Let Him Lie (7 page)

Jeanie, who found Miss Wills's ponderous pawkiness almost more embarrassing than her sulks, agreed with what, she knew, was over-effusiveness.

“Where's Sarah?”

“Reading in the school-room. Oddly enough, Sarah's lessons don't seem the most important thing in the world just at the moment!”

Jeanie tried hard not to feel abashed, and followed Sarah's governess up the newel staircase into the octagonal gun-room which, with the two rooms and the cellar below, was all that remained of the Norman tower. The high raftered ceiling, the stone walls with their gunracks and cupboards were formidable and chill. But the big sixteenth-century mullioned window which filled three sides of the octagon, and the cushioned window-seat below it, had a reassuring, kindly, civilised effect, saying that Black Ellen had been dust for centuries, and that those days were no more than a memory when men built strong towers and hid themselves therein, and that the guns in this armoury were used only for shooting coneys and wild birds. Standing by that peaceable, beautiful window, her knee on the soft cushion, Jeanie looked out. Looking down the lawn she could see, across the two low hedges, the orchard, and Molyneux's ladder still leaning against the tree. She could imagine she saw Molyneux himself lying in the grass, complaining that the broad peaceful windows lied! She turned, and met Tamsin's eyes fixed on her in a cold stare above the vases on the table.

“I've been wanting to ask you—
Don't
you think it was my duty, Miss Halliday?” 

“What?”

“Why, to tell the superintendent that one can see the orchard from this window. And that I saw Mr. Fone sitting on that window-seat yesterday afternoon. Seeing that he went home so unexpectedly, I mean, and wasn't here to answer questions himself.”

Miss Wills took up a chrysanthemum and slowly, as though she were cutting a living thing and rather enjoyed it, cut its stalk before sticking it in a tall vase.

“It was your duty, I suppose,” said Jeanie slowly, “to tell the superintendent everything.”

“Everything? Oh! I didn't know that! I'm afraid I didn't tell him quite everything.”

Was this irony? Jeanie glanced at her companion, but could read nothing from the light that glittered on those large horn-rimmed lenses.

“I mean, I didn't tell the superintendent about the letter Mr. Molyneux had the day before yesterday from Mr. Fone. Perhaps I ought to have done. Do you think so, Miss Halliday?”

“No, I don't think so,” replied Jeanie guardedly. “Only if he asks you. The police'll go through letters and things for themselves, won't they?”

“They won't find this one. Mr. Molyneux was so much annoyed he threw it in the fire. I wonder whether I ought to mention it. You see, I've been acting as Mr. Molyneux's secretary since Mr. Johnson went.”

“Then I expect the police will ask you if you had any threatening letters.”

“Well, you would call it a threatening letter—wouldn't you?—when a person says the wrath of the old gods will fall on your presumption and their heavy feet will crush your flimsy scientific superstitions. Or wouldn't you?” 

“Did Mr. Fone really say that?”

“Yes, and a lot more. He's quite crazy in some ways. Especially on the subject of opening the tumulus. A more extraordinary letter I never read.”

“Oh well, he's a poet, so I suppose he's allowed these peculiar feelings about tombs and things,” said Jeanie placably. “I rather like him.”

“There's certainly no accounting for tastes,” said Miss Wills acidly, cutting viciously at a flower stalk.

“He's a clever man in his way, surely.”

“Great wits to madness sure are near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide,” said Miss Wills grimly.

“Oh well, as long as they
have
bounds, and
are
divided! Besides, Mr. Fone isn't the only person in this place with feelings about opening the tumulus. Mrs. Barchard's hair was standing on end at the idea, too.”

“Oh, village people!” said Tamsin, with a disfiguring sneer.

“Anyway, I suppose the tumulus isn't likely to be opened now?”

“Not unless the Field Club find the money for it, which isn't at all likely. It was going to be an expensive business, you know. Agnes certainly won't want to spend anything on it, with death duties and everything. She doesn't care for that sort of thing, anyway.”

“The opening hadn't actually been arranged, then?”

“No. The Office of Works had just given permission for it to be done.”

“The Office of Works! I thought the tumulus was on Cleedons land!”

Miss Wills sneered again.

