“THEY SAY SHE KILLED HIM”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 March 1941, Page 10

“THEY SAY SHE KILLED HIM”

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY

PEARL BELLAIRS.

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

CHAPTER X. At first Valerie thought she would do anything—anything! —to get away from Trench. She went to the far end of the Tourist B deck, and leaned on the stern rail, over the churning screws, and held her head in her hands in a blind desperation of emotion. She wished herself anywhere—anywhere but on the Mahal, if Trench was aboard it too! And to think that he had been there all the time for the last three days and she had not known it! But the windy loneliness at the end of the ship offered no comfort. Mist and rain were blowing over the Mediterranean, the screws churned and shook and the stern of the liner dipped dizzily . . She was driven below again; but it was difficult to think clearly in the crowded lounge, or down in the cabin where two of the other nurses were exchanging gossip about patients and hospitals. At first she thought of leaving the ship at Marseilles. She had friends on the Riviera; she could stay there before going back to London, or perhaps go to Spain and see if she could find something worth doing there . . Rut when the Mahal put into Marseilles under the chill, wet blanket of the mistral Valerie had got the better of her cowardice.

She would not run away. She was not afraid of Trench. She had done her best to alter her life, and could not do more . . Perhaps it might be that he would realise that in the end, and do her justice.

On such a big liner, travelling in different classes, it was possible for two passengers never to see one another from one week’s end to another. Valerie avoided going into the Tourist class, on any pretext, such as visiting the barber’s shop or the Purser’s office as the other nurses did. She stayed at the end of the Tourist B deck from which the Tourist deck was not visible.

At Port Said she saw Trench on the other side of the street, walking with one of'the women passengers; and a sports event for the children in which Valerie was assisting threw them together one hot afternoon in the blue blaze of the Indian ocean.

Trench had the job of mustering the little boys in the Tourist class, Valerie the little girls from the Tourist B. For a whole two hours they were together in the Tourist promenade deck. They nodded to one another in formal manner. And once, when he was just in front of her at the judge’s table, she studied him covertly, painfully noting the traces of his likeness to poor Peter. It was there, in the rather wide forehead, and in the lock of hair, redder than Peter's, which tended to detach itself from the well-brushed remainder and fall over his brow. But his features were more substantial, he Had an ail- of strength in reserve which made him as different from Peter as an oak from an aspen. She wondered if he hated her presence very much, disgusted and dismayed by the chance that had thrown them together? To Trench also, though he looked unruffled enough, the afternoon was one of queer tensity, haunted by the knowledge of the past, and the lack of suspicion in everyone about them. His eyes were continually drawn across the deck to where she was sitting or standing.

To him it was a piece of stupid bad luck that they should both have joined the mission.

He did not want to withdraw the things he had said to her about Peter. They were true, but in these circumstances he wished he had never' said them. He wished he had not given way to his feelings, but had been as conscious of their uselessness then as he was now.

It puzzled him to know why the deuce she was playing at being a nurse and travelling Tourist B on a mission to China!

Valerie’s reason for being with the mission was a puzzle to others besides Trench. The other nurses had a professional excuse. They none of them seemed to think much about the risks, though conversation on board was always turning to the subject of the war in China, and conditions in general in the East. Those passengers who had been there before regaled the others who were going with depressing narratives of dirt, death, famine, and disease.

But Valerie had no excuse for going to China. Her photograph had appeared too often in the illustrated weeklies since she was eighteen. Everyone knew that her father was one of the wealthiest men in England. It was exaggerated and absurd that she should be travelling Tourist B. She belonged to another world. She did her best to fit in with the other nurses. But she became more and more conscious that she was an outsider. unqualified for the job she was going to share with them. On all sides she saw a sort of consciousness and curiosity in the rough and ready Tourist B passengers which froze her into loneliness. The only person who ventured to ask her why she was going to China was one of the other nurses in her cabin. ‘ Because life seems futile if one lives it for oneself alone,” said Valerie, uncomfortably. Such confidences always sounded out of place, and in her experience nobody seemed to take them seriously. The nurse, who was young and impulsive, had conceived a great admiration for Valerie, and was always telling the other nurses how beautiful she was, and describing the “marvellous” underwear she wore. But of the two other cabinmales, Miss Paley, who was sour and sallow and thirty, never lost her hostility to Valerie. The third, middle-aged, cynical, and good-hu-moured, was always friendly to her; and when accused of snobbery by the

