She went into Mrs. Dean’s shop, and was quite pleased to find it full and everyone talking. The first words she caught told her what they were talking about. She stood still in the corner of the shop looking earnestly at some rather damaged liquorice sweets and hoped that her attention would appear to be focussed on them.
A fair-haired young woman was saying, “That Jimmy Mottingley he’ve got a sort of look of my brother Bill, and I’m sure Bill wouldn’t lay a finger on a fly.”
An older woman took her up.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said.
“You don’t know about what, Mrs. Wilson?” The young woman had flushed up. She had a pretty skin and a clear colour. “You are not saying that our Bill ’ud do a thing like that, are you? Because if you are-”
“Well, I’m not, me dear, and that’s that, and no need to get red about it either. And I’ll have a quarter of the tea and a pot of that black currant jelly. My black currants were no good at all this year. I’ll have to have the bushes out, that’s what, and whether it’s worth while I don’t know. I don’t ever remember those bushes having anything wrong with them when I was a girl, but nowadays they keep on getting that big bud they talk about.”
A little pale-faced woman next to her broke in.
“I don’t know what things are coming to, I’m sure. They find out new diseases every five minutes, that’s what I say. You dunno where you are for them. There’s that myxy that all those rabbits have gone for-” Her voice died away. She said in a nervous undertone, “I don’t know, I’m sure. There’s some thinks one way, and some thinks another.”
Mrs. Dean leaned across the counter and addressed Miss Silver.
“Good-morning,” she said.
“Oh, good-morning.” Miss Silver looked in her bag and drew out her purse. “I wonder if you have any peppermints.”
By the time that the peppermints were bought she had established the most cordial relations. The shop had cleared a little, and she managed to bring the conversation round to Jimmy Mottingley.
“That was a strange case you had here. The week before last, was it?”
“Dreadful,” said Mrs. Dean. “You read about things like that in the papers, but you don’t expect to see them happening on your own doorstep so to speak.”
“No indeed,” said Miss Silver warmly.
“Though I don’t say it was a right down surprise to me her being murdered. I suppose I oughtn’t to say so now that she’s dead, but if she wasn’t the very type and moral of what gets into the papers one way or another, well, I don’t know what I’m talking about.” She tossed her head as much as to say she knew very well, and so did Miss Silver.
Miss Silver looked suitably shocked.
“This girl-you knew her?”
“I’ve seen her,” said Mrs. Dean darkly. “You’re not supposed to say things about people who are dead, but I can’t see it that way myself. If you’re flighty and domineering, then you are and there’s no getting from it, and dead or alive it’s all one. But that’s my way of thinking and no call to press it on you.”
Miss Silver had a good deal to think about when she finally came out of the shop. Miriam had not impressed the village favourably. Jenny had. Mrs. Dean was loud in her praise.
“As nice a young lady as ever stepped. And they say that she’s got a fortune, too. But there, perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. The fact is, Mr. Richard’s a favourite here, and everyone ’ud be glad to see him fixed up with a nice young wife. That girl that was murdered, she was after him, you know. But there, least said soonest mended, and I shouldn’t get talking.”
Miss Silver smiled. She had a gift for drawing people out, and, as Frank Abbott had often said, it was not done of design. When she showed interest it was because she was genuinely interested. As she stepped into the street she became aware of Jenny Forbes. She was just coming out of the other shop, and at the sight of Miss Silver she stopped and said, “How do you do?” Miss Silver found the meeting a pleasant and, she hoped, a propitious one.
“I was on my way to see Miss Danesworth. Perhaps I might walk with you.”
“Yes, do.”
Jenny’s quick smile flashed out and her colour rose. She was nervous. Now why? It was the same thing which Miss Silver had noticed at their first meeting. And yet Jenny was not a nervous type. She should have a confidence which was quite plainly lacking.
“You must be wondering why I have come here again,” she said, turning to Jenny.
Jenny changed colour. One moment she was pale, the next all a bright blush.
“Oh, no-no,” she said in confusion.
Miss Silver smiled.
“My dear, why are you embarrassed?”
“Oh, I’m not,” said Jenny quickly.
“I think that you are. And I think that I should like to know why. It is possible that you know something that you have not told. If that is the case, I would beg you to think very carefully of what you may be doing.”
“Of what I may be doing?” Jenny’s voice was a startled one.
“Yes, my dear. That boy in prison at Colborough-if you know anything at all you owe it to him to be perfectly frank.”
Jenny’s heart was beating so fast that she stood still. She did not seem to have enough breath to carry her feet forward-not with her heart thumping like this. She said unevenly,
“To be perfectly frank? But I don’t know anything-I don’t indeed. It’s only-only-”
“Yes, my dear?”
Jenny had turned round and was looking at her. They had both stopped. Before them lay the dip in the road. Then it rose again, and just beyond the dip were Miss Danesworth’s cottage and Mrs. Merridew’s small house.
Jenny raised her eyes to Miss Silver’s face. What she saw there apparently reassured her. She felt steadier. Her mind cleared. All at once the only thing that mattered was that she should tell the exact truth. She said,
“I’ve been troubled.”
“I can see that, my dear.”
“If I tell you-you see, I don’t know if it will hurt anyone-” She stood there with her lips parted looking at Miss Silver, who was very grave.
“I cannot tell you that. I can only say that if wrong has been done, the consequences should fall upon the wrongdoer, and not upon an innocent stranger.”
Jenny said, “Yes-that’s what I keep on saying to myself. If he hasn’t got anything to do with it-and he can’t, he can’t- Oh!” She put up her hands to her face for a moment and covered her eyes as if to shut something out.
Miss Silver’s gaze was full of compassion. She spoke very gently.
“I think that you must tell me what you are afraid of.”
Jenny dropped her hands. The tears were running down. She said,
“I don’t know-I don’t know what I ought to do-I don’t indeed-”
And then all at once she did know. She held her hands together tight, tight, and she said,
“That boy-he said there was a note. For me. He took it back afterwards and pretended that he hadn’t said it. It was a note addressed to Miss Jenny Hill. That’s what I was called before I came here. It was my mother’s name, and they thought-everyone thought that my father hadn’t married her, so I was called Jenny Hill, which was her name. And then I heard Mrs. Forbes and her son talking. I didn’t mean to listen, but I’d been crying, and I was sitting behind the curtain in the schoolroom. There’s a window seat with a curtain in front of it. I was there, and they came in, and Mac told his mother he had been to Somerset House and he had got a copy of the certificate-my father and mother’s marriage certificate. And he said the place belonged to me, but there was no need to tell me anything. He would marry me, and if I ever found out, it wouldn’t matter then. So I ran away in the night, and I met Richard who is a distant cousin, and he brought me here.” Jenny’s tears had dried. She felt drained and empty, but quite calm.