The injunction came too late. Bridget’s hand had tweaked the painful ear. Wonky Pooh spat at her and retired, a mass of orange offended dignity.
“Oh, dear, has h
e scratched you?” cried Miss Waynflete.
“Nothing much,” said Bridget, sucking a diagonal scratch on the back of her hand.
“Shall I put some iodine on?”
“Oh, no, it’s quite all right. Don’t let’s fuss.”
Miss Waynflete seemed a little disappointed. Feeling that she had been ungracious, Bridget said hastily:
“I wonder how long Luke will be?”
“Now don’t worry, my dear. I’m sure Mr. Fitzwilliam is well able to look after himself.”
“Oh, Luke’s tough all right!”
At that moment the telephone rang. Bridget hurried to it. Luke’s voice spoke.
“Hallo? That you, Bridget? I’m at the Bells and Motley. Can you wait for your traps till after lunch? Because Battle has arrived here—you know who I mean—”
“The superintendent man from Scotland Yard?”
“Yes. And he wants to have a talk with me right away.”
“That’s all right by me. Bring my things round after lunch and tell me what he says about it all.”
“Right. So long, my sweet.”
“So long.”
Bridget replaced the receiver and retailed the conversation to Miss Waynflete. Then she yawned. A feeling of fatigue had succeeded her excitement.
Miss Waynflete noticed it.
“You’re tired, my dear! You’d better lie down—no, perhaps that would be a bad thing just before lunch. I was just going to take some old clothes to a woman in a cottage not very far away—quite a pretty walk over the fields. Perhaps you’d care to come with me? We’ll just have time before lunch.”
Bridget agreed willingly.
They went out the back way. Miss Waynflete wore a straw hat and, to Bridget’s amusement, had put on gloves.
“We might be going to Bond Street!” she thought to herself.
Miss Waynflete chatted pleasantly of various small village matters as they walked. They went across two fields, crossed a rough lane and then took a path leading through a ragged copse. The day was hot and Bridget found the shade of the trees pleasant.
Miss Waynflete suggested that they should sit down and rest a minute.
“It’s really rather oppressively warm today, don’t you think? I fancy there must be thunder about!”
Bridget acquiesced somewhat sleepily. She lay back against the bank—her eyes half-closed—some lines of poetry wandering through her brain.
“O why do you walk through the fields in gloves
O fat white woman whom nobody loves?”
But that wasn’t quite right! Miss Waynflete wasn’t fat. She amended the words to fit the case.
“O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
O lean grey woman whom nobody loves?”
Miss Waynflete broke in upon her thoughts.
“You’re very sleepy, dear, aren’t you?”
The words were said in a gentle everyday tone, but something in them jerked Bridget’s eyes suddenly open.
Miss Waynflete was leaning forward towards her. Her eyes were eager, her tongue passed gently over her lips. She repeated her question:
“You’re very sleepy, aren’t you?”
This time there was no mistaking the definite significance of the tone. A flash passed through Bridget’s brain—a lightning flash of comprehension, succeeded by one of contempt at her own density!
She had suspected the truth—but it had been no more than a dim suspicion. She had meant, working quietly and secretly, to make sure. But not for one moment had she realized that anything was to be attempted against herself. She had, she thought, concealed her suspicious entirely. Nor would she have dreamed that anything would be contemplated so soon. Fool—seven times fool!
And she thought suddenly:
“The tea—there was something in the tea. She doesn’t know I never drank it. Now’s my chance! I must pretend! What stuff was it, I wonder? Poison? Or just sleeping stuff? She expects me to be sleepy—that’s evident.”
She let her eyelids droop again. In what she hoped was a natural drowsy voice, she said:
“I do—frightfully…How funny! I don’t know when I’ve felt so sleepy.”
Miss Waynflete nodded softly.
Bridget watched the older woman narrowly through her almost closed eyes.
She thought:
“I’m a match for her anyway! My muscles are pretty tough—she’s a skinny frail old pussy. But I’ve got to make her talk—that’s it—make her talk!”
Miss Waynflete was smiling. It was not a nice smile. It was sly and not very human.
Bridget thought:
“She’s like a goat. God! how like a goat she is! A goat’s always been an evil symbol! I see why now! I was right—I was right in that fantastic idea of mine! Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…That was the start of it—it’s all there.”
She murmured, and this time her voice held a definite note of apprehension.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with me…I feel so queer—so very queer!”
