For a moment or two there was silence in the room. Then Marjorie’s lips began to tremble like a troubled baby’s.
‘This is perfectly beastly,’ she gulped. ‘You don’t know how I’m hating it. When I think of the good times we used to have and now you…. If there’s anything you’d like to tell me, I wish you would. I mean, I can’t promise to do anything, but… I don’t know how to put it…. We were pals at school… if you’d sort of give me your parole.’
Miss Ranskill made no reply.
‘Haven’t you anything you could tell me that would make it easier?’
‘Nothing, really,’ said Miss Ranskill, ‘except that I only came back to England this morning. I’ve spent nearly four years on a desert island.’
‘A desert island? But there aren’t any now.’
‘There is one, because I’ve lived on it.’
‘Was it a British possession?’
‘I don’t know: there wasn’t anything to show. It wasn’t coloured red, if that’s what you mean.’ Miss Ranskill nearly explained that sea-gulls do not sing national anthems, but she restrained herself.
‘And were you quite alone for four years?’
‘No, there was a carpenter there as well.’
‘A carpenter. What sort of a man was he?’
I never was much to look at, Miss Ranskill, but I’ve always been well set up. Seems to me if you’re born with a good body it’s right to use it right, keep it clean and healthy and don’t let it sag…. This I can say, I’ve never owed a penny for a minute more’n I could help. I’ve never ill-treated an animal or a child or been rude to a girl. I’ve not been what you’d call a vicious man.
‘He was a good man,’ answered Miss Ranskill.
Marjorie left the door, her watch and ward forgotten for the moment.
‘A desert island – for nearly four years. How frightfully thrilling. Why didn’t you tell me at once…. It must have been queer, living there all alone with a man like that, I mean. It must have seemed a bit funny.’
‘No funnier than being alone with a woman.’
Miss Ranskill’s mouth shut firmly on the words.
‘Oh! I know you wouldn’t go in for any Blue Lagoon sort of stuff, but was he quite all right all the time, I mean –?’
There was no answer from the woman on the bed, but an unassailable expression came into her eyes and she clenched one hand slightly.
‘I say, I’m most awfully sorry, I oughtn’t to have asked, only I am one of your oldest friends, and it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference to me. I mean, ordinarily it would, but a desert island’s different. I only meant that over anything like that I’d have done anything I could to help.’
The voice went blundering on, as Miss Ranskill’s knuckles whitened.
She was seeing a figure on the sand and a whirl of sea-gulls.
‘I mean, of course, I hate anything like that, but I’m quite broad-minded, I suppose it’s being a doctor’s wife. I only wanted to help, I mean.’
Marjorie’s voice tailed off, and, at last, Miss Ranskill answered.
‘If you mean did he rape me, he did not.’
‘Nona!’
‘That was what you wanted to know, wasn’t it?’
‘Of course not, not put like that, anyway.’
Miss Ranskill made no answer. She was trying to see her island again, cool in the morning light, set in a fretwork of silver splinters, but the image was tarnished now.
‘Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken,’ she murmured.
‘What?’ asked Marjorie. ‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Tone-deaf,’ Miss Ranskill’s mind made answer but her lips did not move.
CHAPTER NINE
The police had come and gone, and now Miss Ranskill was sitting in the Mallisons’ overcrowded drawing-room.
‘It’s only a matter of form,’ her mind repeated. ‘This is a purely formal question…. Just a matter of routine, you know; no need to worry about it.’
She wondered if the Prince had murmured, ‘Just a matter of routine,’ before bestowing on the Sleeping Beauty that formal kiss that must have awakened her, also, to more practical matters than the buzzing of bees in the hedge of roses.
After each little bout of questioning, the elder had nodded to the younger, who had murmured, ‘Excuse me, Madam,’ and disappeared, not, as Miss Ranskill had at first imagined, to fetch suitable handcuffs, but to hold long telephone conversations.
He verified the fact that Miss Nona Ranskill, passenger in The Coraltania, had not been among the passengers who disembarked at Southampton a month before war was declared.
‘It is so much better for you, Madam, that we should check up on everything. And now, if you wouldn’t mind writing your signature, your usual signature, on that pad…. Three times, if you don’t mind…. The Midland Bank, you said, didn’t you? We can describe the signature by telephone.’
The younger policeman excused himself again, this time taking the pad with him; and the inquisition continued, to be interrupted by his return.
‘That seems to be all right, sir. The full-stop just below the first i, and the short rising line under the signature. The Will was proved in 1940.’
‘My Will?’ asked Miss Ranskill.
The elder inquisitor pursed his lips and nodded gloomily, adding: ‘They would be obliged to do that, of course, just as a matter of routine, but there should be no difficulty – just a few formalities.’
An hour and a half passed by, but at the end of it Miss Ranskill was in possession of her sister’s address in an inland Hampshire village.
She was told that certain formalities must be observed ‘merely as a matter of routine, of course’, and gathered that when her identity had been established more formally, she would be given the identity card and ration books that would prove her right to exist, as well as to be fed and clothed. In the meanwhile, and, again purely as a formality, it would be more convenient for everyone if she would remain where she was for the next few days.
‘Yes,’ agreed Miss Ranskill. ‘I must ask my hostess.’
It was then that Marjorie had made an entry and announced, while plumping uneasily on to the arm of a chair, that she had no intention of butting in.
‘Quite,’ replied the elder inquisitor, and saved Miss Ranskill from embarrassment by asking if she might remain as guest while matters, tiresome but necessary to routine, were completed.
‘But, of course.’ Marjorie hitched up a stocking and patted her sleek head. ‘And, I hate suggesting it, but I do think it would be an awfully good idea if Nona, Miss Ranskill, I mean, gave her parole not to do a bunk. I mean, we were at the same school, and that sort of simplifies things, doesn’t it?’
Assurance that nothing of that kind would be necessary stirred Marjorie to curious forms of activity. Miss Ranskill and the policemen watched and waited while she scratched her leg, opened and shut her mouth, tugged at her shirt collar and writhed as though the arm of her chair were a bed of stinging nettles.
‘I say,’ she gasped at last. ‘It’s no good, I simply must get it off my chest. I’d feel awful if I didn’t. I mean, private loyalties and being at the same school with a person aren’t absolutely everything in war-time, and so though I feel frightful and exactly like Lancelot–’