sharp-tongued Miss Paley, said with a laugh that one “ought never to neglect one’s chances. She wouldn’t mind nursing Sir George Lane through his last illness some time or other!” The story of Valerie’s explanation of why she had joined the mission soon went round. Dr. O’Connell, who made a habit of going into the Tourist B decks, heard about it. The way in which he sought her company was obvious to Valerie early in the passage, but she did not want to attract him. She was frightened of her attraction for men. She dreaded the possibility of having any influence on another man such as she had had on Peter. Her only defence was to avoid those officers and male passengers who showed any active signs of interest in her. In consequence she soon had a reputation of being standoffish. Her coolness rankled a little in Dr. O’Connell’s vanity, but he could not resist mentioning her and speculating about her sometimes at the bridge table in the smoking-room, where he made up a four with Trench, Macey, and the ship’s surgeon. Trench would listen and made no contribution to the subject. Two days out of Colombo while the ship laboured through a streaming monsoon, O'Connell remarked at the beginning of a rubber: “Our society ‘lovely’ will be a grand one for scrubbing the floors and making the beds! It seems she was too tired to go into Colombo at eleven o’clock in the morning when the second officer asked her.” “Pooh!” said the ship’s surgeon, a wizened little man. “He didn’t think she’d go with him, did her—just because she happens to be travelling Tourist B?” Dr. O’Connell took up his cards and said nothing. While they were waiting for Dr. Macey to call, the surgeon remarked: “I know something about that young woman. I heard it from a ,chap in Colombo —and as soon as I was reminded, I remembered the business myself. It may explain what she’s doing on this mission of yours, giving up the bright lights for the sake of suffering China.” O’Connell was all ears at once. Trench put down his cards and lighted a cigarette carefully, afraid of what was- coming. So far as he knew, none of the men he was with connected him with Peter’s case —or indeed, remembered that trivial little newspaper sensation, six months past now, among a thousand others. But he was right in feeling nervous. In another moment, without the least suspicion that Trench had anything to do with the affair, the surgeon was telling them about it:

“Didn’t any of you chaps see a case in the papers a few months back, about some young writer chap who committed suicide? He wrote a book, or something, and when the critics didn’t like it, he was so put out that he hanged himself. I don’t remember the name, I only remember reading about it; and I said to myself at the time: ‘Well that’s a queer reason for doing a thing like that!” I thought there was more to it. I forgot all about it, and then when I met this friend of mine in Colombo —a chap in the Navy—he began talking about it.” Dr. Macey looked up from consideration of his cards to cut in.

“I remember the case! My sister got the chap's book from the library and tried to get me to read it!” “Eh? Well, it seems that this girl Valerie Lane was mixed up with the affair. They kept it out of the papers; but the truth of it was that this young chap hanged himself on her account!" Dr. O’Connell whistled. Trench, sitting in weary silence, teeth set on the resolve to say nothing at all, could see the whetted interest in Dr. O'Connell’s eye.

Trench could see that it only needed the information that a man had hanged himself for Valerie, to give her the final touch of romantic and dramatic fascination.

“But why,” Dr. O’Connell demanded. “Why does that explain what she’s doing with the Mission? Are you meaning to say she had to leave to get away from the scandal?” “Good lord, no! If she wanted to escape a scandal she’d have more comfortable ways of doing it than that! But it mayn’t be the pleasantest thing in the world, perhaps, to know that a man’s killed himself for you!” “Remorse?” queried Dr. Macey, with his wintry smile. •'l’m not saying it’s so,” said the surgeon with a shrug. "But it supplies a motive for what seems to puzzle our friend here, so much!” and he nodded at O'Connell. '‘One no-trump,” said Dr. Macey, who thought it was time they played bridge. O'Connell was so much distracted by the sensation of the story about Valerie that it was a moment or two before he could bring his allention to the game. As he took no part in the conversation, nobody took any notice of Trench. Finally Dr. Macey, who was dummy, having put down his cards remarked: "I recollect the name of the writer now. It was Peter Trench. At. least, I'm pretty sure ! He broke oh' Io look at Trench and ask mildly, “No relation of yours—l hope?” So little did they expect anythin;' but a denial, that there were smiles on the faces of the oilier two men. O'Connell had put down his lead. Trench seized the opportunity to evade any answer, by smiling and going quickly ahead with the game, looking as though the question were not worth a reply. He looked so absorbed, look the trick in dummy, and lead again so promptly, that by the time he had lost tile lead Dr. Macey’s question was forgotten.

Trench knew that it would have been useless and acutely unpleasant

Cor the others if he had told them that they had been discussing his brother . . . lie might, perhaps, tell Macey in private afterwards, with a word of explanation. When the subject seemed safely abandoned, his mind dealt with the game almost unconsciously, while his thoughts pursued their bitter way. The casual discussion of Peter's death was painful enough. But the surgeon's suggestion that Valerio was posing self-sacrifice annoyed him. Trench remembered his own prediction. How right he had been! He had told her that one way or another she would contrive to make Peters death into something flattering to herself! (To be continued.)