“You mean she disappeared just like that?”
Jenny nodded.
“I told you it was rather frightening. And if I was writing it for a story I should stop there, because the end rather spoils it.”
“What was the end?”
“Oh, she wrote-twice. On a postcard to her mother, and to Miss Cunningham. She was the daily at the Cunninghams’, and their card just said, ‘Away temporary’. But the one to her mother was longer-something about being obliged to go away and coming back as soon as she could. That’s what she wrote, only she never did, and they never heard any more. The postmark on the card was London. And in the end they went to the police, but they couldn’t find her. Nobody knows what made her do it, because she had always been such a good daughter. And when she didn’t send any money or anything, the poor old Bells had dreadfully little.”
“You say they don’t live here any more?”
“Oh, no. They’re dead. Maggie oughtn’t to have gone away and left them.”
Over Jenny’s head Rosamond gave him one of those looks. All right, he was a blundering fool, and Jenny oughtn’t to be encouraged to dwell upon village tragedies. Let her stick to her Gloria Gilmores and life as it never was. Only if you were going in for fairy tales, he preferred Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and the Twelve Dancing Princesses, with the warp in folklore and the weft in fantasy. He gave back Rosamond’s look with as much hardihood as he could muster and said,
“Yes, that’s the sort of thing I mean. Only it needn’t always be tragedy, you know. Queer things happen in villages, just as they do everywhere-and nice things and interesting ones.” He even steeled himself to add, “Gloom is the hallmark of extreme youth.”
Jenny flushed. He felt that he had been a brute, but Rosamond’s eyes were thanking him.
She left him with Jenny after that, and presently brought in a tray with cups of tea and some of Mrs. Bolder’s biscuits which melted in the mouth. She found the party going with a bang and Jenny chattering away nineteen to the dozen, after which she ate a great many biscuits and drank what was practically a cupful of milk.
“And if any of us was slimming, we shouldn’t be able to, should we? So what a good thing it is that we’re not, because Mrs. Bolder does make the most heavenly biscuits. I expect it will be years, and years, and years before Rosamond and I have to think about that sort of thing. She runs about too much, and I can’t run about enough. And anyhow it must be perfectly ghastly to think about everything you eat and feel perhaps you oughtn’t to. Miss Cunningham is like that, you know. She doesn’t eat this and she doesn’t eat that, and she gets fearfully hungry. And then quite suddenly she can’t bear it any more, and everything she’s taken off comes on again, so what’s the good? Anyhow she’s quite old, so I don’t see why she worries. Nicholas teases her about it, and she goes all pink and says, ‘Oh, my dear boy!’ ”
Rosamond walked down the passage with him when he had said goodbye. He wondered whether he was to be summoned to Miss Crewe’s presence again, but they passed her door in silence. As they came out upon a wide corridor which led directly to the hall, she said in a hesitating voice,
“Would you care to see the house?”
He made no attempt to soften the tone of his reply.
“No, I wouldn’t.”
Her lips quivered into a smile.
“People do come and see it. There are some good pictures.”
“No, thank you.”
“Two Leys and a Vandyck, and a pet of a Gainsborough- Miss Louisa Crewe, three years old, in a white muslin dress and a blue sash, with a puppy.”
“Then in heaven’s name, why doesn’t she sell them, and give you a human life?”
The smile went out like a blown candle flame.
“Aunt Lydia will never sell anything,” she said. “And you- you mustn’t say things like that.”
“Then you had better not ask me to bow down to the idol which is destroying you all. I suppose it started as a perfectly good house put up to serve the needs of real live flesh-and-blood people. The sort of life they lived is over. The kind of houses they lived in just aren’t wanted any more. They’ve either got to be put to new uses, or they’d be better pulled down. You know as well as I do that this house is nothing but a mausoleum, and that it’s draining the life out of you. If you’re going to ask what that has to do with me, I’ll tell you.”
“But I’m not asking you.”
“I’ll tell you all the same. First of all, it’s everyone’s duty to prevent an attempt at suicide.” He grinned suddenly. “That’s not what you expected, is it? I’m on nice firm uncontroversial ground there. I see you about to leap from Waterloo Bridge, and I put out a restraining hand!”
“I think you are quite mad.”
“No-only metaphorical. But cheer up-it gets easier as it goes on. In the second place, you keep doing something to me. You make me angry, and you make me tired; If I’m not in a rage with Miss Crewe for making a slave of you, I’m in a rage with you for letting yourself be made a slave of. ‘A Sister’s Sacrifice’, that’s what you are-a living embodiment of one of those Gloria Gilmores that Jenny wallows in. Do you know, I haven’t been so angry half a dozen times in the last half dozen years! I wouldn’t have believed it of myself, but there it is, and I expect you know what it means just as well as I do. And now perhaps we had better change the subject.”
She had been watching him in a way that came across to him as aloof. Not exactly the Blessed Damozel looking forth over the gold bars of heaven, but perhaps the medieval damsel watching a furious lance being broken for her sake. There was a suggestion that men would play these rough games, and that there wasn’t anything you could do about it. What she said was a plain inexpressive “Yes.” And then, “I would like to talk to you about Jenny.”
She took him into the hall and across it into the small pale room where they had talked last night. They sat in the same chairs, and talked about what Jenny should read, and what she should be encouraged to write.
It was Rosamond who spoke about Maggie Bell.
“I don’t know what made Jenny bring that up. It’s a frightening story.”
“I don’t suppose she found it so. There has been time for her to get used to it.”
“I hoped she had never heard very much about it.”
“In a village? What a hope! Besides children always know everything.”
“Nobody has even known what happened to Maggie. It really is frightening, you know. She was such a good daughter. She would never have gone away and left her father and mother like that if she hadn’t been obliged to.”
She was echoing Jenny’s words. He guessed that they were not so much Jenny’s as everyone’s. They were what had been said so often that as soon as there was talk of Maggie Bell the words were there, all ready to be used again.
He said,
“I suppose it was the usual thing-some man, and she couldn’t face the talk.”
“But there wasn’t any man. She must have been forty, and she had never been about with anyone.”
“Axiomatic,” he said. “Girls who disappear or who get themselves murdered have never had any men friends-all their friends and relations say so. But that’s an old story. Let us now give our minds to Jenny.”
CHAPTER 5
Chief Inspector Lamb sat back in his office chair and allowed his frowning gaze to rest for so long upon Detective Inspector Frank Abbott that that promising young officer began to wonder which of the crimes regarded by his Chief with particular disfavour he had committed this time. Whichever it was, the appropriate homily would undoubtedly be forthcoming. Since he knew them all by heart, from Thinking oneself Better than one’s Superiors, Entertaining a quite False Impression that one’s Opinion had been Sought or was Desired, through a long list to, last and not by any means least, the Using of Foreign Words where Plain English ought to be Enough for Anyone, he awaited the breaking of the storm with resignation, and was surprised that it should be still delayed.