“Where have you taken them, Mr. Lester?”
“Well, I thought about my uncle’s house. Highly respectable and all that, but it would have made too much fuss. Elderly maid, nurse companion, everything going like clockwork-you know the sort of thing. It wouldn’t have done. So I took them to the Station Hotel-they’re used to people arriving by early trains. They’ll stay in their room-or at least I hope they will- until we come for them. I don’t think Jenny had had much sleep, and Rosamond would be trying to keep her quiet.”
Miss Silver sat silent and thoughtful. News flies fast in the country. The case was a sensational one. The arrested persons had been taken to Melbury to be charged. There might already be talk in an hotel, where the staff would be coming to work. The Melbury rubies would set tongues wagging. She hoped indeed that Rosamond Maxwell would remain in her room.
At Craig’s knock on the door Rosamond opened it. If he too had had misgivings, they were swept away. She was wearing the blue jumper in which she had come to tea with Mrs. Merridew. It wasn’t new, but it deepened the sapphire blue of her eyes. When she looked at Craig they were full of light.
He said, “Miss Silver has come to see us married,” and she turned at once and put out both her hands.
“How kind of you-how very, very kind!”
Jenny was feeling rather grand because she was wearing a skirt and jumper of Rosamond’s. Her own clothes were all up over her knees, and you can’t go to your sister’s wedding like that. These things weren’t new-none of their things were new-but she could feel the skirt swishing against her legs in a perfectly grown-up way, and though it was just rather a dull old tweed and the jumper was brown, they did show up her hair. Odd that when Miss Silver looked at her she should feel as if she wanted to cry.
They went down to the Register Office in Craig’s car. Jenny thought it was a very dull way to be married. Rosamond would have looked so nice in a long white dress with a train behind and a lovely floating veil. And Jenny would have been bridesmaid, in a white dress too, with a wreath of flowers on her hair. And an organ, and singing, and a lot of flowers in the church. Dull, that’s what this was, and all over whilst she was still thinking how nice the other sort of wedding would have been. She hadn’t really got as far as deciding whether she would have snowdrops and ivy leaves or grape hyacinths in her hair before the Registrar was saying, “Let me be the first to congratulate you, Mrs. Lester,” and it was all over.
Craig and Rosamond didn’t kiss. They looked at each other. There was something in the way they looked which gave Jenny a curious shaky feeling. It wasn’t flowers and a white dress and music that made a wedding romantic. It was something else- something which was between the two people who were marrying each other. And just for a moment when Craig looked at Rosamond and she looked back at him Jenny had seen it.
CHAPTER 45
She never stops talking,” said Frank Abbott. “It’s pretty grim. They’ve got her in the Infirmary-she just goes on and on and on. Detailed accounts of everything for the last twenty years.”
Miss Silver sighed.
“An extremely shocking case,” she said.
It was the evening of a crowded day. They sat in the drawing-room at the White Cottage, Frank stretched out in the largest chair, Miss Silver primly upright with her knitting in her lap. Mrs. Merridew was still with Lucy Cunningham, and would remain there until she had seen her settled for the night. The coffee-tray stood at Frank’s elbow, and a pleasant fire burned upon the hearth. He said,
“The Chief Constable wouldn’t believe it, you know. Said she had gone off her head, and the whole thing was just a painful delusion. Even the sight of the Melbury rubies didn’t shake him. There had been Crewes at Crewe House for three hundred years, and so forth and so on. If there was a villain in the piece it would be Henry Cunningham. The Cunninghams, you see, have only been here about thirty years, and as to Selby, a mere chance-come Londoner, well naturally, he might be anything. Odd, you know, because he is quite an able man. But that sort of thing is died in the wool-the old county family can do no wrong.”
Little Josephine’s leggings were very nearly completed. There had been just enough of the cherry-coloured wool. She said,
“And pray, how did you convince him?”
Frank poured himself out another cup of coffee. He sugared it extravagantly.
