“THEY SAY SHE KILLED HIM”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 March 1941, Page 10

“THEY SAY SHE KILLED HIM”

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY rr " —'.7 J? •?£W£ ■

PEARL BELLAIRS.

(Author of “Velvet and Steel,” “Christabel,” etc.)

CHAPTER IV. (Continued). “Dr. Trench?” said Valerie. “Peter Trench's brother. Didn't I tell you that I'd seen him?” “No —what did he say?” “Oh, nothing much. But I was afraid he might be hostile! However, he wasn't, so it doesn't matter!" And Sir George rang oil'. So Dr. Trench might be hostile! Valerie remembered him, silent, ironic, and rather forbidding, at that party. What did he think? Did he blame her too? The thought of his ill opinion troubled her. At the same time the verdict at the inquest, and the Coroner’s opinion relieved her mind to the extent of makink her feel that her remorse for not having gone to see Peter was rather exaggerated. She had done everything she could for him, she had persuaded Delfield to publish his verse, she could not have done more . . It was just another tragedy to add to the lost list of unhappy artists, and it had to be forgotten. She rang Daisy Lismore, and Daisy suggested that a quiet little party—just half a dozen, people—in Valerie’s flat that evening, might liven her up. Valerie consented reluctantly. After all, one had to try to forget. All the day, during the inquest in the little Parish Hall and afterwards, Dr. Trench wondered whether he should show Peter’s letter to Valerie. He was thinking about it as he drove cut to Essex, as he had promised to do, to see his father. He sat with his father in the neat sitting room of the brick cottage in which he lived with his sister Alice. As a boy Trench had lived in just such another’ house by the railway station or Little Aiding, vzhere his father had worked as porter, and then station master. Peter had always been a puzzle to Mr. Trench, and his death was no less so. Peter was even more foreign to him than Simon, who had risen by his own efforts to the astounding heights of being a doctor. Mr. Trench admired Simon, he felt no envy of his elder son for so far outstripping him. But Peter had been a queer- one, with his poetry books, and keeping his hair long, and the strange things he said —! “He did it because he was downhearted about what the papers had in them about his book?” said Mr. Trench. It was odd enough that a son of his should be in the papers at all —unless because of some “IS that what they said?” “Yes,” said Trench; and again he felt that dull sort of anger at having to repress Valerie’s part in the matter. But it would have required so much explanation and his father was becoming a little hard of understanding. Mr. Trench shook his head, pained by the misery of the world. Aunt Alice sat by, red eyed and silent, the picture of a patient slave. She had worked in the local draper’s shop for twenty nine years.

“I never did understand Peter,” said Mr. Trench. “Many a time I had hard words with him on that account. But it’s done with now—the poor lad!” He made thorough enquiries into the arrangements for the funeral in Hertforshire next day. “You must see it’s all done proper.” he said, and told Aunt Alice: “You must see about my black suit. I haven’t worn it since mother died.”

Trench came away sorry for his father, yet with his loneliness unrelieved. He had so made his life that he could no longer feel any real kinship with the old man, working his bit of garden, feeding his fowls, and reading the paper. He respected his father’s stoical acceptance of his “place,” but they haff no common ground. His mother had been different. She had been the influence which had made him work hard at the village school and get a scholarship at the grammar. There he had found another influence in an unusually vigorous English master, who had lifted both him and Peter out of their mental environment.

Simon had won scholarship after scholarship, and had taken a medical degree at Cambridge. But Peter, less able, had turned would-be artist, poet and genius; a maternal relative had lef.t him enough to ensure him a pound a week and his endefinite career had ended in the mortuary of a country hospital.

Men who have climbed by their own efforts tend to turn either into toadies or rebels. Simon Trench tended to be a rebel. And his sense of a losing fight against society was hot in him as he drove back to London that evening.

• That letter of Peter’s burned in his notecase against his breast . . But he was tired and getting cooler.

He was almost resolved to forget Valeries Lane and let her go her way in undeserved peace when, seeking distraction for his tired brain, he turned into one of the news reel cinemas near Piccadilly. He watched for about twenty minutes. It was no use. His depression conquered his attention. He was thinking of going when a title flashed on the screen.

“Captain Forrestier lands in Paris after Atlantic flight.”

He was reminded that Valerie had been in Paris then. Ho watched with greater interest.

The arcs of floodlights fanned out against a black sky. Black figures swarmed to and fro, now and then turning swarthy faces towards the camera, the noise of the crowd hummed below the urgent voice of the newsreel commentator . . An instant later the plane shot out of the darkness touched the ground, glided on, and was lost behind the running figures of the spectators. The cheers at Le Bourget landing ground filled the London theatre . .

