Читать книгу Pilgrim's Rest - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 3

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Judy Elliot stepped off the moving staircase at Piccadilly Circus, and felt a hand under her elbow. As it was undoubtedly a male hand and she was not prepared to be picked up by something in the lonely-soldier line, she first quickened her pace, and when that didn’t seem to be any good whisked round with a few refrigerated words upon her tongue.

They never got said. The keep-your-distance look melted into one of pleased recognition. She tilted her chin, gazed up at a tall young man in a dark blue suit and a discreetly chosen tie, and exclaimed, “Frank!”

Detective Sergeant Abbott gave a poor imitation of his usual rather cynical smile. He was in fact considerably handicapped by the behaviour of his heart, a perfectly sound organ but responding at the moment to a quite uncalled for access of emotion. When you haven’t seen a girl for a year, when she hasn’t answered your letters, and when you have convinced yourself that any slight interest you may have felt is now a thing of the past, it is extremely discomposing to find yourself behaving like a schoolboy in love. He couldn’t even be sure that he had not changed colour, and, worst symptom of all, he was rapidly beginning to feel that, Judy being here, nothing else mattered.

He continued to smile, and she continued to tilt her chin, this being made necessary by the difference in their heights. The chin was a firm one, the face to which it belonged agreeable rather than pretty, the mouth wide and curving, the eyes indeterminate in colour but very expressive. They began at this moment to express surprise. What on earth Frank Abbott thought he was doing, standing looking at her like that.... She pulled him by the arm and said,

“Wake up!”

He came to with a jerk. If anyone had told him he would make a public exhibition of himself like this, he would have laughed in the idiot’s face. He found a tongue very little accustomed to being out of action, and said, “It’s shock. You must make allowances. You were the last person on earth I expected to see.”

The gaze became severe.

“Does that mean you thought you had hold of a perfectly strange girl’s elbow, and found it was me?”

“No, it doesn’t. I should get the sack from the Yard if I went about doing that sort of thing. Besides, not very subtle—I can do better than that when I give my mind to it. Judy, where have you been?”

“Oh, in the country.... We’re blocking the traffic.”

He took her by the arm and steered for a backwater.

“Well, here we are. Why didn’t you answer my letters?” He didn’t mean to say that, but it came out.

“Letters? I didn’t get any.”

He said, “I wrote. Where have you been?”

“Oh, here and there—with Aunt Cathy till she died, and then rather on the trek.”

“Called up?”

“No. I’ve got Penny—she hasn’t got anyone else.”

“Penny?”

“My sister Nora’s baby. She and John went in an air raid just after the last time I saw you. All right for them, but rotten for Penny.”

He saw her face stiffen. She looked past him as he said, “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. What can one say?”

“Nothing. I can talk about it all right—you needn’t mind. And I’ve got Penny. She isn’t quite four, and there isn’t a single other relation who can take her, so I’ve got exemption. What about you?”

“They won’t let me go.”

“What rotten luck! Look here, I’ve got to fly and feed the child. We’re staying with Isabel March, and she’s lunching out, so I simply daren’t be late. She said she’d have Penny whilst I shopped.”

He kept hold of her arm. “Wait a minute—don’t vanish till we’ve got something fixed. Will you dine with me?”

She shook her head.

“No—Isabel’s out—there’d be no one in the flat. I can’t leave Penny. And if you say what you were going to say, I’ll never speak to you again.”

There was a rather sardonic gleam in the light eyes as he said,

“Undoubtedly an angel child. I adore them!”

Judy burst out laughing.

“Don’t they teach you to tell lies better than that at Scotland Yard?”

“They don’t teach us to tell lies at all. We’re all very high-toned. My Chief is an esteemed Chapel member. If your Isabel March is out, what about my dropping in to help look after Penny?”

“She’ll be asleep. I could do an omelette—reconstructed egg, of course.”

“What time?”

In spite of himself his voice was eager. Judy wondered why. They had been friendly, but no more. They had dined together, danced together. And then she had had to go back to poor old Aunt Cathy, and he hadn’t written or anything. Only now he said he had.... She wondered about that. She wondered if he was one of the out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind, because if he was, she wasn’t the right person to try it on. A year’s silence, and then that eager voice. And it wasn’t like him to be eager. She recalled an elegant young man with a rather blasé manner. He was still elegant—slim and tall, with very fair hair slicked back and mirror-smooth, and light blue eyes which had appeared to contemplate his fellow-beings with supercilious amusement, but which at the moment were fixed upon her in rather a disturbing manner.

