The Governess (18 page)

At least, she thought, the curtains will have been drawn back there and the blinds will be up now that the funeral is over so I shall be able to see.

She opened the bedroom door.

She was indeed able to see.

She was able to see in a single revealing instant the body of Simmons in her lavender stuff half-mourning dress, sprawled face downwards on the room’s patterned green carpet.

For a long moment Miss Unwin stood in the doorway, transfixed. Almost she believed she was seeing a vision, that William Thackerton’s terrible death must at last have suddenly unhinged her.

She shook her head angrily.

No, this was no vision. Simmons, quietly creeping, papery-faced Simmons, was lying there on the floor in front of her, dead.

That she was dead Miss Unwin did not doubt. But, again, she forced herself to be rational. How could she be truly certain that the still, sprawled figure was actually without life? Wasn’t it possible that Simmons had simply fainted?

At once Miss Unwin went forward, dropped to her knees on the carpet beside the still figure, lifted one of the sprawled arms by the wrist and felt for a pulse.

Nothing. Nothing but a coldness, a less than body-heat.

Then, as she knelt there, Miss Unwin glimpsed the edge of a
stain that was soaking into the carpet beside Simmons’s dry-skinned, scrawny neck. She lowered her own head almost to floor level and peered more closely. Protruding from underneath the body by the barest half-inch there was a small length of bright metal. She recognised it instantly. It was the top of the hilt of the second of the pair of Italian paper-knives from the library.

Miss Unwin wanted nothing more at the moment of realising this than to leap up, fling herself away from the dead body and scream and scream and scream. Instead, she closed her eyes for an instant, took one long, deep breath and then slowly got to her feet.

She went over to the bell-rope beside the bed and gave it a vigorous tug. Then she walked across to the door of the room which she had left open, closed it and stood waiting. She would have liked to have gone back to Mrs Thackerton, who would be vexed by the long delay in bringing her Godfrey’s Cordial. But there could be no question of leaving Simmons’s dead body to be discovered for a second time by one of the servants.

Yet when her ring at the bell was answered she almost wished she had after all gone to Mrs Thackerton. It was Joseph she found when she opened the door to the knock.

But, enemy or no enemy, there were things to be done. And without delay.

‘Joseph,’ she said, standing where she blocked his view into the room, ‘another terrible event has occurred. I am sorry to say that – that your mistress’s lady’s-maid is dead. No, that she has been killed. She has been stabbed to death. Will you go at once to the police station and fetch an officer? If Sergeant Drewd is there, of course bring him. I will lock the door here now and go to Mrs Thackerton. Be as quick as you can.’

Much to her relief Joseph made no difficulties.

‘Yes, miss,’ he said. ‘I’ll fetch the Sergeant all right. Don’t you worry about that.’

He set off down the servants’ stairs at a run. Miss Unwin, feeling a little disturbed at something in the man’s tone of voice, something she had no time to pin down now, went back into the bedroom, secured the Godfrey’s Cordial, which she had already seen on the table beside the bed, and then returned to Mrs Thackerton.

She decided not to break the news to her. It would be a
tremendous shock. Simmons had been her maid for many years, and, although there had not appeared to have been the affection between them that there often was between a mistress and an old servant, learning of her brutal death could not but affect her. It might be best to suggest to Mrs Arthur that the news should be delayed even until the doctor had been fetched once more. Mrs Thackerton had looked as if Death was a near neighbour to her even before this calamity.

So, in the sitting-room she made some lame excuse for not having found the bottle of cordial more quickly, gave Mrs Thackerton the dose she wanted and then resumed reading Mrs Edwardes’s insipid novel to her.

It was all she could do to concentrate on the words on the page in front of her and not betray in her voice the effect the appalling sight she had just seen had had on her. But she knew she must do nothing to rouse Mrs Thackerton’s suspicions and she resolutely forced herself to make sense of the words she was reading, to speak them clearly and well.

But all the while she kept an ear open for sounds in the corridor outside, for the arrival once again in this house of death of the police.