The camera flashed to a close-up, showed Forrestier climbing stiffly down from the machine, in the midst of a milling crowd. He was laughing and held out his hand to greet someone —a woman.

She turned, smiling, full in the face of the camera; and with, a shock, Trench recognised Valerie . . .

The hubbub of cheers filled the theatre, suddenly ceased. The newsreel switched on to something else.

Trench didn’t wait to see it. He had seen enough. He rose and groped his way blindly out of the cinema. He crossed the pavement without an instant’s hesitation, and hailed a taxi.

He had already looked up Valerie’s address in the telephone book that morning; he got into a taxi and told the driver to take him to her flat.

That sight of her, smiling, carefree, sharing Forrestier’s triumph at Le Bourget, was too much for Trench. At that moment Peter had been alone in Hertfordshire, thinking, perhaps already trying ! No, it was too much. Trench was too bitterly angry for discretion. CHAPTER V. The door of the lounge into which the maid had shown him stood half open, and through it Simon Trench could hear voices, and the sound of laughter. His face was white and tired, and his eyes shone queerly as he stood there listening. His lips twisted for a moment in what was hardly mirthful enough to be called a smile. After a moment Valerie came out to him. She closed the door behind her, with a movement which made the light gleam on the “V” of skin between the dark, filmy purple stuff of her negligee crossed over her bosom; the chiffon fell away from her shoulders, leaving her arms bare, and the light gleamed there, too, on the creamy white flesh Her hair was brushed out cloudily behind her ears. Dressed like that her beauty had a tenderly abandoned look which somehow. only served to accentuate the lovely innocence of her face. “Dr. Trench!” she murmured. “You remembered me?”

There was irony in his tone, something in the way in which he threw his words contemptuously in the teeth of her commiserating manner, which made Valerie flinch. But she persisted in her sympathetic tone: “Yes, of course I do. Please sit down. You came about your brother —'?” He looked at her, his gaze straight as a sword blade, and seeming to hold her before it as the point of a sword might have done. “No, thank you. I won’t sit down.” He stood there, and it was she who sat down. His manner made her un-easy—-at a loss. What had he come for?” “I was so shocked,” she began. “It was a terrible thing. Frightful for anyone belonging to him. I was so sorry that I could no nothing; perhaps I could have helped, but I was away in Paris.” “So I understand.” Silence. There was nothing to do but to ignore the stoniness of his tone and struggle on, but she was saved, for he spoke himself: “My brother wrote a letter before he took his life. The police knew nothing of it. Possibly I should have handed it to the coroner; I haven't inquired what the penalty for withholding evidence is in these cases. However, I withheld it.” He paused. “He explained to you why he did it?” Valerie said painfully. “Yes."

“And why—?" He looked at her, with such bitter amusement, such savage and incredulous contempt. “Have you no idea, Miss Lane?" “What do you mean?” She winced from his sarcasm. “Perhaps you’d like to see his letter?”

She moistened her dry lips, watching with dread as he took out his notecase. He abstracted the letter and handed it to her. Her hand trembled as she took it, and read the few scrambled words: “Dear Simon, Forgive the trouble I’m making, but I don’t think I ever had an hour’s happiness in my life, so why go on? My verse is all muck, of course. That wouldn’t matter, if it wasn’t that I feci I shall always deceive myself, if not about one thing, about another. Vai said she was coming tonight, but she’s gone to Paris. You were right, and I was wrong, but I don’t blame her.” That was all. It was signed “Yours Peter,” and headed, like the one he had sent io her. “Oak Cottage, 1 a.m., Sunday.” Speechlessly, Valeric handed it back to him. So things were as bad as she had feared. The realisation of it paralysed her; but she gathered the remnants of her pride together to ask Trench hollowly: “Why didn’t you give the letter to the coroner?” “Not because 1 wanted to save you from censure." Trench• replied: “but because I thought it would be rather hard on Eileen—the girl Peter was engaged to.” “I see!" Valerie nodded. She clenched her fists in the effort to control herself, not to expose to him the dreadful pain which was racking her since she had read the letter.

Trench glanced at her, but she lowered her eyes and would not speak, and then, as though her passivity were the breaking point of his reserve, he walked tip and clown in front of her telling her everything that was in his mind.

He did it with a logical impersonal determination to state the truth that was far more devastating than any apparent animosity would have been. (To be continued.)