Authors: Evelyn Hervey
‘I am glad to hear that, sir.’
Miss Unwin rejected an easy way out, and gathered her courage again.
‘But that is not what I meant.’
‘Then what did you mean? I’m blessed if I know.’
‘Well, sir, is it not possible that you will, before many months have passed, be residing at Stavely?’
It was said. Miss Unwin felt a burden lifted.
‘At Stavely? With Cousin Cornelia? As Cousin Cornelia’s husband? Oh, Harr – Oh, Miss Unwin, the idea is laughable.’
Miss Unwin found, to her enormous surprise, that Richard Partington’s dismissal of the idea of marrying his cousin and going to live in the country sent a bound of emotion rising up in her. She was not at all sure what emotion it was. Joy? Relief? Mere wonder? But she knew she had felt it, and that she had been shaken by it.
‘Then, sir,’ she said, after what to her had seemed a long, long interval, ‘I trust my stay in this house will not be short. I trust I shall find myself here perhaps until the girls’ sixteenth birthday, unless –’
She checked herself at once. But the word had been spoken. The possibility that had come into her mind, perhaps because of the secret anxiety that had been satisfied only a moment before, had induced her to pronounce that one extra unnecessary word.
She hoped fervently that Richard Partington had not paid it any heed.
But he had.
‘Unless? Unless what? It is my earnest hope that you will stay under my roof for … that you will certainly stay as the girls’ governess as long as they need a governess.’
‘Then we are in agreement at least over that,’ Miss Unwin said.
And she turned to go.
‘No, wait. Wait, Harr – Miss Unwin, one moment. You said that you hoped to stay here unless … There was an urgency in your tone. Unless what, Miss Unwin?’
For the second time in this brief interview Miss Unwin was at a loss how to reply. She had hesitated over telling Richard Partington that she believed he was to marry his cousin. Now she hesitated yet more about confessing to him the terrible thought that had risen unbidden to her mind when she had imagined her future in this house. The thought that she could not stay if its head was put on trial for murder and found guilty.
That was not a possibility that she believed in. Indeed, with all her will she wanted to thrust it away. But it had lain there waiting to leap out of ambush ever since Doctor Sumsion had given it as his opinion that old Mr Partington had been poisoned.
What was she going to say now in face of Richard Partington’s insistence that she tell him what she had been going unwittingly to blurt out?
She was going to tell him the truth.
‘Mr Partington, sir. Unless by some appalling chance it is thought –’
‘It is thought what, Miss Unwin?’
On Richard Partington’s face there was nothing but a guileless interest in what she was about to say. Not a trace of guilt trying to hide, not a trace even of guessing what it was that was in her mind. And yet … And yet it was all she could do to bring out the words she knew she must pronounce.
‘Sir, unless by some chance too terrible to contemplate it is believed that you yourself are responsible for the death of your father.’
He stepped back a pace.
‘But – But me. My father. What can you be saying?’
Innocence seemed written on every pore of his round open face. Miss Unwin could have sworn that the idea that he himself might be thought to be responsible for the poisoning of old Mr Partington had never once entered his head.
Yet even as she told herself this, the simple unswerving
sense of logic that had been implanted in her mind by one of her unknown parents made her realise that in trusting to what she had immediately felt about Richard she was trusting only in an impression. Logic said, inexorably, that if he had in fact poisoned his father he would have had to assume just such a look of scandalised innocence at the mention by anybody of the possibility.
However, she must seem to trust him. She owed him that. And she wanted passionately to be able to give him her trust without the reservation that her mind had forced her to make.
‘Mr Partington,’ she said in haste. ‘Can it be that since Doctor Sumsion told you that he suspected your father had died by poison you have not considered how that poison can have been administered? Have you not thought how others might think it had been administered? Mr Partington, they will look to the one who most plainly benefits from your father’s death. And – And –’
She faltered now for an instant. But she brought herself to resume.
‘And, sir, since your father died you have been spending the money that he had saved over so many years as if – as if it was as freely come by as water from a well.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is true. I have. But – But money is there to be spent, Miss Unwin. What else is it for? What good does it do if it is no more than pieces of gold, than pieces of some metal, hidden in the ground? Or in the vaults of a bank, which comes to much the same thing?’
