The Governess (19 page)

‘You called, madam?’ he said to Mrs Thackerton. ‘If it is in my power to be of any assistance, glad to oblige. Glad to oblige.’

‘Yes, Sergeant, there is something you can do for me.’

‘At your service, madam. What is it I can do for you?’

‘You can listen to me, Sergeant.’

Plainly the Sergeant was surprised at the sharp tone in which the request had been made. For an instant his face went turkey-cock red. But he controlled himself.

‘I shall greatly enjoy the privilege of listening to you, madam. To whatsoever you may have to say.’

‘Well, I have this one thing to say only, and I trust you will hear it with attention.’

‘Certainly, madam.’

‘Then, Sergeant, do I understand you have implied that you believe the person who has killed poor Simmons committed the crime only just before it was discovered?’

‘My investigations – well, in a manner of speaking, yes, madam.’

‘In a manner of speaking only, Sergeant?’

‘Well, yes. Er – that is to say, no, madam. I do believe it to be a fact, certainly, that the poor unfortunate woman was done to death only a very short time before the governess of this establishment purported to discover the corpus.’

‘Indeed, Sergeant? Purported?’

‘Yes, madam, I regret to have to inform you that such is the conclusion I have come to, taking into account a good deal of experience I have had in such matters.’

‘I see.’

Mrs Thackerton fell silent. The ammonia smell of her hartshorn struck more strongly than ever on Miss Unwin’s nostrils.

‘Well then,’ Mrs Thackerton said at last, ‘I see that it is my duty to tell you, Sergeant, that Miss Unwin was here in this room with me for at the very least half an hour before I asked her to fetch some medicine for me from my bedroom. Does that alter your opinion of matters?’

Conflicting emotions swept through Miss Unwin’s mind. First, sheer disbelief. It had seemed that nothing could prevent Sergeant Drewd acting on his fixed conviction of her guilt to the point of making an arrest. He had called her for everyone to hear ‘a woman with blood on her hands’. Then, without the least hint of what was to come, relief had arrived.

Next, sweeping through as strongly as that feeling of bemused unbelief, came a huge wave of gratitude. Mrs Thackerton had, in a few simple words, made her safe. She had endorsed her innocence.

But then, in a new whirling gust, she asked herself confusedly why Mrs Thackerton had said what she had. It was not the truth. She had been in the sitting-room reading for barely five minutes. Yet Mrs Thackerton had stated calmly and clearly that she had been there for a full half hour, a length of time that put her clearly beyond the circle of people who could have plunged that Italian paper-knife into Simmons’s throat.

‘But – but, Mrs Thackerton,’ she found herself saying. ‘Why are you – I mean – I mean, are you certain that I was in this room reading for as long as that?’

‘My dear, I have said what I have said. I am sure that the Sergeant has understood me. It was quite half an hour that you were here.’

‘But –’

‘No, my dear, let me be the judge of this. And now, Sergeant, I am not well, you know, and I must ask you to leave me to rest.’

‘Of course, of course, madam. Sergeant Drewd is not one to give unnecessary trouble to a lady. I shall see to it that the utmost quiet is kept outside your room. I shall make it my business.’

He was as good as his word, though the orders he barked at Constable Wilson to secure the quiet he had promised were delivered
almost as loudly as if the man had been on parade in front of him in a police station yard.

‘Sergeant,’ Miss Unwin said, when he had completed his arrangements, ‘if you have no further need of me I should like to go and make sure Mrs Arthur Thackerton is aware of what has happened.’

The Sergeant looked at her. The twin points of his waxed moustache rose in unison as he gave her a ferocious glare.

‘No, miss,’ he said. ‘I don’t see as how I can put any particular questions to you at the present moment.’

‘Then I will say good-day.’

‘Yes, miss. Say good-day to Sergeant Drewd by all means. It is a good day for you. A lucky day, I would go so far as to opine. But, remember this, miss. Times change. Luck changes. A good day may turn into a bad day before all’s done.’

‘I do not forget such things, Sergeant, I assure you.’

Miss Unwin turned on her heel and marched off along the corridor, head high.