“It is, but it's scheduled as an ancient monument. In these glorious days a man can't do as he likes with his own land—did you think he could? Oh, the dear old villagers will have their way, and old Grim will sleep in peace. Perhaps it was Grim who was responsible for Mr. Molyneux's death!”

“Well, I've heard that theory uttered only this morning.”

“After all, one has to dislike a man a good deal to shoot him,” went on Tamsin languidly, stuffing another flower into the vase. “And as far as I know, nobody had any cause to dislike Mr. Molyneux. Except old Grim. Oh, and of course old Grim's arch-priest, Mr. Fone.” “He was popular, then, was he?”

“Oh,
very
!” answered Tamsin, with an emphasis somehow more damaging than a denial. “Everybody liked him. High and low, rich and poor.
Everybody
.”

Somewhat to her own consternation, Jeanie found herself responding abruptly:

“Except you.”

Miss Wills seemed quite unperturbed. Her dark eyes gleamed behind gleaming spectacles. She gave a little shrug and a falsetto laugh.

“Oh well!” she said deprecatingly, and yet another mutilated chrysanthemum was crammed into a vase already overfull. “You see, I'm very fond of Agnes.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” asked Jeanie somewhat distastefully. It was quite hard work being amiable to Tamsin Wills.

“Well, really,
only
that Mr. Molyneux, like most irresistible men, hadn't much resistance himself! Of course, it must be very nice to be irresistible at fifty-two, and have quite young people falling in love with one. Naturally, one would take it as a sort of joke, I dare say. But not such a joke for one's wife, after all.” 

“Oh surely!” uttered Jeanie, “Mr. Molyneux wasn't— didn't—he wasn't that sort of man at all!”

She flushed hotly at the unexpectedness of this attack on poor Molyneux, whom she had liked.

Lifting the jammed bunch of flowers and giving them a good shake as if they were naughty children, Miss Wills said primly:

“Oh, don't you think so? But perhaps you didn't know him so very well!
I
did. Poor Marjorie!”

“Marjorie?”

“Marjorie Dasent, you know. She'll miss her riding. I don't suppose Agnes'll keep many horses going.”

“I suppose not. Miss Dasent's a great rider, isn't she?” said Jeanie, glad to turn the subject, as she thought.

“Oh, very horsy indeed! Rides to hounds, you know, and comes in all gleeful and girlish, talking at the top of her voice. Oh yes, I'm afraid our Diana of the Chase will miss the Cleedons mounts a good deal.”

Tamsin buried her nose in the chrysanthemums, and glanced sideways over them at Jeanie.

“But even more she'll miss her guide, philosopher and friend! Though I believe he
was
doing his best to resign from all three posts! These police inquiries are horrible, aren't they, Miss Halliday? They make one feel so treacherous. Yet what can one do? Do you think one's justified, ever, in keeping anything back?”

Jeanie hesitated.

“I suppose not.”

She was about to qualify this, but Tamsin did not give her time.

“I'm so glad! I hoped you'd say that! I had to decide very quickly, you see. Superintendent Finister was here early this morning, asking questions about—well, about Mr. Molyneux's habits and so on, and I had to decide all in a moment, and I thought, yes, it's my duty to tell everything I know. I'm so glad you think I did rightly.”

Jeanie was not at all sure that she did think so. She did not like the complacent tone of Tamsin's voice. It was pretty obvious that somebody had received a nasty stab in the back and that Jeanie was being manoeuvred into condoning it.

“You mean,” said Jeanie slowly, unable to endure Miss Wills's circumlocutory method of telling what was evidently going to be an unpleasing story, “that the police have been inquiring into Mr. Molyneux's friendship with Miss Dasent?”

“Isn't it horrible for poor Agnes? Only, when the superintendent asked me directly whether I'd ever seen or heard anything, well, what could I do? I felt an absolute traitor. But I'm so glad you think I did right! I don't feel quite so awful now.”

“Surely you hadn't anything to tell them!”

Miss Wills turned upon Jeanie a pained, would-be ingenuous look.

“Well, I just told him what I'd heard. In the stable. Last Friday. Not quite a week ago. And it seems like a century.”

“Well?” asked Jeanie abruptly, for Tamsin's circumlocutory style annoyed her.

