The Governess (16 page)

‘Would he? The devil. But, Unwin, whatever can he have found out at the office? That’s what I’d like to know.’

‘And I, Vilkins. And I.’

But Miss Unwin had to wait till the new day and the bright new issue of the
Mercury
to have that question answered. Even when she saw the paper lying on the breakfast table curiosity could not be satisfied.

It had been the custom in the house before violent death had come to it for Mr William Thackerton to be handed
The Times
by Mellings each morning and for Mr Arthur to be given the more raffish
Mercury
. But the day after the murder Mellings had had no hesitation in placing the freshly ironed
Times
, all smelling of printer’s ink, in front of Mr Arthur. It was almost the first acknowledgement that he was now head of the house. Then Mellings had been for a moment at a loss. What should he do with the
Mercury?
Perhaps it ought to have been cancelled. But it had not been. So eventually he had placed it, not exactly in front of Mrs Arthur, but within her reach.

She had picked it up with some eagerness.

So thereafter Mellings had given it to her more directly each morning and she had glanced at its pages in the intervals between pouring coffee or tea. It had been while reading more of it after breakfast that she had come across Horatio Hopkinson’s ‘exclusive interview’ with Miss Unwin and had broken into her frenzy of weak rage.

Nothing for it now, then, but to sit eating buttered toast and drinking tea next to Pelham and to watch Mrs Arthur toying with the
Mercury
, picking it up, reading a few lines, then putting it down again to pour more tea or coffee.

Then Pelham spilt his glass of milk.

Miss Unwin somewhat blamed herself. Unable not to look at the copy of the paper that, if Sergeant Drewd’s hint was to be believed, contained an explanation of why Ephraim Brattle was now thought to be the most likely murderer of William Thackerton, she had not kept an eye on the boy’s table manners quite as watchfully as usual. Luckily, his glass was all but empty. But there was mopping up to be done, a little scolding to be quietly done too, and a saucer to be inserted under the heavy white table cloth to lift the offending wet patch clear of the polished wood below.

So when a sudden ‘Tcha’ came from Mrs Arthur Miss Unwin thought it was an expression of irritation over the minor catastrophe directed chiefly against herself. But it was Mr Arthur, not at all concerned over Pelham’s misfortune, who guessed the true reason for his wife’s expression of annoyance.

‘Something in your newspaper?’ he asked. ‘Not more scurrility about what they are pleased to call the Northumberland Gardens Tragedy, I hope?’

‘And why should they not call it that?’ Mrs Arthur replied, with unaccustomed sharpness. ‘Surely it is a tragedy when your own father is foully murdered under his own roof?’

‘My dear,’ Mr Arthur answered along the length of the table, ‘I wish you would not interrupt when there is an article in
The Times
here concerning events within this house. I think I ought to be allowed to try to master it without distraction.’

Mrs Arthur, behind silver coffee pot and silver tea pot, silver milk jugs and silver sugar basin, was clearly furious over this unjust accusation. But she elected, as she nearly always did, to suffer in silence.

‘And not only events under this roof,’ her husband went on, ‘but events at the office as well. At my place of business.’

With that he plunged his head down into
The Times
again like a starved horse pushing its nose into a sagging bag of oats.

However, there was one person at the table blind to the performance he had put on for all their benefits. Little Pelham.

‘Please, Papa,’ he said. ‘What means “event”? Why are we having events under the roof?’

‘Hush, Pelham,’ Miss Unwin said quickly. ‘You must not talk to your papa while he is reading important things in the newspaper.’

‘But they’re things about us, Miss Unwin,’ Pelham answered. ‘Papa said so.’

‘I dare say they are, Pelham. But little boys, you know, should be seen and not heard.’

‘Yes, Miss Unwin.’

Slowly then Arthur Thackerton raised his eyes above the outstretched copy of
The Times
. He sighed.

‘Apparently,’ he said, addressing the air, ‘the police have made inquiries at the office and they have found out that Brattle was not only Father’s confidential clerk but that he is also, it appears, the grandson of a man by the name of Gunner, now dead, some sort of engineer, who is supposed, ridiculously I may say, to have been the inventor of our steam-moulding machine.’

