Maggie waited a second too long before she came back with “It wouldn’t be my business if I had!”
Miss Silver looked at her kindly.
“You do not wish to do Miss Mirrie any harm. But you may be helping her, you know. If this man has been frightening her into meeting him or giving him information she may need to be protected from him. She is a very young girl and she has no father or mother. I think there is something you have not told me, and I would like you to do so. If this man is a murderer, do you not think that Miss Mirrie may be in need of protection? I would ask you very seriously indeed to tell me what you know.”
There was a moment of indecision. Then Maggie said,
“She rang him up.”
“Quarter-past eight Tuesday evening. And it’s no use your asking me what number, because I didn’t get on in time to hear it. First thing I did hear was him scolding her for ringing up. ‘And no names,’ he says, ‘or it’ll be the worse for you.’ Proper bullying way he’d got with him, and not what I’d have put up with if I’d been her. And she says oh don’t- she’d only got a minute because of their all being in the drawing-room having coffee. And then a bit about her uncle having got back from London and telling her he’d made a new will and signed it and all and he was treating her just like she was his daughter. Ever so pleased she was, and no wonder.”
“What did the man say to that?”
“Oh, he said it was a bit of all right, and he’d got a friend at court that had okay’d it or he might have thought it was just a bit too good to be true. Miss Mirrie asked him what he meant, and he said he’d got ways of finding out what he wanted to know and she wasn’t to trouble her head, he could look after them both! And she’d better be getting back to the drawing-room, or someone would be wondering where she was.”
Miss Silver said in her most serious tone,
“Miss Bell, are you quite, quite sure that the man who spoke to Miss Mirrie before the dance was the man whom she rang up on Tuesday evening at a quarter past eight, and who rang up Mr. Field and made an appointment with him later on the same night?”
Maggie stared.
“It was the same voice. I could swear to that.”
Miss Silver said,
“You may have to.”
Chapter XXXI
JOHNNY FABIAN drove Mirrie up on to the Common and off the road along a sandy track that doesn’t lead anywhere. Such a long time ago that most people had forgotten all about it a man called Sefton had tried to build a house there. The land being common land, he wasn’t allowed to get very far with it, and when he finally threw the whole thing up in disgust and went away, people from all the neighbouring villages came along and cleared the site. There really wasn’t much to take away-a few preliminary loads of bricks, a broken-down wheelbarrow, and a pile of gravel. It didn’t take long for the Common to come back to its own with a crop of loosestrife, and later on with seedlings of gorse, heather and birch. Today the only indication that there had ever been an invading house lay in the track which had led up to it, the rather more luxuriant growth which had followed the digging of the site, and the name of Sefton’s Folly.
Johnny flogged his car to the end of the track and drew up there, remarking that Sefton would have had a fine view if he had been allowed to finish his house. He told Mirrie the story, and she said it would have been very lonely up here without another house anywhere in sight.
Johnny laughed.
“Some people like being all alone on the top of the world.”
“I don’t. I’d hate it.”
“Why?”
“I like people.”
He laughed again.
“Rows and rows of them-all in little houses exactly alike, with an aspidistra in the window?”
Mirrie gazed at him.
“Aunt Grace has an aspidistra. She is very proud of it. I had to sponge the leaves.”
“And you loved it passionately?”
“I didn’t! I hated it!”
“Darling, what a good thing! Because, easy as I shall be to live with, on that point my mind is made up, my foot is down, and my will is law. I won’t share a flat with an aspidistra!”
She went off into a peal of laughter.
“Oh, Johnny, you are funny!”
They were not looking at the view selected by Mr. Sefton. The Common stood high and there was quite a wide prospect. The bells of Deeping church came up into the silence in a very pleasing manner, and the cloud which was later on to break in rain still lay crouched upon the horizon, leaving the sky agreeably dappled with blue and grey. The air was mild and the two front windows of the car stood open to it.
Mirrie and Johnny looked at each other. She wasn’t wearing her new black suit but the grey tweed skirt and white wool jumper, with an old nondescript top coat of Georgina ’s which Johnny had fished out of the cupboard under the stairs. She was bare-headed with a black and white scarf about her neck. If country clothes were not very exciting they were certainly comfortable and warm. She also thought that she looked quite nice in them. Johnny thought so too. He kissed her several times before he said,
“Darling, this is not why I brought you here.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Definitely not. The reason we are here is because I want to talk to you, and this is the sort of place where nobody is likely to butt in.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“You-me-Sid Turner.”
She winced away from the mention of Sid’s name.
“I don’t want to. Johnny, I don’t.”
“Sorry, darling, but I do. If you didn’t want people to talk about Sid you oughtn’t to have asked him to the funeral.”
“Johnny, I didn’t-I wouldn’t! He just came.”
“And you just took him off into the morning-room.”
“I didn’t! It was he who took me. I didn’t want to talk to him.”
“Then why did you?”
“He made me.”
“Why did you let him?”
“I-I couldn’t help it.”
He took both her hands and pulled her round to face him.
“And now you’re not going to help talking to me! That is why we are here. Nobody’s going to come in and interrupt us, and if you were to scream for help until you hadn’t any more breath to scream with, no one would come. So just stop looking like a scared kitten. I am going to talk, and you are going to talk, and before we start I want to make it quite clear that lies are out.”
Her eyes were like saucers.
“Lies?”
“Yes, darling. Fibs, falsehoods, tarradiddles, and what have you! They’re out, and the reason they’re out is that you can’t put them across. Not with me. Every time you’ve lied to me I’ve known about it. You can’t get away with it, so why bother? I’m an expert liar myself, and you won’t ever be able to take me in. It’s the same principle as set a thief to catch a thief. And that being that, darling, what about Sid Turner?”
“S-S-Sid?”
He nodded.
“Yes, darling-Sid. The boy friend! That was the way he introduced himself, wasn’t it? Do you know, from what you have told me about Aunt Grace I shouldn’t have expected her to approve of him.”
“She d-doesn’t.”
“I’m not surprised. What does he do for a living?”
“I d-don’t quite know.”
Johnny Fabian laughed.
“Don’t you ask no questions and you won’t be told no lies-that’s about the size of it, I should say! Always got plenty of money-better not ask where he gets it! Now to start with, he doesn’t always call himself Sid Turner, does he? That letter you dropped at the post office-that was to him, wasn’t it?”
She raised brimming eyes to his face, and then quite suddenly she put up her hands and covered them.
“Oh, Johnny-”
“All right-that’s as good as a yes. It was to Sid. Now just carry your mind back to the day you wrote that letter and pretended to read it to me.”