But as soon as she had turned the corner and set foot on the stairs to go down to Mrs Arthur very different feelings surged up in her.

She saw at once that she was by no means in safe harbour on any sensible reckoning. It was only Mrs Thackerton’s extraordinary statement that stood between her and Sergeant Drewd’s plain desire to have her in a cell. Statement? No, in the privacy of her own mind she could call those words by their true name. That extraordinary lie.

There could be no two ways about it. Mrs Thackerton had told the Sergeant a direct lie. In her frail state of health it might have been that she was a little confused about exactly how many minutes reading the first page or two of Mrs Edwardes’s novel had taken. She could have believed, for instance, that it had taken ten minutes rather than five. But she could not possibly have believed that a whole half-hour and more had passed. No, she had lied to the Sergeant. It had been a deliberate attempt to put herself beyond the reach of the law. An act of extraordinary kindness, and one which she felt she had done nothing in particular to deserve.

Had she been weak to have allowed the lie to go unchallenged? Should she have chosen the truth at all costs and told the Sergeant roundly that she had been in Mrs Thackerton’s sitting-room for only those five minutes?

Another uneasiness wriggled up in her mind. If the Sergeant somehow found out for certain the truth of the matter, would not her evasion just now count all the more against her? Might the Sergeant not hit on the notion that she had had some hold over Mrs Thackerton? That she had forced her to say what she had?

Well, it was too late now. What had been said had been said, and she had made no attempt to deny it.

So there was nothing for it but to trust to time to bring the real murderer to light when the lie that had helped her now could be forgotten.

Standing half-way down the first flight of the broad, carpet-covered staircase, with its brightly polished brass stair rods at every step, Miss Unwin asked herself once again who it could have been who had killed William Thackerton. There was no doubt, she thought, that whoever that had been had killed, too, poor Simmons. Simmons must have had some knowledge that was dangerous to that person, and she had paid dreadfully for her possession of it. She had paid in exactly the same manner as William Thackerton’s death had been brought about.

So who was this person, the murderer? Was it, as she had believed until Sergeant Drewd had produced Ephraim Brattle as a suspect, Mr Arthur?

But, no, now it could not be. Mr Arthur was, surely at his office at this hour of the day. There would be plenty of people there who would have seen him, who could if necessary aver upon oath that he was there at the very moment of Simmons’s death. Then was the murderer Ephraim Brattle? Ephraim Brattle who had bribed poor, greedy John into giving him an alibi for the time of Mr Thackerton’s murder? But, no, again. Ephraim Brattle, too, would be at the office with dozens of people to witness it.

Then, as she slowly descended the stairs in deep consideration, there, walking across the hall below with his customary quiet, sober step, was none other than the person who had been in her mind.

‘Mr Brattle,’ she called out, before any more circumspect thoughts intervened. ‘Mr Brattle.’

Ephraim Brattle, startled, looked all round him before he realised who it was who had called his name.

‘Miss Unwin, isn’t it?’ he said at last when he had recognised her.

They were the first words he had ever spoken to her directly, though she had seen him on many occasions in the time she had been in the house as well as having heard all that the invaluable Vilkins knew about him.

‘Mr Brattle, a word with you if you please.’

She had begun, and she could not now see how she could very well draw back. Nor, with some inner part of her, did she want to.

She descended the rest of the stairs while he waited for her at their feet, his round, solid, determined face showing only the very least signs of curiosity.

‘Mr Brattle,’ she said when she had come level with him, ‘I have a somewhat curious question to ask you. Could we perhaps step into the dining-room there. I believe there will be no one in it at this hour.’

‘As you wish.’

Ephraim Brattle doled out the words as if they were ha’pence, and money he could ill spare at that.

Miss Unwin preceded him into the dining-room, where the heavy green cloth had been put back on the long table after the luncheon dishes had been cleared. He carefully closed the door behind him and waited to hear what she had got to say, compact and settled.

For a moment her mind misgave her. Was she really going to accuse this quiet, self-confident person of committing murder? Was she actually going to tell him to his face that she alone knew that he had bribed John to provide him with an alibi for the exact time Mr Thackerton had been killed?