Miss Unwin’s thoughts raced. Thackerton’s Patent Steam-moulded Hats, so much cheaper and so nearly as good as other hats, were, she knew, manufactured on the remarkable machines one of which, in miniature, crowned the tall silver Testimonial in the library. She had always understood, indeed it had been told her as gospel by more than one person in her first days in the house, that, although William Thackerton’s father had not precisely invented the device he had been all but its sole originator. It was called, after all, the Thackerton Tube. Yet if it was true that the device had not been a Thackerton invention at all, that it should have been called – what was it? – the Gunner Tube, the invention of Ephraim Brattle’s humble artisan maternal grandfather, then surely that grandson, the quiet, self-contained creature they were all used to seeing once a week in the house, had had a real and heavy grievance against the ‘sole proprietor’ of the Thackerton enterprise.

The possibility that he was William Thackerton’s murderer had now become strong indeed.

But Arthur Thackerton had not finished imparting his information. He had paused to allow the full iniquity to become apparent of someone else claiming to have invented the device on which the family fortune rested. Now he added a summary of the final part of
The Times
article.

‘It seems, I am glad to say, that the police are questioning Brattle at Great Scotland Yard. I suppose, indeed, that the arrest may have already been made, though apparently there is some doubt about the exact time the fatal blow was struck. I dare say Sergeant Drewd will be here again this morning to complete his inquiries.’

And, as if the mere mention of the Sergeant’s name had brought him magically careering round the last corner of the course heading for the post, Mellings re-entered the room at that very moment to announce that he had arrived.

‘See that nothing is placed in his way, my dear, about whatever questions he may want to’ put to the servants,’ Mr Arthur instructed his wife. ‘The sooner this business is finished and dealt with the better.’

So before beginning Pelham’s lessons Miss Unwin had to have another brief interview with her tormentor of old. But it was only to tell him, once again, that she had heard quite unmistakably Ephraim Brattle’s determined footsteps going up to the servants’ attic on his way to bed at a time shortly before ten o’clock on the night of the murder. The Sergeant impassively recorded her testimony in a large notebook, not without licking a good many times the tip of his lead pencil. And that was that.

All through the morning, however, as she taught Pelham a poem from the
Juvenile Reciter
called ‘The Bee’ she was aware of an unusual hubbub in the house. No one was carrying out their daily tasks at quite the right time. There was the frequent sound of hurrying footsteps.

Once she caught, floating up the stairs, the sharp demanding tones of the Sergeant himself. She listened, unashamedly. Apparently Simmons, the papery-faced, was for some reason objecting to answering his questions. Then it became clear that she was insisting on staying with her mistress, to whom the doctor had earlier been called once again, on the grounds that she was too ill to be left alone. More hurrying steps. Then it seemed that Mrs
Thackerton must have told Simmons she could dispense with her services because after one final bark the Sergeant’s voice was heard no more.

Miss Unwin went back to going over ‘The Bee’ line by line with Pelham and to wondering, as she could not prevent herself doing, whether what Mr Arthur had called ‘this business’ was really going to be finished and dealt with in only an hour or two more.

Would the Sergeant by all his close questioning be able to establish to the satisfaction of a future court that Ephraim Brattle had been truly the last person to have seen William Thackerton alive? That he had had the only real opportunity to have used that paper-knife dagger, as well as possessing that strong motive that had so unexpectedly come to light?

Only time would tell, she kept saying to herself. She must be patient. Perhaps even before the hour of Pelham’s morning walk the burden she had stooped under ever since the moment Sergeant Drewd had seen that unfortunate blood on her sleeve would at last be lifted from her shoulders.

Sergeant Drewd, it appeared however, had not quite finished his interviews by the time for Pelham’s walk. Miss Unwin was just setting off down the stairs with him when she realised that below in the hall the Sergeant was conducting what was presumably the last of the interviews, with the youngest and least in the household, John the page.

‘One moment, Pelham dear,’ she said. ‘I think the police sergeant is in the hall. We won’t disturb him. You can sit on the top step there for a little.’

