Dark Threat (32 page)

‘She won’t dare risk the villages. This goes up to St. Agnes’ Heath. If I were in her shoes I’d take it, get within walking distance of Coulton or Ledbury, and shed the car. She’s had forty minutes’ start, and I shouldn’t think she would reckon on getting more than that.’

It was up on the heath that they saw the lights of a car coming towards them and stopped it. It contained two friendly Americans who were quite willing to admit that they had helped a lady out of a ditch a couple of miles back.

‘She was sure glad to see us. Might have been there all night. It’s a lonely bit of country ... Oh, sure, she was alone—’

They were rather bewildered by the speed at which they were passed and left behind.

March said, ‘Do you know the place—the fork they mentioned?’

‘Yes, I should have thought she’d bear right, but he said she took the left-hand fork—’ He broke off suddenly. ‘What’s that?’

It was Judy, standing out in the middle of the lane and flashing the torch. Dr. Daly would have been horrified at the suddenness with which the brakes came on.

L
ONA
D
AY DROVE
on until she came to what she was looking for, the right-hand turn which would take her back to the Coulton road. She had to get back to it because she was going to Coulton, but she had not felt able to risk taking the right-hand fork under the eyes of the helpful young men who had got the car out of the ditch for her.

She was quite sure now that Judy had ditched it on purpose. Every time she thought of it she felt a burning surprise and anger. That the girl should have dared, and having dared, that she should have brought it off! She ought to have known that she hadn’t a chance. She ought at this moment to be dead with a bullet in her brain. She wasn’t dead. She was alive, with a tattling tale to tell. Never mind, Lona would get away in spite of her. She hadn’t killed four men, to be beaten by a tattling girl. She had made her plans. Her new name, her new place in the world, were waiting for her. Once she had slipped into them, the police might whistle but they wouldn’t find her. In a way it was gratifying that they should know how clever she had been, and how she had diddled everyone for three years.

She went on slowly and carefully past the turning until she came to the narrow lane on the left which ran across the fields to Ledham. If she left the car just beyond it, the police would think she had gone that way. She drew up by the side of the road and walked quickly back to the right-hand turn. A mile to the Coulton road, and three miles on—farther than she cared to walk, but not too far for safety. When she was in sight of the Coulton road she would make her adjustments. A pity about her fur coat, but it would be the first thing in the description they were sure to circulate.

Twenty minutes later she was stripping it off and pushing it well down inside a hollow tree. Her hat followed it. Just a bit of luck that the moon had come out, for it wouldn’t have been at all easy to find the tree in the dark. Seven—no eight months since they had picnicked here and pushed the sandwich papers down out of sight. She felt cold without her coat, though the skirt suit she was wearing was a thick one. Thick and new—no one at Pilgrim’s Rest had ever seen it. The moonlight robbed it of its colour, but in the day it was a good shade of sapphire which took the green out of her eyes and made them look blue.

She found a comb in her bag and proceeded to deal with her hair, taking it up straight, away from face and neck and ears, before slipping on the dark wig which changed her quite beyond belief. Demure, smooth waves coming down to a roll at the back. Not nearly so ornamental as the chestnut curls, but oh, so respectable.

The woman who came out of the wood on to the Coulton road was no longer Lona Day. A short three miles lay between her and safety.

F
RANK
A
BBOTT WAS
taking tea with Miss Silver. There was a cosy fire. A comfortable twilight veiled
Soul’s Awakening
and
The Monarch of the Glen.
The rows of silver photograph frames which enshrined past clients and their babies caught a reflected glow from the firelight.

Miss Silver, neat and smiling, dispensed tea from a small Victorian teapot with a strawberry on the lid. Her tea-set, of the same date, displayed a pattern of moss roses. Since Emma never broke anything it remained as she had inherited it from her great aunt, Louisa Bushell, that formidable pioneer of women’s rights in an age which saw no reason why they should have any, since a gentleman could always be relied on to give a lady his seat. The tea-set lacked one cup of its original twelve, this having been broken by Miss Bushell’s vicar, who set it down on its saucer with a slam at the climax of his argument that the original misdeanour of Eve entailed continuous subjection upon her daughters. There were, however, few occasions when Miss Silver entertained so large a party as to be reminded of this painful incident.

Frank now looked gloomily at her across the cups and said, ‘She’s done the Macbeth act—made herself air.’

Miss Silver coughed.

‘Not quite an accurate statement, I think. She has merely become someone else. You will remember I said all along that there was a very clever, unscrupulous mind at work. I feel convinced from what Miss Day said to Judy that she had very carefully prepared a line of retreat.’

Frank continued to look gloomy.

‘Well, we can’t pick up any trace of her in Coulton, Ledbury, or Ledham. No one answering to her description boarded a train at any of these places, and unless she got a lift in a car she couldn’t have got any farther afield. It was too late for her to catch a bus.’

‘I do not imagine that the description which has been circulated will correspond with her present appearance. Our sex has an advantage over yours when it comes to a change of identity. Different colouring, another way of doing the hair, will completely alter a woman’s appearance. At Pilgrim’s Rest Miss Day wore green or black, both of which emphasised the red in her hair and the greenish tint of her eyes. You should look for someone with brown or dark hair, and I should conjecture that she would be wearing blue. The hair might of course be grey, but I fancy she has rather too much vanity for that.’

‘I wonder who she’ll murder next,’ said Frank Abbott.

Miss Silver lifted the lid of the teapot and added a little more hot water to the brew before she answered.

‘She will be very careful for a time at any rate.’ After which she enquired brightly, ‘And how is Judy? I hope she is now none the worse for her very alarming experience.’

