He Who Whispers Page 7

  ‘I’m a dutiful bride-to-be, Steve.’

  ‘Dutiful my foot,’ said Stephen, without stress or resentment; he simply stated a fact. At the same time, obviously soothed and shaken back to normal by this talk, he dismissed the subject of Fay Seton. ‘By George, Miles, you must take me to a meeting of this Murder Club one day! What do they do there?’

  ‘It’s a dinner club.’

  ‘You mean you pretend the salt is poison? That sort of thing? And score a point if you can shove it into somebody’s coffee without being detected? All right, old man: don’t be offended! I must be pushing off now.’

  ‘Steve!’ Marion spoke in a voice whose inflexion her brother knew only too well. ‘I forgot something. May I have a word with you? You will excuse us for a moment, Miles!’

  Talking about him, eh?

  Miles glowered at the table, trying to pretend he was unconscious of this, as Marion moved with Stephen towards the door. Marion was speaking in an animated undertone, Stephen shrugging his shoulders and smiling as he put on his hat. Miles took a drink of tea that had begun to grow cold.

  He had an uncomfortable suspicion that he was somehow making a fool of himself, certainly that he was losing his sense of humour. But why? The true answer to that occurred to him a moment later. It was because he wondered whether he might not be loosing in his own household certain forces over which he had no control.

  A cash-register rang: outside the windows rose the chug of a train; the burring voice of the loud-speaker recalled him to Waterloo Station. Miles told himself that this fleeting idea – the momentary intense chill which touched his heart – was all nonsense. He repeated it, summoning up a laugh, and felt his spirits improved when Marion returned.

  ‘Sorry if I sounded bad-tempered, Marion.’

  ‘My dear boy!’ She dismissed this with a gesture. Then she eyed him persuasively. ‘But now that we’re all alone, Miles, tell your little sister all about it.’

  ‘There isn’t anything to tell! I met this girl, I liked her manners, I was convinced she’d been slandered …’

  ‘But you didn’t tell her you knew anything about her?’

  ‘Not a word. She didn’t mention it, either.’

  ‘She gave you references, of course?’

  ‘I didn’t ask for them. Why should you be so interested?’

  ‘Miles, Miles!’ Marion, shook her head. ‘Practically every woman falls for that sauntering Charles-the-Second air of yours, the more so as you’re so superbly unconscious of it yourself. Now don’t draw yourself up and look stuffy! You hate it when I take any interest in your welfare!’

  ‘I only meant that these constant sisterly character analyses –!’

  ‘And when I hear of a woman who seems to have impressed you so much, naturally I’m interested!’ Marion’s eyes remained steady. ‘What was the trouble she was mixed up in?’

  Miles’ gaze wandered out of the window.

  ‘Six years ago she went over to Chartres as private secretary to a wealthy leather manufacturer named Brooke. She became engaged to be married to the son of the house …’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘ … a young neurotic named Harry Brooke. Afterwards there was a row of some kind.’ Inwardly Miles choked over the words. He couldn’t physically couldn’t, tell Marion about Howard Brooke’s determination to buy off this girl.

  ‘What kind of a row, Miles?’

  ‘Nobody knows; or at least I don’t. One afternoon the father climbed up to the top of a tower that’s a landmark in the district, and …’ Miles broke off. ‘By the way, you won’t mention any of this to Miss Seton? You won’t give her any intimation you know?’

  ‘Do you think I could be so tactless, Miles?’

  ‘It was a wild, rainy, thundery day over the tower, like a scene in a German ghost-story. Mr Brooke was found stabbed through the back with his own sword-stick. But that’s the amazing part of the whole business, Marion. The evidence showed he must have been alone when he died. Nobody came near him or could have come near him. It almost seemed that the murder, if it was a murder, must have been committed by someone who could rise up unsupported in the air …’

  Again he paused. For Marion was contemplating him in a strange, wide-eyed, searching way, bursting and balanced on the edge of laughter.

  ‘Miles Hammond!’ she cried. ‘Who’s been stuffing you full of this awful rubbish?’

