Miss Silver was not unaware of this discomfort. She regretted it. But Miss Ora must not only be allowed to talk, she must be encouraged to do so. In the ten minutes or so which went by before the arrival of the tea she heard all about Jonathan Random’s debts and Emmeline’s cats.
“Really quite a mania, and most insanitary! Kittens all over the place! As my sister told Arnold Random-she has a great deal of influence with him, you know-they are friends of very long standing-in fact they might easily have been something more, only it didn’t come to anything- Dear me, where was I?… Oh, yes, she told him quite plainly-Mildred is always frank-that he had much better give her notice to quit and get the place cleaned up.”
It was at this point that Ruth Ball found herself unable to keep silence.
“Oh, Miss Blake, he couldn’t! Not his own brother’s widow!”
Miss Ora turned placid blue eyes in her direction. So long as she was comfortable, what did it matter if another woman was turned out of her home? She said in her amiable-sounding voice,
“Well, I believe he has done so.”
A fierce little verse from the Psalms about people who were enclosed in their own fat came up in Ruth’s mind. David said it, and it was in the Bible, and whether John would approve of it being applied to one of his parishioners or not, that was how she felt about Miss Ora Blake. She gave her really quite an indignant glance. But Miss Ora slid away from it.
“It is really very good of you both to come out to tea with me. I have been an invalid for so long that I feel it is very brave of anyone to be out in the dark-and I am afraid it will be very dark indeed by the time you leave. Such a dull evening. And of course no street lighting-one of the drawbacks of living in a village.”
Miss Silver smiled.
“I really do not mind the dark at all. I have an excellent torch.”
Miss Ora nodded.
“We have one too, but of course I do not use it myself.”
Miss Mildred came into the room as she spoke, carrying a small and rather dirty japanned tray with a teapot and hot water jug of heavy Victorian silver. When she had set it down and shaken hands with Mrs. Ball and Miss Silver, her sister pursued the theme.
“Miss Silver has a very good torch, Mildred. I was telling her that we have one too.”
“I suppose everyone in Greenings has one,” said Miss Mildred in her deep voice.
Miss Silver coughed in an interrogative manner.
“You go out a good deal in the evenings?”
The remark was addressed to Miss Mildred, but it was Miss Ora who answered it.
“Oh, no-not at all. Just church, and the Vicarage work-party on Fridays. There is really no entertaining at all since the war-people have not the staff. But Mrs. Ball’s parties are so very pleasant, everyone says. I only wish I could go to them.” She beamed upon Ruth. “Mildred is most regular-in fact I don’t know when she missed. Except, of course, last Friday, when we all thought we would go early to bed. Miss Dean had a headache-at least she said she had, but we found out afterwards that it was just an excuse to run out and meet whoever it was that murdered her-and I suppose most of us can make a guess as to who that was!”
Miss Silver said,
“Poor thing! And you did not hear her go out?”
“Oh, no-we had no idea. Mildred had a headache too. Of course I always go to bed early myself-Dr. Croft says it is most important. So we were going to have an early night, only of course in the end we were up till all hours. Such a terrible shock, the Doctor coming round and telling us Miss Dean was dead, when we had no idea that she was even out of the house. And you know how it is, if you are waked out of your first sleep, it is most difficult to go off again.”
Whilst this narrative proceeded Miss Mildred had been putting about three drops of milk into each of the cups and pouring out a faint straw-coloured brew, all in a grim silence. For which it was perhaps hard to judge her. Her manner was certainly not pleasant, but her sister must be trying to live with.
Reflecting on this, and looking at Miss Ora in her shell-tinted shawl, Ruth Ball could not help feeling irresistibly reminded of a pink blancmange-the sort you have at children’s parties, all shapeless and wobbly. As for Miss Mildred, she thought that she had never seen her look more dingy. She had not troubled to change out of her shabby clerical grey, and it seemed to have entered upon a new phase of deterioration. The sagging skirt was crumpled at the hem, and either there were new stains upon it and upon the cuffs, or else the overhead light showed them up more plainly. It shone down upon the greyness of her skin, and on the hands which looked as if they had not been washed for quite a long time. She poured out the tea in a manner which did very little to suggest hospitality, and broke in upon her sister’s remarks as to the courage required to go out in the dark with a sharp,
“It would be a great deal better if more people stayed at home. All these girls slipping out to go walking in dark lanes with their young men-well, it isn’t surprising if they get into trouble. And if one of them gets herself murdered, it’s no more than is to be expected.”
Miss Silver gazed at her innocently.
“You mean that poor Miss Dean. Do you think that she was meeting someone?”
Miss Mildred thrust a plate of bread and butter at her and said in her harshest voice,
“I think she was meeting Edward Random. She had been running after him ever since she came here. Nobody could help noticing it.”
Miss Ora heaved a sigh.
“Of course we don’t know that he murdered her.”
Mildred Blake turned a frowning gaze.
“I didn’t say that he had, Ora. Perhaps we had better talk about something else. Will you have some bread and butter, Mrs. Ball? I hear Annie Jackson has moved in at the Vicarage. How do you find her? I thought she looked very strange at the funeral.”
Ruth Ball pressed her lips together and was thankful that Miss Silver absolved her from the necessity of answering.
“A very trying experience, poor thing. She is sadly shaken.”
Miss Mildred drank from a scalding cup to which she had added neither milk nor sugar.
“I have known her for years,” she said-“all the time she was with Lucy Wayne. I never thought it would take very much to send her off her balance. Her father was a cow-man on the Burlingham estate. He drank and beat his wife. None of the children were very strong in the head. Annie certainly couldn’t have been, or she wouldn’t have married that good-for-nothing William Jackson. Lucy left her five hundred pounds, and of course that was all he was after.”
If the tea was a meagre one-a plate of bread and butter that was really margarine, and a plate of home-made biscuits, with a slab of fruit cake which Miss Mildred made no attempt to cut; if the milk ran short and there were only half a dozen lumps of sugar in the Victorian basin which could easily have accommodated a pound-there was at least no stint about the gossip which flowed in rich profusion.
As they walked home, Ruth Ball said with vexation in her voice,
“Every time I go there I make up my mind never to do it again. But what is one to do? It’s go, or start a quarrel-and you simply can’t do that in a village.”
CHAPTER XXX
Arnold Random walked down to the south lodge that afternoon. The burden upon him was now so great that he no longer noticed the untidiness of Emmeline’s garden. Even the fact that three of Scheherazade’s kittens were playing at being tigers in the jungle, and that Lucifer actually darted across his path and nearly tripped him up, made very little impression upon the unhappiness of his mood. What had happened had happened-you could never go back. But he need not turn Emmeline out. Sitting in the least uncomfortable of her chairs, he told her so, his manner very stiff, his face lined and grey.