Ladies’ Bane (7 page)

Miss Maud Silver looked up from the card in her hand to the client whom Emma Meadows was ushering in, a short, broad person in the roughest of tweeds, stoutest of brogues, and the most sensible of country hats. Repeating the name which she had just read, Miss Silver said in a tone of mild enquiry,

“Miss Josepha Bowden?”

Her free hand was warmly grasped and wrung.

“How do you do? You have no idea what a relief it is to hear my name pronounced correctly. You have no idea of the number of people who just say Joseph and then add some kind of a little grunt. Most infuriating! It is, of course, pronounced as if the ‘e’ were doubled-Joseepha, and I cannot tell you how much pleasure it gave me to hear you say it properly.”

She seated herself in the chair which had been placed for her on the far side of the large writing-table, stripped off a pair of thick leather gloves, and said,

“You are Miss Maud Silver?”

Miss Silver inclined her head.

Miss Bowden’s eyes were fixed upon her. They were rather good eyes, grey with a growth of strongly curling lashes. Her hair which was streaked with grey curled too, and quite obviously without any other assistance than that of nature, one glance being enough to dispel the idea that she would ever bother about her appearance for longer than she could possibly help. She was fortunate in possessing what had once been a very fine complexion and was still, in spite of the buffetings of all kinds of weather in all quarters of the globe, an extraordinarily healthy and colourful affair. With her eyes on Miss Silver’s face she said,

“I have come to see you on a-well, I don’t know how to put it, and I hate beating about the bush, but it’s-well-it’s a delicate matter.”

A great many delicate matters had been brought into that room and laid before Miss Silver-in doubt, in perplexity, in dreadful anxiety, or mortal fear. Josepha Bowden went on.

“Elizabeth Moore is a distant connection of mine-she is Elizabeth Robertson now. She tells me you got her young man out of a mess, and what is a great deal more important so far as I am concerned, she says that you can hold your tongue, and
that you actually do
.”

The temperature of the room appeared at this moment to sustain a chill. There was a faint distance in Miss Silver’s voice as she replied that the confidences of a client were, of course, inviolate.

“There now-I’ve offended you, and that’s the last thing I meant to do! I can’t wrap things up and be tactful about them. All I can do is to tell the truth and hope that everyone else is going to do the same. And, do you know, they very often do. I’ve got out of quite a lot of tight places that way. I’m a traveller, you know-or perhaps you don’t. I go knocking round in odd places, and then I write books about them.”

Miss Silver’s memory was seldom at a loss for long. It now connected Miss Josepha Bowden quite firmly with such phrases as “Intrepid woman explorer.” “The first European to attempt this dangerous route,” and the like. She smiled in her own peculiarly charming manner and said,

“Oh, yes-I have seen accounts of some of your journeys. So very interesting. And now what can I do for you?”

Miss Bowden sat back in her chair and allowed her eyes to travel about the room. It was the pride of Miss Silver’s heart, and it never failed to make its own impression upon her clients. They were sometimes wafted back to the home of some old-fashioned relative who had preserved the furnishings and pictures of an earlier date. Miss Bowden perfectly remembered being taken to see an aged great-aunt who possessed chairs in curly walnut frames which could not be distinguished from those on either side of Miss Silver’s hearth, and at least two of the pictures which had graced Aunt Janet’s walls looked down at her now from over the mantelpiece and above the bookcase-the Black Brunswicker’s farewell to his bride and “Bubbles.”

She hastened into speech.

“I’ve been rude again, but I was admiring your things. My great-aunt Janet had chairs like these, and some of the pictures too.”

Miss Silver beamed.

“They came to me from my grandparents, and I value them highly. Whilst I was engaged in the scholastic profession it seemed improbable that I should ever be in a position to accommodate them in a flat of my own, but when circumstances enabled me to exchange that profession for a more lucrative one I was able to do so.”

Her eye travelled fondly about her little room, so bright, so cosy, with its peacock-blue curtains and carpet, both new since the war but repeating as far as possible the shade and pattern of their predecessors. She came back to Miss Josepha Bowden.

“You think that I can help you in some way?”

“I don’t know.”

