The Listening Eye (7 page)

The rest of the party adjourned to the drawing-room for coffee. Miss Silver found herself next to Mrs. Scott. She was about to remark on the view from the windows, where a smooth green lawn sloped gently to the windings of a stream, the banks all set with daffodils, when Moira Herne walked up to them coffee-cup in hand and said,

“I shall have to get another dress for the Ball. What a bore!”

Annabel laughed.

“Why should getting a new dress be a bore? And why do you have to get one anyway?”

Moira just stood there.

“The other dress was a copy of one Marie Antoinette really wore. I’m not going to wear it without the necklace—why should I! Anyway they say her things are unlucky.”

Annabel Scott looked up at her appraisingly. It was rather as if she were looking at a picture or a statue.

“I don’t know about unlucky, but definitely not in your line.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

The appraising look vanished. A wide flashing smile took its place.

“But, darling—with your colouring! Why smother it with powder? Fancy having hair like yours and covering it up with a wig!”

Moira frowned.

“I didn’t think about that. I wanted to wear the necklace. If it’s gone, there doesn’t seem to be much point about the rest of it. Now I don’t know what to wear.”

“Oh, you must be Undine! I didn’t say anything before, because you’d got it all settled.”

“Who was she? I’ve never heard of her.”

Miss Silver was shocked. She was aware that the classic authors of her youth were now mere shadows from the past, but that La Motte Fouqué should have ceased to be even a shadow shook her. It appeared that Mrs. Scott at least knew something of his most famous creation.

“Undine was a water spirit. It’s a German legend. She fell in love with an earthly knight and married him, but in the end he was false to her and she disappeared in a cloud of spray from a fountain. One of the Chopin ballades puts the story into music.”

“You do know a lot, don’t you?” said Moira Herne. And then, “What would she wear?”

Miss Silver considered that Mrs. Scott showed an amiable temper in her reply. Mrs. Herne’s manner had been abrupt to the point of rudeness, but Annabel only laughed and said,

“Undine? Well, it might be rather enchanting, I think. Transparent green draperies like water flowing, and your hair brushed out into a sort of cloud like spray. Lucius, give me a pencil and paper and I’ll show her.”

There were both on an ornamental table in the window. She took them, drew rapidly, and held up the result to Moira. The sketch had caught a likeness, but it was a likeness with a twist on it. It was, in fact, Undine with her unearthly lightness and grace, her hair blown by some wind of glamour, her dress flowing with the lines of flowing water. Moira studied it attentively. In the end she enquired,

“Green chiffon?”

“Green and grey—very pale grey, to get the water effect. You could have crystal drops where the points of the dress come down. No, not diamonds—they mustn’t be too bright.”

She went across to the piano at the far end of the room and began to play the Undine ballade.

“Listen—this will give you the idea.”

She had an exquisite touch. The rocking melody came on the air with real enchantment. When the storm of Kühleborn’s anger broke she gave it only a few wild chords and dropped her hands from the keys.

“Lovely, isn’t it?”

Moira Herne said in a grudging tone,

“It mightn’t be bad, but no one will have the foggiest idea what it’s meant for.”

As Annabel Scott came back to her seat she was saying to herself, “She hasn’t a spark of imagination. Why did I suggest Undine?”

GOING through the hall, Lucius Bellingdon picked up a letter or two lying ready for the post. The one on the top attracted his attention. It was addressed to Miss Sally Foster, 13 Porlock Square. He stuck there, frowning at the number and the name of the square. In the end he called Moira and waited for her to come to him. She arrived without hurry, stared, and said,

“What are you doing with my letter?”

“I was going to post it—I’m going down into the village. Who is Sally Foster?”

Those curious light eyes of hers dwelt upon him without affection. She said,

“Why?”

He had been used to her for so many years that he was conscious of no fresh chill. There was no warmth in her, no kindness. You couldn’t get blood from a stone. What he meant to get was an answer. He said,

“I know the address—that is all. I couldn’t help seeing it. Who is this girl?”

“She was at school with me. Why do you want to know?”

“I have a reason. It’s some time since you left school. Have you seen anything of her since?”

