When all these things were clear in her mind Miss Silver entered the yew tunnel and began to walk slowly down the incline. She was obliged to switch on her torch. Centuries of growth had locked branch and twig and leaf in an impenetrable mass. Even at midday the place was dark, and at this hour of a November evening the gloom was absolute. If the murderer of William Jackson had come from the church, he too would have needed a light. Or would he? She thought even the most accustomed foot might stumble on this winding path. And murder must go silently.
Her mind was now occupied with the question as to the actual means by which William and Clarice had been killed. In Clarice’s case the back of the head had been bruised. In the case of William Jackson the medical evidence was silent. He might have been pushed, or there might have been a bruise which had not been noticed. She had considered whether the murderer could have snatched up a stone or some broken piece of masonry, but a careful daylight examination had afforded no support for this. The churchyard was beautifully kept, and as far as the road was concerned the soil was a soft loamy clay upon both sides of the splash. As she followed this path from the church she was doing what the murderer must have done if he had come this way. Light and shadow play strange tricks. They are also sometimes unexpectedly revealing. Walking slowly down towards the road, she turned the ray of the torch here and there, her mind alert and clear, but the old yews gave up no secret. She came to the lych gate and found it empty under the timbers which had protected it for three hundred years. There was nothing here except deep shadow and the weathered oak.
She passed out on to the road. On either side of the gate there was a stretch of low stone wall. Since the village children had developed a tendency to play such games as King of the Castle upon the flat convenient top of this wall, the late Vicar had caused an iron railing to be set up on it. Mrs. Ball had been informative as to her husband’s dislike of this addition.
“It’s quite hideous, and John can’t bear it. Like those dreadful little railings you used to see in the suburbs. John is only waiting until we have been here rather longer to have it taken away. He says he doesn’t think it would be tactful until we have been here at least three years. Fortunately, the gilding is wearing off.”
Miss Silver did not share the Vicar’s repugnance. She considered the railings very neat and tasteful, the dark green of the paint harmonizing pleasantly with the grass in the churchyard beyond, and the touches of gilding really quite subdued. But it was not with its artistic merits or demerits that she was concerned as she turned the ray of her torch upon the series of arrow-heads which defended the wall. If one of these spikes was loose-
She was testing them with her free hand, when a voice said from behind her,
“Oh, no, it wasn’t one of them.”
If Miss Silver had come near to starting she showed no trace of it. She turned with her usual composure and spoke to the dark shape which stood on the grass verge between her and the road. Transferring the torch to her left hand and letting it hang down, she said,
“Was it not, Annie?”
The shape went back a little.
“Oh, no, it wasn’t one of them.”
“What makes you so sure about that?”
“What makes anyone sure about anything?”
“We can be sure of what we know.” Miss Silver’s voice was quiet.
For a moment everything was so quiet that they could hear the water moving down towards the splash. It had cut itself a channel below the slope of the churchyard before it widened out and shallowed to take the stepping-stones. It moved all the time, and the mild air moved above it. The sky was thick with cloud.
Annie said,
“What anyone knows is their own business.”
“Not always. When murder has been done, everyone has a duty to tell whatever they know. Two people have been murdered.”
Annie said, “Two-” on a caught breath. And then, “Things go in threes, don’t they? Next time it might be you-or me-” Her voice was like a ghost’s voice-weak, and worn, and with no feeling in it.
Miss Silver put out a hand towards her, and she stepped back. She had been a dark shape, but now she was so little distinguishable that she might have been part of the darkness itself. Miss Silver made no attempt to follow her. She drew her hand back again and said,
“I will not touch you, Annie, but I would like you to listen to me. Your husband knew something. If he had spoken of it to those who had a right to know he would not now be dead. Miss Dean also knew something, but like your husband she tried to use this knowledge for her private advantage. I think that is why she died. If there is something that you know, I beg you very earnestly to consider that you are endangering your own safety by not being frank with the police. I said this to Miss Dean, but she did not take my advice. Now I say it to you. Pray think about what I have said. And now let us go in. I do not feel that you should come down here alone in the dark, and I should like you to promise me that you will not do so again”
Annie said on a grieving note,
“Time was I’d have been afraid. You get used to being alone.” Then, after a pause, “I heard you go, and I came after you.”
“Then we will go home together,” said Miss Silver with cheerful firmness.
Avoiding the yew tunnel, they took the open way of the Vicarage drive. It was when they had almost reached the house that Annie, a little way in front, turned her head and spoke.
“You didn’t find what you were looking for-nor you won’t.”
Miss Silver let a moment go by before she said,
“How do you know that I did not find it, Annie?”
CHAPTER XXXV
Annie Jackson made no reply. She had been a little way ahead. Now she was gone, running quickly and lightly along the path which led to the back door.
Miss Silver stood where she was and waited until a gleam of light through the shrubbery informed her that the door had been opened to let Annie in. She went on waiting until she heard it close behind her. It was then, and not until then, that she was aware of what seemed at first to be just a vibration on the air, but which, as it swelled, she recognized to be the sound of organ music coming from the church. With one of those quick decisions which sometimes made her actions unpredictable she turned from the house and took her way along the churchyard path to the side door of the church. She was, in fact, doing just what Mildred Blake had done when she left the Vicarage work-party on the night of William Jackson’s death. Like her she tried the door, found it unlocked, and passed quietly within. As she did so the music sounded in the empty place like the rolling of drums, the crashing of a stormy tide, the sound of wind, and the sound of thunder.
Miss Silver recognized this music. It was the Dies Irae. “Day of wrath, day of mourning”-with its picture of the Last Judgment-heaven and earth consumed in the burning wrath of the Judge. But she had never heard it played like this before. If it was Arnold Random who was playing, there must be something behind that grey, controlled façade. She did not count herself to be musical, but she could recognize that here was a musician, and, what mattered a good deal more, someone in an extremity of pain.