‘No, sir,’ Miss Unwin answered steadily. ‘I fear you should not think of it in that way. Yes, it is to be spent when it will buy what is necessary or even what is pleasant. But it is to be saved too, surely? Saved for worse times that may come.’
Richard smiled suddenly then, that old, disarming, wry smile which since the need for it had passed with his father’s passing Miss Unwin had not seen.
‘I suppose you are right,’ he said. ‘But, you know, I
have learnt to be prejudiced against the man who saves. Sadly I have learnt that.’
‘Well, I can hardly blame you for that, sir,’ Miss Unwin said.
And she meant those to be the words which would end this tempestuous conversation. Only at that moment the door of the drawing room, so newly furnished, was jerked open and Vilkins stood there.
‘It’s a caller,’ she said.
Miss Unwin winced mentally. Her good friend certainly had little idea how a parlour-maid should behave. But then until now she had never aspired to any position in the long domestic hierarchy higher than that of a housemaid, a sweeper of carpets, layer of fires, duster of shelves, polisher of wood, maker of beds.
‘A caller, Mary,’ she said, for she had of course told nothing of the friendship between herself and Vilkins to Richard Partington and saw no need ever to do so. ‘Is it a gentleman? Should you not have brought him in to wait in the hall?’
‘Oh, it ain’t no gentleman, Miss,’ Vilkins replied cheerfully. ‘He told me ‘is name. It’s the doctor. Doctor Somesing he said he was.’
‘Doctor Sumsion?’ said Richard Partington. ‘What can he want?’
But Miss Unwin thought she knew. The post-mortem examination of old Mr Partington’s body had already been delayed exceptionally long. It was more than likely that now the work had been done. Doctor Sumsion, whose patient in a sense old Mr Partington had been, was likely to have been present, and was likely now to be coming to inform Richard Partington of the findings.
‘Mary, show the doctor up,’ she said.
As soon as Vilkins had left, closing the door behind her with a hearty bang, Miss Unwin turned to Richard Partington.
‘The examination of your father’s body,’ she said. ‘I
imagine whatever tests were necessary have now been carried out.’
Again Richard, the innocent, looked surprised.
‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes, I suppose you are right. In which case we shall know all about it in just a few minutes.’
Abruptly his eyes glowed with sudden warmth.
‘Miss Unwin,’ he said, ‘do not leave me. Stay here. I shall feel happier hearing whatever I will have to hear in your presence.’
‘I am not sure –’ she began.
But before she could express her doubts about the propriety of what he had asked the door was shoved open again and Vilkins put her head round it.
‘It’s the doctor,’ she said. ‘An’ I forgot to say. There’s another gentleman with ‘im. Or not a gentleman rightly, either. He’s the police.’
Miss Unwin hardly had eyes for Doctor Sumsion when he came into the room in the wake of Vilkins’s extraordinary announcement. Even though she knew he was going to tell Richard Partington the result of the post-mortem examination, she had realised from the very fact that he was accompanied by a police officer that poison must have indeed been found in old Mr Partington’s body. But what she feared more was that the police had already come to the conclusion that Richard must be responsible for its being there.
And this time he was not innocently unaware of what was happening. When she gave him a quick look she saw that his ordinarily cheerful red face had turned a lustreless grey.
The man who had entered half a pace behind the rotund physician spoke first.
‘Your domestic has failed to name me,’ he said. ‘Inspector Redderman, Harrow Road Station.’
Miss Unwin looked at him.
He gave her at once the impression of being a man pared down to essentials. Later, thinking about him as she was to have cause enough to do, she was unable to account exactly for the vividness of her first strong feeling. It might have been, she thought, the clothes he wore, a suit of blue serge on which not a quarter-inch of material appeared to have been wasted. Or it might have been the set of his features where the flesh, again, seemed to have been distributed so as to serve its function of covering the bones beneath just to the necessary point and no more. Or it
might have been the hair on his head which was trimmed back as far as it could be and still remain hair.
