RANDALL MARCH WAS not called upon either to strain his conscience or to jeopardize his prospects. The truth of the homely proverb which asserts that it never rains but it pours was once more exemplified. An hour after a silent party had breakfasted next day Miss Columba was called to the telephone by Robbins.
‘It is a telegram, madam. I began to take it, but I thought—perhaps you would prefer—’
She got up and went out without a word.
Ten minutes passed before she returned. With no discernible change in face or voice, she addressed the only other occupant of the morning-room, Miss Silver.
‘It was a telegram from the War Office about my nephew Jack. They have proof of his death.’
Miss Silver’s condolences were all that a kind heart and good manners dictate, yet to both women they seemed only what is taken for granted on these occasions. Beneath the conventions, beneath Miss Columba’s affection and grief for a nephew so long removed that his death could hardly be felt as something new, there was a compelling urgency. It brought words to Miss Columba’s unwilling lips.
‘Jerome—’ she said, her eyes on Miss Silver’s face. ‘Did you mean what you said yesterday? Is he in danger?’
‘Not immediately. Not unless he should wish to sell the house.’
Miss Columba dropped her voice to a gruff whisper.
‘He will have to sell—two lots of death-duties—he hasn’t any money—’
It was easy to see where her affections centred. For the two dead nephews she felt a reasonable grief. A possible danger to Jerome brought the sweat to her forehead and a dumb anguish to her eyes.
It was with this look of distress fastened upon Miss Silver’s face that she said, ‘I asked you to go. Things have changed. Now I ask you to stay.’
Miss Silver returned the look with one in which firmness and kindness were blended.
‘My commission was from your nephew Roger. Are you now asking me to accept one from yourself?’
‘Yes.’
‘You must realize that I do not know in what direction my enquiry my lead. I cannot guarantee that the result will please you.’
Still in that gruff whisper, Miss Columba said, ‘Find out what’s been happening. Keep Jerome safe.’
Miss Silver said gravely, ‘I will do my best. Superintendent March is a very good man—he also will do his best. But you must help us both. He may wish to search the house. It will be pleasanter and more private if you will give him leave to do so instead of obliging him to apply for a warrant.’
Miss Columba said, ‘Keep Jerome safe’, and walked out of the room.
Half an hour later she was giving Randall March a free hand to go where he liked and search where he pleased. After which she disappeared into the garden, where she showed Pell such a frowning face that the customary grumble died in his throat and he allowed her for once in a way to do as she wished with the early peas. Later he told William that they would all be frosted, and they had a very comfortable heart-to-heart talk about the interferingness of women.
The search began at two o’clock. When the last of the heavy-booted men had gone clumping down the old worn cellar steps, Miss Silver came along the passage and pushed open the kitchen door. She had a cup in her hand and an expression of innocent enquiry on her face. If these were meant to provide her with an excuse for what might be considered an intrusion, they were not required, for the movement of the door and her own soft footfall went unregarded. And for a very good reason. Mrs. Robbins was standing over the range stirring something in a saucepan and sobbing convulsively, whilst her husband, with his back to her and to the room, was contemplating the flagstones of the yard upon which the kitchen window looked. Without turning his head he said harshly and in the tone of a man who is repeating what he has said before, ‘Have done, Lizzie! What good do you think you’re doing?’
To which Mrs. Robbins replied, ‘I wish I was dead!’
Miss Silver stepped back into the passage and remained there. The sobbing went on.
Presently Lizzie Robbins said in a tone of despair,
‘I don’t know what we’re coming to—I don’t indeed!’ And then, ‘If there’s any more to come, I’ll give up, for I can’t stand it. First Mr. Henry, and then Mr. Pilgrim, and now Mr. Roger and Mr. Jack—it’s like there was a curse on the house!’
He said, ‘Don’t talk stupid, Lizzie!’ and she flared up at him, sobbing all the time.
