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“Yes, yes, that will do quite well,” said Mrs. Dane Calthrop.
Aimée Griffith went into the International Stores.
Mrs. Dane Calthrop said: “Poor thing.”
I was puzzled. Surely she could not be pitying Aimée?
She went on, however:
“You know, Mr. Burton, I’m rather afraid—”
“About this letter business?”
“Yes, you see it means—it must mean—” She paused lost in thought, her eyes screwed up. Then she said slowly, as one who solves a problem, “Blind hatred…yes, blind hatred. But even a blind man might stab to the heart by pure chance… And what would happen then, Mr. Burton?”
We were to know that before another day had passed.
II
It was Partridge who brought the news of the tragedy. Partridge enjoys calamity. Her nose always twitches ecstatically when she has to break bad news of any kind.
She came into Joanna’s room with her nose working overtime, her eyes bright, and her mouth pulled down into an exaggerated gloom. “There’s terrible news, this morning, miss,” she observed as she drew up the blinds.
It takes a minute or two for Joanna, with her London habits, to become fully conscious in the morning. She said, “Er ah,” and rolled over without real interest.
Partridge placed her early tea beside her and began again. “Terrible it is. Shocking! I couldn’t hardly believe it when I heard.”
“What’s terrible?” said Joanna, struggling into wakefulness.
“Poor Mrs. Symmington.” She paused dramatically. “Dead.”
“Dead?” Joanna sat up in bed, now wide awake.
“Yes, miss, yesterday afternoon, and what’s worse, took her own life.”
“Oh no, Partridge?”
Joanna was really shocked—Mrs. Symmington was not, somehow, the sort of person you associated with tragedies.
“Yes, miss, it’s the truth. Did it deliberate. Not but what she was drove to it, poor soul.”
“Drove to it?” Joanna had an inkling of the truth then. “Not—?”
Her eyes questioned Partridge and Partridge nodded.
“That’s right, miss. One of them nasty letters!”
“What did it say?”
But that, to Partridge’s regret, she had not succeeded in learning.
“They’re beastly things,” said Joanna. “But I don’t see why they should make one want to kill oneself.”
Partridge sniffed and then said with meaning:
“Not unless they were true, miss.”
“Oh,” said Joanna.
She drank her tea after Partridge had left the room, then she threw on a dressing-gown and came in to me to tell me the news.
I thought of what Owen Griffith had said. Sooner or later the shot in the dark went home. It had done with Mrs. Symmington. She, apparently the most unlikely of women, had had a secret… It was true, I reflected, that for all her shrewdness she was not a woman of much stamina. She was the anaemic clinging type that crumples easily.
Joanna nudged me and asked me what I was thinking about.
I repeated to her what Owen had said.
“Of course,” said Joanna waspishly, “he would know all about it. That man thinks he knows everything.”
“He’s clever,” I said.
“He’s conceited,” said Joanna. She added, “Abominably conceited!”
After a minute or two she said:
“How awful for her husband—and for the girl. What do you think Megan will feel about it?”
I hadn’t the slightest idea and said so. It was curious that one could never gauge what Megan would think or feel.
Joanna nodded and said:
“No, one never does know with changelings.”
After a minute or two she said:
“Do you think—would you like—I wonder if she’d like to come and stay with us for a day or two? It’s rather a shock for a girl that age.”
“We might go along and suggest it,” I agreed.
“The children are all right,” said Joanna. “They’ve got that governess woman. But I expect she’s just the sort of creature that would drive someone like Megan mad.”
I thought that was very possible. I could imagine Elsie Holland uttering platitude after platitude and suggesting innumerable cups of tea. A kindly creature, but not, I thought, the person for a sensitive girl.
I had thought myself of bringing Megan away, and I was glad that Joanna had thought of it spontaneously without prompting from me.
We went down to the Symmingtons’ house after breakfast.
