IT WAS PLEASANT to return to the morning-room, which faced the dining-room across the hall and was of the same date. Furnished in Miss Janetta’s taste, Miss Silver approved it as bright and comfortable. True, its front windows also faced the wall, but there was less shrubbery, so the effect was not so dark, and the two side windows looked south-east and admitted all the sun. There was a blue cineraria in a pink china pot, and a pink cineraria in a blue china pot; curtains, carpets, and chintzes in variation upon these two themes; a large sofa for Miss Janetta, and a number of extremely comfortable chairs. When Miss Columba observed that her nephew Roger was standing by the far window looking out, she shut the door on Miss Silver and hastened to do battle with Pell about the peas.
With a slight preliminary cough Miss Silver addressed a rather unpromising back.
‘I should be very glad of a word with you, Major Pilgrim.’
He turned round with so much of a start that it seemed he must have been unaware of the opening and shutting of the door. Miss Silver, advancing to meet him, admired the pink cineraria.
‘Really most charming. Such a sweet shade. Miss Columba is a most successful gardener. She tells me these plants do not require heat, only protection from the frost.’
He said in a worried voice, ‘You wanted to speak to me?’
‘Yes, indeed—a most fortunate opportunity.’
Roger did not appear to share this view. His voice sounded uneasy as he said, ‘What is it?’
Miss Silver had a reassuring smile for him.
‘Just a little information which I hope you will be able to give me. I think we will remain here by the window. It will then seem quite natural that we should break off our conversation and move back into the room if anyone should come in.’ She continued in a conversational style. ‘You have really a most interesting house—very interesting indeed. Miss Columba has just been taking me round it. I was deeply interested. No, thank you,’ as he pushed forward a chair, ‘it will be better if we remain standing. The view from this window must be very pleasant in summer. Those are lilacs over there, are they not—and a very fine laburnum. It must be very delightful indeed when they are all in bloom together.’ Here she coughed and went on with no real change of voice. ‘Pray, will you tell me whether you have taken my advice?’
He gave a nervous start.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you do. Before you left me the other day I advised you to return home and inform your household that you had no present intention of proceeding with the sale of your property. Did you do this?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Then, as she made a faint sound of regret, he burst out, ‘How can I? I’m more or less committed, and the place will have to go soon anyhow. It’s too expensive to run. Look at the house—you’ve just been over it. It wants the sort of staff people used to have and nobody’s ever going to get again. They’re all at me to keep it, but why should I? And after what’s happened here I don’t want to. I’d like to get clear of it and have a place I can run on my income. I don’t like big houses, and I don’t like old houses. I want something clean and new that don’t need an army of servants to look after it. I’m selling!’
Miss Silver appeared to approve these sentiments. It was, indeed, her considered opinion that old houses, though of interest to the sight-seer, were by no means comfortable to live in. Recollections of dry-rot, neglected plumbing, a deficiency of modern amenities, and a tendency to rats, arose in her mind and rendered her tone sympathetic as she replied, ‘You have every right to do so. I merely suggested that you should for the moment employ a subterfuge.’
He looked at her so blankly that, as on a previous occasion, she obliged with a translation.
‘My advice was that you should allow your household to think that you had given up the idea of selling. You could, I imagine, ask the intending purchaser to give you a little time.’
He looked at her in a wretched kind of way.
‘You mean I’m to tell lies about it. I’m no good at it.’ He might have been confessing to being bad at sums.
Miss Silver coughed.
‘It is very advisable, in view of your own safety.’
He repeated his former remark.
‘I’m no good at it.’
‘I am sorry about that. And now, Major Pilgrim, I would like to ask you a few questions about the Robbins. I know that they have been here for thirty years. I want to know whether they have, or whether they think they have, any grounds for a grudge against you, or against your family.’
He was certainly discomposed, but there might have been more than one reason for that—surprise, offence, or just mere nervousness. What he said was, ‘Why should they have?’
Miss Silver coughed.
‘I do not know. I should like to be informed. Are you aware of any such grudge?’
He said, ‘No,’ but might as well have left it unsaid, there was so little conviction in his tone. He may have been aware of this himself, for he followed it up with a vexed ‘What made you think of anything like that?’
‘I have to think of motives, Major Pilgrim. You have told me that you think your life has been attempted. There must be a motive behind that. Neither you nor I can afford to say of anyone in this house that he or she is to be beyond suspicion or above enquiry. I believe the Robbins had a daughter—’
‘Mabel? How could she have anything to do with it? She’s been dead for years.’
‘Miss Columba did not say that.’
‘What did she say?’
‘That the girl had got into trouble and run away, and her parents had been unable to trace her.’
He turned and stared out into the garden.
‘Well, that’s true. And as it happened before the war, I can’t see any reason for digging it up now.’
Miss Silver gave a slight reproving cough.
‘We are looking for a motive. If you do not wish to give me the information for which I am asking, I can no doubt obtain it elsewhere, but I would rather not do so.’
He said in an irritable voice, ‘There isn’t the slightest necessity—I’ll tell you anything you want to know. It’s just that I don’t see why it’s got to be dug up. She used to be here in the house, you know. She was a jolly little kid. They sent her away to school, and she passed all sorts of examinations and got a very good job in Ledlington—lived there with an aunt and came back here for week-ends. Then all of a sudden they found out—the Robbins found out, or the aunt, I think it was the aunt—that she was going to have a child, and she ran away. I was up in Scotland with my regiment, and I didn’t hear about it till afterwards. It was in the summer of ’39, just before the war. The Robbins were frightfully cut up. They tried to find her, but they couldn’t. That’s as far as Aunt Collie knows.’
‘But there is something more. You said she was dead.’
He nodded. Now that he had got going he seemed to have lost his reluctance. He said, ‘Yes. It was in the blitz—January ’41. I’d been down on leave. Robbins told me he’d heard that Mabel was in London. He said he was going to see her. We travelled up together. I had to go to the War Office, so I was staying with a chap I knew. There was a raid in the late afternoon. Getting on for midnight Robbins walked in looking ghastly, poor chap, and told me Mabel was dead. The baby was killed right out, but she lived to be taken to hospital, and he saw her there. He said he would have to tell his wife, but he didn’t want anyone else to know. He said they’d got over it and lived it down as much as they ever could, and it would rake it all up again. I could see his point. I said I thought my father ought to know, and he agreed with that, but we didn’t tell anyone else. I hope you won’t tell anyone. It would be very rough luck on the Robbins if it was all raked up again now.’
Miss Silver looked at him gravely and said, ‘I hope it may not be necessary to speak of it. But since you have told me so much, will you tell me who was responsible for Mabel Robbins’ disgrace?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do the Robbins know?’
He gave her the same answer—‘I don’t know.’
‘Major Pilgrim, suspicion is not knowledge. Have you, or have they, no suspicion in the matter? It is not pleasant to have to ask you such a question, but I must do so. Had the Robbins any reason to suspect a member of your family, or did they suspect anyone without perhaps having a reason at all? I do not suggest that there was a reason, but I must know whether such a suspicion existed.’
He turned a horrified face to her.
‘What are you driving at? If you think—’
She put up a hand.
‘Pray, Major Pilgrim—I think you must give me an answer. I will put my question again, and more plainly. Did the Robbins suspect anyone?’
‘I tell you I don’t know!’
‘Did they suspect you?’
He swung round with an angry stare.
‘Would they have stayed on if they had?’
She coughed.
‘Perhaps—perhaps not. Did they suspect Mr. Jerome Pilgrim?’
‘Why should they?’
‘I do not know. Did they suspect Mr. Henry Clayton?’
Roger Pilgrim turned round and walked out of the room.