  ‘I am simply,’ he said through his teeth, ‘stating the facts of the official police investigation.’

  ‘All right, dear. But who told you?’

  ‘Professor Rigaud of Edinburgh University. A distinguished man in the academic world. You must have come across his Life Cagliostro?’

  ‘No. Who’s Cagliostro?’

  (Why is it – Miles had often pondered the question – that in debates with your own family you are inclined to lose your temper over questions which from an outsider would be greeted with mildness, even amusement?)

  ‘Count Cagliostro, Marion, was a famous wizard and charlatan of the eighteenth century. Professor Rigaud takes the line that Cagliostro, though he was a thundering fraud in most respects, really did possess certain psychic powers which …’

  For the third time he checked himself. Marion was whooping. And, hearing what his own voice must sound like, Miles had enough sense of proportion left to agree that possibly he might have made a better choice of words.

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘It does sound a bit funny, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly does, Miles. I’ll believe that sort of thing when I see it. But never mind Count Cagliostro. Stop pulling my leg and tell me about this girl! Who is she? What’s she like? What sort of influence does she have?’

  ‘You can find out for yourself, Marion.’

  ‘Still gazing down out of the window, Miles rose to his feet. He was looking at one of the green-painted signs opposite the platform gates, the sign where travellers already drifted by ones and twos in readiness for the five-thirty train to Winchester, Southampton Central, and Bournemouth. And with great deliberation Miles nodded towards it.

  ‘There she is now.’

  CHAPTER 7

  GREY twilight hung over Greywood in the New Forest, that evening which afterwards was to be so well remembered.

  Off the main motor-road from Southampton branches another motor-road. Follow this into tall green depths where forest ponies browse at the edges. Presently turn left at a broad wooden gate, down the curve of a gravel path dusky even at noonday, cross a rustic bridge over the stream which winds through the estate, and just ahead is Greywood – set against a green lawn, encircled by the might of beeches and oaks.

  Long and narrow-built, not large, its narrow side faces you as you cross the rustic bridge. You must climb up a few stone-flagged steps, and go round a flagged terrace to what seems the side of the house, in order to reach the front door. Built of wood and of brick plastered over, it stands out brown and white against the sun-dusted forest. It has friendliness and it is touched with magic.

  One or two lights gleamed in the windows to-night. They were paraffin lamps, since the electric power-plant of Sir Charles Hammond’s day had not yet been put in order.

  Their light grew stronger, yellow, and tremulous, as the cool dusk deepened. Perceptible now, almost unnoticed by day, was the silky splash of water over the miniature dam. Dusk blurred the outlines of the bright-canopied garden swing, with wicker chairs and a table for serving tea, which stood on the open lawn westwards towards the curve of the stream.

  And in a long room at the rear of the house – a room after his own heart – stood Miles Hammond, holding a lamp above his head.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he was saying to himself. ‘I didn’t make a mistake in bringing her here. It’s all right.’

  But he knew in his heart that it wasn’t all right.

  The flame of the little lamp, in its tiny cylindrical glass shade, partly drew the shadows from a mummified world of books. It was wrong, of course, to call t
his place a library. It was a stack-room, a repository, an immensely long dust-heap for the two or three thousand volumes accumulated like dust by his late uncle. Books old and broken, books newish and shiny, books in quarto and octavo and folio, books in fine bindings and books withered black: breathing their exhilarating mustiness, a treasure-house hardly yet touched.

  Their shelves reached to the ceiling, built even round the door to the dining-room and enclosing the row of little-paned windows that faced east. Books piled the floor in ranks, mounds, and top-heavy towers of unequal height, a maze of which the lanes between were so narrow that you could hardly move without knocking books over in a fluttering puff of dust.

  Standing in the middle of this, Miles held the lamp high and slowly looked round him.

  ‘It’s all right!’ he fiercely said aloud.

  And the door opened, and Fay Seton came in.

  ‘Did you call me, Mr Hammond?’

  ‘Call you, Miss Seton? No.’

