Shroud of Silence (12 page)

What else could I do but nod and reassure her? She looked older than her sister now, more lost than Tansy ever seemed.

“I’d better know the whole story, Gwen.”

“Yes.”

But she didn’t go on, I got a feeling that her hesitation was due to some new sense-of shame. And I was right.

“I must have a drink first, Kim,” she muttered with furtive determination. “I simply must.”

“No, not now, Gwen.”

“Yes, now.”

She was staring down at her joined hands, at the fingers nervously flexing. Suddenly she looked me straight in the eye.

“I know I drink too much, Kim. I didn’t   before ...”

I softened. “I’ll go down and get you something. Wait here for me.”

The house seemed empty as I ran down the stairs. But then, coming faintly from the music room at the far end of the hall, I heard Corinne’s voice. She was singing.

Quietly, I closed the door of the drawing room behind me. I guessed it didn’t matter much to Gwen what particular form of alcohol she swallowed. The first bottle to hand was gin. I poured an unmeasured dose and tossed in a splash of tonic. I hustled back across the room, slid into the hall and made for the stairs.

A quiet voice, silk-smooth with sarcasm, floated at me from behind.

“That’s right, Miss Bennett. We want you to feel quite free to help yourself.”

I jumped, nearly spilling the outsize portion of gin. Corinne was watching me with a wicked smile of triumph.

“There’s always a selection of drinks put out—but of course you know that already.”

“But this isn’t ...” What could I say? That Gwen was upstairs, so badly shaken that she needed a stiff drink to pull her round?

The best I could manage on the spur of the moment was to pretend to take Corinne at the value of her deceitful face. So I smiled warmly, thanked her, and went on upstairs.

Gwen grabbed at the glass and swigged half the gin in a couple of gulps. She paused, and looked at me apologetically. “I’m sorry but I needed a lift.”

I didn’t explain just how much her lift had cost me in reputation.

Fascinated, I watched the remainder of the gin follow the first half. Gwen put down the drained glass regretfully. She was beginning to look faintly better.

“Brian was a louse,” she announced abruptly. “Everyone knew that. Even Tansy.”

“Then why does she get so upset whenever his name is mentioned?”

“Poor Tansy feels guilty. Guilty because she couldn’t love her son. There was just nothing lovable about him. Even as a small child he was a nasty deceitful little brute.”

I said, a bit pompously, “Whatever he may have been, he couldn’t have deserved to die so young.”

Gwen took me up on that.

“I tell you, it was an accident. We’d had an awful row earlier, and I ran into him again when I went out for some air. We met down there on the road between the ponds. He was coming back from the pub, and immediately started on me again.”

Behind those great goggle spectacles, slow tears were filling her eyes. She left them to trickle away as though entirely unaware.

“Brian had a vicious tongue, Kim. An evil tongue.”

“Just tell me what happened, Gwen. I’m not asking what he said.”

‘“You might as well know it all. I think I’ve no shame left now. Perhaps I strike everybody the way he described me.”

She stood up and began wandering around the room, fingering ornaments. Then she  suddenly stopped this nervous prowling and stood still, her back to me.

“He called me a frustrated old virgin. He said if I could persuade a man to go to bed with me, which he took leave to doubt, it might make a human being of me.”

She bent her head and pulled off her glasses to free the flood of tears,

I went over to her quickly and put my arm round her shoulders. “It was a wickedly cruel thing to say.”

She sobbed for a minute, and then I witnessed a display of iron self-control. Her voice was defiant.

“He said it to annoy me, out of sheer spite. It hurt me so very much because it’s probably true.”

“‘But you mustn’t let it hurt you, Gwen,” I pleaded helplessly. “I mean….”

“I gave him such a little push,” she went on. “I couldn’t believe it when he fell back into the pond. He wasn’t by any means a small man. He must have tripped, or slipped on some mud or something. I don’t know.”

“But, Gwen, why didn’t you tell all this to the police? Or the coroner?”

“How could I?” She reached behind her for the support of the mantelpiece. “I would have been charged with ... heaven knows what. Manslaughter, I suppose.”

