VOICES IN THE LIBRARY
The swift tragedy of the winter afternoon had convulsed the
well-organized repose of Hartley Parrish’s household. Nowhere had his
master grasp of detail been seen to better advantage than in the
management of his country home. Overwhelmed with work though he
constantly was, accustomed to carry his business and often part of his
business staff to Harkings with him for the week-ends, there was never
the least confusion about the house. The methodical calm of Harkings
was that of a convent.
Hartley Parrish was wont to say that he paid his butler and housekeeper
well to save himself from worry. It was rather to ensure his orders
being punctiliously and promptly carried out. His was the mind behind
the method which ensured that meals were punctually served and trains
at Stevenish Station never missed.
But it was into a house in turmoil that Mary Trevert stepped when she
left the drawing-room and passed along the corridor to go to her room.
Doors slammed and there was the heavy thud of footsteps on the floor
above. The glass door leading into the gardens was open, as Mary passed
it, swinging in the gusts of cold rain. In the gardens without there
was a confused murmur of voices and the flash of lanterns.
In the hall a knot of servants were gossiping in frightened whispers
with a couple of large, rather bovine country constables who,
bareheaded, without their helmets, which they held under their arms,
looked curiously undressed.
The whispers died away as Mary crossed the hall. All eyes followed her
with interest as she went. It was as though an echo of her talk with
the Inspector had by some occult means already spread through the
little household. Through the half-open green baize door leading to the
servants’ quarters some unseen person was bawling down the telephone in
a heated controversy with the exchange about a long-distance call to
London. And but an hour since, the girl reflected sadly, as she mounted
the oaken staircase, the house had been wrapt in its wonted evening
silence in response to that firm and dominating personality who had
passed out in the gloom of the winter twilight.
When, about six months before, Mary and her mother had begun to be
regular visitors at Harkings, Hartley Parrish had insisted on giving
Mary a boudoir to herself. This, in response to a chance remark of
Mary’s in admiration of a Chinese room she had seen at a friend’s
house, Parrish had had decorated in the Chinese style with black walls
and black-and-gold lacquer furniture. The room had been transformed
from a rather prosaic morning-room with old oak and chintz in the space
of three days as a surprise for Mary. She remembered now how Parrish
had left her to make the discovery of the change for herself. She loved
colour and line, and the contrast between this quaint and delightful
room with her rather shabby bedroom in her mother’s small house in
Brompton had made this surprise one of the most delightful she had ever
experienced.
She rang the bell and sat down listlessly in a charmingly lacquered
Louis Seize armchair in front of the log-fire blazing brightly in the
fireplace. She was conscious that a great disaster had overtaken her,
but only dimly conscious. For more poignantly than this dull sense of
tragedy she was aware of a great aching at her heart, and her thoughts,
after hovering over the events of the afternoon, settled down upon her
talk that afternoon ... already how far off it seemed ... with Robin
Greve in the library.
Robin had always been her hero. She could see him now in the glow of
the fire as he had been when in the holidays he had come and snatched
her away from a home already drab and difficult for a matinée and an
orgy of cream cakes at Gunter’s afterwards. He was then a long, slim,
handsome boy of irrepressible spirits and impulsive generosity which
usually left him, after the first few days of his holidays, in a state
of lamentable impecuniosity. All their lives, it seemed to her, they
had been friends, but with no stronger feeling between them until
Robin, having joined the Army on the outbreak of war, had come to say
good-bye on being ordered to France.
But by that time money troubles at home with which, as it seemed to
her, she had been surrounded all her life, had grown so pressing that,
apart from Lady Margaret’s reiterated counsels, she herself had come to
recognize that a suitable marriage was the only way out of their
ever-increasing embarrassment.
She and Robin, she recalled with a feeling of relief, had never
discussed the matter. He, too, had understood and had sailed for France
without seeking to take advantage of the circumstance.
Outside in the black night a car throbbed. Footsteps crunched the
gravel beneath her window. The sounds brought her back to the present
with a sudden pang. She began to think of Hartley Parrish. All her life
she had been so very poor that, until she had met this big, vigorous,
intensely vital man, she had never known what a lavish command of money
meant. Hartley Parrish did things in a big way. If he wanted a thing he
bought it, as he had bought Bude, as he had bought a car he had seen
standing outside a Pall Mall club and admired. He had rooted the owner
out, bade him name his price, and had paid it, there and then, by
cheque, and driven Mary off to a lawn tennis tournament at Queen’s,
hugely delighted by her bewilderment.