She began to regret the omelette. Because what was the good of being disturbed? She wasn’t going to have any time for young men, what with Penny and getting a job as a housemaid. She had a moment of wanting to back out—she had a moment when she would have liked to run away. And then the voice of common sense chipped in with one of its most insidious and fallacious remarks—“After all, it’s only one evening—what does it matter?”

She gave Frank a smile of pure relief, said, “Half past seven—3 Raynes Court Buildings, Cheriton Street,” and walked rapidly away.

When one is four years old going to bed is a very important ceremony. Miss Penny Fossett exacted the full rites. Any attempt at hurry, any scamping, merely resulted in a mellifluous “Do it again.” Judy’s attempts to maintain the upper hand were conscientious, but they didn’t always come off. The way of the transgressor was, unfortunately, so very beguiling. At the very moment of Judy’s screwing herself up to be severe the infant sinner would remark with a heart-piercing smile, “It loves its Judy,” and fling damp throttling arms about her neck.

On this particular evening the bath had been a very lingering one. Isabel had unearthed an aged rubber duck from an attic in her mother’s country house. It should, of course, have gone to salvage long ago, but had been overlooked, much to Penny’s delight. When she could be torn away from it, there was not as much time left as Judy could have wished. Even if you are completely indifferent to a young man, you do like to have time to do the hair and give nature a helping hand with the face before he comes to supper. It is difficult to bathe the very young without becoming dishevelled. The old-fashioned Nanny could do it, but it is a rapidly dying art. Judy was hot and damp as she sat on the edge of her bed and held out her arms.

“Now Penny—prayers.”

Miss Penelope Fossett was wearing pale blue pyjamas. Her dark hair curled artlessly about her enchanting head. She had little pink ears and rather a heart-shaped face. Her eyes were unbelievably blue, her lashes unbelievably long and black. The colour in her cheeks was pure and deep. She diffused warmth, moisture, and a smell of lavender soap as she kneeled up beside Judy, bowed her head upon her folded hands, and emitted a long penetrating “Moo!” If you laughed you were lost. Judy bit the inside of her lip, which sometimes helped.

“Penny! I said prayers!”

One blue eye opened, gazed at her, and shut again.

“It is saying its prayers. It’s a moo-cow. That’s the way they say them.”

It took about a quarter of an hour to persuade Penny to be human again. Even then a last faint contumacious “Moo!” followed the final amen.

Judy turned a deaf ear, forbade further conversation, and went to tidy herself up in the bathroom. She had just come to the conclusion that she had never looked plainer in her life, when the front door bell rang and she had to go and let Frank Abbott in.

They made the omelette together in Isabel’s minute kitchen. There is nothing like a homely, domestic job for breaking the ice. By the time he had laid the table, and she had called him an idiot for dropping the butter-dish, they might have been married for years. Over the omelette, which was very good and had all sorts of exciting scraps in it, Frank told her so. His naturally impudent tongue was his own again, but if he expected to raise a blush he was disappointed. Miss Elliot agreed with perfect calm.

“Yes, we might—only not so dull.”

“It mightn’t be dull with the right person.”

Judy proffered tomato sauce.

“You mightn’t think it was going to be until it was too late. I mean, we both like this sauce, but if we had to eat it at every meal for the next forty or fifty years we’d be bored stiff.”

“My child, you make me shudder! I can assure you that I have at least thirty distinct flavours—like all the soup and jelly makers used to advertise, and you could always try mixing them if thirty wasn’t enough. Besides, the brain is not completely stagnant—I can invent new ones. You’ve got it all wrong. People are dull because of something in themselves—a tendency to stew over old tea-leaves—keeping the windows tight shut to prevent any new ideas getting in—all that sort of thing. You have been warned!”

“Thank you.” Words and tone were meek. Her eyes mocked him.

When she saw he was going to speak, she said with her best smile,

“How many girls have you said that to?”