Miss Silver waited. After a pause Miss Bowden said with a jerk,

“When I said it was delicate-well, it is. And most people would say it was none of my business, and I suppose strictly speaking, it isn’t. But if you’re going to mind your own business to that extent, people might be murdered right and left under your nose and you wouldn’t feel called upon to do anything about it. And if I was one of the people who was going to be murdered I’d rather have someone who didn’t mind sticking his fingers into other people’s pies.”

Miss Silver gazed at her mildly.

“Do you know of anyone who is going to be murdered?”

“I’m sure I hope
not
!” said Josepha Bowden with considerable force.

Miss Silver continued to gaze at her in an expectant manner.

Miss Bowden pushed back her chair and planted a hand squarely on either knee.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m worried about my goddaughter Allegra.”

The name meant nothing to Miss Silver. She waited for more. Miss Bowden went on.

“When I said this was delicate, I meant all of it-right from the beginning where I come in. Allegra isn’t any relation of mine, but she’s the daughter of the woman who got me out of a very nasty mess when I was a girl-about the nastiest mess a girl can get herself into, and you can dot the i’s and cross the t’s for yourself. She died when Allegra was a child, and if there’s ever anything I can do to show that I haven’t forgotten what she did for me, well, I’m here to do it whether anyone thinks I’m interfering or not.”

Miss Silver had picked up some soft white knitting. About two inches of a baby’s bootee hung down like a little frill from the needles.

“You are in some concern about Miss Allegra?”

Josepha gave a loud vexed laugh.

“That’s the bother-she isn’t Miss Allegra! She’s married, and I want to know a lot more than I do about the man-where he comes from-what he was doing before he married Allegra-whether he really has got any money, and if so, where
that
comes from-and why, ever since her marriage, she doesn’t answer anyone’s letters, or go and stay with her relations or have them to stay with her.”

Miss Silver shook her head.

“I could not undertake such an enquiry in respect of the husband. It would not be in my line at all.”

“And I wouldn’t want you to undertake it. To put it quite bluntly, it’s a man’s job, and I’ll have to get a man working on it. I’ve just put things clumsily-I always do. What I want you for is this. Look here, I’m taking Elizabeth’s word for you, and I’m taking you as I’ve found you and I’m going to put my cards down on the table. The man’s name is Geoffrey Trent, and he’s taken Allegra to live in some kind of a medieval house in a village called Bleake. I hear he’s trying to buy the place-with Allegra’s money. She has quite a lot, and most of it is in trust, thank goodness. But her other god-mother left her enough to buy this place and a good bit over without any strings to it at all. So one of the things I want to know is why that money isn’t being used.”

“It is not?”

Miss Bowden shook her head vigorously.

“No. They are trying to get round the trustees to let them use some of the money out of the trust, and I want to know why. There’s been some talk about losses.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“You think that the other money may have been spent?”

Josepha Bowden thumped her knee.

“Looks like it to me! If they’ve still got it, why don’t they use it? Then there’s this house-I want to know more about it. Old houses don’t appeal to me. After all, nobody washed in the Middle Ages, and I don’t fancy living in a place where nobody ever had a bath between the cradle and the grave for hundreds and hundreds of years-it doesn’t sound healthy to me! Now what I want you to do is to go down and stay in the village. There’s a Miss Falconer who will take an occasional p.g. if she thinks they are all right. She lives in a cottage, but this place Geoffrey Trent wants to buy, the Ladies’ House, belongs to her. There hasn’t been any money for donkey’s years, and the last male Falconer was killed in the war, so she ought to be tumbling over herself to sell. But by all accounts she isn’t. That’s one of the things I want to know about.”

Miss Silver laid down her knitting, opened a drawer on her left, and took out what used to be called a copybook with a bright blue cover. Moved by the insatiable curiosity which is one of his besetting sins, Detective Inspector Frank Abbott of Scotland Yard had once explored the source and origin of these survivals from an earlier and more brightly coloured world. It then transpired that a grateful client retiring from the conduct of an old-fashioned stationery business had come across a couple of gross of these books, and had forthwith presented them to Miss Silver. “And really, my dear Frank, the supply appears to be inexhaustible.”

The bit of bright colour pleased Miss Bowden. She watched Miss Silver write down Miss Falconer’s name, the names of the village, the Ladies’ House, and of Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Trent, together with the question upon which she had desired to be informed.