  ‘I beg your pardon. I thought I heard you call.’

  ‘I must have been talking to myself. But it might interest you to have a look at this confusion.’

  Fay Seton stood there framed in the doorway, with the many-hued books on either side of her. Rather tall and soft and slender, her head a little on one side. She herself was carrying a paraffin lamp; and, as she lifted the lamp so that it illuminated her face, Miles was conscious of a sense of shock.

  In daylight, at the Berkeley and later on the train journey, she had seemed … not older, though in fact she was older; not less attractive … but subtly and disquietingly different from the image in his mind.

  Now, by artificial light, under the softened radiance of the lamp, it was as though for the first time the photographic image of last night had sprung to life. It was only a brief glimpse, of eye and cheek and mouth, as she raised the lamp to glance round her. But the very passiveness of those aloof features, with their polite smile, flowed out and troubled the judgement.

  Miles held up his own lamp, so that the light of the two clashed in an unsteady shadow-play, slow and yet wild, across the walls of books.

  ‘The place is a mess, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not nearly as bad as I’d expected,’ answered Fay. She spoke in a low voice and seldom raised her eyes.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t dusted or cleaned up for you.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter, Mr Hammond.’

  ‘My uncle, if I remember correctly, bought a card-index cabinet and an incredible number of reference cards. But he never did any cataloguing. The things are somewhere in this jumble.’

  ‘I can find them, Mr Hammond.’

  ‘Is my sister – er – making you comfortable?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ She gave him a quick smile. ‘Miss Hammond wanted to move out of her bedroom up there’ – she nodded towards the ceiling of the library – ‘and move me in there. But I couldn’t have her do that. Anyway, there are reasons why I much, much prefer to be on the ground floor. You don’t mind?’

  ‘Mind? Of course not! Won’t you come in?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The piles of books on the floor ranged from breast-high to waist-high. Obediently Fay moved forward, with that extraordinary and unconscious grace of hers, edging sideways among the lanes so that her rather shabby dove-grey dress hardly brushed them. She set down the little lamp on a heap of folios, raising a breath of dust, and looked round again.

  ‘It looks interesting,’ she said. ‘What were your uncle’s interests?’

  ‘Almost anything. He specialized in medieval history. But he was also keen on archaeology and sport and gardening and chess. Even crime and –’ Miles checked himself abruptly. You’re sure you’re quite comfortable here?’

  ‘Oh, yes! Miss Hammond – she asked me to call her Marion – has been very kind.’

  Well, yes: yes, Miles supposed, she had been kind. During the train journey, and afterwards while she and Fay prepared a scratch meal in the big kitchen, Marion had talked away twenty to the dozen. Marion had almost gushed over their guest. Yet Miles, who knew his sister, was uneasy in his mind.

  ‘I’m sorry about the servant situation,’ he told her. ‘They can’t be obtained in this part of the world for love or money. At least, by newcomers. I didn’t want you to have to … to …’

  Her tone was deprecating.

  ‘But I like it. It’s cosy. We three are all alone here. And this is the New Forest!’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hesitantly, with that same sinuous grace, Fay edged through the lanes over to the row of small-paned windows – themselves framed all round with books – in the east wall. The stationary lamp threw an elongated shadow of her. Two of the window-lights stood open, propped open on catches like little doors. Fay Seton leaned her hands on the window-sill and looked out. Miles, holding his own lamp high, blundered over to join her.

  Outside it was not quite dark.

  A grass terrace sloped up a few feet to another open space of grass bounded by a straggling iron fence. Beyond that – remote, mysterious, ash-grey turning to black in that unreal light – the tall forest pressed in on them.

  ‘How large is the forest, Mr Hammond?’

  ‘About a hundred thousand acres.’

  ‘As large as that? I hadn’t realized …’

  ‘Very few people do. But you can walk into the forest, over there, and get lost and wander about for hours, so that they have to send out a search-party for you. It sounds absurd in a small country like England, but my uncle used to tell me it happened time after time. As a newcomer, I haven’t liked to venture too far myself.’