“I’ve only just thought of it. It’s their loss.”

Something made her say a little more quickly than she meant to,

“We’re going away tomorrow.”

“We?”

“Penny and I.”

“Where?”

With the feeling of having reached nice firm, safe ground, Judy could relax. The smile came out again, bringing with it a rather pleasant dimple.

“We’re going to be a housemaid.”

“What!”

“A housemaid. In a nice safe village because of Penny. Their total casualties up to date are one goat in an outlying field.”

“Did you say a housemaid?”

“I did. And if you’re going to say I can do better than that—which is what everybody does say—you haven’t tried, and I have. If I hadn’t got Penny I could get dozens of jobs—but if I hadn’t got Penny I should be called up. And I have got Penny, so that’s that. And I’m going to keep her, so that’s another that. And when you’ve got all that straightened out you’ll find like I did that the only job you can get with a child is a domestic one—and you can only get that because people are so desperate they’ll do anything. Think how nice and appropriate it is, the policeman and the housemaid having supper together!”

Frank looked down his long nose and didn’t laugh.

“Must you?”

Judy nodded.

“Yes, I must. I haven’t a bean. Aunt Cathy was living on an annuity, though nobody knew it. By the time I’d got everything paid up there wasn’t anything left. John Fossett had nothing but his pay, so there’s nothing for Penny except a minute pension, and I want to save that up to pay for her going to school later on.”

Frank crumbled a piece of bread. What business had John and Nora Fossett to get killed in an air raid and leave Judy to fend for their brat? He said in an angry voice,

“Where are you going?”

Judy was feeling pleased with herself. She removed the bread and told him not to waste good food. Then she answered his question.

“It sounds rather nice. Penny and I are to live with the family because—well, I rather gather the cook and butler put all their feet down and said they wouldn’t have us. There are two Miss Pilgrims and an invalid nephew, and the house is called Pilgrim’s Rest. The village is Holt St. Agnes, and—” She got no farther, because Frank rapped the table and said in the loudest voice she had ever heard him use,

“You can’t go there!”

Judy became Miss Elliot. Whilst remaining only just across the table from him, her lifted eyebrows and the expression of the eyes beneath them indicated that he had been relegated to a considerable distance. In a tone of suitable coolness she enquired,

“Why not?”

Frank wasn’t cool at all. The detached and indifferent manner which he affected no longer afforded him any protection. He looked very much taken aback as he said,

“Judy, you mustn’t. I say, don’t look at me like that! You can’t go there.”

“Why can’t I? Is there anything wrong with the Miss Pilgrims? One of them came up to town to see me—I thought she was nice. Do you know them?”

He nodded.

“That would be Miss Columba. She’s all right—at least I suppose she is.” He ran a hand back over his hair and pulled himself together. “Look here, Judy, I’d like to talk to you about this. You know you always said I’d got more cousins than anyone you’d ever heard of, and I suppose I have. Well, one lot lives just outside Holt St. Agnes, and I’ve known the Pilgrims all my life. Roger and I were at school together.”

She said with a zip in her voice, “That probably wasn’t his fault.”

“Don’t be a fool! I’m serious. I want you to listen. Roger is just home from the Middle East. He was taken prisoner by the Italians, escaped, put in some time in hospital, and is still on sick leave. I’ve just had a spot of leave after ’flu myself. I’ve been staying with my cousins at Holt St. Agnes, and I saw quite a lot of Roger.” He paused and looked at her hard. “You can hold your tongue, can’t you? What I’m telling you is what everyone in the village knows more or less, but I wouldn’t want Roger to think I’d been handing it on. He’s a nice chap, but he’s a bit of a dim bulb, and he’s in the devil of a flap. I wouldn’t be talking about it to anyone else, but you oughtn’t to go there.”

Judy sat opposite him with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes wary. She said,

“Why?”

He hesitated, a thing so unusual that it rattled him. The cool self-assurance to which he was accustomed had left him in the lurch. It was like coming into a house and finding the furniture gone. It rattled him. He found nothing better to say than,

“Things keep happening.”

“What kind of things?”

This was the devil. The gap between what he could get into words and what he couldn’t get into words was too wide. And behind that there was the horrid niggling thought that the gap had only become evident when he learned that it was Judy who was going to Pilgrim’s Rest. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have bothered his head.