“It was in the stable-loft, you see. I was taking milk to Sarah's kittens. It was in the evening, about five o'clock, just growing dark. I heard somebody come into the stable below. I was just going to get down the ladder when I heard Mr. Molyneux say:
Marjorie, you mustn't do this. Really, my dear, you mustn't. Can't you see how foolish it is?
He was speaking quite kindly, but strongly, you know, as if he was annoyed and didn't want to show it too much. And then I heard Miss Dasent, and she sounded very emotional, and she said:
Oh, Robert, I had to! Don't be angry with me!
And he said:
I'm not angry, but really you can't do this sort of thing. If you want to see me, you can come to the house, Marjorie
. I suppose you think that I oughtn't to have listened, Miss Halliday, but what could I do? Go down the ladder and burst in on them?”

“I suppose not.”

“I'm so glad you understand! Well—and then she kind of burst out crying and became very hysterical and said she was miserable because she hadn't seen him, and what had she done to make him cross with her, and all that kind of thing, really quite incoherent! I don't remember it all. And he said she must pull herself together and not give way to silly fancies. He said:
I'm a quarter of a century older than you, my dear, and my romantic days are a long way behind me!
Which wasn't quite true, of course, because Marjorie's thirty-three if she's a day! And then he said half-jokingly:
And anyway, I'm Agnes's property, you know, my dear
. And she burst out:
She doesn't care for you, she's heartless!
And he said quite angrily:
Please don't talk like that!
And then I heard him say more sympathetically:
You ought to go away for a holiday, Marjorie. Ask your father to let you go away on a cruise for a month or two. And when you come back we'll be better friends than ever, and laugh at all this together.
And she kind of shouted out:
Laugh! How can you be so devilish?
And then he went away, and she went on howling to herself, and I crept down the ladder without her noticing me, she was so busy soaking poor Gipsy with her tears.”

There was a pause when Tamsin had brought her narrative to a close. A certain note of gloating triumph seemed to linger on the air, and Tamsin as well as Jeanie seemed to become aware of it, for hastily she added in a voice pitched so mournfully that it was almost lachrymose:

“I can't tell you, Miss Halliday, how badly I've felt about it. I'm so glad you think I did right not to try to conceal it. Though, of course, for Agnes's sake, I was terribly tempted to.”

“I suppose it was right to tell the police,” conceded Jeanie coldly. “But why tell me?”

Tamsin looked for a second disconcerted, but soon recovered herself and gave a somewhat artificial smile.

“I'm sorry if I've bored you, Miss Halliday.”

“You haven't bored me, exactly. I'm only wondering just why you disliked poor Mr. Molyneux so much that you can get a kick out of repeating that sort of story about him.”

Jeanie's voice was a little breathless. Her face was burning. The dormant hostility between the two of them awoke fully armed. They glared at one another.

“Really, Miss Halliday, I don't know why you should take that tone!”

“You're not going to tell me you didn't dislike him!”

“I certainly didn't dislike Mr. Molyneux. But as I've already explained, I'm a friend of Agnes's, and—”

“Oh, for Heaven's sake don't start all over again!”

“Very well. I'm sorry I ever mentioned the matter.”

“I should think so!”

About to depart indignantly, Jeanie turned, finding a weapon to her hand:

“By the way, what
were
you doing in the lower Tower room at the time Mr. Molyneux was shot?” 

Tamsin looked startled, furious and secretive all in the space of a moment.

‘‘Looking for Sarah. I said so.”

“Why?”

Miss Wills laughed somewhat harshly.

“I am her governess, you know!”

“Yes, but why the Tower?”

“It's a good look-out place!” said Tamsin defensively. Her dark, pebbly eyes snapped at Jeanie behind their horn-rimmed glasses.

“You certainly get a good view of the orchard from there,” agreed Jeanie.

“What does that mean, exactly?”

Jeanie shrugged her shoulders. She remembered how Sarah had said:
Uncle Robert says I'm getting beyond her. I don't think she'll be here much longer. She adores Aunt Agnes...
 Suddenly, under the cold hostile look of those dark eyes, Jeanie felt a shiver pass over her. This was not an abstract thing that they were quarrelling about. Out there in the sunny orchard under the trees, Robert Molyneux had lain dead. Perhaps out of this window, perhaps out of another, the murderer had taken aim: perhaps with one of these very lethal weapons that stood in racks and cases around the room!