  ‘No, of course not. It looks … I don’t know! …’

  ‘Magical?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Fay moved her shoulders.

  ‘You see where I’m pointing, Miss Seton?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Not a very great walk from here is the spot where William Rufus, the Red King, was killed with an arrow while he was out hunting. There’s an iron monstrosity to mark it now. And – you know The White Company?’

  She nodded quickly.

  ‘The moon rises very late to-night,’ said Miles. But one night soon you and I – and Marion too, of course – must take a walk by full moonlight in the New Forest.’

  ‘That would be awfully nice.’

  She was still leaning forward, the palms of her hands flat on the window-sill; she nodded as though she had hardly heard him. Miles was standing close to her. He could look down on the soft line of her shoulders, the whiteness of her neck, the heavy dark-red hair glistening under lamplight. The perfume she used was faint but distinctive. Miles became aware of the disturbing nearness of her physical presence.

  Perhaps she realized this; for abruptly, but in her unobtrusive way, she moved away from him and threaded a path back through the books to where she had left the lamp. Miles also turned abruptly and stared out of the window.

  He could see her reflexion, ghostly in the window-glass. Picking up an old newspaper, she shook it out for dust, opened it, and put it down on a pile of books. Then she sat down, beside the little lamp.

  ‘Careful!’ he warned without turning round. ‘You’ll get yourself dirty.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’ She kept her eyes lowered. ‘It’s lovely here, Mr Hammond. I imagine the air is very good?’

  ‘Excellent. You’ll sleep like the dead to-night.’

  ‘Do you have difficulty in going to sleep?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes.’

  ‘Your sister said you’d been very ill.’

  ‘I’m all right now.’

  ‘War?’

  ‘Yes. The peculiar and painful and unheroic form of poisoning you get in the Tank Corps.’

  ‘Harry Brooke was killed in the retreat to Dunkirk in nineteen-forty,’ remarked Fay, with absolutely no change of tone. ‘He joined the French Army as liaison-officer with the British – being bi-lingual, you see – and he was killed in the retreat to Dunkirk.�
��

  During a thunderclap of silence, while Miles’s ears seemed to ring and Fay Seton’s voice remained exactly the same, he stood staring at her reflexion in the window-glass. Then she added:

  ‘You know all about me, don’t you?’

  Miles put down the lamp on the window-sill, because his hand was shaking and he felt a constriction across his chest. He swung round to face her.

  ‘Who told you …?’

  ‘Your sister intimated it. She said you were moody and had imaginative fits.’

  (Marion, eh?)

  ‘I think it was awfully decent of you, Mr Hammond, to give me this position – and I am rather badly off! – without asking me anything about it. They very nearly sent me to the guillotine, you know, for the murder of Harry’s father. But don’t you think you ought to hear my side of it?’

  Long pause.

  A cool breeze, infinitely healing, crept in through the window-lights and mingled with the fustiness of old books. From the corner of his eye Miles noticed a black strand of cobweb swaying from the ceiling. He cleared his throat.

  ‘It’s none of my business, Miss Seton. And I don’t want to upset you.’

  ‘It doesn’t upset me. Really it doesn’t.’

  ‘But don’t you feel …?’

  ‘No. Not now.’ She spoke in a very odd tone. The blue eyes, their whites very luminous in lamplight, turned sideways. She put one hand against her breast, a hand very white in contrast to the grey silk dress, and pressed hard there. ‘Self-sacrifice!’ she said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘What we won’t do,’ murmured Fay Seton, ‘if we get a chance to sacrifice ourselves!’ She was silent for a long time, the wide-spaced blue eyes expressionless and lowered. ‘Forgive me, Mr Hammond. It doesn’t really matter, but I wonder who told you about this.’

  ‘Professor Rigaud.’

  ‘Oh, Georges Rigaud.’ She nodded. ‘I heard he’d escaped from France during the German occupation, and taken a university post in England. I only asked that, you see, because your sister wasn’t sure. For some reason she seemed to think the source of your information was Count Cagliostro.’