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Miss Silver knew trouble when she saw it, and she saw it now. The reddened eyelids spoke of lack of sleep. She said in her kindest voice,
“I know that everyone has felt the deepest sympathy with you in your loss.”
Miss Pell’s lips trembled.
“Everyone has been very kind,” she said. “But it doesn’t bring her back. If it hadn’t been for those letters-”
She didn’t know what made her speak of the letters. She had been asked about them at the inquest, but ever since she had tried to keep them out of her mind. Wicked, that’s what they were, and not fit language for a Christian woman to call to mind. And Doris always such a good girl. She felt her way to a chair and sat down because her legs were shaking. Her thought found its way into words.
“She was always such a good girl. None of the things in the letters were true. She was a good Christian girl.”
Miss Silver had sat down too.
“I am sure she was, Miss Pell. If the person who wrote those letters could be found, it might save some other poor girl the same experience.”
Miss Pell stared at her.
“Anyone that was wicked enough to write those letters would be wicked enough to know how to hide themselves.”
“Do you think that your niece had any idea who had written them?”
Miss Pell’s hands, which were lying in her lap, jerked and closed down, the right hand over the left.
“There wasn’t anything to say who wrote them.”
“If she had had any idea, in whom would she have been most likely to confide?”
“She hadn’t any secrets from me.”
“Sometimes a girl will talk to another girl. Had your niece any special friend? Was she, for instance, friendly with Co
Miss Pell looked down at her own clasped hands.
“They had known each other from children,” she said. “Miss Renie will have told you I was maid to Miss Valentine’s mother, Mrs. Grey-and a sweet lady she was if ever there was one. When my brother died and I had to take Doris, Mrs. Grey let me bring her to the Manor. And just about then Mrs. Brooke and her little Co
“And they went on being friendly?”
“Really fond of each other, that’s what they were. The very last bit of work Doris did was to alter a dress for Miss Co
Miss Silver looked at her gravely.
“Miss Pell, you knew, did you not, that Co
“It wasn’t Mr. Martin who said so.”
“No, it was his housekeeper. It was all over the village that Co
“I couldn’t say.”
Miss Silver waited for a moment. Then she said,
“Co
A little colour came up into the sallow face. The eyelids came down for a moment over the faded eyes, and then were raised again. In a changed voice Miss Pell said,
“It is the third sign-”
“Yes, Miss Pell?”
“Once by a dream,” said Miss Pell, looking fixedly at her, “and once by the Bible text, and once by your mouth. If there was a third sign, I said that I would know what I had to do.”
If the words were strange, her ma
“There is something you know and that you think you ought to tell?”
The answer she received was an indirect one.
“I will tell you about the signs. You won’t understand unless I tell you about them. Because when Doris came home that day I promised her that I wouldn’t speak of what she told me, and it isn’t right to break a promise to the dead- not unless there is a sign, and I’ve had three. She said to me, ‘You’ll never tell, Aunt Emily, now will you?’ And I said, ‘Of course I won’t.’ Nor I wouldn’t ever, if it hadn’t been for the signs.”
“What were they, Miss Pell?”
“The first was a dream that I had in the night. Last night it was, and as clear as if I was waking. I was here in this room and sewing on something black, and I was crying over the work, and I remember thinking that it would be spoiled, because nothing spots quicker than black. And then the door opened and Doris and Co
Miss Silver said very kindly indeed,
“It was a comforting dream.”
Miss Pell’s eyes were full of tears.
“It ought to have been, but it wasn’t. I’d heard about Colonel Repton, and I kept troubling in my mind about whether the dream meant that I was to break my promise and go to the police, and whether it was a sign, or whether it had just come up out of my troubling about what I had said to the police. I hadn’t told any lies-I wouldn’t do that-but when they asked me if I had told them all I knew, I just put my handkerchief up to my face and cried, and they thought that I had.”
“I see.”
“So I thought what I could do to make sure about the sign. And what I did, I took my Bible and I shut my eyes and opened it just where it fared to open and put my finger on a verse. And when I opened my eyes it was the sixteenth verse of the eighth chapter of Zechariah, and it said-‘These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates.’ So I thought, ‘If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.’ And then it come over me that I’d never broke a promise in my life, and that I’d got to be sure. And I thought, ‘If the Lord wants me to speak, he can send me a third sign just as well as the other two, and if there is a third sign, I shall know that it’s from the Lord and I shall know what I’ve got to do.’ And then you come knocking at the door, a stranger, and the very words of the sign in your mouth, telling me that there was something I knew, and that I should tell it.”
Miss Silver repeated the words.
“Yes, I think you should tell it.”
Miss Pell brought out an old-fashioned linen handkerchief neatly folded and touched her eyes with it.
“It was that last day before Doris was drowned. She went out in the afternoon, and she’d got a mauve silk blouse she was taking to Miss Maggie at the Manor, and a dress she’d made for Miss Wayne, a blue wool that she had, coming out of mourning for her sister, and she said it was a little tight under the arms though I couldn’t see it myself, so Doris had been letting it out. Quite a round she had, what with leaving the blouse, and the dress, and looking in to settle the pattern of a couple of nightdresses for Miss Eccles and finishing up with Miss Co