Pencil in hand, Miss Silver looked up and said,

“Pray proceed.”

“I want to know why Miss Falconer doesn’t jump at selling the place. Have you got that down?”

Miss Silver inclined her head.

“The survivors of an old family are often averse to parting with the last vestiges of former greatness.”

Miss Bowden made the sound which is usually written, “Humph!”

“That’s as may be! I just want to make sure that she hasn’t got some kink in her conscience. Geoffrey Trent would be welcome to buy up all the insanitary ruins in England he’d a mind to if he hadn’t married my god-daughter. But he has, and that brings me in neck and crop. The person I am concerned about is Allegra, and I don’t want her saddled with a mouldy old manor built over a cesspool-if they even had cesspools at the time it was built-or one of these places that has got a curse on it, or some particularly horrid kind of ghost!” She banged her knee even more decidedly than before. “And we all know that ghosts and curses are just a lot of superstitious nonsense! But I’m not having Allegra subjected to them! There is such a thing as suggestion, and she’s not in a state to have unpleasant things suggested to her!”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Without admitting any reality in these phenomena or pronouncing an opinion as to whether they have their origin in trickery or in the vagaries of the human mind, they can at times be extremely unpleasant.”

Miss Bowden nodded vigorously.

“I consider myself a strong-minded woman, and so, I suppose, do you. At this moment, at twenty minutes past eleven in the morning, sitting here in your nice bright room, I have a perfectly healthy and civilized disbelief in ghosts, spectres, apparitions, ghouls, vampires, and curses. But put me in a haunted room at midnight, with doors opening by themselves and the candle guttering and going out, and I don’t pretend for a moment that I shouldn’t probably scream the house down. It’s all atmosphere, and whether the thing can get you to believe in it or not. I’ve seen a man die of a curse in Africa. He believed in it like mad, and he just lay down and died, like an animal will if it’s been too badly frightened. And that brings me back to Allegra. I want to know whether anything is frightening her. She is the kind that would be easy enough to scare. Gentle, timid kind of creature with a soft voice and pretty ways. Not half the pluck and go and spirit of her sister Ione.”

“There is a sister?”

“Yes-unmarried-Ione Muir. I hear she’s on a visit to Allegra now. First time for two years, but she’s been out in the States. Made rather a hit there with monologues, sketches-you know the sort of thing. I’m told they went quite wild about her. Well, she’s been back some time now, but until a few days ago she hadn’t so much as laid eyes on Allegra. That’s one of the things that’s been worrying me. She’s been going down there half a dozen times, and they’ve always put her off. And Allegra’s been coming up to meet her in London, but there’s always been a telegram or a last minute call to say she couldn’t come. I ran into Ione on Bond Street and dragged it all out of her. I just said to her, ‘Look here, you can make this hard work for me and very irritating for yourself, but I intend to know what is going on about Allegra, and you can’t put me off. I shall just go on until I find out, so it will be a whole lot easier if you come across and tell me what you know.’ ”

Miss Silver picked up her knitting again.

“And then she told you?”

Josepha Bowden nodded.

“Told me I was a human battering-ram and I ought to be ashamed of myself! So then we went in and had some coffee, and she told me all about it. Not that there was really anything to tell-only about being put off, and Allegra never turning up when she’d made an appointment. Once we got the ice broken, I think she was glad enough to talk-I could see she was just as worried as I was. So it was a considerable relief to me to hear that her visit to Allegra had actually come off at last.”

Miss Silver looked thoughtfully across her rapidly moving needles.

“Since Miss Muir is now staying at the Ladies’ House and will be able to give you a much fuller account of the situation there than I can possibly hope to do, are you sure that you really wish to engage my services?”

She got one of those hearty laughs.

“I shouldn’t have come if I didn’t! I want the village talk, the village gossip. I want the Falconer angle. Elizabeth Moore says you’re a wonder at getting people to talk. Well, that’s what I want. Villages can be as tight as clams. I sent a man down to snoop around, didn’t get a thing, and he wouldn’t if he’d stayed there a year instead of a day. But one of Miss Falconer’s p.g.’s pottering round with her, buying oddments, and going to church on Sundays-well, that’s different. Especially if you could carry on a spot of knitting.”