“Oh, Mr. Frank-is it true about my father? They told me in Ledlington.”
He took the hands, held them for a moment, and said,
“I’m afraid it is.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes. We thought that you were too.”
She drew her hands away.
“My father wanted it that way.”
“He knew you were alive?”
She had very dark blue eyes. The long black lashes had darkened them still more. They lifted now. She looked full at Frank and said,
“Oh, yes, he knew.” Her voice was soft and pretty, with no trace of country accent. On those last words it was tinged with bitter feeling.
She turned to Randall March.
“I beg your pardon-I should have spoken to you. But I am sure you will understand. I have known Mr. Frank since I was a little girl, and I have just heard of my father’s death-it was nice to see a friendly face. But of course I know you too-by sight. I used to work in Ledlington.”
Her manner was perfectly simple and direct. In a situation beset with embarrassments she appeared to be unaware of them. When March asked her to sit down she did so. When he explained Miss Silver her faint smile and the slight inclination of her head had a natural grace. When he enquired if she had something to say to him she lifted her eyes to his face and said,
“Yes, that is why I’ve come.”
Away to her left Frank Abbott produced writing-pad and pencil. Above her knitting Miss Silver’s eyes were bright and intent. March said.
“Well, Miss Robbins, what have you to say?”
Those very black lashes dropped. She said,
“A great deal. But it isn’t very easy to begin. Perhaps I ought to tell you that I am not Miss Robbins. I am married, and-Superintendent March, will it be necessary to bring my married name into it?”
“I don’t know. It depends on what you have to say.”
She drew a long breath.
“It has nothing to do with my husband.”
“Does he know you are here?”
She looked up again at that, quick and startled.
“Oh, yes-he knows everything. We talked it over. It was he who said that I must come, but it is I who don’t want to bring his name in because it might hurt him in his profession. He is a doctor.”
March said gravely,
“I can’t make any promises-you must understand that. Will you tell me what it is that you and your husband thought I ought to know? I suppose it concerns the death of Henry Clayton?”
The colour ran up into her face and died again. Just for a moment she had the beauty which takes you unawares. No one of the other three people in the room was insensible to it.
She said, “Yes.” And then, “I was here that night.”
The few quietly spoken words produced almost as vivid a shock as her entrance had done. Frank stared. Miss Silver’s needles halted for a moment. March said,
“You were here on the night that Henry Clayton was murdered?”
“Yes.”
“You really mean that?”
She smiled very faintly.
“Oh, yes, I really mean it.”
“Do you mean that you were present when he was-murdered?”
She caught her breath.
“Oh, no-not that!” Another of those quick breaths, and then, “Superintendent March, may I tell it to you from the beginning? You won’t understand unless I do.”
“Yes, certainly-tell it your own way.”
She had been leaning towards him over the table. Now she sat up straight, unfastening her coat and throwing it back.
The dress beneath was of dark red wool, plain and good. She had taken off her gloves and put them down on the table. Her bare hands lay in her lap, the left hand uppermost. Over the platinum circle on the wedding-finger was a fine old-fashioned ruby and diamond ring. Mabel Robbins looked down at it and began to speak in a low, steady voice,
“I expect you know why my father wanted me to be dead. He was a very proud man, and he thought I had disgraced him. Henry Clayton made love to me, and I fell in love with him. I don’t want to excuse myself, but I loved him very much, and I don’t want to blame him, because he never pretended that he was going to marry me.” She looked up with a startling effect of truthfulness. “He isn’t here to speak for himself, so I want it to be quite clear that he didn’t deceive me. He never promised me anything. When I knew that I was going to have a child he provided for me and for the baby. I wrote to tell my mother that I was all right and well looked after, but she never got the letter. My father burnt it.”
Miss Silver said, “Dear me, what a very high-handed proceeding!”
Mabel looked across at her for a moment and said briefly, “He was like that.”
Then she went on.
“I didn’t know about the letter till afterwards. I only knew they didn’t write. When my baby was a year old I wrote again and sent a snapshot of her. She is very sweet. I thought if they saw how sweet she was… Well, my father came up-he came to see me. It-it was quite dreadful. There was a very bad air raid. He wouldn’t go to the shelter, or let us go. He sat there and told me what I was to do, and made me put my hand on the Bible and swear to it.” She was looking at March now, her eyes big and full on his face. “It doesn’t seem reasonable now to think I promised what I did, but what with the noise of the guns, and the bombs coming down, and my father looking like the day of judgment, I did it. I was to be dead, and my baby too, so as not to disgrace him any more. I wasn’t to write, or to come, or to do anything to show that I was alive. He said he would curse me if I did, and curse my baby. And he said it would be happier for my mother if she thought I was dead, because then she would stop worrying. So I promised, and he went back and told Mr. Roger, and Mr. Pilgrim, and my mother that my baby and I had been killed in the raid-he had seen us dead. Mr. Roger told Henry, and Henry came to see me and make a joke of it. We weren’t living together any more, but he would come and see me once in a while. He had begun to take a good deal of notice of the baby. He used to say she was like his mother and she was going to be a beauty.”
She paused for a moment, as if it was hard to go on. Then she said,
“He stayed longer than usual, and we talked about a lot of things, but in the end he went away without saying what he had come to say. And when he had gone away he sat down and wrote it to me-I got the letter next day. He was going to marry Miss Lesley Freyne in a month’s time, and he wasn’t going to see us again.”
There was a long pause. She looked down at her ring. The light on it brought up the brightness of the diamonds, the deep colour of the ruby-deep, steady, shining, like the lights of home. Presently she said in a low voice,
“I don’t want anyone to blame him. He was getting married, and he didn’t think it was right to go on seeing me. Only when it happened I didn’t feel that I could bear it. At first I didn’t do anything-I didn’t feel as if I could. I lost a lot of time that way. Then I wrote and said I wanted to see him to say good-bye, and he wrote back and said much better not, it would only hurt us both, and he was going down to Pilgrim’s Rest.”
She put up her hand to her head for a moment and let it fall again-a pretty, well-cared-for hand with tinted nails.
“I think I was crazy, or I would never have done what I did. I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t get it off my mind that I must, must see him again.” She turned from March to look, not at Frank Abbott whom she had known since she was a little girl, but at Miss Silver sitting there knitting in her low Victorian chair. “You know how it is when there’s anything on your mind like that-you don’t think about anything else-you can’t-it just crowds everything out. I was working, you know. I used to leave my little Marion with my landlady. She was very good. Well, when I got away from the office that day-the day I made up my mind I couldn’t bear it any longer, I’d got to see him-I just went to the station and took the first train to Ledlington. It seemed as if it was the only thing to do. I didn’t plan it at all, I just went. Can you understand that?”