When they were about halfway up she began to talk in a rapid whispered monotone. There were words, but they had no form. It was like listening to someone talking in another room. She wondered where Minnie was in her dream, and what she was saying.
At the top of the stair there was one of those long pauses.
The murmuring voice sank into inaudibility and ceased. Julia said “Min-darling-” and to her relief Minnie walked suddenly across the landing and in through the open doorway of her room. It was dark after the light outside, but she went straight up to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. Julia stood back to see what she would do.
All at once Minnie said in a lamentable voice, “What have I done?”
Julia felt as if everything inside her had turned over. It wasn’t only the words. They were bad enough, but they seemed to come on the very breath of despair. She said them again, her tone failing under them as if they were too heavy to be borne. Then, as she drew two or three long sobbing breaths and groped for her pillow and lay down, Julia pulled the clothes over her with shaking hands. Her knees shook too. She stood there listening, and heard the sobbing breaths grow still. In less than a minute she could tell that Minnie was asleep. Whatever her dream had been, she had passed out of it into ordinary, everyday sleep.
In so far as Julia was capable of feeling relief it came to her. She turned from the bed and went towards the door. It was wide to the lighted landing. There was someone standing just outside. Julia came out into the light and saw that it was Miss Silver, in a dressing-gown of crimson wool trimmed round the neck and sleeves with handmade crochet. There were black felt slippers on her feet, her hair was arranged very neatly under a net, she looked dreadfully intelligent and alert. Julia had never felt so near the end of her courage. She did not know that her own wide, dark gaze stirred all the kindness of a benevolent heart. She did somehow receive some assurance from Miss Silver’s voice and manner as she said,
“If she is asleep now, I think it will be safe to leave her. I have never known of a case where a somnambulist has left his bed a second time. A trying experience for you, I am afraid, but there is no cause for alarm. Has she been accustomed to walk in her sleep?”
Julia put a hand against the jamb of the door. They both spoke very low. She said,
“I don’t think so-not since I can remember. I think she did a long time ago, when she was a girl. It has all been a great strain.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“Quite so. And now, my dear, I think you should go back to bed. You are so very thinly clad, and the nights are cold. I do not think you need be afraid that Miss Mercer will disturb us again.”
Julia went into her room and shut the door. It seemed a long time since she had left it. As she lay down and pulled the bedclothes over her she found that she was shivering from head to foot. She was cold, but it was not only the cold that made her shake. She was very much afraid.
CHAPTER 24
Life would be much easier if it could be arranged as in a play or a novel, where the curtain may be rung down or a chapter closed, and the action or the narrative resumed after a lapse of days, weeks, or even years. In real life there are, however, no such intervals. Whatever happened yesterday, you have to rise and dress, endure a family meal, and face whatever the hours provide. If Julia could have rung down a curtain before her interview with Mrs. Maniple, and rung it up again afterwards with what had been said between them relegated to the past, she would have confronted the daylight with a better heart. If it had to be done, she would do it. And if she had to do it, the sooner she got it over the better.
Nobody was disposed to linger over breakfast. The general gloom was definitely deepened by the arrival of the post. Jimmy looked down the table after opening the long envelope which bore his name and said in a dazed voice, “She has left me all that damned money.” After which he sat there staring at nothing, until quite suddenly he pushed back his chair and went out of the room.
The Chief Inspector and Sergeant Abbott arriving, first interviewed him in the study, where the party was joined by Miss Silver, and then, after he had gone unhappily away, remained there with her.
Julia cleared and washed up the breakfast things, sent Antony off to walk Jimmy round the garden, and then went through the kitchen feeling rather as if she was going to attend an execution.
She found Mrs. Maniple weighing out the ingredients for a pudding, with Polly in attendance. It must be a special one, because Manny didn’t weigh things as a rule, she just threw in butter, and flour, and milk, and eggs, and what not in a splendidly inattentive manner, and the result was a dream.
“Yes, Mrs. Maniple,” said Polly, and fetched the lemon essence.
Julia came into the room.
“Manny-could Polly go and give a hand upstairs? Miss Minnie had a bad night, I’m afraid-”
“Looks fit to drop,” said Mrs. Maniple. “Polly, you take and go along and see what you can do. There’s nothing here I can’t manage. No call for you to come back before eleven, so you get right on with the bedroom floors, and Miss Ellie can do the dusting.”
The table faced the long window looking into a stone-paved court with a very old chestnut tree growing in the middle of it. Julia stood and looked out at the tree. There was a story about it. A Cavalier Latter had hidden in the branches whilst the Roundheads ransacked the house for him. Everyone in the village knew that he had come home wounded, but no one gave him away. It was an old story-
She turned round from the window, to see Mrs. Maniple looking at her shrewdly.
“Well, Miss Julia, what is it? You may as well come out with it soon as late. It wasn’t Polly you came after-was it?”
“No, Manny.”
“And no call to look as if we was at our own funeral neither. There’s some that can be spared, and I’m not saying nothing about them, but no reason why you and me should cry our eyes out neither.”
“Manny-don’t!”
Mrs. Maniple had her hands in the pudding-bowl. There was a dusting of flour on her strong arms. The sleeves of her lilac print dress were rolled above the elbows. She wore it high to the neck with a little turndown collar of the stuff, and it fastened with hooks and eyes all down the front like dresses used to when she first went into service. An out-sized apron with strings to it was tied in a bow at the back of what had once been a waist. Her hair was still very thick. It stood up strongly from her forehead and was coiled into a large knot behind. It was iron-grey in colour, and if she had allowed it to curl it would have curled. Under it black eyebrows gave a very decided look to eyes which were as nearly black as eyes can be. She turned them defiantly on Julia.
“Now, Miss Julia, what’s the good of saying that? I don’t hold with speaking ill of the dead no more than you do, not without there’s a reason for it, but I don’t hold with pretending neither, nor yet with crocodile’s tears which isn’t my way, as well you know. And no good your coming here and saying, ‘Don’t, Manny!’ ”
Julia took hold of herself. It wasn’t any good thinking of all the times she had watched Manny breaking eggs, and stoning raisins, and buttering tins as she was doing now, to the accompaniment of the village news and all the stories of everything that had ever happened to everyone in it. It wasn’t any good. She found she was saying the words out loud,