She did not love him. She could never have learnt to love him. There
was a gleeful zest in his enjoyment of his money, an ostentatious
parade of his riches which repelled her. And there was a look in his
face, those narrow eyes, that hard mouth, which revealed to her womanly
intuition a ruthlessness which she guessed he kept for his business.
But she liked him, especially his reverent and chivalrous devotion to
her, and the thought that his dominating and vital personality was
extinguished for ever made her conscious of a great void in her life.
And now she was rich. Hartley Parrish’s idea of “proper provision” for
her, she knew, meant wealth for her beyond anything she had ever
dreamed. The perpetual debasing struggle with poverty which she and her
mother had carried on for years was a thing of the past. Money meant
freedom, freedom to live ... and to love.
She stretched her hands out to the blaze. Was she free to love? What
had driven Hartley Parrish to suicide? Or who? She went over in her
mind her interview with Robin Greve in the billiard-room. He had spoken
of other women in connection with Hartley Parrish. Had he used that
knowledge to threaten his rival? What had Robin done after he had left
her that afternoon with his final taunt?
She felt the blood rise to her cheeks as she thought of it. Mary
Trevert had all the pride of her ancient race. The recollection of that
taunt galled her. Her loyalty to the man from whom she had received
nothing but chivalry, whose fortune was to banish a hideous nightmare
from her life, rose up in arms. What had Robin done? She must know the
truth ...
A tap came at the door. Bude appeared.
“I think you rang, Miss,” he said in his quiet, deep voice. “I was with
the Inspector, Miss, and I couldn’t come before. Was there
anything?...”
The girl turned in her chair.
“Come in and shut the door, Bude,” she said. “I want to speak to you.”
The butler obeyed and came over to where she sat. He seemed ill at ease
and rather apprehensive.
“Bude,” said the girl, “I want you to tell me why you were certain that
Mr. Greve was going to Mr. Parrish in the library when he passed you in
the hall this afternoon!”
The butler smoothed his hands down his trousers in embarrassment.
“I thought he ... Mr. Greve ... would be sure to be going to fetch Mr.
Parrish in to tea, Miss ...” he replied, eyeing the girl anxiously.
Mary Trevert continued gazing into the fire.
“You know it is a rule in this house, Bude,” she said, “that Mr.
Parrish is never disturbed in the library ...”
The butler changed his position uneasily.
“Yes, Miss, but I thought ...”
Slowly Mary Trevert turned and looked at the man.
“Bude,”—her voice was very calm,—“I want you to tell me the truth. You
know that Mr. Greve went in to Mr. Parrish ...”
Bude looked uneasily about him.
“Oh, Miss,” he answered, almost in a whisper, “whatever are you
saying?”
“I want your answer, Bude,” the girl said coldly.
Bude did not speak. He rubbed his hands up and down his trousers in
desperation.
“I wish to know why Mr. Parrish did this thing, Bude. I mean to know.
And I think you are keeping something back!”
The challenge resounded clearly, firmly.
“Miss Trevert, ma’am,” the butler said in a low voice, “I wouldn’t take
it upon me to say anything as would get anybody in this house into
trouble....”
“You saw Mr. Greve go into Mr. Parrish?”
The butler raised his hands in a quick gesture of denial.
“God forbid, Miss!” he ejaculated in horror.
“What, then, do you know that is likely to get anybody here into
trouble?”
The butler hesitated an instant. Then he spoke.
“That Inspector Humphries has been asking me questions, Miss, in a
nasty, suspicious sort o’ way. I told him, what I told him already,
that just after I’d done serving the tea Mr. Greve crossed the hall and
went down the library corridor....”
“You didn’t tell him everything, Bude?”
The butler took a step nearer.
“Oh, Miss,” he said, lowering his voice, “if you’ll pardon my
frankness, but I know as how you and Mr. Greve are old friends, and I
wouldn’t take it upon me to tell the police anything as might ...”
Mary Trevert stood up and faced the man.
“Bude,” said she, “Mr. Parrish was your master, a kind and generous
master as he was kind and generous to every one in this house. We must
clear up the mystery of his ... of his death. Neither you nor I nor Mr.