We were a little nervous, both of us. Our arrival might look like sheer ghoulish curiosity. Luckily we met Owen Griffith just coming out through the gate. He looked worried and preoccupied.
He greeted me, however, with some warmth.
“Oh, hallo, Burton. I’m glad to see you. What I was afraid would happen sooner or later has happened. A damnable business!”
“Good morning, Dr. Griffith,” said Joanna, using the voice she keeps for one of our deafer aunts.
Griffith started and flushed.
“Oh—oh, good morning, Miss Burton.”
“I thought perhaps,” said Joanna, “that you didn’t see me.”
Owen Griffith got redder still. His shyness enveloped him like a mantle.
“I’m— I’m so sorry—preoccupied—I didn’t.”
Joanna went on mercilessly: “After all, I am life size.”
“Merely kit-kat,” I said in a stern aside to her. Then I went on:
“My sister and I, Griffith, wondered whether it would be a good thing if the girl came and stopped with us for a day or two? What do you think? I don’t want to butt in—but it must be rather grim for the poor child. What would Symmington feel about it, do you think?”
Griffith turned the idea over in his mind for a moment or two.
“I think it would be an excellent thing,” he said at last. “She’s a queer nervy sort of girl, and it would be good for her to get away from the whole thing. Miss Holland is doing wonders—she’s an excellent head on her shoulders, but she really has quite enough to do with the two children and Symmington himself. He’s quite broken up—bewildered.”
“It was—” I hesitated—“suicide?”
Griffith nodded.
“Oh yes. No question of accident. She wrote, ‘I can’t go on’ on a scrap of paper. The letter must have come by yesterday afternoon’s post. The envelope was down on the floor by her chair and the letter itself was screwed up into a ball and thrown into the fireplace.”
“What did—”
I stopped, rather horrified at myself.
“I beg your pardon,” I said.
Griffith gave a quick unhappy smile.
“You needn’t mind asking. That letter will have to be read at the inquest. No getting out of it, more’s the pity. It was the usual kind of thing—couched in the same foul style. The specific accusation was that the second boy, Colin, was not Symmington’s child.”
“Do you think that was true?” I exclaimed incredulously.
Griffith shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ve no means of forming a judgment. I’ve only been here five years. As far as I’ve ever seen, the Symmingtons were a placid, happy couple devoted to each other and their children. It’s true that the boy doesn’t particularly resemble his parents—he’s got bright red hair, for one thing—but a child often throws back in appearance to a grandfather or grandmother.”
“That lack of resemblance might have been what prompted the particular accusation. A foul and quite uncalled for bow at a venture.”
“Very likely. In fact, probably. There’s not been much accurate knowledge behind these poison pen letters, just unbridled spite and malice.”
“But it happened to hit the bull’s eye,” said Joanna. “After all, she wouldn’t have killed herself otherwise, would she?”
Griffith said doubtfully:
“I’m not quite
sure. She’s been ailing in health for some time, neurotic, hysterical. I’ve been treating her for a nervous condition. It’s possible, I think, that the shock of receiving such a letter, couched in those terms, may have induced such a state of panic and despondency that she may have decided to take her life. She may have worked herself up to feel that her husband might not believe her if she denied the story, and the general shame and disgust might have worked upon her so powerfully as to temporarily unbalance her judgment.”
“Suicide whilst of unsound mind,” said Joanna.
“Exactly. I shall be quite justified, I think, in putting forward that point of view at the inquest.”
“I see,” said Joanna.
There was something in her voice which made Owen say:
“Perfectly justified!” in an angry voice. He added, “You don’t agree, Miss Burton?”
“Oh yes, I do,” said Joanna. “I’d do exactly the same in your place.”
Owen looked at her doubtfully, then moved slowly away down the street. Joanna and I went on into the house.
The front door was open and it seemed easier than ringing the bell, especially as we heard Elsie Holland’s voice inside.
She was talking to Mr. Symmington who, huddled in a chair, was looking completely dazed.