“She is Marigold Marchbank’s secretary. One of the girls married Freddy Ambleton. I see quite a lot of them. Sally is a friend of theirs—I met her again like that.”

“Do you know her well enough to ask her down here?”

She gave an odd laugh with a flavour of contempt,

“There’s no harm in asking!”

He had continued to frown at the letter. Now he turned the same look on her.

“What is she like?”

“Very much the same as other people.”

“About your age?”

She shrugged.

“More or less.”

“And you know her fairly well. What were you writing to her about?”

“She asked me to make a four to go dancing. I said I couldn’t.”

He said, “Look here, I want you to ring her up and ask her down for the week-end.”

She opened her eyes so widely that the dark line about the iris showed clear.

“But I don’t want to.”

His voice roughened.

“She needn’t be in your way.”

“Why do you want her?”

He said,

“Too long to go into. She comes from the same house as David Moray. I told you I’d asked him for the week-end—that is why I was struck by the address on your letter. She can help to entertain him, and to prevent your being bothered.”

Moira considered the question in a leisurely manner. She didn’t want Sally down at Merefields, but she didn’t want this David Moray person either. She wanted Wilfrid, and she didn’t really trust Wilfrid where Sally was concerned. On the other hand it might be a good plan to have a show-down. There would have to be one soon anyway. If Wilfrid was in the same house with her and Sally he would have to show his hand. If David Moray was at all presentable he might come in usefully, either to distract Sally’s attention or to flirt with herself and put Wilfrid on his mettle. Because the one thing she was really sure of in the whole situation was that, Sally or no Sally, Wilfrid had no intention of letting himself be cut out with Moira Herne. That was a development which he simply couldn’t afford, and he knew it. Having reached this point, she said in a flat uninterested voice,

“Oh, well, I can ring her up if you want me to. Ellen will say it makes it more of a party, but I suppose you don’t mind about that.”

Lucius Bellingdon said, “Not a bit.”

She was not prepared for his following her into the study and standing there looking out of the window with his back to her whilst she telephoned. Her voice came through to Sally without any more than its usual lack of expression.

“Is that you?… Moira Herne speaking. Look here, Wilfrid is coming down for the week-end, and another man. I expect you know him, because he seems to live in the same place as you do—David Moray. He is an artist. Probably too uncivilized, but Lucy has just bought one of his pictures, and he has asked him down, so I thought we had better make it a four, and then we could dance, or play something and it won’t be too unutterably mouldy.”

If it had been just Moira and Wilfrid, Sally would have found an excuse, but David was another matter. Moira had her own way with attractive men. It was an odd way, but it appeared to get results. They became mesmerized and fell into vicious circles like moths about a lamp. Saily was unable to bear the thought of David as a moth. She mightn’t be able to prevent the mesmerizing process, but at least she wouldn’t be about thirty-five miles away enjoying the pleasures of the imagination. Sally’s imagination could do wicked things when it really got going, and she didn’t feel like giving it its head. Better be there on the spot and see for herself than have to listen to its insidious whisperings in Porlock Square. It was always possible that David might take against Moira. By all the rules he should. There was his Scottish common sense, and the detached and critical manner in which he regarded the female sex. He was wary, he was intolerant, and he thought well of his own judgment. He was, in fact, an odiously cocksure young man who wanted taking down quite a number of pegs. Only how could she bear to see anyone doing it? Especially Moira. The answer was that she couldn’t. And that, illogically, was the reason why nothing would stop her from going to Merefields.

MISS SILVER was able to make considerable progress with the pale blue baby shawl intended for a young friend and former client, Dorinda Leigh, now expecting her third child. Miss Bray, who was engaged in the domestic work of darning pillow-cases, bore her company and was most helpful and informative in her conversation. To many this perpetual trickle of talk might have seemed dull, but not to Miss Silver. She had a very genuine interest in the lives and the problems of other people, and when occupied upon a case nothing that she could learn about those concerned in it could be dismissed as trivial or worthless. As her needles moved rhythmically above the pale blue cloud in her lap and Miss Bray jerked at her linen thread, a picture of the Bellingdon household began to take shape.