She might have been easier about doing so had she been sure that he had not been in the house at the time that Simmons had died. But had he been elsewhere? He was here now when, if he was anywhere, he ought to be at the firm’s office and it was not so
long since that paper-knife had been thrust brutally into Simmons’s throat.

Miss Unwin felt sudden tears prick at her eyes, tears as much of fear for herself as of pity for Simmons. Resolutely she thrust back the thought of the moment of the poor woman’s death.

‘Have you been here in the house very long, Mr Brattle?’ she asked without preliminary.

‘An hour or so,’ he replied, giving just the slightest indication of interest at the abrupt question.

One hour, she thought. Then he could indeed have been here when Simmons was killed. And he has admitted it. Well, Henry or Joseph would certainly know the hour at which he had been let in. He could really, guilty or innocent, do nothing else but agree to how long he had been here.

So, was she standing now facing a murderer? Was she standing within two feet of a murderer? One who had not hesitated, so it seemed, to kill a second time when he was in danger of discovery?

She glanced at the door which she had been foolish enough to let Ephraim Brattle shut. Its solidly thick wood would not be penetrated by any sound less loud than a full-throated scream. And she had, foolishly again, stepped quite far into the room before she had put her give-away question. Ephraim Brattle now stood between her and the only means of escape, a short, well-built figure, with square-toed boots planted firmly on the carpet beneath him.

But there was nothing else for it but to carry on where she had begun.

‘I am surprised to find you here at all,’ she said, not quite having resolution enough to ask at once why he had seen fit to give a whole golden guinea to young John. ‘I should have thought that at this hour on any day but a Sunday you would be at Mr Thackerton’s office.’

Best by far, she thought, not to mention that she knew he had spent some long time at Great Scotland Yard being questioned about Mr Thackerton’s death.

‘I should have been there,’ Ephraim Brattle answered. ‘I hope I may say that I have not been absent as much as half a day from my desk ever since I came to the house.’

‘I am sure you have been most diligent. But you are here in this house now not that one.’

‘That is because I was to meet Mr Arthur here.’

Miss Unwin could hardly believe what she had heard. Except that it had been said in such a short and straightforward way there could be no disbelieving.

‘To meet Mr Arthur Thackerton? Here?’

‘Those were my instructions. I dare say you know that I was taken last night to Great Scotland Yard under suspicion of having murdered Mr William Thackerton?’

‘Yes. Yes, I had heard something to that effect.’

‘Well, when I learnt that I was to be released this morning – there was no case against me, you know – I was told that Mr Arthur had urgent orders for Lancashire and would be at home here to-give them to me.’

‘And you have seen him here?’

Thoughts ran across Miss Unwin’s mind like the flying shadows of clouds on a wild and windy day. Mr Arthur in the house here as well as Ephraim Brattle? Then he too must have been in a position to have killed Simmons. And, had he not to her certain knowledge had an excellent reason for having made away with his father? So, if Simmons had known by chance something which proved that, was it not likely at least that she might have thought the knowledge would keep her in high comfort into her old age if she held the threat of it over him? Certainly Simmons had always had the air of a person who hugged secrets to herself.

‘No, I have not seen Mr Arthur yet. I understand he is in the library, while I had been put to wait in Mr Mellings’s pantry. I had waited so long, indeed, that I was coming to see whether I had been forgotten when you called out to me just now.’

While Ephraim Brattle had been giving this reply – and it was the longest speech she had yet heard him make to anyone – Miss Unwin’s thoughts had swung back to seeing him in the black light in which she had just envisaged Mr Arthur. There was the bribe to John. Surely there was no way of getting round that. Whatever reason this determined young man might have had for killing Mr Thackerton, and she was not sure that the reason Sergeant Drewd
had seen him as having was altogether compelling, he had clearly shown by offering that bribe that he had something to hide.

‘You are perhaps wondering,’ she said, ‘why I called to you, what it is I have to say to you.’

‘Well, you have something to say, no doubt.’

And this is the moment, the inescapable moment, when I must say it, Miss Unwin thought.