Miss Silver became aware that the night air was not as warm as it had seemed. She retired from the window and pulled up an eiderdown which she had previously discarded. Afterwards there was some impression of voices in the road outside-Miss Mettie’s voice saying good-night, and a murmur of sound that answered it.

CHAPTER 11

The morning of Valentine’s wedding day came up clear and bright. There was still some cloud in the west, but the rest of the sky was of the enchanting shade of blue which makes amends for days of mist and rain. The girl who brought up the early morning tea put the tray down upon the table beside the bed. The curtains were all drawn back, and the room was full of light. She said,

“You’ve got ever such a lovely day, Miss Valentine. I do hope it keeps up.”

Valentine said, “Thank you, Florrie.”

She sat up and turned to lift the cup. If there had been less light, it would have been easier to face it. She felt as if the day that lay before her was a steep hill which somehow she must climb, only she didn’t know how she was going to do it. There was no firm, hard purpose in her, no resolve. She had come up out of deep belated sleep feeling light and relaxed. Somewhere far down there was a tremulous flutter of joy because Jason had come back, but how they were to cross all the things that lay between them, she had not even begun to think.

But she would have to think. Florrie went out of the room and shut the door. She was a nice girl, and she was looking forward to the wedding. She was going to be disappointed. A lot of people were going to be disappointed. Maggie had got a new hat. She couldn’t marry Gilbert because Florrie would be disappointed if she didn’t, or because of Maggie’s hat, or the bridesmaids’ dresses, or Mettie Eccles’ new suede gloves. Just for a moment she could hear Mettie’s voice quite distinctly-“I’ve had the others cleaned so often, and I’m sure they must be ten years old, so I’m getting a new pair in your honour.” Mettie would certainly be very much annoyed.

She drank some of the tea, and found it warm and comforting. What was she going to do? She would have to tell Roger Repton that she couldn’t marry Gilbert. He would want to know why, and she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t go to him and say, “I can’t marry Gilbert, because Jason has come back,” any more than she could go to him and say, “I can’t marry Gilbert, because he is Scilla’s lover.” It was a perfectly good reason, but she couldn’t use it. She couldn’t use it, because it would smash up his marriage. It wasn’t a happy marriage, but to know that Scilla was unfaithful would be a terrible blow. He had been a fool to marry her, and it is a terrible thing to find out that you have been made a fool of. She couldn’t hurt Roger like that.

And she had heard what she hadn’t been meant to hear. She had stood and listened at a chink of the door in the dark. They might have been saying good-bye, and what they said hadn’t been meant for her to hear. She thought that she could tell Gilbert what she had heard, but she knew she couldn’t use it to break off their marriage, or to give Scilla away.

She finished the rest of the tea and turned to put down the cup. It was eight o’clock, and everywhere all over the house and in other houses people were either up or getting up and the preparations for her wedding were going on. There was a pile of letters on her tray with the tea things. There would be telegrams and telephone calls, and eleventh-hour presents to add to all the others which would have to be written about and sent back. She picked up the letters that were on the tray and began to go through them.

Janet Grant, in her characteristic sprawling hand, two words to the line and not more than four lines to the page.

“Darling-so devastated-Jessica prostrate-can’t leave her-all my love-she sends hers.”

Lexie Merridew’s mother-Lexie was devastated too.

The next envelope was the kind you get in a village shop or a very cheap shop anywhere, the kind they sell with the lower priced Christmas cards. Odd writing too, very large and clumsy. She had not to wonder about it-she knew. And then she was opening it and taking out a thin crumpled sheet with the same odd writing on it. It had no beginning, and when she turned the page there was no ending either. It said:

“You may not mind about his playing fast and loose with Doris Pell and driving her to take her life or about his carrying on with S R and if you don’t know what I mean you are more of a fool than what I took you for but you had better find out about his marrying Marie Dubois under a false name when he was in Canada or you may find yourself in the cart along of the other pore gurls he as led astray.”

There were no stops, and there was no signature.

Valentine dropped the letter back on to the tray and sat looking at it.

The time was half past eight.

On the stroke of the half hour Penelope Marsh jumped off her bicycle, wheeled it round to the garden shed, and opened the front door of the Croft with her latchkey. She was a tall girl with blue eyes, a brown skin, and very white teeth. She stood in the hall and yodelled to Connie Brooke, her partner in the little kindergarten school which was doing so well. When there was no answer, she called again, louder and more insistently. And then it came over her that there was something odd about none of the windows being open. The children arrived at nine, and they made a point of getting the rooms aired and then warmed up before they came.

She ran upstairs, still calling, knocked vigorously on Connie’s door, and getting no reply, went in. Connie had taken off her dress, and she must have hung it up, because it wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but she hadn’t got any farther than that. She was lying on the bed in her slip with the eiderdown pulled round her, and at first Penny thought that she was asleep, but when she touched the hand that lay on the coverlet and tried to unclasp its hold she knew that Connie was dead, because the hand was quite stiff-quite cold-

Her mind knew that something dreadful and final had happened. It was like a thing which you read about in a book, a thing that happened to other people, not to anyone who was part of your own life like Connie was. She let go of that cold, heavy hand and backed away from the bed. It wasn’t until she had reached the door that fear and desolation rushed in upon her. She found herself running down the stairs, out through the open door, and along the road to bang on Miss Eccles’ front door and clamour that Connie was dead.

Miss Eccles was extremely efficient. It would be unfair to say that she enjoyed the situation, but she certainly enjoyed her own competence in dealing with it. She rang up Dr. Taylor, herself accompanied Penny back to the Croft, and there set her down to telling all parents who were on the telephone that Miss Brooke was ill and there would be no school to-day.

Dr. Taylor when he came had nothing to tell her that she did not already know. Connie Brooke was dead-had been dead for hours.

“We walked home together last night after the party at the Manor,” she said. “She was all right then, except that she hadn’t been sleeping too well. Maggie Repton had given her some sleeping-tablets.”

Dr. Taylor was built on bulldog lines. He did not exactly bare his teeth, but he wrinkled up his nose and his voice was a growl.

“She had no business to do any such thing.”

Mettie Eccles said,

“Well, you know what people are-they will do it. I told her she had better not take more than one. She was going to dissolve it in her bedtime cocoa. You’ll remember she can’t swallow anything like a pill.”

He grunted. “Where’s the bottle?”

They found it on the kitchen dresser, and it was empty.

“Know how much there was in it?”