“There’s something-and I don’t know whether to tell you-” She paused, and added thoughtfully, “or not.”
Jeremy threw his bag on to the couch. He turned back to say,
“Look here, what’s all this?”
“Well, perhaps it’s nothing-”
“All right, if it’s nothing, you’d better go to bed.”
“No-I’ll tell you. It’s only-you know I met Miss Silver at Mrs. Moray’s, and I thought just what anyone would think, that she was a sort of Edwardian specimen governess and really ought to be under a glass case in the British Museum or somewhere, but rather a lamb, and we’d been getting on like a house on fire.”
“Darling, is all this going to get us anywhere? Or shall I just go quietly off to sleep until you arrive at the point?”
“I have arrived at it. That’s what she seemed like, and that’s what I thought she was. But she isn’t. At least she is really. That’s why it’s so convincing. I mean, she used to be a governess and all that sort of thing, so it’s the most marvellous protective colouring-like insects pretending to be sticks-”
“Jane, you’re raving!”
“No, darling, I’m only leading up to it gently.”
“Leading up to what?”
She gave a little gurgle of laughter, put her lips quite close to his ear, and said,
“She’s a detective.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“No-really. Mrs. Moray said she was marvellous. Charles said so too-they both did. They said the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard thought no end of her.”
“You’re not spoofing?”
She said indignantly, “As if I would!”
“You might. Then-”
They looked at each other. Jane nodded.
“I know-that’s what I’ve been thinking-about her being here. It might be accidental like she said, or it mightn’t. She might be detecting.”
Jeremy said in an exasperated tone,
“I told you there was something fishy about this place. You oughtn’t to have come.”
“The theme song!” She blew him a kiss. “So I thought if there is any dirty work going on, she might just as well know which of us is which and have some sort of an idea of the lay-out. Because-well, I didn’t tell you about Luke White, did I?”
She proceeded to do so, finishing up with, “It really was horrid. And don’t keep saying I oughtn’t to have come, because that’s nonsense. It’s Eily I’m thinking about. You could see what a shock she’d had. You know, really it isn’t civilized to go round throwing your weight about saying you’ll cut people’s hearts out and drench them with blood if they marry somebody else.”
Jeremy said, “Not very,” in rather an odd tone of voice.
Then he tipped Jane’s chin up and kissed her in a good hard kind of way. It was agreeable, but undermining. It was still more undermining when he said in a different voice,
“Let’s get married soon.”
Jane didn’t want to be undermined, but she felt it coming on. She hadn’t ever realized before how dreadfully easy it would be to say yes. She kissed him back once, and pulled away. And ran out of the room.
CHAPTER 14
Everyone began to go to bed. The downstairs rooms were left to darkness and silence except for the glimmer of a wall-lamp in the small square hall. Old houses settle slowly to their rest. Floors upon which many generations have walked, furniture which has been a very long time in use, walls which have borne the stress and weight of old beams for centuries, have a way of lapsing into silence by degrees. There are small rustling sounds, creakings, movements-a whispering at the keyhole of a door, a stirring amongst spent ashes of a fire, a sighing in the chimney-and all in the darkness which has been there night after night for perhaps three hundred years. Thoughts, feelings, actions which have left their impress come to the surface. The life of today no longer dominates these empty rooms. The past comes stealing back.
Upstairs Miss Silver braided her hair and pinned it up neatly for the night. She had spent a very instructive evening. She folded her crimson dressing-gown, made in the last year of the war from utility cloth but most warm and comfortable and ornamented with the handmade crochet lace which was practically indestructible and had already served two previous gowns. Her slippers were new, a present from her nephew’s wife Dorothy, who had brought them home from the East. So very kind, and just the right shade of red. They had black pompoms on the toes, and of course these would not wear so well as the slippers but could be replaced. She arranged them neatly side by side before getting into bed, after which she put on a warm blue shawl with an openwork border over her long-sleeved woollen nightdress, and read a chapter from the Bible before blowing out the candle and composing herself to sleep.
Mildred Taverner also wore a long-sleeved nightgown of a woolly nature. She had embroidered a spidery bunch of flowers on either side of the front opening, which she had trimmed with little ruches of lace. She lay in the dark and wished that she had drunk less champagne. The bed really was not steady at all, and she felt far from well. She tried to remember what she had said to Jacob Taverner.
In the big double bed over the way Freddy Thorpe-Ennington could just hear his wife’s voice going on and on. He wasn’t asleep, because he could hear Marian talking, and he wasn’t awake, because he wouldn’t have been able to answer her even if he had wanted to. He didn’t want to. He wanted her to stop talking and put out the light, which hurt his eyes. He wasn’t drunk-he had walked upstairs, hadn’t he? All he wanted was to go to sleep. Why couldn’t Marian let him alone and put out the light? He wished she would stop talking, because every now and then he couldn’t help hearing what she said. She said things like, “Freddy, my sweet, you know you really shouldn’t drink so much,” and, “You’ll feel rotten tomorrow-you know you will.” He didn’t want to hear what anyone said. He wanted to go to sleep.
Marian Thorpe-Ennington finished creaming her face and put on the chin-strap which she wore at night though it was really dreadfully uncomfortable, tied a cap over her hair to preserve the waves, and slipped her hands into soft wash-leather gloves. When she had done all this she took off the cape which she had been wearing to protect her nightgown. It was worth protecting-white triple ninon smocked at the shoulders and at the waist in a delicate apple-green. She put on the matching apple-green coatee and took a casual look at herself in the glass. The chin-strap rather spoilt the effect, but anyhow you had to cream your face, and it wasn’t as if there was anyone to see you. Freddy, poor sweet, never knew how you looked or what you had on.
This happened to be true, because having once made up his mind that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, he remained in that simple belief, and nothing she did or omitted to do had the slightest effect upon it.
Marian Thorpe-Ennington gave a fleeting sigh of regret to the days when her complexion owed its astounding brilliance to her own youth and to the soft water and softer airs of Rathlea and when she didn’t have to bother about a double chin. Then she got into bed, kissed the back of Freddy’s head, and blew out the candle.
On the other side of the landing Geoffrey Taverner was reading in bed. He wore neat grey pyjamas, and a grey dressing-gown edged with a black and white cord. He had only two pillows and he had been at some pains to arrange them comfortably. He wore pale horn-rimmed glasses. He was reading a thriller with the intriguing title of Three Corpses and a Coffin.
In the room next to Miss Silver Florence Duke hadn’t undressed. She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. There was a lighted candle on the chest of drawers which served for a dressing-table. The flame moved in the draught from the window. It made the candle gutter. The flame, the guttering wax, and the candle itself were reflected in the tilted glass. There were two wavering tongues of fire, two little caves running with melted wax, two candles thickened with what old wives’ tales call winding-sheets. Florence Duke stared past them at the wall.