“We’re some of the cousins. This is Jeremy Taverner, and I am Jane Heron. We want to say thank you for the lovely dinner, Cousin Annie.”
She put out her hand as she spoke. Annie Castell looked at it, looked at her own, wiped it slowly upon the washed-out overall which enveloped her, and then just touched Jane’s fingers in a limp, hesitating way. She did not speak at all.
Jane persevered.
“It was a most beautiful dinner-wasn’t it, Jeremy?”
“I don’t know when I tasted anything better.”
Annie Castell made some kind of a movement, but whether it was intended to be a modest disclaimer, or a mere acknowledgement of compliments received, it would have been difficult to say. For a moment nobody said anything. Then a raw-boned elderly woman emerged from what was evidently the scullery. She had a battered-looking hat on her head, and she was buttoning up a man’s overcoat some sizes too large for her.
“I got through,” she said in a hoarse confidential tone. “And if you’re really not wanting me to do the silver-”
Annie Castell spoke for the first time. She had a country accent and a very flat, discouraged voice.
“No, Eily can do the silver. You’ve done the glass?”
“I didn’t know I had to.”
“Yes, please.”
The woman bridled.
“I’m sure I don’t know that I can. Mr. Bridling, he won’t half carry on if I’m late. But there, if I must I must, and no good having a set-to about it. I’ll tell him you kept me.”
“Thank you.”
Annie Castell turned back to Jeremy and Jane.
“The coffee has gone through,” she said in her flat monotone.
They were dismissed, and, as far as it was possible to tell, without acquiring any merit. As they shut the kitchen door behind them, Jeremy said,
“Effusive person our Cousin Annie.”
“Jeremy, do you suppose he beats her?”
“Who-Fogarty? I shouldn’t think so. Why?”
“She’s got that crushed look. People don’t look like that if they’re all right.”
Jeremy put his arm round her.
“Sometimes I like you quite a lot. But talking about looks, you’ve got a green smudge-you’d better slip upstairs and do something to the face.”
They separated at the foot of the stairs. As Jane turned into the passage which led to her room she heard a man’s voice. She didn’t get any words, only the voice. There was something about it that made her angry. She came up the four steps where the level of the passage rose, and heard Eily say, “I won’t!”
Just at this point she realized that the voices came from her own bedroom, and that one them belonged to Luke White who certainly had no business there. Eily, she supposed, would be turning down the beds, and if either of them thought of Jane Heron at all, they would expect her to be taking coffee in the lounge or whatever they called that big room downstairs. In the circumstances, she didn’t feel the least bit ashamed of standing still and listening.
Luke White said with an odious drawling sound in his voice,
“And what good do you think you’re doing by saying you won’t?”
Eily sounded breathless.
“I’m saying it because I’m meaning it.”
“And what good do you think you’re doing by meaning it? I’ll have you in the end. If you’d a grain of sense you’d know that and come willing.”
He must have reached out and caught hold of her, because there was a half-stifled “Let me go!”
“You’ll listen to me first! And you’ll give me a nice kiss, and then you can go-for this time.”
She said, “I’ll scream. You’ve no business here. I’ll tell Aunt Annie.”
“Annie Castell-that makes me laugh!And what do you think you’ll get out of telling Annie Castell?”
Her voice wavered.
“I’ll tell Uncle.”
“You won’t! If you want to start anything like that, there’s two can play at telling. Where had you got to this evening when I spoke up for you and told Castell Annie had sent you out on an errand? I lied for you and got you out of the mess you’d have been in if he’d known where you was. Along of John Higgins, wasn’t it? Keeping company like-sweethearting like-holding hands and kissing, or perhaps a bit more. For all he’s so pious, I bet you don’t sing hymns all the time you’re with him!”
“Luke-let me go!”
“In a minute, when I’ve said what I want to. Here it is. You go snivelling to Castell or you go running away to John Higgins, and I’ll cut his heart out. If you want to wake up some night and find your bed a-swimming in his blood, you run off and marry him, and that’s what you’ll wake up to some fine night. I’ll not swing for him either-you needn’t think it-I’d not give you that satisfaction. I’ll have an alibi that the two Houses of Parliament couldn’t break, not if they tried ever so. And I’ll have you too, whichever way it goes and whatever you do. You can choose whether you’ll come willing and now, or whether you’ll let it come to what I said and have John Higgins’ blood on you first. And now you’ll kiss me proper.”
Jane went back down the four steps, and made a noisy stumble on the bottom one. Just as she did so she heard Eily cry out. Hard on that Luke White cursed. Jane ran, and almost bumped into him as he came out of the bedroom looking dangerous and nursing a hand. When he saw her he stopped for a moment and said,
“Eily called me in to see to the catch of your window. It slipped and caught my finger.”
Jane watched him nearly to the end of the passage before she shut the door.
Eily stood by the chest of drawers which served as a dressing-table. She had a fixed sick look, her eyes staring, her face dead white. She was holding Jane’s nail-scissors. There was blood on the blades. She was wiping it off with her finger and staring at it.
Jane went close up to her and put an arm round her shoulders.
“I heard what he said. Why do you stand it?”
Eily went on wiping the blades with her finger.
“There’s nothing else I can do.”
“Of course there is! You ought to tell Mr. Castell and your aunt.”
A faint shudder went over Eily like a ripple going over water.
“You don’t understand.”
“You could walk out of here and marry John Higgins. He wants you to, doesn’t he?”
“I can’t be doing that.”
“Because of what Luke said? He was just trying it on. You could go to the police. There, that’s three things you could do. And you can put those scissors down-they give me the creeps. You stuck them into his hand, didn’t you?”
The dark blue eyes widened. There was another of those slow shudders. Jane said half impatiently,
“I shouldn’t worry-he was asking for it.”
She turned round to the glass, exclaimed at what it showed her, and began to get busy with cleansing tissue.
Eily put the scissors down and moved a step or two away. All the time Jane was doing her face she was aware of her, standing there with that fixed staring look.
When she was ready, Eily was still there. Jane began to feel that she needed shaking. A girl who was chambermaid at an inn which certainly contained some odd people ought to be a bit tougher than that. The Catherine-Wheel was no place for a sensitive plant-very few places were. If you had your living to earn you had to learn how to look after yourself, but it oughtn’t to have to come to stabbing, not even with nail-scissors. She said rather briskly,
“Come along, Eily-there’s no harm done.”
Eily looked down at the blood on her forefinger.
“It was only the little pair of scissors,” she said, “and no harm done at all.”
“Then what are you worrying about?”
She said, “Suppose I’d had a knife-”
This time the shudder was in her voice.
CHAPTER 11
As Jane passed the turn of the stairs on her way down, a cold wind came blowing up to meet her. She stopped half way, and saw the front door open and Luke White standing there with his back to her. She could see that it was Luke because of his grey waiter’s jacket. His left hand hung down and there was a handkerchief around it. His voice came back to her with the blowing wind-quite a polite, civilized voice for someone who had just been talking about cutting people’s hearts out. “I am sorry, madam, but I am afraid we have no room.”