Miss Silver gave her little dry cough.
“Indeed I remember you very well, Miss Pennington.”
Lydia said quickly, “What are you doing here?” Her thoughts were racing, racing. The colour had come into her face.
In her driest manner Miss Silver replied, “I am buying wool.”
Lydia’s colour brightened still more. She lowered her voice.
“I didn’t mean that. I meant are you on a case?”
Miss Silver looked at her with attention.
“Oh, no. I am staying with my niece, Mrs. Burkett. Her husband has been transferred to the Birleton branch of his bank. He joined up, you know, but he is not very strong and they have sent him back to his work. So delightful for Ethel. They are such a devoted couple, and they have three children, all boys. They very kindly asked me for Christmas, but I was unable to come to them then, so I have been spending the New Year with them instead.”
As she spoke Miss Silver observed the fluctuation of Miss Pennington’s colour and the manner in which she kept herself rather rigidly turned away from the other shoppers. She was not, therefore, much surprised when Lydia said,
“Miss Silver-could I speak to you-would it be possible?”
“There is a nice tea-room here. We could have a cup of tea.”
“I don’t know-I don’t think so-too many people know me. I just came in to get myself a hat. I hadn’t got a black one, and there’ll be the inquest, and the funeral. Where are you staying? Could I walk there with you?”
Miss Silver coughed.
“We could walk-yes, certainly. My niece has a flat in Birleton Mansions.”
“What!”
“They are quite new and most convenient-a restaurant on the ground floor, and most reasonable. But of course, with the children, my niece will do most of the cooking upstairs. There is a very up-to-date kitchenette. Perhaps you know the flats?”
“I know someone who has one.”
“Then I will just pay for my wool, and we will walk in that direction,” said Miss Silver.
Chapter 21
It was perhaps an hour later that Lydia emerged from Mrs. Burkett’s flat, which was No. 12 Birleton Mansions, and stood for a moment on the landing. She could take the lift, or she could walk down. She wasn’t very fond of automatic lifts. She looked past the lift-shaft to the door of No. 12a, and thought how surprising it was that Miss Silver’s niece should be living just across the landing from Mark Paradine. She wondered if there were any possibility that he would be in, and all at once she wanted him to be in so overwhelmingly that she found herself standing on Mark’s threshold and ringing his bell. It would save hours of time. They would be able to talk for once without the family streaming in and out. And he could take her back. He was sure to have to go out to the River House again. Excellent reasons and full of common sense. But the impetus which had taken her across the landing and set her finger on the bell owed nothing to reason.
The bell tinkled somewhere inside the flat. Lydia was sure that he wasn’t going to be in. Why should he be in? It was nearly five o’clock. He was probably having tea with Grace Paradine and Phyllida-Elliot and Albert somewhere on the edge of the party, if they hadn’t been frozen right off it. Or else he was interviewing solicitors, undertakers, and policemen.
She had reached this point of ultimate depression, when the door jerked open and Mark stood there glowering. She hoped that his really outrageous frown was not for her, and received some confirmation of this from an abrupt, “I thought you were another of those damned reporters.” At once she was herself again, cool and self-possessed. She said,
“Thank you, darling-I’m glad I’m not. You look absolutely homicidal. May I come in?”
He stepped away from the door.
“Why did you say that?”
“Why did I say what?”
His voice rasped as he said, “Homicidal.”
Lydia felt quite sick. What had he done to himself? What was he doing, to make him look and speak like this? She slammed the door behind her, leaned against it, and said in a blaze of anger,
“Don’t be such a damned fool!”
They stood glaring at each other, until all at once he shook himself, gave a short hard laugh, and turned back to the room from which he had come.
“All right-that’s that. Do you still want to come in?”
“Yes, I do.”
She walked past him into an untidy, comfortable sitting-room-brown leather chairs, brown curtains, a shabby carpet, walls lined with books, a writing-table, an electric fire. She sat down on the arm of one of the chairs.
“Cut it out!” she said. “I love quarrelling with you, darling, but we haven’t got the time. I want to talk. And do you mind sitting down, because you’re about a mile up in the air and I can’t speak to people who are scowling over my head. It gives me the same feeling as a long-distance call.”
He came unwillingly down to the arm of the opposite chair.
“What do you want? I’m busy, you know. I came back for some papers.”
“All right, I won’t keep you longer than I can help. I won’t keep you at all if you’d rather not.”
“Go on-what is it?”
He wanted her to go with everything in him which was set to resist her. He wanted her to stay with all the unruly storm of emotion against which that resistance had been put up. Deep in his consciousness a voice was calling him what she had called him-a fool-a damned, damned fool.
She said quietly and seriously,
“Mark-will you listen? I do want to talk to you, but I can’t unless you listen-I don’t mean just with your ears, but with your mind.”
He looked at her, nodded, and looked away again.
“All right.”
“You see, at Meadowcroft or at the River House someone is always coming in. You can’t talk like that. I want to talk to you.”
“All right, talk.”
She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at the bright red of the fire, two bright glowing bars framed in bronze. She said,
“Mark, this is a frightful thing. The police think it was one of us.”
“Has that only just struck you?”
“No, of course not. But I don’t see any way out of it.”
“Nor do I. So what?”
“We want someone to help us.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked at him now, her eyes brightly intent.
“Well, there’s someone who could help us-right here at this moment, in this building. Her name is Miss Maud Silver, and she’s a detective. I heard about her from Laura Desborough. You won’t know her, but I expect you remember that Chinese Shawl case. Well, she cleared it up. And then last autumn those murders at Vandeleur House, when that woman was caught-what was her name-Simpson. The police had been looking for her for ages. That was her again. She’s absolutely marvellous, and at this moment she’s staying with the people in No. 12. Burkett is her niece.”
Mark’s eyes were as intent as her own, but they were dark and bitter.
“And what do you expect this prodigy to do-find a convenient scapegoat outside the family circle? What a hope!”
Lydia said, “I don’t want scapegoats-I want the truth.”
“Whatever it is?”
“Whatever it is. Don’t you?”
“I-don’t-know-”
She struck her hands together.
“Mark, we’ve got to know! How can we go on if we don’t? It’s a thing that’s got to be cleared up. How can we go on like this-all of us under suspicion-everyone suspecting everyone else-wondering if people are suspecting us-afraid to be natural-afraid to open our mouths. Look at yourself-at me! I used the sort of word one uses, and you went up in smoke. I could have bitten my tongue out the moment I’d said it, and I’d have boxed your ears if I could have reached them when I saw how you took me up. Are we going to have lists of things we mustn’t speak about, words we mustn’t say? Are we going to walk around like a lot of cats on hot bricks? I say, whoever it is, it’s better to know.”