The temperature of the room appeared at this moment to sustain a chill. There was a faint distance in Miss Silver’s voice as she replied that the confidences of a client were, of course, inviolate.
“There now-I’ve offended you, and that’s the last thing I meant to do! I can’t wrap things up and be tactful about them. All I can do is to tell the truth and hope that everyone else is going to do the same. And, do you know, they very often do. I’ve got out of quite a lot of tight places that way. I’m a traveller, you know-or perhaps you don’t. I go knocking round in odd places, and then I write books about them.”
Miss Silver’s memory was seldom at a loss for long. It now connected Miss Josepha Bowden quite firmly with such phrases as “Intrepid woman explorer.” “The first European to attempt this dangerous route,” and the like. She smiled in her own peculiarly charming manner and said,
“Oh, yes-I have seen accounts of some of your journeys. So very interesting. And now what can I do for you?”
Miss Bowden sat back in her chair and allowed her eyes to travel about the room. It was the pride of Miss Silver’s heart, and it never failed to make its own impression upon her clients. They were sometimes wafted back to the home of some old-fashioned relative who had preserved the furnishings and pictures of an earlier date. Miss Bowden perfectly remembered being taken to see an aged great-aunt who possessed chairs in curly walnut frames which could not be distinguished from those on either side of Miss Silver’s hearth, and at least two of the pictures which had graced Aunt Janet’s walls looked down at her now from over the mantelpiece and above the bookcase-the Black Brunswicker’s farewell to his bride and “Bubbles.”
She hastened into speech.
“I’ve been rude again, but I was admiring your things. My great-aunt Janet had chairs like these, and some of the pictures too.”
Miss Silver beamed.
“They came to me from my grandparents, and I value them highly. Whilst I was engaged in the scholastic profession it seemed improbable that I should ever be in a position to accommodate them in a flat of my own, but when circumstances enabled me to exchange that profession for a more lucrative one I was able to do so.”
Her eye travelled fondly about her little room, so bright, so cosy, with its peacock-blue curtains and carpet, both new since the war but repeating as far as possible the shade and pattern of their predecessors. She came back to Miss Josepha Bowden.
“You think that I can help you in some way?”
“I don’t know.”
Miss Silver waited. After a pause Miss Bowden said with a jerk,
“When I said it was delicate-well, it is. And most people would say it was none of my business, and I suppose strictly speaking, it isn’t. But if you’re going to mind your own business to that extent, people might be murdered right and left under your nose and you wouldn’t feel called upon to do anything about it. And if I was one of the people who was going to be murdered I’d rather have someone who didn’t mind sticking his fingers into other people’s pies.”
Miss Silver gazed at her mildly.
“Do you know of anyone who is going to be murdered?”
“I’m sure I hope not!” said Josepha Bowden with considerable force.
Miss Silver continued to gaze at her in an expectant manner.
Miss Bowden pushed back her chair and planted a hand squarely on either knee.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m worried about my goddaughter Allegra.”
The name meant nothing to Miss Silver. She waited for more. Miss Bowden went on.
“When I said this was delicate, I meant all of it-right from the beginning where I come in. Allegra isn’t any relation of mine, but she’s the daughter of the woman who got me out of a very nasty mess when I was a girl-about the nastiest mess a girl can get herself into, and you can dot the i’s and cross the t’s for yourself. She died when Allegra was a child, and if there’s ever anything I can do to show that I haven’t forgotten what she did for me, well, I’m here to do it whether anyone thinks I’m interfering or not.”
Miss Silver had picked up some soft white knitting. About two inches of a baby’s bootee hung down like a little frill from the needles.
“You are in some concern about Miss Allegra?”
Josepha gave a loud vexed laugh.
“That’s the bother-she isn’t Miss Allegra! She’s married, and I want to know a lot more than I do about the man-where he comes from-what he was doing before he married Allegra-whether he really has got any money, and if so, where that comes from-and why, ever since her marriage, she doesn’t answer anyone’s letters, or go and stay with her relations or have them to stay with her.”
Miss Silver shook her head.
“I could not undertake such an enquiry in respect of the husband. It would not be in my line at all.”
“And I wouldn’t want you to undertake it. To put it quite bluntly, it’s a man’s job, and I’ll have to get a man working on it. I’ve just put things clumsily-I always do. What I want you for is this. Look here, I’m taking Elizabeth’s word for you, and I’m taking you as I’ve found you and I’m going to put my cards down on the table. The man’s name is Geoffrey Trent, and he’s taken Allegra to live in some kind of a medieval house in a village called Bleake. I hear he’s trying to buy the place-with Allegra’s money. She has quite a lot, and most of it is in trust, thank goodness. But her other god-mother left her enough to buy this place and a good bit over without any strings to it at all. So one of the things I want to know is why that money isn’t being used.”
“It is not?”
Miss Bowden shook her head vigorously.
“No. They are trying to get round the trustees to let them use some of the money out of the trust, and I want to know why. There’s been some talk about losses.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“You think that the other money may have been spent?”
Josepha Bowden thumped her knee.
“Looks like it to me! If they’ve still got it, why don’t they use it? Then there’s this house-I want to know more about it. Old houses don’t appeal to me. After all, nobody washed in the Middle Ages, and I don’t fancy living in a place where nobody ever had a bath between the cradle and the grave for hundreds and hundreds of years-it doesn’t sound healthy to me! Now what I want you to do is to go down and stay in the village. There’s a Miss Falconer who will take an occasional p.g. if she thinks they are all right. She lives in a cottage, but this place Geoffrey Trent wants to buy, the Ladies’ House, belongs to her. There hasn’t been any money for donkey’s years, and the last male Falconer was killed in the war, so she ought to be tumbling over herself to sell. But by all accounts she isn’t. That’s one of the things I want to know about.”
Miss Silver laid down her knitting, opened a drawer on her left, and took out what used to be called a copybook with a bright blue cover. Moved by the insatiable curiosity which is one of his besetting sins, Detective Inspector Frank Abbott of Scotland Yard had once explored the source and origin of these survivals from an earlier and more brightly coloured world. It then transpired that a grateful client retiring from the conduct of an old-fashioned stationery business had come across a couple of gross of these books, and had forthwith presented them to Miss Silver. “And really, my dear Frank, the supply appears to be inexhaustible.”
The bit of bright colour pleased Miss Bowden. She watched Miss Silver write down Miss Falconer’s name, the names of the village, the Ladies’ House, and of Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Trent, together with the question upon which she had desired to be informed.
Pencil in hand, Miss Silver looked up and said,
“Pray proceed.”
“I want to know why Miss Falconer doesn’t jump at selling the place. Have you got that down?”