Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”
Frank laughed.
“It doesn’t get you any farther with your suspicions, does it? Except for just one thing. You do get the drug motif cropping up-not in Geoffrey Trent himself, but in his predecessor. Of course a cynic might say that the business owes its present blameless reputation to the fact that Geoffrey Trent is being cleverer than his cousin, and has so far been able to avoid being found out. But then you and I, my dear ma’am, are not cynics.”
Miss Silver took no notice of this. She said in a meditative tone.
“Is that all, Frank?”
“Oh, yes. Except about Miss Delauny. Nothing on record about anyone of that name, but as I said, it has a very strong smell of the alias. You say she was a secretary?”
“Miss Falconer gave me that impression. She said she was a great help to Mr. Geoffrey Trent with his business correspondence.”
“Besides looking after the abnormal girl? Well, well! She must be a tiger for work! And what is Geoffrey Trent like-how does he strike you?”
Miss Silver was not immediately ready with an answer. This was in itself something of a portent. In the end she said,
“You will probably laugh if I say that his extreme good looks make that a very difficult question to answer. With some people this would predispose them in his favour. With others it would have an exactly opposite effect. I know quite a number of women who would distrust so good-looking a man at sight. I myself greatly prefer the type whose features have been shaped by character and by the stress of events rather than that which appears to have been cast in a perfect mould. But I should, of course, use every precaution against allowing myself to be prejudiced against a man because he is unusually handsome.”
Frank considered that his Miss Silver was excelling herself. He could not resist saying,
“Let me be grateful that I have been spared the fatal handicap.”
He received a slight frown of reproof.
“The matter is a very serious one. Miss Falconer appears to be much attached to Mr. Trent. She describes him as the soul of consideration and kindness, and she has greatly admired his goodness to his unfortunate ward and to his invalid wife.”
“Then what is troubling you?”
“The old Venetian saw, Frank-cui bono-who profits? Geoffrey Trent is hard up. He has one of those strange passions for the fourteenth-century house which he rents from Miss Falconer. He wants to buy it, but he cannot produce the money himself, and so far Mrs. Trent’s trustees have refused to allow any of her capital to be used.”
“And pray, how do you know all this?”
“From Miss Falconer, and from Miss Muir.”
“One at the seller’s, and one at the buyer’s end! Should be reliable. Well, go on.”
“The ward’s death gives Mr. Trent whatever was left of her fortune. If Miss Muir had been killed yesterday, as she very well might have been, everything she possessed would have passed to her sister, who could then have done what she liked with it. I cannot refrain from asking myself how long, in these circumstances, Mrs. Trent might have been expected to survive. She is known to be a drug addict. There is a reputable local doctor in attendance, and a husband to whose solicitude everyone can testify. How easy to arrange for an overdose! Drug addicts are known to be incredibly cunning. She obtains a supply and, impelled by her craving, she takes a fatal quantity. Geoffrey Trent would be free, and a very rich man. He could buy the Ladies’ House and have it for a possession.”
Frank said,
“Well, you are making out a case-you always do. That could be the plan of it, but-no evidence, just a lot of threads that seem to lead in the same direction. In fact, ‘much suspected, nothing proved.’ ” He paused, then went on abruptly. “You said just now that Trent had ‘one of those strange passions’ for this house he wants to buy. What exactly did you mean by that?”
“Just what I said, Frank. It obsesses him-he has a craving to possess it. Miss Muir tells me there are times when he can hardly think or speak of anything else. Miss Falconer confided to me that if she could bring herself to sell, it would be to someone who thinks the world of the place, as Mr. Trent does. ‘Sometimes, do you know,’ she said, ‘I feel as if he cares about it too much. In the old days people might have said that it had bewitched him. But then, of course, they were very superstitious in those times, and we ought not to take any notice of their fancies.’ ”
“And what did she mean by that?”
Miss Silver folded her hands in her lap, looked him straight in the face, and said,
“You see, my dear Frank, she believes that there is a curse upon the place.”
“My dear ma’am!”
“That is why she hesitates to sell, though the money would be very welcome indeed.”
“A good thing the Chief isn’t here! There would have been a major explosion! Of course the bother with him is that deep down inside he has the remnants of a lurking belief in curses, witches, ghosts, bogles, and things that go bump in the night. Now what about this curse? Does Trent believe in it? It might have a bearing if he did. Anyhow, what is it?”
“It is extremely old. It goes back, in fact, to the fifteenth century. The young Falconer who was Lord of the Manor went over to France and came back with a French wife instead of the heiress his mother had planned for him to marry. She was portionless, and she spoke hardly any English. She was a stranger, and she had strange ways. She would go out and gather herbs by moonlight, and she made potions. It began to be whispered that young Falconer had had a spell cast upon him. In the end there was a formal accusation of witchcraft, brought by his mother. The girl stabbed herself and left a dying curse. Since she had lost the thing that was dearest to herself in all the world, every mistress of the manor should likewise lose the thing upon which she had set her heart.”
He was looking at her with his quizzical smile.
“And how did it work out?”
Miss Silver coughed demurely.
“Miss Falconer is a little vague about that. There were some deaths of children. Young Falconer married the heiress whom his mother had chosen for him, and their eldest son was killed in the tiltyard at the age of seventeen. This would naturally be put down to the French girl’s curse.”
“In fact once you’ve got a curse like that in the family, everything would go down to it. People had fourteen or fifteen children and didn’t expect to rear more than half of them, but every time a Falconer child died it would be the curse. But to come down to more modern times. Any further evidence?”
Miss Silver said drily,
“Miss Falconer’s great-grandfather lost a fortune on the turf, and her grandmother, who had been left a famous parure of emeralds, was robbed of them whilst staying on the Riviera.”
“Not really!”
Her tone changed.
“I am afraid Miss Falconer does believe in the curse, Frank. She was herself in some sort mistress of the Ladies’ House when her nephew was killed in the war. He was the last male Falconer, and she had certainly set her whole heart upon him, poor thing. It is difficult to argue with anyone when such feelings as these are involved.”
He said,
“Yes.” And then, “Difficult to see how all this might affect Trent. Difficult to see anything in this case of yours-if you can call it a case. It began in a fog, and it seems to me to have stuck there. All I can do is to give you a bit of advice which you can pass on to Miss Ione Muir. If there is anything in the yarn, she ought to clear out of Bleake as quickly as she can. If there is anything in the story at all, Mrs. Trent is safe so long as Miss Muir is safe. Nobody is going to attempt Mrs. Trent’s life if her money is going to her sister. Her danger only begins if and when something happens to Miss Muir. So Miss Muir must get out and stay out, and look after herself as well as she can.”