“Of course he is a very clever man and he has been very successful, but I’m not sure that it didn’t all come too suddenly for Lily. She wasn’t ever what you would call strong, and when he began to go over to America on his business she fretted a lot—she was that kind, you know. There was some patent he had got for one of those new materials they keep making out of such very odd things. I really can’t remember whether it was seaweed, or milk, or wood pulp, but he made a lot of money out of it and he had to go over to America about the patents. I remember his telling Lily they were going to be rich, and she cried about it afterwards and said she would rather have her husband.”

Miss Silver had been turning the shawl. She looked up brightly.

“It was not possible for her to accompany him?”

Miss Bray shook her head in a mournful manner.

“Oh, no—she didn’t like travelling. Not at all! And there is such a lot of travelling in a big place like the United States! He used to say she would get used to it, but I told him he hadn’t the right to expect her to go. He didn’t like my saying it of course, but if I didn’t stand up for Lily, who was going to, I should like to know!”

“So she stayed at home?”

“And moped,” said Miss Bray, digging into a darn in a haphazard way which Miss Silver found distressing. She was using far too thick a needle. The mended place would be sadly conspicuous. Miss Bray gazed at it disapprovingly, but it was evident that it was really Mr. Bellingdon who was being disapproved of. “Men are all the same,” she continued. “He was free enough with the money, but you can’t live on money, can you? What she wanted was company. That’s why I came to live with them. And of course it’s been very comfortable and all, but a big house is a lot of trouble, and I sometimes think—” Her voice trailed away.

Miss Silver wondered what she had been going to say. Whatever it was, it didn’t get said. There was an interlude during which the shortcomings of the Hiltons were deplored.

“She may be a very good cook, and I don’t say she isn’t, but I am sure she is terribly extravagant. And I don’t say that Hilton doesn’t know his work, because he does, but I do say that Lucius ought to look into the accounts! I would be willing to do it myself though I am sure figures always make my head ache and it’s so difficult to get them to come out right, don’t you think so—but when I suggested it Lucius was really quite rude! I may be too sensitive—perhaps I am—but I think it’s better than going round hurting people’s feelings. But do you know what he said—and it wasn’t only the words, but his voice and the way he looked at me. ‘You let the Hiltons alone!’ he said. ‘And you let the accounts alone, and I’ll let you alone!’ And then he laughed and patted my shoulder and said, ‘You wouldn’t be a bit of good at either, and we’ll all be a lot more comfortable if you’ll leave well alone.’ ”

Miss Silver smiled.

“That sounds to me very much like the way in which a man talks to someone he is fond of—in fact very much like a brother. They do not think about being polite, they just feel that things like accounts are not really a woman’s department. And if you do not feel very much at home with figures, I should think you would be grateful to be spared having to deal with them.”

Something about Miss Silver’s smile and the tone of her voice as she said this gave Miss Bray a pleasant sense of being sheltered from the rougher blasts of domestic life. She preened herself and admitted that she had always found arithmetic troublesome. They glided imperceptibly to other subjects and presently arrived at the question of the weekend party.

“Moira is really not at all domestic,” Miss Bray lamented. “One does not expect a man to consider what sheets are at the wash—towels of course, and pillow-cases too. Not that the linen-cupboard is not well stocked, though we could certainly do with more sheets and I have been waiting for an opportunity of speaking to Lucius on the subject, but the laundry only delivers once a fortnight and rather irregularly at that—and the house so full—I’m sure every bed was occupied last week-end! So if Moira stopped to think, but of course she doesn’t—” Miss Bray surveyed her completed darn and shook her head. “The linen gets no rest,” she said.

Miss Silver pulled on her pale blue ball.

“Mrs. Herne invites a good many people?”

Miss Bray threw up her hands.

“They just come in and out, and I’m sure I don’t know whether they are coming or going, or which of them are going to stay the night! Why, only last week-end just as I’d got all the rooms nicely arranged and the beds aired—and that’s a thing I don’t feel Mrs. Hilton sees to as she should, and you can’t really trust the girls—Where was I? Oh, about the beds! You see, there are the five rooms in regular use, because that poor Mr. Hughes was sleeping in the house until he was murdered.”

