Читать книгу Murder in the Mill-Race - Edith Caroline Rivett - Страница 21

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“Never was good coffee more enjoyed,” said Raymond Ferens. “Lord, I wanted that.” He passed his cup across to Anne to be refilled and pushed his plate aside, having polished off the eggs and bacon. “It’s going to be a peck of trouble, Anne. She was drowned all right, but I’m afraid she didn’t jump into the mill stream herself. She was shoved in—after somebody had batted her over the head with the inevitable blunt instrument. At least, that’s my diagnosis.”

Anne sighed. “You mean her head was damaged while she was still alive?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Couldn’t she have hit her head on one of the piles as she jumped?”

“The back of her head? If the coroner and jury are willing to believe that, nobody will be better pleased than myself. But I don’t think they will. Wherever she went in, whether from the bank or the bridge, she’d have gone slap into deep water and she would have sunk. Her body would have been carried towards the piles by the current, but she couldn’t have hit the back of her head on them.”

Anne sat silent, her face troubled, and Raymond went on: “Sergeant Peel was on to it like knife. He must have driven about fifty miles an hour to get here from Milham Prior in the time he did. His attitude was one of expectancy. ‘I expected this’ was written all over his face.”

“But why?” cried Anne. “What did he know about Sister Monica?”

“I don’t know what he knew, angel, but it appears that he was never satisfied they’d got to the truth in the last drowning case here—the wretched Nancy Bilton. The verdict was suicide while of unsound mind, and there was no evidence against it. The girl had sworn she’d kill herself and there it was. But there was a lot of talk about it here afterwards.” Raymond held out his cigarette case to Anne. “We might as well talk it over now, Anne. It’s better that you should know what’s been said, and what’s being said now. We’ve only been here three months, but it’s surprising how much gossip comes a doctor’s way in three months. It’s some of the old chronics who do most of the talking—it’s all that life has left to them, the power to chatter. After the verdict had been given on Nancy Bilton, more than a few folks surmised that the reason she was found drowned was that Sister Monica pushed her into the mill pool.”

“You don’t believe that, do you, Ray?”

Raymond sat and looked at his wife with very thoughtful eyes. “I don’t know, Anne. I’ve always refused to discuss Sister Monica with you. We both took a dislike to her, and I was very anxious to avoid being unfair by judging the woman at first glance. Then I made up my mind to avoid taking sides in local feuds. I expect I heard very much what you heard, because I noticed that you left the subject of Gramarye severely alone after our first few weeks here.”

“Yes. I did,” said Anne. “Tell me this: gossip which somebody else has told you isn’t evidence, is it? If this sergeant comes round asking questions, I’ve only got to tell him what I know at first-hand, haven’t I?”

“Yes. That’s right. Now to get back to the Nancy Bilton rumours. Venner and Wilson and Bob Doone all state that Sister Monica had been wandering at night, around the park and across the bridge and into the lower end of the village, and this is apparently no recent habit. She has been known to do it for years at infrequent intervals, but latterly has done it much more often. Now it was agreed that Nancy Bilton was a night bird. If Nancy spied on Sister Monica, I wouldn’t put it beyond Sister M. to have shoved Nancy in the mill stream, because it does seem to me that Sister Monica was something less than sane.”

“You say ‘if Nancy spied on Sister Monica’,” said Anne slowly. “It might have been the other way about. Sister Monica may have spied on Nancy. Do you remember the first thing you said to me about Sister Monica—that you sensed the religious fanatic in her? Isn’t it true that religious mania, like any other mania, can make a sort of megalomaniac of anybody? They can no longer see themselves in focus, or realise their own shortcomings—only other people’s.”

“That’s true enough; they see themselves as ‘chosen vessels,’ above criticism. This was particularly true of Sister M. She had developed a mania for taking people’s characters away. But what were you thinking about when you said that perhaps it was Sister Monica who spied on Nancy?”

“I was wondering if Nancy went for her and tried to shove her in the stream, without realising that Sister M. was much bigger and stronger than herself—and it happened that way. She was a very powerfully built woman, Ray, and she had enormous hands. They gave me the horrors.”

“Yes. I noticed her hands, too. But all this doesn’t get us any nearer to who shoved Sister Monica in the mill-race.”

“Did they ever find out who was the man Nancy had been going with?”

“No. She never told anybody, and when the police enquired in the village, the answer was ‘I don’t know.’ Nobody knew, which meant that nobody would tell. This village has a very strong defence mechanism of the ‘I don’t know’ variety. They’re nearly all related or connected by marriage, and they present an unbroken front to outside interference. That’s why they resent the fact that the village children are sent to school at Milham Prior now. Children chatter, one to another.”

“Do you think the village rumours got to Milham Prior that way?”

“Yes. I think Sergeant Peel got wind of what was being said in secret conclave in this village—to wit, that Sister Monica pushed Nancy in the mill stream. Incidentally, he doesn’t believe it, but he holds there’s no smoke without fire.”

“And so what?”

“Peel’s own belief is that there’s a killer in the village, responsible for both deaths. Whether he’s right or wrong, it means a full dress police investigation. He’ll go on asking questions until somebody cracks.”

“How grim,” said Anne. She paused a moment, and then said: “Well, thank heaven I don’t know anything about anything: and in the meantime, ought I to offer to go and help at Gramarye?”

“I’d much rather you didn’t, but I suppose we ought to offer to help,” said Raymond. “I’ll ring up Lady Ridding and find out how things are. My own opinion is that it would be much better to have all those tinies dispersed to other homes. They’re bound to hear some of the gossip and they’d be better out of it.”

“Oh, do try to get that done, Ray. It’d be so much better. That aged nurse and the old cook will be fairly spreading themselves over death and disaster, and the brats of maids will be gossiping like ghouls. It’s bound to happen. They’ve all been battened down and kept under, and now the tyrant’s hand is removed they’ll go haywire.”

“I think that’s probably perfectly true,” said Raymond.