The house was quiet again now. After her wild outburst Tansy had collapsed. Drew had carried her upstairs, the frail thin body held tenderly in his arms.
My heart was heavy as I watched them go. I was responsible for what had happened, but I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand why Tansy had confessed to something she hadn’t done. Bewildered, I could only suppose that my shock tactics had driven her over the; edge of reason.
Of those of us left in the room, Verity was the first to speak.
“I suppose,” she said to Corinne with obvious reluctance, “we’d better see what we can do for her.”
Corinne didn’t seem to hear. She was staring through the open door in stunned surprise. I wondered what the three Harpers had made of Tansy’s extraordinary confession. To be told, from out of the blue, that a mother had killed her own son!
Bill Wayne knew the truth of it, as I did. Or at least, he knew half the truth.
I killed Brian! I killed my own son! It could have meant almost anything, or almost nothing. Was it a near-demented woman’s sense of guilt? A feeling of moral responsibility, just because she had never loved Brian enough?
Bill Wayne was edging towards the door. Obviously he wanted to get away, and I couldn’t blame him. But I knew from his oddly hesitant manner that he couldn’t quite bring himself to walk out on me. He wanted my permission to leave.
With a simple nod of the head I released Bill. Why keep him here any longer? We had moved on from the point where his evidence about the jacket could resolve anything. We’d moved into deeper, darker waters now. Bill muttered brief goodnights and departed with eager haste.
His going seemed to bring Corinne back to life. “All right then, Verity, let’s go up. Though heaven knows what we can do ...”
I’d never heard Corinne’s voice falter into indecision before. Nor had I ever watched her trail from a room as she did now, tamely following her sister. She looked years older suddenly. A woman who had just received a monumental shock.
I was left alone with Felix. I’d nowhere in particular to go, but I had no wish at all to stay here with him.
His drawling voice held me as I turned to leave. Not sardonic now, he seemed to be chiding me for some minor wrongdoing.
“You went too far then, Kim my love.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we all like a joke now and then, but you really did overdo it a bit, you know—suddenly producing old Brian’s jacket like that. You can’t pretend it’s helped anybody, can you?”
“I ... I hoped it would,” I said wretchedly.
How was it that I felt nailed to the floor when I was perfectly free to walk out of the room any moment I pleased?
Felix considered me silently for a while, and then stood up straight, stretching his tall frame rather self-consciously.
“You puzzle me, Kim. Were you trying to get at Drew for some reason?”
“Get at Drew?” I repeated in breathless astonishment. “But that’s the last thing I’d want to do.”
“I thought you wouldn’t,” he said. “So why go and stir things up like this? You must see it’s only making trouble for the poor chap.” Felix was being more serious than I’d ever seen him before.
“Why don’t you just do the job you came here for?” he exclaimed. “Get that poor kid’s stammer put right, and stop bothering your head about these other things, They’re much best left alone and forgotten.”
“How can they be forgotten now?” I said, wearily sticking to my guns.
But he had cut right across me as if he didn’t want to hear.
“Drew is in love with you, Kim. Did you know?”
If I’d stopped to consider I would have kept silent. But knocked completely off-balance, I rushed straight in.
“Who told you that?”
He smiled wryly. “Not Drew, if that’s what you’re scared of. Not anybody, actually. I’ve merely been observing my brother-in-law these last few days. I know his moods by now.”
“It’s utterly ridiculous ...” I began, but my protest petered out feebly.
“And I’ve been watching you, as well,” Felix said sagely. “No wonder you gave me the thumbs down, Kim. You were utterly hooked on Drew from the start.”
I was silent, stunned by a truth I should have recogized before. A truth, I saw now with terrifying clarity, that I had recognized before in my subconscious mind.
Felix was frowning, “What I can’t understand, though, is why you should want to make him unhappy?”
“Me make Drew unhappy! As if he wasn’t already desperately unhappy long before I came here.”
“Well, maybe that’s true. Corinne and Drew aren’t exactly an ideal match. But you wouldn’t want to do anything to make it worse for him, would you?”
In sudden swift agony, I said, “But I was trying to help him. I wanted to clear up this awful mystery and ... I mean, helping Jane would be helping Drew, wouldn’t it?”
His smile of understanding only increased my pain. Felix understood too much—more than I did myself. I felt exposed, torn to raw pieces. And I felt bewildered. It was fantastic that I should be having a conversation like this, with a man like Felix. I just couldn’t grasp why he was being so untypically gentle.
“I’m telling you, Kim,” he said softly, “the very best way you can help Drew now is to carry on with your speech what’s-it and forget all about this other business. Put it right out of your mind.”
How much longer I’d have gone on listening to him smoothly soothing my conscience I don’t know. But Felix broke it up then. On his way to the door he paused and touched my arm lightly.
“Poor old Drew,” he said with unusual feeling. “I reckon he’s had just about as much as a man can put up with. Try to make it easier for him, Kim.”
I hardly saw him go. My mind was spinning dizzily with disbelief. Drew is in love with you, Kim. Did you know? I didn’t know. Could such a miracle be true? Hope flared like a rocket, to be quenched by black despair.
Minutes later I came back to cold reality. The dining room was empty, save for me. And save for the almost living presence of that foul parcel still lying there on the table.
* * * *
I knew that I must get in touch with Gwen. It was the least I could do to put things right. I shrank from yet more interference, but nobody else knew the truth of the matter. Nobody else knew that Gwen too had confessed blame for Brian’s death.
