried to burn it-as requested. There is absolutely no evidence as to the writer, or to the time at which it was written. Clayton may have had the thing for years-months-weeks. He may have brought it down from London with him. He may have been clearing up here, as Abbott tells us he had already done in town. He was going to be married in three days’ time, and he wouldn’t want to have this sort of oddment lying about.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“The letter says, ‘Burn this,’ and we find that an attempt had been made to burn it. This does not support the idea that it had been kept, and belonged to an earlier date.”

March looked at Frank.

“You knew Clayton. How would he have been about a letter which a woman asked him to burn-punctilious, or careless?”

Frank’s left eyebrow rose.

“That’s a pretty difficult thing to answer. Strictly off the record and between ourselves, Henry was a careless chap- anyone who knew him would tell you that. And what strikes me is this, the woman who wrote that letter knew it, or why trouble to disguise her hand? It wasn’t to deceive Henry. The only possible inference is that she knew he was careless and was afraid of his leaving her letter about. Printing is finger-breaking work-she didn’t do it for fun. But-and this is a big but-if Henry got a letter like that three days before his wedding, I think he would have burned it-or tried to.”

“We have no idea when he got it,” said March wearily. “I’ll get the handwriting experts on to it, but I don’t suppose they can do anything with these printed capitals. As to fingerprints, after a scorching and three years of a damp chimney, it’s no good expecting to find any.”

Miss Silver had remained standing. She said,

“Will you show Miss Day this letter in my presence?”

His brows drew together.

“Miss Day?”

“Miss Lona Day-who had to soak her Chinese coat in water on the morning after Henry Clayton was stabbed and his body concealed in the cellars. Miss Day who was in and out of Captain Pilgrim’s room, and may very easily have been out of it at the moment when Roger Pilgrim fell from that attic window. A stair goes up to the attic floor between her room and mine. I advise you to see how long it would take an active person to run up to that attic and down again. Remember that Miss Freyne says she saw Lona Day at the end of the passage after leaving Roger Pilgrim, although Miss Day says she did not see Miss Freyne. But if she did see her, she would know that Roger was alone. She had only to run up those stairs and down again. The attic window was open, and the sill was low. Any excuse that would direct his attention to the garden would serve. It would require very little force to push him off his balance.”

“My dear Miss Silver!”

She stood her ground.

“All this applies equally to the case of Robbins, with this significant addition-he came to the door of Captain Pilgrim’s room, and there, but out of Captain Pilgrim’s hearing, he spoke to Lona Day. We do not know what he said to her. She says he asked to see Captain Pilgrim, and that she told him he was resting. That is very likely. But, Randall, why did he want to see Captain Pilgrim? On the supposition that he was the murderer, I find it inexplicable. If he was guilty he should have had one object in view-to reach his room before the police began to search it.”

“The police were already searching it.”

“That is true. But he had wasted twenty minutes quarrelling with his wife. He knew that he was suspected by the police. If at this juncture he tried to reach Captain Pilgrim, I think it was because he knew something, and was no longer prepared to hold his tongue about it. Suppose for a moment that he knew something about Miss Day-something that connected her with the death of Henry Clayton. You have to remember that he was on duty in the hall that night, that he believed Henry Clayton to have seduced his daughter, and that now, a bare month after that daughter’s tragic death, Henry Clayton was at Pilgrim’s Rest to marry another woman. If he had seen or suspected something that night, do you not think it very possible that he would hold his tongue? But now it is too dangerous. He is aware that he is himself suspected by the police, and he goes to his master to make a clean breast of what he knows. As I said before, we cannot tell what passed between him and Miss Day. He may have warned her that he could no longer hold his tongue. He must, I think, have said something which made her take a desperate risk to silence him.”

Frank Abbott leaned forward.

“Are you suggesting that it was she who locked us in?”

She said soberly,

“I think so. I am unable to see why Robbins should have locked the door. Even if he had been seen, he had only to rush into the next room and fling himself from the window. But if it was he who looked in, he would know that you had not seen him. If it was his design to commit suicide, he had all the time he required. I do not believe that he had any such design. I think he went upstairs to go to his room. Hearing that the police were there, he turned in next door to wait till they had finished. And there he met the same fate as Roger Pilgrim.”