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Maud said, ‘A con…? Oh, I see. It’s perfectly genuine, I assure you. Your sister will be at Quire House with Miss Forrester.’

‘Not me as well?’

Maud had been ready for this. She said, ‘Miss Forrester only seemed prepared to pay for one. Of course, if you wanted to buy your own train ticket, you could come. Or you could follow in a few days’ time.’

‘Have to think about that,’ said Catherine Kendal. ‘Leaving London an’ all. I got my ladies to consider.’

‘Are you a sempstress?’ said Maud, and Catherine Kendal laughed.

‘You been working for Thomasina and you think that! Bit of an innocent, aincha? No, it ain’t sewing I do for my ladies. Nor for the gentlemen who come here, neither.’ She went on studying Maud, and Maud began to feel uncomfortable. She did not dare risk looking at her watch to see if the half hour was up yet, but she thought it could not be far off, and she had not yet seen the sister. Supposing the sister did not exist–that it had simply been a–what had she called it? A con. Supposing it had been a con to get money out of Thomasina.

Then Catherine said slowly, ‘She’d be at Quire House,’ as if the name was a charm that might open doors.

‘Yes.’

‘A proper doctor who might help her?’

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘Wait here,’ said Catherine. ‘I’ll see what she thinks.’

She was only gone a few minutes, but to Maud, who was in an agony of suspense, it felt like several hours. At last Catherine reappeared.

‘She’ll come.’

‘I’m so glad,’ said Maud, managing to sound as if it was a matter of complete disinterest to her. ‘Can she be ready at once? I’ve arranged for a cab to collect us in about ten minutes.’


‘Hardly time to pack winter furs, is there?’ There was a sudden grin, oddly reminiscent of a cat’s purring smile, and then Cat Kendal whisked back up the stairs and into the room overhead. In less than the ten minutes she was back, carrying a pitifully small bundle of things, a thin girl with translucent skin and tow-coloured hair at her side.

‘Nell,’ she said, by way of introduction. ‘Ellen if you want to be posh about it.’

Maud stared at the girl. It’s all right, she thought. The resemblance is strong enough. It’s going to work. But there’s one more thing, and I have to be sure.

Catherine said, ‘She don’t speak,’ and Maud, who had not until now trusted Thomasina’s other words that day, knew it was going to be all right. She knew that the last and most crucial piece of her plan had dropped silkily into place. (‘A sick sister,’ Thomasina had said, that day. ‘A mute. Fair-haired–pretty little thing. Great tragedy, though–she’s quite unable to speak.’)

‘She understands everything you say,’ Catherine was saying. ‘But she don’t never speak. She can’t.’

In a brisk voice, Maud said, ‘Oh, I see. Well now, Ellen–Nell–we’re going to take the train to Chester, and from there we’ll hire a conveyance of some kind to take us to Amberwood–that’s quite a short journey.’

It all came out as casually and as confidently as if she was accustomed to travelling up and down the countryside every day, ordering cabs and making complicated journeys. It had to be complicated, of course, this journey: the nearer they got to Amberwood, the more unobtrusive they would have to be.

So Maud made sure they got an afternoon train, which would mean they would not reach Chester until after dark, and not reach Amberwood until late in the evening. She bought lunch in the station buffet, relieved to see that although Nell Kendal ate hungrily, her table manners were acceptable. She wondered briefly about the two girls’ parentage, but since it was clearly impossible to question the girl, she concentrated on getting her back to Toft House.

As the train jolted its way out of London, she tried not to stare too greedily at this girl who might have changed places with her, and who could not speak…





CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN




Godfrey Toy had been preparing for a quiet evening, which he thought was owed to him after the horrors of the last twenty-four hours. He was still very upset indeed. He told Oliver this, and Oliver said they were all very upset, and had recommended Godfrey to go to bed early with a hot drink, a good book and a couple of aspirin. He could put the phone by his bed if he was nervous, or even take the dinner bell to ring out of the window to summon help.

Godfrey thought this was unnecessarily flippant of Oliver, but he did think he would follow the first part of the suggestion. He would make himself a nice hot toddy to drink in bed. He might take one of the Barchester novels to read, so he could make the old joke about going to bed with a Trollope, but actually he would probably end up with Dorothy L. Sayers. He had always admired Harriet Vane’s angry independence, and he loved Sayers’ depictions of 1930s Oxford colleges.

He was just washing-up his supper things when there was a peremptory hammering at Quire’s main door. His heart skittered into a panic-stricken pattern, because although it was only seven p.m., what with murdered bodies in the music room and hangman’s ropes and convicted killers in Charity Cottage, you could no longer be sure who might turn up on the doorstep.

He waited until he heard Oliver’s second-floor door open, since, if there was some murderous maniac outside Godfrey was not going to confront him by himself, and then pattered down the stairs in the professor’s wake. Faint but pursuing, that was the keynote, although if he really had had a dinner bell he would have taken it with him, and if the caller had looked at all suspicious he would have swung it with vigour.