A flush showed in Phyllida’s cheeks. She did not speak.
“I am sorry to distress you, Mrs. Wray, but it will be better if you will tell me what you know. At the moment Mr. Mark Paradine is under suspicion.”
“Mark? Oh-but it wasn’t Mark-”
Miss Silver nodded.
“Mr. Mark did come back to see his uncle, but he did not reach the study until just before eleven.”
Phyllida’s eyes were wide and troubled.
“It wasn’t Mark. I was back in my room by half past ten.”
“Will you tell us who it was, Mrs. Wray?”
Phyllida turned those troubled eyes on Elliot.
“I think you’d better, Phyl.”
She said only just above her breath,
“It was Frank.”
“Mr. Frank Ambrose?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell us what you heard? You did hear something, did you not?”
Phyllida’s hand went to her cheek in an unconscious gesture like a child’s.
“Yes. Uncle James said, ‘Hullo, Frank-come to confess?’ and Frank said something, but I didn’t hear what it was. I didn’t want to hear. I wanted to get away.”
Miss Silver’s needles clicked.
“Very natural, Mrs. Wray.”
Elliot said in an astounded voice,
“Frank? I don’t believe it.”
Miss Silver coughed.
“You mean, Mr. Wray, that you do not believe Mr. Ambrose to be the guilty person. You do not mean to imply any disbelief in Mrs. Wray’s statement?”
“Admirably put. I told you Phyl couldn’t tell a lie. She can’t, so it isn’t any use her trying. She just has to make the best of a bad job and stick to the truth.”
Phyllida said “Elliot!” in a tone of protest. And then, “Miss Silver, please-it doesn’t mean anything-it really doesn’t. I mean Uncle James saying that, because he said exactly the same thing to me-about confessing, you know. I knocked at the door, and he said, ‘Come in!’ And I said could I come and speak to him, and he said, ‘Come and sit down.’ And then he said, ‘Well, Phyllida-have you come to confess?’-just like that. So you see it didn’t mean anything. Please, please don’t think it did.”
“He said pretty much the same thing to me,” said Elliot-“ ‘Come to confess, have you?’ A bit grim, but it seems to have been his idea of a joke.”
Miss Silver opened her lips to speak and shut them again. Her mind was for the moment so brightly illuminated that it required all her attention. Having dealt with what she perceived there, she turned to Phyllida, who was saying earnestly,
“Everyone trusts Frank. He isn’t always easy, but he’s the solid kind-everybody trusts him. If he came back like that, it would be because he wanted to talk things over with Uncle James and find out what was wrong. It couldn’t be anything else-it simply couldn’t.”
Miss Silver looked at her with a kind of grave attention. She said,
“No doubt he will be able to explain the nature of his business with Mr. Paradine. I think he will have to do that.” She folded her knitting, put it away in the bag which had been Ethel’s Christmas present, and got up. “There is something that I want to ask Lane. He will be busy later on, so I will see if I can find him now.” She went over to the door with the bag slung on her arm. With her hand on the knob, she turned and looked again at Phyllida. “Pray do not be troubled, Mrs. Wray,” she said. “The truth hurts sometimes, but, believe me, it is always best in the end.”
Chapter 36
Elliot and Phyllida were left alone. Neither of them moved, until suddenly she lifted her eyes and gave him the same troubled look as before.
“Why didn’t you write?” she said.
He had been leaning back against the mantelpiece. Now he jerked upright.
“Why didn’t I write?”
She kept her eyes on him. The blue had gone out of them. They were dark, like water under a cloud. The colour had gone from her skin too. She had a lost, white look which would have gone to his heart if it had not made him almost too angry to speak. She said,
“I thought you would write-but you didn’t-” Her voice trailed away.
He said, “You didn’t get my letters-is that what you’re saying?”
There was a very faint movement of her head which said “No.” His face had gone so bleak that it frightened her.
He said, “I wrote you two letters. In the first one I told you just what had happened about Maisie Dale. In the second I asked you to let me know whether you had got that first letter, and when I could come and see you. I suggested meeting you in Birleton as I didn’t want to come to the house. I got an answer to that by return, a quite explicit telegram-‘Cannot meet you now or at any time. Please accept this as final.’ So I did.”
Phyllida sat quite still. Everything in her was too cold and stiff to move. She went on looking at Elliot because she couldn’t look away.
He said very harshly and angrily,
“What are you looking like that for?”
She made her lips move then. She said,
“I didn’t get the letters.” And, after a pause, “I didn’t send the telegram.”
Suddenly his face frightened her. The stiffness broke. She began to shake. Her shaking hands came up and covered her face. She said in a small piteous voice,
“Don’t! Oh, please don’t! I didn’t get them-I really didn’t.”
She felt his hands on her wrists, pulling her up. She had to face him. The look that had frightened her was gone. He said in a controlled, gentle voice,
“Don’t be an idiot, child-unless you want me to beat you. Did you think I was angry with you? We’ve got to have this out. If you pull yourself together and listen to me, I’ll tell you what I wrote in the letter you didn’t get. Can you do that?”
His grip was hurting her wrists. She had a feeling of security-of being held up. She said,
“Yes.”
Elliot put her back in her chair, pulled Miss Silver’s chair round a bit, and sat down facing her.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded.
“Yes. I was silly.”
“You’ve said it! All right, no recriminations. Now listen! Going back to the smash-up-I quit because I was afraid I should murder somebody if I didn’t. I’ve got a foul temper-I expect you know that. I can keep the upper hand of it as a rule, but that time it got away. I’d just enough sense to get out. I went back to London, and when I’d cooled off a bit I sat down and wrote to you. I’ll tell you the whole thing now. There isn’t a great deal in it. I’m not particularly proud of it, but it isn’t what you’ve been told. I can tell you what really happened, but I can’t make you believe it. I can just say this-I can prove part of what I’m going to tell you, but if you can’t believe me without that proof, it’s all up between us.”
He waited.
Phyllida lifted her eyes and said,
“I’ll believe you-”
“All right, then here goes. The June before we were married-we’ve got to get back to that. We hadn’t ever met. We didn’t meet until September, when Mr. Paradine suddenly asked me to dine, I don’t know why. I didn’t even know you by sight. I was working pretty hard and not taking much time off. Cadogan said I was working too hard. He wanted me to take a week-end off and get right away. Well, I bumped into a chap I used to know. He’d got a spot of leave, and he asked me to join a week-end party at a place he’d got on the river. In the end we didn’t go there. We went to a road-house instead-himself, and me, and a couple of girls-Doris for him, Maisie for me. It was a pretty rackety party. We kept it up late and we went the pace a bit. There wasn’t anything more in it than that as far as Maisie and I were concerned. She was the sort of girl that’s out for a good time and can’t get enough of it. She wasn’t very old, and she was just cram full of vitality-you could almost see the sparks flying. She was a good sort… Well, that’s that. We started back. I’d a bit of a hang-over-I can’t say whether that had anything to do with what happened. I don’t drink as a rule. I suppose my reactions may have been affected-I don’t know. Anyhow we had a smash. A lorry came blinding out of a side road, and I wasn’t quite quick enough. We turned over. The car wasn’t damaged, but Maisie was knocked out. We took her into the nearest house, and of course we had to give our names and addresses. Maisie came round all right, and when the police had finished with us we went on. I drove her home, and that was the end of it as far as I was concerned.”