Miss Waynflete gave a swift glance round her. The spot was entirely desolate. It was too far from the village for a shout to be heard. There were no houses or cottages near. She began to fumble with the parcel she carried—the parcel that was supposed to contain old clothes. Apparently it did. The paper came apart, revealing a soft woolly garment. And still those gloved hands fumbled and fumbled.
“O why do you walk through the fields in gloves?”
“Yes—why? Why gloves?”
Of course! Of course! The whole thing so beautifully planned!
The wrapping fell aside. Carefully, Miss Waynflete extracted the knife, holding it very carefully so as not to obliterate the fingerprints which were already on it—where the short podgy fingers of Lord Whitfield had held it earlier that day in the drawing room at Ashe Manor.
The Moorish knife with the sharp blade.
Bridget felt slightly sick. She must play for time—yes and she must make the woman talk—this lean, grey woman whom nobody loved. It ought not to be difficult—not really. Because she must want to talk, oh, so badly—and the only person she could ever talk to was someone like Bridget—someone who was going to be silenced for ever.
Bridget said—in a faint, thick voice:
“What’s—that—knife?”
And then Miss Waynflete laughed.
It was a horrible laugh, soft and musical and ladylike, and quite inhuman. She said:
“It’s for you, Bridget. For you! I’ve hated you, you know, for a very long time.”
Bridget said:
“Because I was going to marry Gordon Whitfield?”
Miss Waynflete nodded.
“You’re clever. You’re quite clever! This, you see, will be the crowning proof against him. You’ll be found here, with your throat cut—and—his knife, and his fingerprints on the knife! Clever the way I asked to see it this morning!
“And then I slipped it into my bag wrapped in a handkerchief whilst you were upstairs. So easy! But the whole thing has been easy. I would hardly have believed it.”
Bridget said—still in the thick, muffled voice of a person heavily drugged:
“That’s—because—you’re—so—devilishly—clever….”
Miss Waynflete laughed her ladylike little laugh again. She said with a horrible kind of pride:
“Yes, I always had brains, even as a girl! But they wouldn’t let me do anything…I had to stay at home—doing nothing. And then Gordon—just a common boot-maker’s son, but he had ambition, I knew. I knew he would rise in the world. And he jilted me—jilted me! All because of that ridiculous business with the bird.”
Her hands made a queer gesture as though she were twisting something.
Again a wave of sickness passed over Bridget.
“Gordon Ragg daring to jilt me—Colonel Waynflete’s daughter! I swore I’d pay him out for that! I used to think about it night after night…And then we got poorer and poorer. The house had to be sold. He bought it!
He came along patronizing me, offering me a job in my own old home. How I hated him then! But I never showed my feelings. We were taught that as girls—a most valuable training. That, I always think, is where breeding tells.”
She was silent a minute. Bridget watched her, hardly daring to breathe lest she should stem the flow of words.
Miss Waynflete went on softly:
“All the time I was thinking and thinking…First of all I just thought of killing him. That’s when I began to read up criminology—quietly, you know—in the library. And really I found my reading came in most useful more than once later. The door of Amy’s room, for instance, turning the key in the lock from the outside with pincers after I’d changed the bottles by her bed. How she snored, that girl, quite disgusting, it was!”
She paused.
“Let me see, where was I?”
That gift which Bridget had cultivated, which had charmed Lord Whitfield, the gift of the perfect listener, stood her in good stead now. Honoria Waynflete might be a homicidal maniac but she was also something much more common than that. She was a human being who wanted to talk about herself. And with that class of human being Bridget was well fitted to cope.
She said, and her voice had exactly the right invitation in it:
“You meant at first to kill him—”
“Yes, but that didn’t satisfy me—much too ordinary—it had to be something better than just killing. And then I got this idea. It just came to me. He should suffer for committing a lot of crimes of which he was quite innocent. He should be a murderer! He should be hanged for my crimes. Or else they’d say he was mad and he would be shut up all his life…That might be even better.”
She giggled now. A horrible little giggle…Her eyes were light and staring with queer elongated pupils.
“As I told you, I read a lot of books on crime. I chose my victims carefully—there was not to be too much suspicion at first. You see,” her voice deepened, “I enjoyed the killing…That disagreeable woman, Lydia Horton—she’d patronized me—once she referred to me as an old maid. I was glad when Gordon quarrelled with her. Two birds with one stone, I thought! Such fun, sitting by her bedside and slipping the arsenic in her tea, and then going out and telling the nurse how Mrs. Horton had complained of the bitter taste of Lord Whitfield’s grapes! The stupid woman never repeated that, which was such a pity.