In a little more than twenty minutes they came. There was the tramp of several pairs of feet, the sound of Joseph’s voice raised in explanation and then a sharp tap at the door.

Miss Unwin laid down the book.

‘I think that will be for me,’ she said. ‘A small matter requiring my attention. May I leave you?’

‘Yes, yes. Go, my child. And thank you for your lively voice. I feel the better for it.’

Crossing to the door, Miss Unwin felt a sharp sense of dismay at the thought of what eventually must come to cause Mrs Thackerton to feel less well again.

But any such feelings were at once dispelled when she opened the door and slipped out. Sergeant Drewd was there.

He stood looking at her, his face as triumphantly grim as it had been when he had seen the bloodstain on her sleeve and had thought he had detected a murderess within an hour of his arrival at the house.

As he now must believe he had done after all, Miss Unwin thought. The idea of that had not come into her mind once up to this moment. She had found Simmons dead. She had been shocked, shocked to the point almost of letting out scream after scream. But she had known then that she must, if only to spare the invalid in the next room, control herself. And she had done so. She had suppressed all thoughts of the second murder other than the sheerly practical considerations, the need to keep the news from old Mrs Thackerton.

But now, at the sight of the Sergeant, cocky as a robin in his vivid brown suit, it came flooding back into her mind that a great part of his case against her for the murder of William Thackerton had rested on his belief – wrong though it was in fact – that she had been the first to discover his body. And now she had, in truth, been the first to discover this second corpse.

With a fierce effort of will she fought down the panic springing up within her. She had not killed Simmons any more than she had killed William Thackerton. She was innocent. Perfectly innocent. And she must behave in the manner of a wholly innocent person, let Sergeant Drewd look at her how he might.

‘Ah, Sergeant,’ she said, carefully closing Mrs Thackerton’s door behind her. ‘I am glad you proved to be near at hand. Has Joseph told you what has happened?’

‘Joseph has communicated to me certain information,’ the Sergeant replied. ‘As a result of which I have returned to this house and now require you to surrender the key to Mrs William Thackerton’s bedroom, which I understand you have in your possession.’

‘Certainly, Sergeant,’ Miss Unwin answered, still making herself remain cool in face of the uniformed constable and another man standing behind the Sergeant as well as of Joseph, lurking in the background, a barely suppressed smile on his bold-featured waxy face. ‘You will understand that, having found Mrs Thackerton’s maid dead in that room, I considered it my duty to prevent anyone entering unprepared.’

In reply the Sergeant simply held out his hand.

Miss Unwin took the key from the pocket of her dress and placed it in his upturned palm.

‘Wilson,’ the Sergeant said, turning to the constable, ‘you will stay here with the def – with this lady while the police surgeon and myself make our examination.’

He marched off then along the corridor to Mrs Thackerton’s bedroom and turned the key in its lock.

Miss Unwin waited where she was. She had bitten back the retort that she had no intention of running away. All she could do now was to stand there, straining to catch through the open door of the bedroom anything said there.

The words that she did eventually catch sent her yet deeper into cold anxiety. They were spoken by the police surgeon.

‘No, Sergeant. Not very long. I would estimate well within an hour, certainly no longer. But it may have been very much less.’

She knew at once what murmured question of Sergeant Drewd’s they had been the answer to.
How long has the corpus been dead?
And to the Sergeant’s mind the answer he had been given could mean one thing only: that the person who had ‘discovered’ the body was in all likelihood the person who had plunged the second paper-knife into a second throat. Herself.

But could she prove to him that it was impossible for her to have done that? She put her mind to thinking.

But it did not take her long to come to the conclusion that no such proof was possible. Before coming down to read to Mrs Thackerton she had been with little Pelham making sure he had dropped off for his nap. He had, in fact, taken a little longer to do so than he often did after luncheon. But who was to know that? How could Pelham himself be relied on to say that she had stayed in his room? No, nothing proved that she had not run down the stairs to the library, seized the solitary remaining Italian-work knife, run up again to Mrs Thackerton’s bedroom, where it was quite likely that Simmons would be busy tidying up or going through her mistress’s clothes to see if her needle was needed anywhere, and had leapt upon her with murderous intent.