Judy repeated her question.

“What kind of things?”

He said, “Accidents—or perhaps not—Roger thinks not. The ceiling came down in his room—if he hadn’t gone to sleep over a book downstairs he’d have been killed. Another room was burnt out, with him inside—the door jammed and he very nearly didn’t get out in time.”

Judy kept her eyes on his face.

“Who does the place belong to?”

“Him.”

“Is he the invalid nephew?”

“No—that’s Jerome. He’s a cousin, a good bit older than Roger. Smashed up at Dunkirk. No money. They took him in—have a nurse for him. They’re a very clannish family.”

“Is he, or is Roger, well—a neurotic type? Would it be either of them playing tricks?”

“I don’t know. It wouldn’t be like either of them if they were normal. And both things might have been accidents. In the first case a tap had been left running and a sink had overflowed. That’s what brought the ceiling down. In the second Roger went to sleep in front of a fire and the whole place littered with papers he’d been sorting. A spark may have jumped out of the fire.”

Judy said, “Is that all?”

There was a little scorn in her voice. It got him on the raw. He said more than he had meant to say.

“Roger doesn’t believe his father’s death was an accident.”

“Why doesn’t he?”

Frank’s shoulder jerked.

“Old Pilgrim went for a ride and never came back. They found him with a broken neck. The mare came home in a lather, and the old groom says there was a thorn under the saddle—but as they’d come down in a brier patch there’s a perfectly believable explanation. Only that makes rather a lot of things to explain, don’t you think? I don’t want you to go there.”

He saw her frown, but there was no anger in her eyes.

“It’s not so easy, you know. Everyone says there are millions of jobs, but there aren’t—not with Penny. Even now people don’t want a child in the house—you’d think you were asking if you could bring a tiger. And then a lot of them seem to think I couldn’t have Penny if she wasn’t mine. When I tell them about Nora and John they get a kind of we’ve-heard-that-tale-before look. I was beginning to think I should have to go round with Nora’s marriage lines and Penny’s birth-certificate and even then they’d have gone on believing the worst, when I saw Miss Pilgrim’s advertisement and answered it. And I liked her, and it’s a nice safe village. And anyhow I couldn’t back out at the last minute. We’re going down there tomorrow. It’s no good, Frank.”

He found himself accepting that. It laid a burden on his spirits.

Judy pushed back her chair and got up.

“Nice of you to care and all that.” Her tone, casual again, indicated that the subject was now closed.

As they cleared away and washed up together, the sense of pull and strain was gone. Presently she was asking him about the people at Holt St. Agnes—about his cousins, and he was offering to write and tell them she was going to Pilgrim’s Rest. And then,

“You’ll like Lesley Freyne. She’s right in the village, only a stone’s throw from the Pilgrims. Both the houses are right on the village street. She’s a good sort.”

“Who is she—one of your cousins?”

“No—the local heiress. Rather shy and not very young. Pots of money and a big house. She’s got about twenty evacuees there. She was going to marry a cousin of the Pilgrims, but it never came off—”

He had nearly stumbled into telling her about Henry Clayton, but he caught himself in time. She would only think he was piling it on, and it was, of course, quite irrelevant. He changed the subject abruptly.

“If by any chance a Miss Silver turns up, either in the house or in the village, I’d like you to know that she’s a very particular friend of mine.”

Judy gave him a bright smile.

“How nice. Do tell me all about her. Who is she?”

Frank was to all appearance himself again. His eye had a quizzical gleam, and his voice its negligent drawl as he replied,

“She is the one and only. I sit at her feet and adore. You will too, I expect.”

Judy felt this to be extremely unlikely, but she went on smiling in an interested manner whilst Frank continued his panegyric.

“Her name is Maud—same as in Tennyson’s poetry, which she fervently admires. If you so far forget yourself as to put an ‘e’ on to it, she will forgive you in time because she has a kind heart and very high principles, but it will take some doing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maudie. I love her passionately. She used to be a governess, but now she is a private detective. She can’t really be a contemporary of Lord Tennyson’s, but she manages to produce that effect. I’ve told Roger to go and see her, so she may be coming down, and if she does, I shall feel a lot happier. Only you don’t know anything, remember. She may be just an ordinary visitor taking a holiday in the village or anything, so not a word to a soul. But if she’s there, you’ll have someone to hold on to.”