Miss Silver performed a simple calculation. Mr. Bellingdon, Mrs. Scott, Moira Herne, Miss Bray herself, and Arthur Hughes—that made five, and still left Hubert Garratt unaccounted for.

“Does Mr. Garratt not sleep in the house?”

“Oh, no, he doesn’t. The East Lodge is empty, and he prefers being there. Mrs. Croft looks in to make his bed and tidy up on her way from the village, and he has all his meals here. It is quite a convenient arrangement, and he prefers it. But of course I should have said six beds are occupied, because as far as the linen is concerned he might as well be in the house. And on the top of the regular people last week-end there was Wilfrid Gaunt. He’s a friend of Moira’s, and always seems to me to be a most idle, frivolous young man, and I’m sure if I’d known he was coming down this week-end again I’d have left his sheets on the bed and not sent them to the wash. But that’s Moira all over, she never thinks ahead. And Lucius had a couple in the Blue Room—some Americans called Rennick who are friends of his—very nice people, I’m sure. And of course Mrs. Scott was here, and my brother Arnold. And then at the last minute Moira just said casually that Clay Masterson would be staying the night, and I must say I was provoked!”

Miss Silver’s memory was much too accurate and retentive for the name of Wilfrid Gaunt to have escaped her attention. He had been mentioned at lunch, and as Miss Bray spoke of him she was aware in retrospect of Paulina Paine talking of the portrait which Lucius Bellingdon had bought—“It is in this gallery, and it has been sold. A young cousin of mine, Wilfrid Gaunt, has two pictures there too.” A young cousin of mine, Wilfrid Gaunt. Here was a link between Miss Paine, the gallery, and Merefields. She maintained her look of interest without accentuating it in any way, and when she spoke it was not of Wilfrid Gaunt. She said, “And who is Clay Masterson?” Miss Bray was unaccustomed to so much sympathetic attention, having passed most of her life in other people’s houses without any very settled position or any qualifications for attracting interest of friendship. She found herself expanding in a very pleasurable manner.

“He has an aunt or cousin or something who lives on the other side of the village, and really there seems to be no reason at all why he should come and sleep here. As I said to Moira at the time, ‘Even if something has gone wrong with his car, I suppose a healthy young man can walk a mile without finding it a hardship!’ Not that it is a mile to the Gables, because it is well this side of the turning to Crowbury and we always count the mile from there, so I must say I didn’t think he need stay the night, and I said so. But Moira insisted, even after I told her that the sheets wouldn’t be aired, or the mattress, or the blankets, because I should have to put him into the north room which we don’t use unless we are obliged to.”

“He is a friend of Mrs. Herne’s?”

“They go out dancing together,” said Miss Bray in a disapproving tone.

“He lives with this aunt?”

“Oh, no, he just comes and goes. He did very well in the war—at least Moira says he did. And he has a very good job in town, only I don’t quite know what it is. I think Moira told me it had something to do with the antique business. I’m sure I don’t know why such a lot of people go in for that nowadays—people who are quite well connected and high up in society. If it was nice new furniture or glass or china, they wouldn’t touch it, but just because the things are old they think it’s quite a smart thing to do. Why, there’s Lady Hermione Scunthorpe—and she’s a Duke’s daughter—and several others I could mention, but it all seems very puzzling to me! This Mr. Masterson goes round looking for old things, and Moira says he is very good at it, so of course it wasn’t at all convenient for him to have his car laid up.”

Miss Silver had been getting on very well with her shawl. It quite filled her lap.

“You spoke of your brother being here. How very pleasant for you.”

This did not appear to evoke any particular response. Miss Bray took one of her clumsy stitches and said,

“It was only for the week-end—he just stayed till the Monday evening. It would have been better if the house hadn’t been so full.”

“Your brother does not care for society?”

Miss Bray was regretting that she had mentioned Arnold. She flushed, the colour deepening towards her nose. Aware of this, she produced a handkerchief from her sleeve and chafed the afflicted feature with unfortunate results. Miss Silver thought it best to change the subject.