“Well, you know, when she said that Maggie Bell’s body was in the old sand pit just off the road down the second lane to the left on the way to Melbury and it was there under a tangle of nettle and bramble, he had either got to credit her with second sight or come round to the idea that she had helped to put it there just as she said. She told us with a good deal of pride how she had intercepted Maggie on her way to the Hunts’s and got her into Selby’s car by saying there was something she wanted her to explain to Florrie’s mother. After which it was quite easy for Selby to knock her on the head, and so to the sand pit. Exit Maggie who, like the unfortunate Miss Holiday, had seen too much. Very regrettable, and a lot of trouble for Lydia Crewe. Henry had been careless enough to leave stolen diamonds lying about on his table when he went out of the room and returned to find Maggie looking at them. Naturally, after that there was only one thing to be done, and Selby and Lydia did it. I gather they didn’t tell Henry. All he did was to pack the stuff in his specimens.”
“That is so. Mr. Lester and I overheard her assuring him that Maggie had gone away because she was bored, and that Miss Holiday had committed suicide. He was uneasy, but only too anxious to be convinced. A weak man, and very much under her influence.”
Frank finished his cup and set it down..
“You know, what got everyone all wrong was the original assumption that the disappearance of Maggie Bell had anything to do with the leakage of information at Dalling Grange. If Maggie hadn’t been working for the Cunninghams, and Nicholas Cunningham had not been employed upon highly confidential work at Dalling, the two things would never have got mixed up. The security people couldn’t get it out of their minds, and it coloured the whole approach. For instance, they investigated Selby and found he had retired from a perfectly respectable garage business in which he and his brother were partners. If they had found out-which they didn’t-that Mrs. Selby’s father used to have a small jeweller’s shop which he left to his daughter, it really wouldn’t have meant anything to them at all, but that is where all the funny business went on. Mrs. Selby didn’t know anything about it-I gather Selby was pretty lordly about her affairs. He picked up a very clever jewel-faker cheap- French Jewish refugee-and they got going on substituting new stones for old. What I want to know is, how did you tumble to it?”
Miss Silver reprehended the expression. A slight cough conveyed the fact. Frank blew her a kiss.
“Apologies and regrets! Evil communications corrupt good manners. My cousin has a lamentable vocabulary. After which honourable amend you will, I am sure, relent and tell me all.”
She smiled with indulgence.
“My dear Frank, you talk very extravagantly. What is it you want to know?”
“How you got on to the jewel business.”
Her needles clicked. She pulled on her cherry-coloured wool.
“It is a little difficult to say. Miss Crewe affected me in a very disagreeable manner. She was closely and curiously linked with the Cunninghams. There had been an engagement between herself and Henry Cunningham. Mrs. Merridew made it clear that he was completely dominated by her. Then a valuable piece of jewelry was missed in circumstances which threw suspicion on Mr. Cunningham, and he lent colour to it by leaving the country. After more than twenty years he returned, a quiet depressed recluse, interested only in natural history. And Lydia Crewe went out of her way to advertize the fact that there was a complete breach between them. She would cut him dead in the street. She did so on the occasion when she came here to tea. Mrs. Merridew was very much distressed about it, and told me that it was her invariable practice. The conversation at tea turned upon Lady Muriel Street having discovered that the stones in a brooch which she had always believed to be valuable were imitations. It was Mrs. Merridew who introduced the subject, but Miss Crewe pursued it in rather a curious manner, instancing a similar discovery on the part of Lady Melbury which need never have been made public if it had not been that Lord Melbury had most indiscreetly talked about it among their friends. She went on to say that if all were known, it would be found that a great deal of historic jewelry had been copied and the originals sold, and that sensible people kept these things to themselves. There was something in the way she spoke which I find difficult to describe, it left a certain impression. Her tone was disagreeably censorious, yet it evinced a kind of pleasure. The subject undoubtedly pleased her. She dwelt upon it. I fancied I could detect some personal pride-I cannot get nearer to it than that.”