Obediently Pelham sat himself down. Miss Unwin, as if she was not quite thinking what she was doing, descended a few steps more.

She very much wanted to hear what was being said in the hall. If this was the end of all the Sergeant’s questioning she might very likely learn from anything she could glean whether he had finally come to the conclusion that he now had a cast-iron case against Ephraim Brattle. That would at last finally put her fears to rest.

There was another small consideration, too, that persuaded her into the unladylike action of eavesdropping. On that first fatal night when the Sergeant had conducted his questioning in the dining-room young John had been frightened almost out of his wits. He might well be as scared again now, and if he should be reduced to tears once more she could come quickly down the stairs and rescue him.

But it was not easy to make out exactly what was being said down below. The Sergeant and John were standing at the very back of the hall where the overhang of the staircase partially blocked them from view. However, idly descending a step or two more, Miss Unwin at last began catching enough of what was being said to come to some understanding of the situation.

‘Yes, Sergeant, yes. True as I’m standing here.’

Well, at least John did not sound too distressed.

She failed to hear the next question the Sergeant asked or John’s reply. But, again, his voice sounded quite confident.

Ought she to go back up to the top of the stairs where Pelham was sitting happily poking his fingers round the banisters in a game of peek-a-boo? If he realised she had deliberately gone down this far so as to overhear a private conversation it would be setting a dreadfully bad example.

John’s voice floated up once more, sounding almost merry.

‘No, I heard him, Sergeant. Honest I did. He had a funny way of coughing the Master, you couldn’t mistake it.’

A quiver of alarm ran through her.

John had heard Mr Thackerton? Surely that must be after the time Ephraim Brattle had left the library. Otherwise the Sergeant would scarcely be interested.

So had Mr Thackerton been alive after that time some few minutes before ten o’clock when she herself had vouched for Ephraim Brattle going upstairs on his way to bed? That would mean unless the wronged confidential clerk had gone creeping back to the library again – and why would he ever risk doing that? – that he was not after all the murderer loose among them.

Recklessly now Miss Unwin moved down half a dozen steps more. She must hear every word she could.

‘Now, lad, Sergeant Drewd ain’t the man to tell a lie to. You learn that. Learn that now, and don’t you try to forget it.’

‘I ain’t lying, Sergeant. Why should I lie?’

Why indeed, Miss Unwin, leaning over the banisters above, asked herself. Why indeed?

‘So now then, me young shaver, if I was to tell you I had it on best information that Mr William Thackerton was dead mutton when Ephraim Brattle left that library, would you dare to tell me you heard Mr Thackerton a-coughing and a-spluttering after that time?’

Below, John was silent.

Above, Miss Unwin held her breath.

Then at last came the boy’s voice from under the overhang of the stairs.

‘I’d tell you it wasn’t true, Sergeant. I’d have to tell you so,
wouldn’t I? ‘Cos I did hear the Master coughing. Coughing the way he always did. Not spluttering. That’d be a lie all right. But coughing that little dry cough of his.’

Yes, Miss Unwin thought, hearing the confident, protesting tones floating clearly up. Yes, Mr Thackerton did have such a dry cough. He had it especially when he smoked a cigar, and in the evening in the library he had been smoking when she had seen him there.

So he had been alive then after Ephraim Brattle had left him. The Sergeant’s newest case looked as if it had collapsed about him at the very last minute. He would scarcely like that.

His voice came to her ears again now, sharp and menacing.

‘Now, you listen to me, lad. Listen to me, and I’ll tell you a bit of a tale. There was once upon a time a criminal of my acquaintance. Let’s call him, naming no names, let’s call him Dirtyguts. Well, Dirtyguts had committed burglary. I knew it. He knew it. But devil a bit of proof had I got. He knew that. I knew that. So do you know what, young John?’

‘No, Sergeant.’

There was a scared quaver in the boy’s voice now.

‘No, of course you don’t, young John. But I’m a-going to tell you. So keep those big ears of yours well pinned back. In the pocket of Dirtyguts’ coat when he was searched before witnesses what should I happen to find but a silver cruet from that very house he had burgled. Now what is the moral of that, my lad?’