'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.
Partridge, who enjoys calamity, came into Joanna's room at an early hour the following morning, and told her with considerable relish that Mrs. Symmington had committed suicide on the preceding afternoon.
Joanna, who had been lost in the mists of sleep, sat up in bed shocked wide awake.
'Oh, Partridge, how awful.'
'Awful it is, Miss. It's wickedness taking your own life. Not but what she was drove to it, poor soul.'
Joanna had an inkling of the truth then. She felt rather sick.
'Not -?' Her eyes questioned Partridge and Partridge nodded.
'That's right, Miss. One of them nasty letters.'
'How beastly,' said Joanna. 'How absolutely beastly! All the same, I don't see why she should kill herself for a letter like that.'
'Looks as though what was in the letter was true, Miss.'
'What was in it?'
But that, Partridge couldn't or wouldn't say. Joanna came in to me, looking white and shocked. It seemed worse, somehow, that Mrs. Symmington was not the kind of person you associated with tragedy.
Joanna suggested that we might ask Megan to come to us for a day or two. Elsie Holland, she said, would be all right with the children, but was the kind of person who would, almost certainly, drive Megan half mad.
I agreed. I could imagine Elsie Holland uttering platitude after platitude and suggesting innumerable cups of tea.
A kindly creature but not the right person for Megan. We drove down to the Symmingtons' house after breakfast.
We were both of us a little nervous. Our arrival might look like sheer ghoulish curiosity. Luckily we met Owen Griffith just coming out. He greeted me with some warmth, his worried face lighting up.
'Oh, hullo, 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, nervous 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 judgement. 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 blow at a venture.'
'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 unbalance her judgement temporarily.'
'Suicide while of unsound mind,' said Joanna.
'Exactly. I shall be quite justified, I think, in putting forward that point of view at the inquest.'
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.
'No, but really, Mr. Symmington, you must take something. You haven't had any breakfast, not what I call a proper breakfast, and nothing to eat last night, and what with the shock and all, you'll be getting ill yourself, and you'll need all your strength. The doctor said so before he left.'
Symmington said in a toneless voice, 'You're very kind, Miss Holland, but -'
'A nice cup of hot tea,' said Elsie Holland, thrusting the beverage on him firmly.
Personally I should have given the poor devil a stiff whisky-and-soda. He looked as though he needed it. However he accepted the tea, and looking up at Elsie Holland:
'I can't thank you for all you've done and are doing, Miss Holland. You've been perfectly splendid.'
The girl flushed and looked pleased.
'It's nice of you to say that, Mr. Symmington. You must let me do all I can to help. Don't worry about the children – I'll see to them, and I've got the servants calmed down, and if there's anything I can do, letter-writing or telephoning, don't hesitate to ask me.'
'You're very kind,' Symmington said again.
Elsie Holland, turning, caught sight of us and came hurrying out into the hall.
'Isn't it terrible?' she said in a hushed whisper.
I thought, as I looked at her, that she was really a very nice girl. Kind, competent, practical in an emergency. Her magnificent blue eyes were just faintly rimmed with pink, showing that she had been soft-hearted enough to shed tears for her employer's death.
'Can we speak to you a minute?' asked Joanna. 'We don't want to disturb Mr. Symmington.'