“But it was an
accident.”

“And I walked off and left Brian there to die!”

“But you couldn’t possibly have known he would drown. You wouldn’t have been blamed,”

Gwen was shaking her head, sweeping aside my protest. “What difference does it make? I hadn’t the courage to confess.”

My mind zoomed away in another direction. “About the jacket, Gwen. Are you saying that Brain was wearing one when ... when he fell into the water?”

She looked at me vaguely, slow to switch her mind to my tack.

“Yes ... yes, that’s right. He was.”

“Yet when Bill Wayne found him in the water next morning, he was minus that jacket. How come? Are you quite certain about it?”

“How could I be mistaken about a thing like that? Do you think I’ll ever be able to forget a single detail of that awful night?”

“Then it looks as if somebody must have taken it off him, after he was dead.”

She nodded, screwing up her face in a misery of pain,

“Yes. I suppose that’s what made me pass out just now. The idea seems so ... so horrible.”

“But who would do a thing like that?” I asked her. “And what for? Money?”

“Brian never had any money. He always spent it the minute he got his hands on any.”

Unwillingly, inevitably, my thoughts flashed to Bill Wayne. Incredulously I considered the possibility. But I rejected it. I had to reject it.

There was still another question that had to be asked.

“What was the row about, Gwen? The quarrel between you and Brian earlier in the evening.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she said shortly, “He was a thief. A nasty little thief.”

She paused again, and then went on, “Brian used to get hold of stuff for my shop. Bits and pieces of Victorian jewelry and bric-a-brac—you know the kind of thing.”

“That’s what you specialize in, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “We had a sort of arrangement. He was supposed to call at likely houses and pick up whatever he could on the cheap. There’s no end to the oddments tucked away in drawers and cupboards—family relics, things like that. The owners think of it just as so much junk, and are glad enough to be offered a pound or two in hard cash. Usually they haven’t the faintest idea what it’s really worth.”

“And that’s what Brian was doing for you?”

“That’s what he
said
he was doing. And whatever he claimed to have paid for a thing, I’d give him double or more. I was still able to make a good profit.”

It sounded like pretty sharp practice to me. Underhand.

Gwen must have read my frown correctly. “It’s done all the time, Kim. In my sort of business you buy cheap and sell dear if you can. Anyway, it’s a darn sight more honest than what Brian was actually doing.”

“You mean the things he sold you were stolen?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “I only found out that evening.”

“And you had a row about it?”

“He was showing me a little mother-of-pearl snuffbox he said he’d bought at a farmhouse over Petersfield way. But I recognized it. I’d sold the thing myself a few years before to a big collector of Victoriana. I realized, then, why it was that some of the other things from Brian had seemed vaguely familiar.”

“You mean he had stolen a whole lot from the one collection?”

“Yes. It was dead easy for him. The man’s widow was an invalid, and Brian was nicely dug in with her nurse. Of course, I was absolutely furious about it. But Brian just laughed. He said that if I wanted to make trouble for him, he could make plenty for me. I was a receiver of stolen goods, and who would ever believe I hadn’t known what was going on all the time?”

So now I knew the truth about Brian Hearne’s accident.

Gwen was still talking, floundering in an ooze of guilt and shame and fear. But I’d stopped listening to her. I was listening now to the questions erupting in my own mind. Gwen had told me a great deal, but her story only thickened the mystery.

Nothing she had said explained why the whole family were hypersensitive about Brian’s death. Nothing explained the climate of explosive discord. I still couldn’t understand why the happiness of a small child was being heedlessly sacrificed.

And what about the missing jacket?

The answers to these questions were woven somehow into the shroud of silence that lay over Mildenhall.

Gwen couldn’t face up to the rest of the family that evening. She was in no condition to face up to anything. I persuaded her to go to her own room and lie down, while I went off and scrounged scrambled eggs and coffee from Miss Pink.

I took the tray up myself, wanting to keep Gwen off the drink if I possibly could. She was certainly in a mood for a real bender; a soothing alcoholic curtain. I hung around with her until just before dinner time, and then went downstairs. I had to show my face at table. The headache excuse would do for Gwen, but it would hardly stretch credibly over the pair of us.