Always supposing there was any reason why she should want to kill Simmons. There was not, of course. How could there be?

But, even as she began to extract a tiny gleam of comfort from that thought, her reasoning faculty told her that the Sergeant
would have in his mind already a perfectly good motive for her killing Simmons. It was definitely possible, he would say, that Simmons had seen her entering the library on the night Mr Thackerton died at an earlier time than she had claimed and that Simmons had decided to keep that secret with a view to blackmail.

What could she say in answer to that notion? There was nothing. She could only deny, as simply and directly as she could, that she had killed the poor creature whose body lay on the green Turkey carpet just inside that open door.

She braced herself to do this.

But she was not to be called on to do so as soon as she had expected. From Mrs Thackerton’s sitting-room there came the sound of a handbell being desperately rung.

Without waiting to explain herself to Constable Wilson, Miss Unwin turned and hurried into the room. Was Mrs Thackerton undergoing another attack such as had necessitated calling the doctor earlier on? Was she even at this moment at death’s door?

Her appearance might well have indicated that she was indeed suffering an attack. She was even paler than usual and her eyes were glitteringly bright.

‘Mrs Thackerton, what is it? Are you ill?’

‘No, no, my dear. Not ill. Not ill at all. But I am prey to anxiety. There has been such a disturbance outside. I have heard men’s voices, strange men’s voices. What is happening? Where is Simmons? She should have heard my bell. What is it, my dear? What is it? Has there been some new tragedy?’

Miss Unwin was silent, thinking hard. What should she say? Then she decided that, terrible though the truth was, it was all that would satisfy Mrs Thackerton now.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am afraid it is as you suppose. There has been another tragedy. I am sorry to have to tell you that your long-serving friend Simmons is –’

‘No,’ Mrs Thackerton almost screamed. ‘No, no.’

‘I am afraid that it is “yes”,’ Miss Unwin said hastily. ‘Try to take it calmly. But poor Simmons is dead. She has been murdered too. In almost exactly the same manner.’

She watched Mrs Thackerton with double intentness. Would
that wan face convulse in the pain of a heart attack? Would those too bright eyes suddenly dim?

But neither event took place. Mrs Thackerton dropped her head back on to the silk cushions of her invalid’s sofa and lay looking up towards the ceiling. There was a strangely calm expression on her face.

Miss Unwin, thanking Providence that she had been able to take the news so well, began thinking that as soon as possible she must get Mrs Arthur to keep watch in the sick room. She herself was likely to be called away at any instant. Called away permanently.

She was on the point of turning to ring the bell with the object of sending one of the servants for Mrs Arthur when a new outbreak of sound in the corridor brought Mrs Thackerton out of her strange spell of peacefulness.

‘What – what is it? Miss Unwin, what is happening out there?’

But Miss Unwin had been able to make out through the thick door the actual words that had been said, even shouted, outside.

‘Constable, didn’t I give you an order? A strict order? What was that order, Constable?’

The constable’s reply was muttered.

‘Yes, Constable. To keep a strict watch on that woman. And what do I find? You have let her escape you. You have let a woman who has only just come from the scene of the crime, a woman with blood on her hands, escape.’

Miss Unwin strode across to the door and swept it wide.

‘No, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘Let me tell you I scorn to escape from either the constable here or yourself. And let me tell you, too, that I am not a woman with blood on my hands.’

She stepped outside then and began closing the door behind her.

But not before a thin, demanding voice had called out.

‘Miss Unwin. Sergeant. Please come here.’

Miss Unwin looked at the Sergeant. Should she do as Mrs Thackerton had requested? Or should she stay where she was, on the point surely of being arrested for a double murder?

However, it seemed that the Sergeant was fully conscious of what was owed to the lady of the house.

‘Young woman,’ he said to Miss Unwin, ‘your employer is calling you. Go in. Go in.’

Miss Unwin turned and re-entered the darkened sitting-room. At her heels, dapper and quick, Sergeant Drewd entered in his turn.