The letter began without any beginning as formal as beginnings go. It said:
Why did you go away like that? It was cruel of you and quite useless. Don’t you know-don’t you know that I care for you? You must know it. Let me come to you. I don’t know why you went away. I think Lilian had something to do with it. You need never see her again if she had. I can promise you that. There is nothing else that I can think of that would come between us. Miss Silver says that you are safe. She won’t tell me where you are. She says she only knows in confidence, and that she won’t tell me unless you say she may. Oh, Anne, please do say so-please. Whatever is the matter-whatever you think you must keep to yourself, please, please, please let me know about it. I only want to help you. Darling-darling Anne, do believe that. You may feel that it is too soon for me to say all this. I know I shan’t change. I won’t worry you, I will promise that. But do let me see you. Don’t shut yourself off from me like this. I can’t stand it.
There was a big bold ‘Jim’ scrawled across the bottom.
Anne read her letter through three times. Then she put up her hand to her eyes, found that they were wet, and got out a handkerchief to dry them with. She didn’t know why Jim’s letter should have made her cry, but it had. Then she saw that there was another sheet. It had dropped on the bed beside her. She picked it up and read it:
I haven’t told you about Anne. There isn’t much to tell. I hardly knew her. She was with her father in the place where we were. Her mother was Russian, and she had been brought up out there. I don’t know whether she was legitimate. I think perhaps she wasn’t, because her father, Borrowdale, was in such a state about her when he was dying. He met with an accident and only lived a few hours. He asked me to marry Anne and look after her. I hadn’t had a lot to do with women, but there was no one else so I said yes. There wasn’t much time to think. He sent for the local priest-it was ten miles over very rough country-and he married us. The priest had been gone about an hour when the American plane came down. They got off again after a couple of hours, and they took Anne with them. It was a bit of a wangle, so don’t talk about it. There have been difficulties about getting anyone away from Russia, especially if their nationality wasn’t quite clear, so that American plane was just what was wanted. I thought it was the safest thing for her. But how she came to be murdered in London I don’t know, or how you got mixed up in it. Let me come and see you. Please do.
It was an extraordinary story. How and why had she come into it? She didn’t know at all. To think about it was like pushing at darkness itself. At dense darkness. Memory didn’t come back that way. If it came, it would come naturally-as naturally as she remembered getting up this morning, or what she did yesterday.
After what seemed like a long time she got up and washed her face. She couldn’t make up her mind what to say to him. She would have to write to him. What did she say? It wasn’t that she distrusted him, but he might distrust her. Suppose she told him just what had happened-how she had come down in the night and found Lilian talking to the man whose name she didn’t know. Suppose he didn’t believe her. Her heart beat hard at the thought. Why should he believe her? Lilian was his own kin. If it hadn’t been for that, she could have trusted him, but-She tried to put herself in his place. A strange girl with no background at all telling the strangest tale about the people you had known always. How could you believe her? How could you believe anything she said?
She didn’t know.
CHAPTER 34
Jim Fancourt came down to breakfast after a night of tumultuous dreams. There was a little pile of letters, and he was sorting them through when he came on Anne’s and dropped the others. She wrote as he had done, without a formal beginning and without a formal address. He read:
I don’t know what to say. You don’t know anything about me. I don’t know anything about myself. You have sent me some money. I don’t know whether I ought to take it, but I am going to just for now, on the condition that you let me pay it back when I have got a job. You needn’t worry about me at all. Miss Silver knows the girl I’m with, and nobody could be kinder. Please wait a little before you try and see me. I want to think things out. If I could only remember-but it’s no use trying, it only makes everything confused.
He put his head in his hands and groaned. Why wouldn’t she? Because she didn’t trust him? Because she didn’t want to be rushed? That hurt a little less than the other. But there wasn’t a word to explain why she had gone off in the middle of the night. He went over the scene with her on the open slope of the hill. She had told him everything then. How did he know that? The answer came passionately. He did know it, but he didn’t know how he knew it. He just knew that everything was all right between them then. Whatever had happened, whatever had gone wrong, had come afterwards. Something had happened. What was it? Something had happened to make her run away in the middle of the night from Lilian’s house-from Lilian. That was it-Lilian had done something that had driven her away. Now, what had Lilian done?
That she was an idle, mischief-making woman, he had no doubt, but the idlest mischief-maker in the world needs something to start her off. It came to him then and suddenly that the man who had frightened Anne in the garden might be in on it. He had gone to the house first, and he had seen Lilian. What had passed between them, and was that their first meeting? He had no idea, but he meant to find out. He looked at his watch. He could catch the eleven o’clock for Haleycott.
Lilian was considerably surprised at his arrival. She had been congratulating herself on the way she had managed. Anne had gone. Jim had come and gone. The man whom she knew as Maxton had gone. There was nothing to bring any of them back again except Jim, who would naturally come down occasionally on a family visit which could have no particular significance, and which would be quite pleasant. She was all for keeping up pleasant relations with the family. What she had not allowed for was his coming down again right on top of his other visit and in such an exceedingly overbearing and difficult frame of mind. He had refused curtly to come into the garden and see how the borders were progressing, and had opened the study door, shown her in, and shut it again, all in the most peremptory manner.
She said, ‘Really, Jim!’ And then, ‘What is it? What have I done?’
‘That is what I mean to know. Just what have you done?’
She went back to her ‘Really, Jim!’ And then, in a tumble of words, ‘I don’t know what you can possibly mean. I don’t think you can be well. I don’t know what this is all about.’
‘Don’t you? Are you sure, Lilian? Are you quite sure you don’t know?’
She was beginning to be frightened. What did he know? How could he possibly know anything at all? He couldn’t- he didn’t! She opened her eyes as wide as they would go and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can only suppose that you’re not well, or-or that you’ve been drinking.’
‘No, I’ve not been drinking. There’s nothing wrong with me, Lilian. You’d better make up your mind to it and tell the truth. Anne told me about the man who came down to see her. I know that he saw you first. It’s really quite useless to try and deceive me. I’ve come here to get the truth, and I mean to get it.’
He saw real terror in her eyes. Her hand went up to her throat.
‘I don’t know-what you mean-’
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘something happened here in the middle of the night when Anne disappeared. It’s no good your telling me you don’t know anything about it. It’s no good, I say.’
Lilian did the best she knew for herself. She broke into sobs.