The family were all there, but fortunately they had no visitors tonight. At the head of the table Drew was as morose as ever. When not looking down at his plate, which was most of the time, he seemed to be watching me covertly in a sad sort of way. Wondering, no doubt, why I didn’t clear off and leave him to his miserable peace.

Corinne managed to make great play with the wine bottle, conveying to everyone that I needed enough for two. I had to counter her tactics by leaving my glass brim full.

Tansy kept herself on the go even more than usual, pattering off with every empty dish the moment it was done with. “There’s a new serial starting tonight,” she offered as full and adequate explanation of Miss Pink’s absence. I’d
have given Tansy a hand most willingly, but I knew from a few tentative moves in the last day or so that it would be a mistake. Now that our relationship had taken a turn to the sour, she’d not welcome any help from me,

I wondered if poor Tansy had any idea that her son had been a thief. Perhaps she had guessed. Gwen claimed that his mother knew him for a waster. Hadn’t she told me Tansy was guilt-ridden because she had never been able to love her worthless son? Coming on top of an already disturbed conscience his death might well have been enough to account for her slightly loopy oddities.

Felix and Verity must have felt cheated of their most responsive butt this evening. In Gwen’s absence they pretended great solicitude about her.

“A headache, you say?” The tilt of Felix’s head displayed a nice degree of disbelief. “It usually takes rather a lot to get Gwen down.”

“Poor Gwen,” cooed Verity. “There’s nothing worse than a headache for making you feel wretched. I find that a glass of champagne usually bucks me up. But perhaps in Gwen’s case that wouldn’t be wise.”

“Coffee might be better,” Felix suggested helpfully. “Strong black coffee.”

I fumed inwardly but smiled outwardly. “Gwen just needs a quiet evening. Some people find that when they’re a bit under the weather even their nearest and dearest can be rather a strain.”

With a tiny bow Felix conceded me a win on points.

When I went upstairs again Gwen was looking distinctly better. It struck me that she had gone quite a long way towards shedding her misery. But the trouble about the problem-shared, problem-halved business was that someone had to inherit the other half. Gwen might be feeling a comforting sense of relief, but I was still trying to adjust my balance under the new load.

I was foolish to let it weigh me down, but I couldn’t help it. Perhaps that’s what drives people into jobs like speech-therapy—a sort of inner compulsion to get involved in other people’s troubles.

It was no good kidding myself that I could just forget the whole thing. Now that a mystery had sprung up about Brian’s death, something had to be done about it but what?

My
inclination, my temptation, was to consult with Drew. He would know what to do. But once before I’d taken a problem to him, and it had swung right back at me—straight at my own head.

So failing help from Drew, I decided in the end to tackle Bill Wayne.

It was dark outside by now. I pulled on a short coat against the evening chill, and crepe-soled shoes against that echoing staircase. I crept down quietly, wanting not to be noticed, and let myself out into the night.

Once clear of the deep shadows of the trees, it was raining starlight, altogether too softly romantic for words. I was afraid Bill Wayne would get the wrong idea about my dropping in at his cottage like this for the second night running.

He did get the wrong idea. His eyes widened and gleamed with male conceit.

“Kim! This is wonderful. Come along in.”

He came to help me off with my coat, ‘but his hands lingered on my shoulders. He was confidently expecting me to turn within his arms and give myself up to his kiss.”

I twisted away from him quickly. “This isn’t exactly a social call, Bill.”

“How would you define it
exactly?”
he said with a grin. Without waiting for an answer he hustled me into his sitting room. Fetching drinks, he came and perched companionably on the upholstered arm of my chair.

“Now then, what’s this all about?”

“I’ve come to talk to you seriously.”

“Darling, there’s nothing I’d like better. Well—almost nothing.” His arm slipped down the back of the chair and came to rest on my shoulders,

I got up at once and stood facing him.

“Bill, don’t fool about. Listen to me.” Without properly preparing the ground I threw out the question that had been niggling at me even before Gwen’s disclosures. I flung it at him crudely.