“I thought it was enough to account for a pretty bad quarrel. Jimmy hates lies. And he worshipped Lois-he thought she was an angel. It was a pretty bad shock.”
Miss Silver said, “I see-” She knitted for a while in silence, and then said suddenly and directly, “Miss Vane, you are very intelligent. You were in contact with these people immediately before the poisoning took place. You say Mrs. Latter was as usual. Did that continue throughout the meal?”
“Yes. She talked-chiefly to me, sometimes to Ellie.”
“What did she talk about?”
“A play I had seen. She asked me if it was good. I made the subject last as long as possible. She told a story about some friends of hers taking a house and not being able to get the previous tenants out. It was just talk, you know.”
“And Mr. Latter?”
“He sat there. He didn’t talk, and he didn’t eat.”
“Mrs. Latter did both?”
“Oh, yes.”
With every word the weight on Julia’s heart grew heavier. She had held nothing back. And what did it go to prove? Could she herself believe that Lois meant to take her own life-that as she talked, as she ate and drank, she knew that she had only an hour or two to live? It wasn’t possible. Jimmy’s image rose-his pallid face, his reddened eyes, the hand which shook as he tilted the whisky decanter. The worst fear she had known came in like a flood.
Miss Silver said quickly, “Are you all right?”
Julia said, “Yes. But that’s all. I don’t know any more.”
She got up and went out of the room.
One of her short sentences remained, to burn like a small, clear light in Miss Silver’s mind.
CHAPTER 34
Miss Silver waited until the house was quiet that night. Then she got out of bed and set the door ajar. If there was to be any more sleep-walking, she wished to make sure of being an interested spectator. If she had come out of her room a little sooner the night before she would certainly not have permitted Miss Vane to intervene. Miss Mercer had had some purpose in her mind. It would have been interesting to discover what that purpose was. It had roused her from her bed, and had taken her to the foot of the stairs. If Miss Vane had not checked her there, it might have taken her a good deal farther. Perhaps as far as the drawing-room. She was certainly facing in that direction.
Miss Silver looked at her watch by the light of the bedside lamp. It was half-past eleven. She was in her dressing-gown, her hair neatly coiled under a rather stronger net than the one she wore by day. She had had the dressing-gown since before the war, a circumstance upon which she congratulated herself. It would be some time before materials returned to that standard. To the pre-war price, she feared, they would never return. This crimson wool, so light, so warm, so durable, would however last for quite a number of years, and the handmade crochet with which it was trimmed, and which was now in its second tour of service, would still be available for further use. Crochet really did wear remarkably well. It would certainly trim another dressing-gown. Perhaps next time she would choose a nice deep blue. She put her slippers handy and got into bed, arranging the pillows so that she could sit up comfortably, and reflected with gratitude that her excellent hearing would immediately inform her if any of the other bedroom doors were to open.
Prepared at all points, she now allowed herself to review the progress of events. They were not satisfactory. They were not progressing in a manner at all favourable to her client. The Chief Inspector had, indeed, been in two minds as to making an immediate arrest. Whilst deprecating this course, she could not deny that the circumstantial evidence against Mr. Latter had accumulated in a very formidable manner. She could not really have blamed the Chief Inspector if he had decided to make the arrest. Yet in the end he had made up his mind to await the result of the inquest. A relief. But the time was short, very short indeed. It would have been so very much pleasanter if the arrest could have been avoided. The publicity would be so very painful for Mr. Latter. There was just the chance that tonight’s vigil might bring something to light. That there were hidden thoughts and motives, actions still screened from view, she was assured. How far they reached, what part they had played or still might play, she did not know, but the feeling of secrecy was there.
As she sat in the half-darkened room with the house so still about her, she turned her thoughts first to one and then to another of the people sheltered there. Some would be sleeping. Did the sleeping thought give up its secrets? Some would be awake-in fear, in grief, in torment. She thought of them one by one-Jimmy Latter-his cousin Antony – Julia Vane- Ellie Street -Minnie Mercer-Gladys Marsh- Mrs. Maniple-the little pale kitchenmaid Polly Pell-
The clock in the hall downstairs struck twelve-first four strokes to mark the house, and then after a pause twelve more, the strokes solemnly spaced, not noisy or ringing but with a quiet, deep tone which enriched the silence of the house without jarring it. If anyone slept, it would not waken him. If anyone waked, it would be a friendly, companionable sound.
Of the nine people at Latter End only Miss Silver counted the twelve strokes on this particular night. Jimmy Latter would say in the morning that he had not slept. There is a borderland state in which, whilst consciousness remains, control is lost. The mind drifts without aim or rest. In a shifting world between waking and sleeping his thoughts had slipped the leash and went questing after shadows, themselves too shadowy to know what they followed or why they followed it. Only always there was the sense of strain, of effort, of something lost beyond recall, of fevered striving to bring back what was gone. Shadow play on the broken surface of consciousness-broken shadows passing, dissolving, coming again-nothing stable-nothing clearly seen-just shadows-
Ellie Street was dreaming, her body relaxed, her left hand under her cheek, as she had slept ever since she was a child. Her dreamself walked in a garden. She didn’t know the place, it was quite strange to her. At first it was sunny and pleasant, but after a little she came to a high thorn hedge, and she knew that she couldn’t get out. The hedge was twenty feet high, and she couldn’t get out. Ronnie was on the other side, and she couldn’t get to him. She began to break the thorns with her hands. The twigs snapped like sticks on a frosty day. They tore her hands and the blood ran down, and all at once they were not thorns any more, but icicles-the whole hedge was made of ice. She stood in snow up to her knees, and the blood ran down upon the snow and froze, so that some of the icicles were white and some were red. She couldn’t get to Ronnie.
In the bed beside her Julia was dreaming too. She had on a white dress and a long white veil. She was being married to Antony. An unbearable joy filled her. He lifted her veil and bent to kiss her lips, and a great roaring wind came and carried her away into a dark place where she was quite alone.
On the other side of the swing-door Gladys Marsh was asleep, with her face well creamed and her hair in curlers. She had taken the cream out of Mrs. Latter’s bathroom together with a good many other oddments. If questions were asked-why, Mrs. Latter had given them to her, and no one could prove she hadn’t. She was having a really vivid and exciting dream in which she was wearing a diamond necklace with ever such big stones and standing up in a high thing like a pulpit to give her evidence. There was a judge in scarlet with a great grey wig, just like she’d seen him when they had the assizes at Crampton. He looked at her over his glasses, the way any man looks at a pretty girl, no matter whether he’s a judge or a juryman. The jury were on the other side. They looked at her too. Everybody looked at her…
Mrs. Maniple was also sleeping. She wore a voluminous calico nightgown which was five yards round the hem and fearful to behold with gussets and stitchery. In her young days a nightgown was an undertaking. She still undertook her own, which she made on her grandmother’s pattern. From the same source she had accepted the conviction that an open window after nightfall induced an early death. Night air wasn’t wholesome, and you shut it out except perhaps in what she called the “heighth” of summer. This being the autumnal season, her window was hermetically sealed. The room smelled strongly of camphor, furniture polish, and lavender.