‘It’s stupid to be fond of people, and you can throw it up at me as much as you like, for it’s no fault of yours. You’ve been a hard, cruel husband, Alfred, and you was a hard, cruel father to our poor girl that’s gone, or she wouldn’t never have run away and hid herself like she did when she was in trouble.’
He made a sharp sound at that, but she went on without giving him time to speak, ‘I suppose you’ll say you loved her, and I suppose you did in your own way, but it was all because you took a pride in her pretty looks, and her cleverness, and the credit she did you. But that’s not loving, Alfred, it’s just pride, and it comes to have a fall, the same as it says in the Proverbs. And you wouldn’t have her back here to be buried—and it’s a thing I shan’t never get over, your letting her and her baby lie among strangers because it’d hurt your pride to bring them here where they belonged.’
He said, ‘Lizzie!’ And then, ‘That’s not true, and you’ve no call to say it! Maybe I’ve done more than what you know—maybe I’ve done more than you’d have done yourself. There’s different ways of showing what you think of people.’
She said with a gush of tears, ‘You forgot her birthday!’
A door banged at the end of the passage. Footsteps could be heard coming nearer. Regretfully, Miss Silver turned back, and presently met Gloria in her outdoor things.
She advanced the cup.
‘I wonder if I could have a little boiling water. If it wouldn’t be a trouble. I don’t quite like to go into the kitchen—but if you—’
Gloria said, ‘Righty-ho!’—an expression which cost Miss Silver an inward shudder.
She took the cup, ran off with it, and brought it back full.
‘Ever such a row going on in there,’ she confided. ‘What’s the good of getting married if you’re going to quarrel like that? The p’lice in the house—that’s what’s upsetting them. He takes it out on her, and she takes it out on him. My mum’s proper upset, I can tell you. But there’s something exciting about it too, and I’d just as soon it wasn’t my afternoon off. Now if I’d wanted to get out early, ten to one I wouldn’t have been let, but just because there’s something going on everyone’s at me. Mr. Robbins, and Miss Columba, and Mrs. Robbins are all for getting me out of the way. My mum won’t half be surprised to see me so early.’
She clattered off down the passage and out by the back door, which she shut with a hearty bang.
Miss Silver, after emptying the cup down the pantry sink and leaving it on the drip-board, went across the hall to the study, where she set the door ajar and awaited developments. The time seemed long, the house was silent. Miss Janetta had declared herself quite prostrated, and Miss Day, with a much more demanding invalid than Captain Pilgrim on her hands, could be supposed to have those hands too full to allow of her coming downstairs. Where everyone else was, Miss Silver had no idea, but she had no desire for company.
When the silence was broken by the sound of tramping feet, she went out into the hall.
Randall March met her there, took her back into the study, and shut the door.
‘Well,’ he said—‘you were right.’
‘My dear Randall—how very shocking!’
It was perfectly genuine. It was not in her to feel complacency or triumph. She was most seriously and genuinely shocked.
He nodded.
‘In the far cellar, behind those piled-up chairs—there’s a door to an inner cellar. The body was there, doubled up in a tin trunk. I suppose there’s no doubt that it is Henry Clayton.’
They stood looking at each other.
‘Very shocking indeed,’ said Miss Silver.
Randall March looked grim.
‘Your hypothetical case has materialized. I take it your reconstruction just about fits the facts. Someone called Clayton back, invented a reason for getting him into the lift passage, and murdered him there. Subsequent proceedings as outlined by you. I’m collecting the knives out of those trophies and having the lift floor scraped—there may be some traces. The floor is, fortunately, bare board, but three years—’ He threw up a hand, and then went on in a different tone. ‘I shall suggest to the Chief Constable that the Yard be asked to send Abbott down to represent them. They’ll want to be in at the death, and he was on the original enquiry into Clayton’s disappearance. There shouldn’t be any difficulty about fixing it up. And now I must get going on the telephone.’