‘Lady Dryden-I’ve got to be with Lila-you mustn’t try and stop me.’
‘I am not trying to stop you. The house is not mine, and I have no say in what goes on here, but I imagine that Mr. Haile will hardly object to your coming. I want you to take a later train, because I want you to get Miss Silver to come here with you.’
Ray didn’t think she had ever heard the name before. She echoed it.
‘Miss Silver?’
‘You won’t know her name-it never gets into the papers. She is a private detective. I have known about her off and on for years. She has helped friends of mine, and she is absolutely reliable. Here is the address-write it down! Miss Maud Silver, 15, Montague Mansions, West Leaham Street. Ring through at half past seven and make as early an appointment as you can. You have got to see her, and you have got to persuade her to come down here with you. She is fond of young people. Tell her about Lila and enlist her sympathies.’
‘Lady Dryden, I don’t really know what has happened.’
The voice came back insistently.
‘I heard what Mr. Waring told you. Lila was walking in her sleep. She found the body-a most dreadful shock. You understand-Miss Silver must be persuaded to come down. You must ring me up when you have seen her and let me know the result, and your train. I will see that you are met.’
In the study at Vineyards Lady Dryden hung up the receiver and turned from the table. No more than a yard away one of Herbert Whitall’s lifeless hands lay palm upwards on the dark carpet. Nothing could be moved until the police came, and none of them must leave the room. Someone had spread a handkerchief over the dead man’s face, but he must not be moved. The ivory dagger must not be moved. The blood must not be washed away. The dark carpet had swallowed it up, but it was there, and there it must stay.
Sybil Dryden skirted the body and came back to the upright chair from which she had risen to go to the telephone. She was wearing a flowered dressing-gown-pale colours on an ivory ground. Her hair was hidden under a lace cap. Her face was pale and set.
Lila was still on the sofa where Adrian had laid her down. He sat beside her with a hand on her shoulder. Every now and then she gave a stifled sob. When this happened he bent and said something which no one else could hear. But she never answered him or lifted her face from the cushion into which it was pressed.
Bill Waring stood with his arm along the stone mantelshelf looking down into the fire. There was an old-fashioned clock on the shelf with a slow, heavy tick. It marked the interminable minutes one by one.
Eric Haile sat on the arm of one of the big leather chairs. Whether by accident or design, he was between the rest of the party and the door. His bright malicious glance went to and fro.
Marsham was in the hall, waiting to admit the police. Mrs. Marsham had been told to dress and make coffee. Frederick had not been roused. The whole house waited. Nobody spoke.
Then all at once everyone stirred. Bill Waring straightened himself. Lady Dryden turned her head. Eric Haile got to his feet. There was a tramp of feet in the passage. Marsham opened the door and announced,
‘Inspector Ncwbury-’
CHAPTER XVII
I don’t know what folk are coming to, ringing up before eight in the morning!’
Emma Meadows spoke her mind with the freedom to which her long years of service entitled her. She had brought in the early cup of tea which Miss Silver considered an indulgence, and instead of waiting for it in her comfortable bed, there she was, three parts dressed and in the act of pinning on the net which controlled a neat curled fringe. The hair was mousy in colour, abundant, and with no more grey in it now than it had had for the last twenty years. Removing her new bright blue dressing-gown with the practically indestructible hand-made crochet trimming skilfully transferred from its crimson flannel predecessor, Miss Silver stood revealed in a slip petticoat of grey artificial silk and a neat white spencer whose high neck and long sleeves had also been adorned with a narrow crochet edging. She smiled benignly upon her faithful Emma, took a sip of the tea, and remarked that people could not always choose the moment when they required assistance.
Emma’s large, pleasant country face remained overcast.
‘They did ought to lern to contain themselves,’ she said. ‘At everybody’s beck and call-that’s what they think you are. And what you ought to say to them is that you need your food and rest the same as others and you don’t start work till ten o’clock.’
Miss Silver’s small neat features remained placid. This kind, solicitous service and the affection which prompted it were amongst the blessings for which she daily returned thanks to Providence. She had left school to enter what she herself called the scholastic profession with no expectation of anything but a lifetime of toil in other people’s houses, and an old age in which her exiguous savings might or might not suffice to keep her out of the workhouse. When, by a curious change of circumstances, she found herself transferred to her present profession, she did not anticipate that it would provide her with the modest comfort which she now enjoyed. Her flat, her faithful Emma, her ability to help those who were in trouble, were the subject of her daily gratitude.
She sipped her tea, smiled kindly upon Emma Meadows, and stepping to the wardrobe, selected her second best dress, a garment of sage-green wool which had been her best during the previous winter. When she had put it on she fastened the neck with her favourite brooch, a rose carved in black bog-oak with an Irish pearl at its heart.
‘I have someone coming to see me at half past eight, Emma,’ she said. ‘She will join me at breakfast. If there is not enough fish for two more fish-cakes, we shall have to open a tin of salmon.’
Emma said gloomily that there would be enough fish- ‘though why people can’t have their breakfasts in their own houses passes me.’
Miss Silver smiled.
‘You are very good to me, Emma,’ she said.
Half an hour later Ray Fortescue was shown into a room which in other circumstances would have amused her very much. The walls were covered with a bright flowery paper and a number of pictures in old-fashioned frames of yellow maple. The pictures were all reproductions of the more famous works of the great Victorian artists-The Huguenots; Hope, drooping over her darkened world; The Black Brunswicker; The Stag at Bay. Oddly shaped but very comfortable chairs with carved walnut frames, bow legs, and spreading laps. Curtains of the bright shade formerly known as peacock-blue. Upholstery of the same material. And a new carpet with a blue ground and wreaths of flowers which had cost so much that Miss Silver’s conscience was not always quite at ease about it. Yet what was she to do? The old blue carpet, nursed through the war, patched and darned in the post-war years, had actually become unsafe. Signs of complete disintegration had appeared-Emma had caught her foot in a hole and had just escaped a heavy fall. Carpets were a wicked price, but the affair of the Urtingham pearls had proved very remunerative. So she told her conscience to be sensible and put her hand in her pocket. Even now, before breakfast and coming into the room with a client, she could not help thinking how well it looked. So cosy, and the colours blended in such a pleasing manner.
A small fire had been lighted on the hearth. As Ray took the curly chair on one side of it and watched Miss Silver settle herself on the other, she was wondering what Sybil Dryden imagined this mousy little person was going to be able to do to help Lila and Bill and all of them. She might have stepped out of any of those photographic groups which cluttered up the family albums of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. And in every case you would have picked her out as the governess. Ray’s eyes strayed from the bog-oak brooch to the black woollen stockings and the rather shabby slippers with the beaded toes. But Lady Dryden usually knew what she was doing. You didn’t always like it, but you could see why she did it.