Frank leaned forward and set down his cup upon the tray. Perhaps he was afraid of emulating the vicar.

‘She’s staying on at Pilgrim’s Rest,’ he said in rather a jerky voice. ‘You wouldn’t think she’d want to, but she does.’

‘She gave her evidence remarkably well at the inquest. And so did that poor girl Mabel—Mrs. Macdonald. I was much relieved that it was not considered necessary to publish her married name. Whilst one cannot approve of her conduct with Henry Clayton, one must remember that she was a young girl, and he by all accounts a particularly fascinating man. Inexperienced young women are sadly liable to be carried away by specious arguments on the subject of free union and companionate marriage. They fail to realize until too late that though civilized marriage laws may sometimes prove irksome, they nevertheless exist for the protection of woman and the family.’

Frank’s gloom relaxed a little. Maudie discoursing upon the Moral Law enthralled him. He accepted another cup of tea and returned to Judy.

‘Lesley and Jerome are getting married in about a month. Judy is going to stay on with them. There’s been a frightful pow-wow about where they were to live and what was to happen to the aunts. I don’t think Lesley was a bit keen on Pilgrim’s Rest, and I don’t blame her, but Jerome dug his toes in. So they’re going to have six assorted orphans in the attics with Lesley’s matron to look after them. That ought to lay the ghosts. The aunts are going to stay put. Lesley and Jerome will have the other wing where his room is now. Meals together, but separate sitting-rooms. Judy will have Penny and stay on. Ditto Gloria. Mrs. Robbins, who has taken a new lease of life, says she’ll stay and cook. She doesn’t hold with going to live with a married daughter, sensible woman. A let-off for Macdonald, who nobly offered to have her. So that places everyone. Happy ending.’ His voice was at its most cynical. He stared into the fire.

Miss Silver said gently, ‘You would not have made one another happy, Frank.’

‘Probably not. At the moment the possibilities seem all the other way.’

‘You are not really suited.’

He gave a short, hard laugh.

‘What you mean is that I don’t really suit. I’m a policeman, you see—a sordid profession.’

‘My dear Frank!’

He nodded.

‘That’s what she thinks, you know—and I’m not so very sure I don’t agree.’

Miss Silver said, ‘Fiddlesticks!’

Frank laughed again, more naturally this time.

‘I never heard you say that before.’

‘I never heard you talk so much nonsense.’

This time he returned her smile.

‘I’m sore, you know. But I’ll get over it. You’re quite right—we don’t suit. We both thought we were going to, but we don’t really, so it’s better as it is. In fact,

‘He who loves and rides away

Will live to love another day.’

Miss Silver beamed.

‘I hope so,’ she said.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Miss Silver Mysteries

T
HE ROOM HAD
seemed dark to Mrs Latter when she came in, but that was because everything in it was black. The carpet on the floor, the hangings covering the walls, the long straight curtains, were all of the same even velvety blackness. But it was not as dark as she had thought. Through the one unscreened window light shone in. She found herself facing this light, as she faced the man who called himself Memnon, across the table which stood between them. It was quite a small table, covered with a black velvet spread, and seeming smaller because the old man in the chair was so large.

As she took the seat he indicated she looked at him curiously. If he thought he could impress or frighten her by all this jiggery-pokery he could think again. She was a fool to have come. But when all your friends were doing something you did it too. If you didn’t — well, what was there to talk about? Everybody was talking about Memnon. He told you the most thrilling things. He told the past, and he told the future. He managed to make the present seem important and interesting instead of rather flat and dull, with the war over and everyone too hard up for words.

She gazed across at him, and could see very little more than his shape, and the shape of the chair against the light. The chair stood symmetrically to the window, outlined against it — high arched back, strong spreading arms. Rising above the back, an old man’s head covered with a velvet cap. She didn’t know why she was sure that he was old. It wasn’t his voice or anything she could see. It wasn’t that anyone had spoken of him as old. It was just an impression. With the light in her eyes like this she couldn’t distinguish his features, only a pale, blurred oval, so much higher up than one expected. He must be very tall to sit so high. And he must have very long arms. It was a long way to where two pale hands rested upon the jutting arms of the chair.

As these thoughts passed through her mind, she was settling herself, laying her bag across her knees, folding her hands upon it, leaning back, smiling easily. It wasn’t every woman of her age who could face the light with so much equanimity. Thirty-seven years had taken nothing from the smooth brilliance of her skin. They had only refined tint, features, and outline, leaving her a good deal more attractive than she had been at twenty. Mistress of herself, of her thoughts, of her life. Very much mistress of Jimmy Latter, Jimmy Latter’s thoughts, and Jimmy Latter’s life.

The continuing silence gave her a slightly contemptuous feeling. It would take more than a dark room and an old man looking at her to disturb her poise. The situation or the circumstances which she could not dominate were as yet an unknown quantity. She had sailed easily through her life and her two marriages. James Doubleday had left her his money. The unpleasantness about his will had been triumphantly surmounted. She had chosen Jimmy Latter to succeed him, and she was prepared to maintain that she had chosen well. You can’t have everything, and the will had been still in doubt. Antony was very charming — when he liked. But you don’t take the poor cousin when you can have the rich one — not at thirty-five, when you are old enough to realise that if you are clever you can both eat your cake and have it.

Not that Jimmy was rich — he had far less than she had imagined. But fortunately James Doubleday’s will had turned out all right, and Latter End was really the setting of her dreams — small and lovely, untouched by the war, needing only the money she would be able to spend on it now.

If it had only been Antony’s ... It might be yet ... The thought passed through her mind like a breath. Antony — she was lunching with him when all this mumbo-jumbo was over. Her smile became a perfectly natural one.