Judy swished water into the washing-up bowl and stuck her chin in the air.

Miss Silver was inclined to see the hand of Providence in trifles. Her first contact with the Pilgrim case occurred when she had just finished working out a new and elaborate stitch for the jumper which she intended for her niece Ethel’s birthday. This she regarded as providential, for though she could, and did, knit her way serenely through all the complications which murder produces, she found it difficult to concentrate upon a really elaborate new pattern at the same time. Ethel Burkett’s annual jumper provided sufficient mental exercise without being brought into competition with a criminal case.

She was considering her good fortune in having obtained this excellent pre-war wool. So soft—such a lovely shade of blue—and no coupons, since it had been produced from a box in the Vicarage attics by Miss Sophy Fell, who had pressed, positively pressed, it on her. And it had been very carefully put away with camphor, so it was as good as on the somewhat distant day when it had been spun.

She had all her stitches on the needles, and the pattern well fixed in her mind, when her front door bell rang and Emma Meadows announced Major Pilgrim. She saw a slight, dark young man with a sallow complexion and a worried frown.

On his side Roger Pilgrim was at once reminded of his aunts. Not that Miss Silver resembled any of them in person, but she and her surroundings appeared to be of approximately the same vintage. His Aunt Millicent, who was as a matter of fact a great-aunt, possessed some curly walnut chairs which were the spit and image of those adorning Miss Silver’s flat—waists, and bow legs, and tight upholstery—only the stuff on Aunt Milly’s had once been green, whilst Miss Silver’s were quite freshly covered in rather a bright shade of blue. Both ladies crowded every available inch of mantelshelf and table-top—Miss Silver’s writing-table excluded—with photographs in archaic silver frames. His Aunt Tina had clung for years to very similar flowered wall-paper, and possessed at least two of the pictures which confronted him as he entered—Bubbles and The Black Brunswicker. But the frames of Aunt Tina’s were brown, whilst these were of the shiny yellow maple so dear to the Victorian age.

Miss Silver herself added to the homely effect. His old Cousin Collie also wore her hair in a curled fringe after the fashion set by Queen Alexandra in the late years of the previous century. Aunt Collie’s stockings were of a similar brand of black ribbed wool. For the rest, Miss Silver was herself—a little governessy person with neat features and a lot of grey-brown hair very strictly controlled by a net. It being three o’clock in the afternoon, she was wearing a pre-war dress of olive-green cashmere with a little boned lace front, very fresh and clean. A pair of pince-nez on a fine gold chain was looped up and fastened on the left side by a bar brooch set with pearls. She also wore a row of bog-oak beads ingeniously carved, and a large brooch of the same material in the shape of a rose, with an Irish pearl at its heart. Nothing could have felt less like a visit to a private detective.

Miss Silver, having shaken hands and indicated a chair, bestowed upon him the kind, impersonal smile with which she would in earlier days have welcomed a new and nervous pupil. Twenty years as a governess had set their mark upon her. In the most improbable surroundings she conjured up the safe, humdrum atmosphere of the schoolroom. Her voice preserved its note of mild but unquestioned authority. She said,

“What can I do for you, Major Pilgrim?”

He was facing the light. Not in uniform. A well-cut suit, not too new. He wore glasses—large round ones with tortoise-shell rims. Behind them his dark eyes had a worried look. Her own went to his hands, and saw them move restlessly on the shiny walnut carving which emerged from the padded arms of the Victorian chair.

She had to repeat her question, because he just sat there, fingering the smooth wood and frowning at the pattern on the bright blue carpet which had kept its colour so well. Reflecting with satisfaction that it looked as good as new, she said,

“Will you not tell me what I can do for you?”

She saw him start, glance at her quickly, and then away again. Whether people use words to convey their thoughts or to conceal them, there is one thing very difficult to conceal from a practised observer. In that momentary glance Miss Silver had seen that thing quite plainly. It was the look you may see in the eyes of a horse about to shy. She thought this young man was reluctant to face whatever it was that had brought him here. He was not the first. A great many people had brought their fears, their faults, and their follies into this room, hoping for they hardly knew what, and then sat nervous and tongue-tied until she helped them out. She smiled encouragingly at Roger Pilgrim, and addressed him very much as if he had been ten years old.