Greve nor anybody must stand in the way. Now, tell me the truth!”
She dropped back into her chair. She gave the order imperiously like
the mistress of the house. The butler, trained through life to receive
orders, surrendered.
“There’s nothing much to tell, Miss. When Mr. Humphries asked me if I
were the last person to see Mr. Parrish alive, I made sure that Mr.
Greve would say he had been in to tell him tea was ready. But Mr.
Greve, who heard the Inspector’s question and my answer, said nothing.
So I thought, maybe, he had his reasons and I did not feel exactly as
how it was my place ...”
Mary Trevert tapped with her foot impatiently.
“But what grounds have you for saying that Mr. Greve went in to Mr.
Parrish? Mr. Greve declared quite positively that he went out by the
side door and did not go into the library at all.”
“But, Miss, I heard him speaking to Mr. Parrish ...”
The girl turned round and the man saw fear in her wide-open eyes.
The butler put his hand on the back of her chair and leaned forward.
“Better leave things where they are, Miss,” he said in a low voice.
“Mr. Parrish, I dare say, had his reasons. He’s gone to his last
account now. What does it matter why he done it ...”
The man was agitated, and in his emotion his carefully studied English
was forsaking him.
But the girl broke in incisively.
“Please explain what you mean!” she commanded.
“Why, Miss,” replied the butler, “we know that Mr. Greve had no call to
like Mr. Parrish seeing how things were between you and the master ...”
“You mean the servants know that Mr. Parrish and I were engaged ...”
Bude made a deprecatory gesture.
“Know, Miss? I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘know.’ But there has been
some talk in the servants’ ’all, Miss. You know what young female
servants are, Miss ...”
“And you think that Mr. Greve went to Mr. Parrish to talk about ...
me?”
Mary Trevert’s voice faltered a little. She looked eagerly at the
other’s fat, smooth face.
“I presoomed as much, Miss, I must confess!”
“But what did you hear Mr. Greve say?”
“I heard nothing, Miss, except just only the sound of voices. After Mr.
Greve had crossed me in the hall, I took the salver I was carrying into
the butler’s pantry. I stayed there a minute or two, and then I
remembered I had not collected the letters from the box in the hall for
the chauffeur to take to the post, the same as he does every evening. I
went back to the hall, and just as I opened the green baize door I
heard voices from the library ...”
“Was it Mr. Greve’s voice?”
“I cannot say, Miss. It was just the sound of voices, rather loud-like.
I caught the sound because the door leading from the hall to the
library corridor was ajar. Mr. Greve must have forgotten to shut it.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, Miss, I closed the corridor door ...”
“Why did you do that?”
“Well, Miss, seeing the voices sounded angry-like, I thought perhaps it
would be better not to let any one else hear.... And Mr. Greve looked
upset-like when he passed me. He gave me quite a turn, he did, when I
saw his face under the hall lamp....”
“Did you stay there ... and listen?”
Bude drew himself up.
“That is not my ’abit, Miss, not ’ere nor in hany of the ’ouses where I
’ave seen service....”
The butler broke off. The _h_’s were too much for him in his
indignation.
“I didn’t mean to suggest anything underhand,” the girl said quickly.
“I mean, did you hear any more?”
“No, Miss. I emptied the letter-box and took the letters to the
servants’ hall.”
“But,” said Mary in a puzzled way, “why do you say it was Mr. Greve if
you didn’t hear his voice?”
Bude spread out his hands in bewilderment.
“Who else should it have been, Miss? Sir Horace and the doctor were in
the lounge at tea. Jay and Robert were in the servants’ hall. It could
have been nobody else....”
The girl’s head sank slowly on her breast. She was silent. The butler
shifted his position.
“Was there anything more, Miss?” he asked after a little while.
“There is nothing further, thank you, Bude,” replied Mary. “About Mr.
Greve, I am sure there must be some mistake. He cannot have understood
Mr. Humphries’s question. I’ll ask him about it when I see him. I don’t
think I should say anything to the Inspector about it, at any rate, not
until I’ve seen Mr. Greve. He’ll probably speak to you about it
himself....”
Bude made a motion as though he were going to say something. Then
apparently he thought better of it, for he made a little formal bow and
in his usual slow and dignified manner made his exit from the room.