Yet none of these things had particularly struck her at first sight. However, the impression she had received was strong and it made her, though she could not in logic see why, somehow all the more apprehensive about the man.
It was characteristic of him, she later thought, that once he had told them who he was he added not a word more.
It was left to old Doctor Sumsion to reveal the purpose of their joint visit. And this, all too evidently, he was finding it hard to do.
He coughed once or twice. He darted a look at Miss Unwin which indicated both that he wished she was not in the room and that he was doubtful about just how he could rid himself of her presence.
Seeing his dilemma she felt bound to offer once again to go-
‘Sir,’ she said to Richard Partington, ‘I believe Doctor Sumsion must have private business with you. I will take my leave.’
‘No,’ Richard Partington almost shouted. ‘No, Miss Unwin, please, I particularly wish you to remain, whatever it may be that Doctor Sumsion and this gentleman have to say.’
He paused, then grabbed at a thought.
‘Er – It is in the interest of my girls that you should be fully aware of the circumstances, of any circumstances, don’t you see?’
‘Very well, sir. If it is in the children’s interest.’
Miss Unwin turned to the doctor and without actually saying anything made it clear that he had now to begin.
He coughed again.
‘Very good, Mr Partington, if that is your wish,’ he said. ‘But I must warn you, however, that what I have to say is – is of the most intimate nature.’
But say it, for heaven’s sake, Miss Unwin thought.
‘No, no. Speak, speak,’ Richard said.
‘Very well. Then what I have to tell you is simply this: I have myself been conducting the post-morten examination on your father’s body. Such work is something in which I have always taken the keenest interest. The examination is now completed. It was necessary to make certain tests on – organs removed. That is what has accounted for a certain delay.’
‘But what has been found?’ Richard barked out, impatience bringing the blood back to his ashen cheeks.
‘Arsenic’
It was the laconic Inspector Redderman who, at last, spoke the word.
‘Arsenic?’ Richard said. ‘Poison? Then it is confirmed what you suspected, Doctor? My father was poisoned?’
‘Yes,’ the doctor answered with a tremendous expression of gravity. ‘Yes, I regret to tell you that there can be no doubt. I found arsenic in your father’s body after carrying out my tests more than once, and its presence absolutely confirmed my diagnosis at the time of his death. It was not due to natural causes.’
He drew himself up with a little puff of pride.
‘I must therefore ask you, sir,’ Inspector Redderman added quietly, ‘to accompany me to the police office where I shall put certain questions to you.’
It was said. And said briefly and tersely as possible, Miss Unwin thought. No wrapping up of words could now disguise that the police suspicions rested firmly on old Mr Partington’s son. On Richard.
On the man for whom she felt – it was only at this instant that she was prepared to acknowledge it to herself – for whom she felt more than she had ever felt for any man, for any human being, in her life before.
Richard, whom she loved surely – Didn’t she? Wasn’t this what it was? – was being taken to the police office under grave suspicion of being that most reprehensible of murderers, the poisoner. The poisoner of his own father.
But at least he had not behaved like a murderer. In
some deep inside part of her Miss Unwin had feared that the man she had admired, and knew now that she felt love for, at the moment the words had been pronounced that showed he was suspected as a poisoner, would break down, curse, snarl, try to escape, be revealed for what he was.
But, no, instead he simply drew himself up a little as if preparing himself and looked Inspector Redderman straight in the eye.
‘Very good,’ he said. ‘I understand perfectly why you should want to question me, and of course I make no objection to coming with you to the police office.’
Then he was gone. Or rather, Miss Unwin thinking of it all afterwards, realised that in five or ten minutes after those words had been spoken he was gone. He had in fact given her a few instructions about the conduct of the household and a message for the chief clerk at the pin works, and then he had fetched his hat and coat, his new overcoat with the fur collar since the day was chilly for May.
But after those ten minutes he was gone indeed. The house was empty of his presence.
Miss Unwin felt it as if all the furniture, the new furniture that had hardly been there more than a few days, the walnut wood chairs, the velvet ottoman, the tall vases and the rich carpets, as if all had been swept away like dream objects in the cold light of day.