“Something is troubling you. You will feel better when you have told me what it is. Perhaps you might begin by telling me who gave you my address.”

This undoubtedly came as a relief. He removed his gaze from the multi-coloured roses, peonies, and acanthus leaves with which the carpet was festooned, and said,

“Oh, it was Frank—Frank Abbott.”

Miss Silver’s smile became warmer and less impersonal.

“Sergeant Abbott is a great friend of mine. Have you known him for long?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, we were at school together. He’s a bit older, but our families knew each other. He comes down to stay with some cousins near us. As a matter of fact, he was there last week-end having a spot of leave after ’flu, and I got talking to him. Frank’s a pretty sound fellow—though you wouldn’t think it to look at him, if you know what I mean.” He gave a short nervous laugh. “Seems awfully funny, somebody you’ve been at school with being a policeman. Detective Sergeant Abbott! You know, we used to call him Fug at school. He used to put on masses of hair-fug. I remember his having a lot which fairly stank of White Rose, and the maths master going round smelling us all till he found out who it was, and sending Fug to wash his head.”

While recounting this anecdote he looked a little happier, but the worried frown returned as he concluded.

“He told me I’d better come and see you. He says you’re a marvel. But I don’t see what anyone can really do. You see there isn’t any evidence—Fug said so himself. He said there was nothing the police could take any notice of. You see, I put it up to him because of his being at Scotland Yard, but he said there really wasn’t anything they would do about it, and he advised me to come to you. Only I don’t suppose it’s any use.”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked briskly. She had the new pattern well in hand. She coughed and said,

“You do not expect me to reply to that, do you? If you will tell me what you seem to have told Sergeant Abbott, I may be able to give you an opinion. Pray proceed.”

Roger Pilgrim proceeded. This was the voice of authority. He blurted out, “I think someone’s trying to kill me,” and immediately thought how damnfool silly it sounded.

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!” And then, “What makes you think so?”

He stared at her. There she sat, the picture of a mild old maid, looking at him across her knitting. He might have been saying he thought it was going to rain. He kicked himself for having come. She probably thought he was a neurotic ass. Perhaps he was a neurotic ass. He frowned at the carpet and said,

“What’s the good of my telling you? When I put it into words it sounds idiotic.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Whatever it is, it is certainly worrying you. If there was no cause for your worry, you would be glad to have this proved to you, would you not? If, on the other hand, there is a cause, it is a matter of some importance that it should be removed. What makes you think that someone is trying to kill you?”

He looked up with an air of arrested attention.

“Well, I thought they were.”

Miss Silver coughed and said “They?” on an enquiring note. She was knitting very fast in the continental fashion, her hands low in her lap, her eyes on her visitor.

“Oh, well—that’s just a way of speaking. I haven’t an idea who it is.”

“I think it would be better if you were to tell me what has happened. Something must have happened.”

He nodded emphatically.

“You’ve said it! The things happened—you can’t get away from that. Lumps of plaster aren’t just imagination, and no more is a lot of burnt ash where there used to be papers and a carpet.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!” And then, “Pray begin at the beginning and tell me all about these incidents.”

He was sitting forward in his chair now, looking at her.

“The bother is I don’t know where to begin.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“At the beginning, Major Pilgrim.”

The eyes behind the glasses met hers in a worried look.

“Well, as a matter of fact that’s just what beats me—I don’t know where it begins. You see, it’s not only me, it’s my father. I was out in the Middle East when my father died—I haven’t been home very long. And of course, as Fug says, there’s no evidence. But I ask you, why should a quiet beast that he’d ridden every day for the last ten years suddenly go mad and bolt with him? She’d never done such a thing in her life. When she came back all of a lather they went out to look for him, and found him with a broken neck. The old groom says she’d a thorn under the saddle—says somebody must have put it there. The trouble is it wasn’t the only one. She hadn’t thrown him, you see—they’d come down together, and the place was just a tangle of wild roses and brambles. But what William said, and what I say is, what would make her bolt? And we both got the same answer—only it isn’t evidence.”