I crossed the deserted hall to a small cubicle where the telephone was tucked away out of sight.
With the dial tone purring in my ear, I searched through the cumbersome directory, but when I found the entry I scarcely even glanced at it.
Drew is in love with you, Kim.
I was crying inside, dry bitter tears of self-reproach. I’d come to Mildenhall to help little Jane Barrington. I’d stayed on only for her sake, because she needed me.
Yet all I could think of now was Drew. I saw his face, dark with hurt, withdrawn into weary sorrow....
With a tiny click the phone was suddenly dead. I jogged impatiently to get the dial tone again.
Gwen answered almost immediately, and to my relief her voice was quite brisk. She sounded perfectly sober.
“Gwen, this is Kim. Something awful’s happened.” Quickly I rushed on across her worried interjection. “It’s Tansy. She ... she’s told everyone here that she was responsible for ... about Brian....”
I didn’t do it very well. Gwen had to ask several questions to get anything like a clear story. Then she fell silent.
I said anxiously: “Could you come down to Mildenhall?”
“Yes ... yes, of course.” She sounded distracted. “I’ll start out right now. Should be there in a couple of hours.”
“I’m sorry, Gwen ...” I said forlornly.
“But why should Tansy go and say a thing like that? I simply don’t understand.”
There was a footstep on the staircase. I ended the conversation quickly. “See you later on, then.”
It was Drew coming down, I dreaded facing him, but it had to be done sooner or later. As I walked out of the phone alcove he had just reached the hall. He stopped. He even made an effort to put something like a smile on his face.
“Oh, there you are.” It sounded as if he’d been looking around for me.
Suddenly he realized what I’d just been doing, and frowned. Not in anger, but with anxiety. .
“Were you phoning for the police?”
“The police? Oh no.” The idea shocked me. That he should imagine I might let my intrusion into his affairs cut so deep. I rushed in to explain that I’d been speaking to Gwen. “I thought she ought to know,” I said apologetically.
“Oh Gwen.” He nodded, not really interested any more. “I thought... you’d have had the right to bring in the police, I suppose, after what’s happened.”
I began indignantly, “I wouldn’t dream of doing any such thing.” And then I dried up, wondering what else I could say to him.
Drew was standing with one hand resting on the heavy bannister post, the other hanging limply at his side.
“How is your aunt now?” I managed to ask him. “Is there ... is there anything I can do for her?”
He shook his head, and I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he said carefully, “She’s resting now, after a fashion.”
His voice sounded bitter, and I couldn’t bear that. I couldn’t bear Drew to misunderstand my motives. All at once I was talking wildly, the words tumbling out in a welter of sorrow and pain.
“I’m sorry, so desperately sorry, about all the trouble I’ve made for you. But I was doing it for Jane’s sake. Can you ever believe that? All the time I was being driven to probe further, because I thought I should find the answer to her stammer.” A sob broke through. “I wish I could go back now. I wish I could undo it all, and start over again.”
He spoke so quietly that I had to strain to hear him. “And would you have ever come to Mildenhall if you’d known, Kim? If you could have seen what the future would bring?”
“I don’t know.” My heart and my head were in battle, and cold commonsense was losing. “Perhaps I can still do something to help Jane,” I said miserably. “Even now ...”
He moved two quick steps towards me. He gripped my arm hard. And then, as if he felt my pain, his hold loosened to a gentle touch.
“Poor Kim!” he said softly. “You mustn’t feel so intensely. In this harsh world it doesn’t pay to be so ... vulnerable.”
He was speaking as an expert. I had sat at his dinner table and wondered at the tough veneer of indifference pasted over his emotions. Or perhaps it had only seemed to be tough. Perhaps in fact the layer was thinly brittle.
His sympathy brought quick tears to my eyes, and I was ashamed because the tears were for myself. I longed to help Drew.
“Please let me stay and help Jane,” I said eagerly “I promise I won’t make any more trouble for you. I won’t even mention Brian’s name again. You can trust me ...”
But he was shaking his head sadly. “There’s no going back for us, Kim. It’s too late—much too late. Whatever happens now, it’s something we can’t avoid.”
“It’s all my fault,” I cried in sharp anguish. “I shouldn’t have interfered. What had Brian Hearne got to do with me?” I looked up at Drew pleadingly. “Can you ever forgive me for what I’ve done?”
He let go my arm abruptly, but he managed a faint wisp of a smile. “You did what you thought was right, Kim. You’re much too honest a person to do anything else.”
We stood together in that dim cavern of a hall, and there seemed nothing more to say. Or perhaps we were on the brink of saying too much.
But there was one thing I had to ask him.
“Drew, you don’t really believe that your aunt killed Brian, do you?”
“I don’t know.” He spread his hands in painful helplessness. “I don’t know what to think any more.”
“But you can’t imagine his own mother would ... !”
Tansy had brought Drew up from childhood. It must have hurt him unbearably to admit the possibility that she could do such a dreadful thing.
“How can I know anything for sure?” he said, and I saw the agony in his eyes before he looked away. “How can we ever know just what happened that night?”
“But I do know,” I cut in without a pause for thought. “I know how Brian died.”
He jerked his head round to look at me again, his face tense with astonishment.
From above came the hollow sound of high heels on the stairs, and a moment later Corinne and Verity appeared.
Drew muttered swiftly, “I must talk to you about this later on.” Then, as the two women came closer, he said loudly, “Meantime, I suppose I’d better do something about that damned jacket.”