Mabel was full of inquiries about Althea.
‘And you feel that she is well enough to be left?’
Miss Silver coughed in a deprecating manner.
‘Oh, I should not have liked to leave her by herself. Mr Carey is with her.’
Nettie and Mabel echoed the name.
‘Nicholas Carey!’
‘Oh, yes. They are great friends, are they not? In fact…’ She hesitated and broke off. ‘But perhaps if it is not given out? And of course at a time of mourning like the present…’
It was a pity that Frank Abbott should not have been privileged to observe his Miss Silver in the role of the well-meaning friend who alternately says too much and too little about the affairs in which she has become involved. In a very few minutes Mabel and Nettie were vying with each other to convince her how intimate they had been with Mrs Graham, and how complete had been the confidence she reposed in them. Between them it became established that Nicholas Carey might be a very charming young man, but definitely unreliable. Look at the way he had suddenly thrown Althea over five years ago and gone off into the wilds!
‘We felt very sorry for her.’
‘Really it quite changed her.’
‘A most untrustworthy young man.’
Miss Silver looked from one to the other.
‘Oh, do you really think so?’
Mabel Pimm’s long nose quivered.
‘Look what has happened as soon as he comes back!’
Lily emerged from her silence.
‘Mrs Graham would not let them get married,’ she said. ‘Mrs Stokes who is their daily told Doris Wills, and Doris told me. She said it was ever so romantic, and now that he had come back she wouldn’t be surprised if it was all on again only Mrs Graham would do all she could to put a spoke in his wheel. That’s what Mrs Stokes said.’
If Mabel had been capable of producing a blush she would have blushed for Lily. It was all very well to be accurate, but there was no need to repeat Mrs Stokes’ uneducated way of speaking. She gave her a look and said in a lofty voice that she never listened to gossip.
When Nicholas Carey’s generally unsatisfactory character had been further dealt with, Miss Silver observed in a diffident manner that she felt herself in a very delicate situation, and that any information which could be given her by such old friends as the Miss Pimms would be most helpful. For instance when friends called to inquire after Miss Graham, since all were strangers to herself it would be of the greatest assistance to know which were really on terms of intimacy with the family.
Mabel Pimm was not one to neglect such an opportunity. Miss Silver heard all about Dr Barrington’s partiality for Mrs Graham.
‘People did say – but you can’t believe all you hear, can you, and a doctor must see too many sick people to be attracted by them. But of course she was always sending for him…’
After which there was a piece about Mrs Justice.
‘There is something rather vulgar about having so much money, don’t you think? The girl Sophy married a distant cousin of ours. They are out in the West Indies. By the way, weren’t you at the cocktail-party Mrs Justice gave the other day?’
Miss Silver smiled a little nervously.
‘Oh, yes, she was kind enough to ask me. There was a time when I knew her quite well. Of course I did not expect to know many people there. Perhaps you can tell me about some of them. There was a woman who seemed to be on very friendly terms with Mrs Graham – rather a striking looking person in royal blue, with that very bright golden hair.’
Miss Mabel’s thin eyebrows rose.
‘If you call it gold,’ she said.
Nettie came darting in.
‘Of course it’s tinted… I believe she doesn’t make any secret of that. People don’t nowadays, do they? They don’t call it a dye any more, they just say they’ve had a brightening rinse. I’ve sometimes wondered lately whether Althea…’
Mabel interrupted her.
‘That was Mrs Harrison. The Harrisons are newcomers to Grove Hill, but Mr Harrison is a cousin of the Lesters who used to own Grove Hill House. He bought it from Miss Lester a couple of years ago, and Emmy Lester asked everyone to call, so we did.’
Nettie took the lead again.
‘She doesn’t fit in very well, but Mrs Graham took her up. Of course the Harrisons have plenty of money. She has a lot of jewellery. Of course we don’t know where it came from.’
‘Perhaps Mr Harrison gave it to her,’ said Lily.
Mabel Pimm sniffed through pinched nostrils.
‘I believe she was once on the stage!’
Nettie continued to prattle.
‘Actresses do get given valuable presents of course. She has a diamond sunburst – quite a big one. She was wearing it at Mrs Justice’s cocktail-party – it made her look rather overdressed, we thought. Perhaps you noticed it.’
‘Oh, yes, I did. A very handsome ornament.’
Nettie went on.
‘And did you notice her rings? There is a ruby and diamond, and a diamond and sapphire, and one which she always wears – five diamonds in a row – great big stones.’
‘She has lost one of the diamonds,’ said Lily Pimm.
Both sisters turned to look at her, and both exclaimed.
Nettie said, ‘A diamond out of that ring!’ and Mabel, ‘How do you know?’
Lily beamed.
‘Because I saw it. She was on the bus on Wednesday morning, and when she pulled off her glove to find some change to pay the fare, there was the ring. And one of the stones was gone! I said, “Oh, Mrs Harrison, you’ve lost a stone out of your ring!” And she said, “Oh, no!” And I said, “Didn’t you know you had lost it?” And she said, “Oh, no, I didn’t,” and she turned the glove inside out to see if it had run down into one of the fingers, but it wasn’t there. And I said, “Didn’t you notice when you put it on?” And she said, “I don’t have to put it on, because I practically never take it off. It’s a little loose, and it is apt to slip round a bit, so I mightn’t notice the stone being gone.” And I said, “Well, it was all right last night when you were playing bridge at the Reckitts, because I always look to see what rings you are wearing, and you had this one and a pearl and diamond one on the right hand, and the ruby ring and the sapphire ring on the left, and the diamonds were all there then.” I don’t know why that should have made her angry, but it did, because she said, “How could you possibly tell?” So I told her.’
Miss Silver showed the most gratifying interest.
‘And how could you tell?’
‘I counted them,’ said Lily simply. ‘There are three in the diamond and sapphire ring, and three in the ruby and diamond ring, and three more in the ring with two pearls in it, and five in the one that is just diamonds and nothing else. And all the five diamonds were there! So I said, “Perhaps you lost it later on?” And she was quite cross and said, oh, no she hadn’t, because all the stones were there when she dressed to come out that morning. I can’t think why she should say that, when she started off by telling me about the ring slipping round on her finger so maybe she hadn’t noticed that the stone was gone.’
‘How strange,’ said Miss Silver. ‘And all this happened on the bus on Wednesday morning? You saw the stone was gone, and first she told you that the ring was in the habit of slipping round on her finger so that she might not have noticed the loss of one of the stones, and then she said that she had noticed that the stone was there when she was dressing to come out?’
Lily gave a pleased smile.
‘Yes, that was what she said. She thinks a lot of that ring, you know. Some uncle or great-uncle in the family brought the stones from India. They cost a lot of money. Mr Harrison had them re-set for her as a wedding-present. She was ever so upset at losing one.’
Miss Silver then narrated an instance of a ring being lost on a beach in Devonshire and turning up some years later in a handbag belonging, not to the person who had lost the ring, but to a relative who had not been anywhere near the beach when it was missed. It was quite a long story, with a good many excursions into such irrelevancies as the exact relationship between the loser and the finder of the ring and both their previous and their subsequent histories. By the time the story was finished Mrs Harrison had receded into the background, emerging later on, no longer in connexion with the ring but introduced by Mabel for the purpose of importing Mr Worple into the conversation.