“What reason had anyone to wish your father dead?”

“Ah—there you have me! There wasn’t any reason—not any reason.”

The heavily accented word invited a question. Miss Silver obliged.

“You speak as if there was something which was not a reason?”

“Well, as a matter of fact that’s just about the size of it. Mind you, I don’t believe in that sort of thing myself, but if you were to ask William—that’s the groom I was talking about—or any of the other old people in the village, they’d say it was because he was going to sell the place.”

“And there is a superstition about such a contingency?”

The word appeared to puzzle him. He frowned, and then got there.

“Oh, yes—I see what you mean. Well, as a matter of fact there is. The place has been in the family donkey’s years. I don’t set a lot of store by that sort of thing myself—a bit out of date, if you know what I mean. No good trying to live in the past and hang on to all the things your ancestors grabbed—is there? I mean, what’s the good? We haven’t any money, and if I fancied an heiress, she probably wouldn’t fancy me. So when my father wrote and said he was going to sell I told him that as far as I was concerned, he could get on with it—only as a matter of fact he never got the letter. But people in villages are very superstitious.”

“What form does this superstition take, Major Pilgrim?”

“Well, as a matter of fact it’s a rhyme. Some ass had it cut into the stone over the fireplace in the hall, so it’s always there—under everyone’s nose, so to speak.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“What does it say?”

“It’s all rubbish of course—made up round our name and the name of the house. We’re Pilgrims, the house is Pilgrim’s Rest. And the rhyme says:

’If Pilgrim fare upon the Pilgrims’ Way,

And leave his Rest, he’ll find nor rest nor stay.

Stay Pilgrim in thy Rest, or thou shalt find

Ill luck before, Death but one pace behind.’”

He gave a short nervous laugh.

“A lot of nonsense, but I should think everyone in the village believes that’s why the mare bolted and my father broke his neck.”

Miss Silver continued to knit.

“Superstitions are extremely tenacious. After your father’s death, Major Pilgrim, were the negotiations for the sale carried on?”

“Well, as a matter of fact they weren’t. You see, by that time I’d managed to get taken prisoner. I was in a prisoners of war camp in Italy, and nothing more happened. Then when Musso got the sack I escaped. I was in hospital for a bit, and then I got home. The chap who wanted to buy the place bobbed up again, and I thought I’d play. That’s when the ceiling came down on me.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Literally—or metaphorically?”

Seeing that he was a little out of his depth, she amended her question.

“Do you mean that the ceiling really came down?”

That emphatic nod again.

“I should just about think it did! Rather a spot ceiling too—nymphs, and garlands, and all that sort of thing. It’s not the best bedroom—that’s next door—but the eighteenth-century chap who put in the ceiling there had it carried on into his dressing-room. He cribbed it from some Italian palace, and it’s the sort of thing people come and look at. Well, about a month ago my particular lot came down all over where I’d have been if I had been in bed, which I would have been if I hadn’t gone to sleep over a poisonously dull book in the study.”

“Dear me! Why did it come down?”

“Because there was a leak from one of the water-pipes and the nymphs and whatnots had all got wringing wet. They weighed quite enough to start with, and the water brought them down like a cartload of bricks. If I’d been in that bed I’d have been dead—there isn’t any doubt about that.”

“A very providential escape. I think you mentioned another incident?”

He nodded.

“A week ago. There’s a sort of small room my father used to keep his papers in. Odd sort of place. Pigeon-holes right up to the ceiling, all crammed with papers. Well, I’d been getting on with going through them a bit at a time, and last Tuesday afternoon I’d had a good old worry at them. Round about half past six I had a drink, and the next thing I knew I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I sat down in a chair by the fire and went to sleep. I must have been dead to the world, because I didn’t wake up till the whole place was in a blaze. I don’t know what started it. It could have been a spark from the fire—wood throws them out—and there was a pretty fair litter of papers, one of them might have caught. But what made me go off to sleep like that, and why didn’t I wake up? I’m a pretty light sleeper, you know.”

Miss Silver said, “What do you mean?”

The frowning gaze met hers.

“I think someone doped me and set light to the papers,” said Roger Pilgrim.