Patricia Wentworth - Pilgrim’s Rest

“I expect you know why my father wanted me to be dead. He was a very proud man, and he thought I had disgraced him. Henry Clayton made love to me, and I fell in love with him. I don’t want to excuse myself, but I loved him very much, and I don’t want to blame him, because he never pretended that he was going to marry me.” She looked up with a startling effect of truthfulness. “He isn’t here to speak for himself, so I want it to be quite clear that he didn’t deceive me. He never promised me anything. When I knew that I was going to have a child he provided for me and for the baby. I wrote to tell my mother that I was all right and well looked after, but she never got the letter. My father burnt it.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me, what a very high-handed proceeding!”

Mabel looked across at her for a moment and said briefly, “He was like that.”

Then she went on.

“I didn’t know about the letter till afterwards. I only knew they didn’t write. When my baby was a year old I wrote again and sent a snapshot of her. She is very sweet. I thought if they saw how sweet she was… Well, my father came up-he came to see me. It-it was quite dreadful. There was a very bad air raid. He wouldn’t go to the shelter, or let us go. He sat there and told me what I was to do, and made me put my hand on the Bible and swear to it.” She was looking at March now, her eyes big and full on his face. “It doesn’t seem reasonable now to think I promised what I did, but what with the noise of the guns, and the bombs coming down, and my father looking like the day of judgment, I did it. I was to be dead, and my baby too, so as not to disgrace him any more. I wasn’t to write, or to come, or to do anything to show that I was alive. He said he would curse me if I did, and curse my baby. And he said it would be happier for my mother if she thought I was dead, because then she would stop worrying. So I promised, and he went back and told Mr. Roger, and Mr. Pilgrim, and my mother that my baby and I had been killed in the raid-he had seen us dead. Mr. Roger told Henry, and Henry came to see me and make a joke of it. We weren’t living together any more, but he would come and see me once in a while. He had begun to take a good deal of notice of the baby. He used to say she was like his mother and she was going to be a beauty.”

She paused for a moment, as if it was hard to go on. Then she said,

“He stayed longer than usual, and we talked about a lot of things, but in the end he went away without saying what he had come to say. And when he had gone away he sat down and wrote it to me-I got the letter next day. He was going to marry Miss Lesley Freyne in a month’s time, and he wasn’t going to see us again.”

There was a long pause. She looked down at her ring. The light on it brought up the brightness of the diamonds, the deep colour of the ruby-deep, steady, shining, like the lights of home. Presently she said in a low voice,

“I don’t want anyone to blame him. He was getting married, and he didn’t think it was right to go on seeing me. Only when it happened I didn’t feel that I could bear it. At first I didn’t do anything-I didn’t feel as if I could. I lost a lot of time that way. Then I wrote and said I wanted to see him to say good-bye, and he wrote back and said much better not, it would only hurt us both, and he was going down to Pilgrim’s Rest.”

She put up her hand to her head for a moment and let it fall again-a pretty, well-cared-for hand with tinted nails.

“I think I was crazy, or I would never have done what I did. I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t get it off my mind that I must, must see him again.” She turned from March to look, not at Frank Abbott whom she had known since she was a little girl, but at Miss Silver sitting there knitting in her low Victorian chair. “You know how it is when there’s anything on your mind like that-you don’t think about anything else-you can’t-it just crowds everything out. I was working, you know. I used to leave my little Marion with my landlady. She was very good. Well, when I got away from the office that day-the day I made up my mind I couldn’t bear it any longer, I’d got to see him-I just went to the station and took the first train to Ledlington. It seemed as if it was the only thing to do. I didn’t plan it at all, I just went. Can you understand that?”

Miss Silver looked at her kindly and said, “Yes.”

She turned back to March.

“There was an air raid, and the train was delayed. When I got to Ledlington the last bus had gone, so I walked. It was a good bit after ten before I got here. I heard the quarter strike on the church clock as I was coming into the village, and it wasn’t until then that it came into my head to think what I was going to do next. You see, I had only been thinking about getting here and seeing Henry. I hadn’t ever stopped to think how I was going to manage it.”

March said, “I see.” And then, “What did you do?”

“I went and stood under the yew tree at Mrs. Simpson’s gate just across the road from here. It casts quite a deep shadow. It was bright moonlight, and I didn’t want anyone to see me. I stood there for a long time, but I couldn’t think of any way to get to Henry. I didn’t dare go up to the house because of my father. I couldn’t think of anything. I heard the half hour strike, and I just went on standing there. And then the door of the glass passage opened and Henry came out. I could see him quite plainly because of the moon. He hadn’t any coat or scarf or hat on, and he was smiling to himself, and all at once I knew that he was going to her-to Miss Freyne. I had taken just one step to go to him, but I couldn’t take another. It came to me then that it wasn’t any use. I let him go. Then, all in a minute, someone came after him out through that glass door-”

“You saw someone come out of this house and follow Clayton? Was it your father?”

“No. But of course you would think that. My husband said you were bound to think it was my father. But it wasn’t. It was a woman, in one of those Chinese coats. The moon was so bright that I could see the embroidery on it as she ran after Henry. She caught him up just by the gate into the stable yard and they stood talking for a moment. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I could see his face when he turned round. He looked angry, but he went back with her. They went into the house.”

March leaned forward.

“Would you know the woman again? Did you see her face?”

“Oh, yes, I’d know her.” Her voice was tired and a little contemptuous. “I knew her then. Henry talked about her quite a lot when she first came to Pilgrim’s Rest to nurse Mr. Jerome. He said she was the most sympathetic woman he had ever met. He showed me a snapshot he had taken of her with his aunts. After that he stopped talking about her, and-I wondered.”

“You say you recognized her from the snapshot you had seen?”

“Yes. It was Miss Day-Miss Lona Day.”

Frank Abbott took a fleeting glance at Miss Silver. He could discern no change in her expression. Little Roger’s sock showed nearly an inch of grey ribbing. She drew on the ball of wool, the needles clicked.

March said, “Is that all, Miss Robbins?”

She looked up with an effect of being startled.

“Oh, no. Shall I-shall I go on?”

“If you please.”

She kept her eyes on his face.

“I went after them into the house. You see, I knew that they hadn’t locked the door, because from where I was I could see right into the passage and they didn’t stop at all. They went right on into the house, and I went after them.”

“What did you mean to do?”

She said as simply as a child,

“I didn’t know-I didn’t think at all-I just followed them. When I got into the hall the light was on. I looked to the left, and the dining-room door was still moving. I went up to it, and I could hear them talking. The door hadn’t latched. I pushed it and went in.” She stopped, leaned forward over the table, and said, “You’ve been in the dining-room-I don’t suppose anything has been changed there. There’s a big screen by the door-Miss Netta always said there was a draught from the hall. Well, I stood behind the screen and I looked round the end of it.”