Afterwards Part 41

"That's just what I was going to propose," he said coolly. "At least I wasn't suggesting that you should be the person; but you might allow someone else to sit there on your behalf. You see, if Tochatti is really the mysterious writer she would not like to run the risk of keeping pens and ink in her own room where some prying eyes might light upon them sooner or later. It would be much less incriminating to use another person's tools, and it is quite possible many, if not all, of those beastly letters were written at this very table!"

The conviction in his tone brought forth a protest from Chloe.

"Dr. Anstice, have you really made up your mind that my poor Tochatti is the criminal? It seems to me that your evidence is very flimsy--after all some uneducated person might quite easily put those inverted commas wrong without being a foreigner; and I still disbelieve in Tochatti's power to write. Besides"--she paused a moment--"she has always served me with so much devotion. She is not perfect, I know, but none of us is that; and I have never, never seen anything in her manner which would lead me to suppose her to be the hypocrite, the ungrateful, heartless creature you seem to imply she is."

Listening to Chloe's words, watching the clear colour flood the marble whiteness of her cheeks, Anstice was struck by the curious contrast between this generous champions.h.i.+p of a woman who had served her and her utter indifference and lack of all protest when it was her own innocence which was in question. In defence of her servant she spoke warmly, vehemently, unwilling apparently, to allow even mere acquaintances to look upon the woman as unworthy; yet she had rarely expressed in words her own entire innocence of the disgraceful charge which had been made against her; and had suffered the cruel injustice meted out to her without allowing its iron to enter into her soul.

And as he watched and listened Anstice told himself that there was something of n.o.bility in this reluctance to accept her own acquittal at the cost of another's condemnation; yet his determination to see her righted never wavered; and he answered her impa.s.sioned speech in a cool and measured tone.

"Mrs. Carstairs, I think you will agree with me that the person who was capable of carrying out such a gigantic piece of deceit, carrying it through to the extent of allowing an innocent person to be found guilty for her offence, must be capable of a good deal more in the way of hypocrisy. I don't say for certain that your maid has written these letters; I don't yet know enough to convict her, or anyone else; but I do say that if it were she who stood by and allowed you to suffer for her wickedness, well, she is fully capable of living with you on terms of apparently, the most respectful devotion--and hating you in her heart all the while."

"But why should she hate me?" Chloe's tone expressed an almost childish wonder; and Sir Richard, who had been watching her uneasily, rose from his seat and patted her shoulder rea.s.suringly.

"There, there, don't distress yourself, my dear!" His tone was fatherly.

"After all, we only want to clear up this mystery for your sake. I daresay Anstice would be quite willing to let the matter drop if he alone were concerned----"

"Ah! I had forgotten that!" She turned to him with contrition in her blue eyes. "Dr. Anstice, please forgive me! In my selfishness I was quite forgetting that you were a victim of this unknown person's spite!

Of course the matter must be sifted to the very bottom; and if Tochatti is indeed guilty she must be punished."

"I think you are quite right, Chloe." Sir Richard spoke with unexpected decision. "For all our sakes the matter must be cleared up. You see"--he hesitated--"there are others to be considered besides ourselves."

"My husband, for one," said Chloe unexpectedly. "I heard from him this morning--he is back in England again now."

"Mrs. Carstairs"--Anstice, feeling desperately uncomfortable, broke into the conversation abruptly--"may I go upstairs and say good-night to Cherry? You know I got into serious trouble for not going up the last time I was here."

She turned to him, smiling.

"Of course you may, Dr. Anstice. I know Cherry would be heart-broken to hear you had gone without seeing her. You know the way?"

"Yes, thanks." He had grown familiar with the house during the weeks of Cherry's illness. "I won't stay long--and I'll not wake her if she's asleep."

She was not asleep, however; and her face lighted with pleasure as Anstice stole quietly in.

"Oh, do come in, my dear!" She sat up in bed, a quaint little figure with two thick brown plaits, tied with cherry-coloured ribbons, over her shoulders. "I'm just about fed up with this stupid old bed!"

She thumped her pillows resentfully; and Anstice, coming up, sat down beside her, and beat up the offending pillows with the mock professional touch which Cherry adored.

"That better, eh?"

"Rather!" She leaned back luxuriously. "Wasn't it a shame sending me to bed to-day? And I hadn't really done nothing!" The intensity of the speech called for the double negation.

"Well, I don't know what you call nothing," returned Anstice, smiling.

"Apparently you'd given poor Tochatti a terrible fright----"

"Serve her right," said Cherry placidly. "She shouldn't have been so silly as to think any _real_ person was dead. She might have known all the servants would have been howling on the doorstep _then_!"

The tone in which she made this remarkable statement was too much for Anstice's gravity; and he gave way to a fit of unrestrained laughter which mightily offended his small friend.

"I don't see anything to laugh at," she observed icily. "Seems to me people being dead ought to make you cry 'stead of laugh."

"Quite so, Cherry," returned Anstice, wiping his eyes ostentatiously.

"But you see in this case there wasn't anybody dead--at least, so I understood from Mrs. Carstairs."

"Yes, there was, then," returned Cherry, still unforgiving. "I'd gone and killed my best-b'loved Lady Daimler"--christened from her mother's car--"on purpose to make a pretty death-bed for Tochatti--and then she simply flew into a temper--oh, a most _dreadful_ temper, my dear!" At the thought of Tochatti's anger she forgave Anstice's lesser offence, and took him once more into her favour.

"That was too bad, especially as I'm sure Tochatti doesn't, often lose her temper with you," said Anstice with some guile; and Cherry looked at him gravely, without speaking.

"Not with me," she announced presently. "But Tochatti gets awful cross sometimes. She used to be fearful angry with Nurse Marg'ret. Where's Nurse Marg'ret now, my dear?"

"Don't know, Cherry. I suppose she is nursing someone else by this time.

Why do you want to know?"

"'Cos I like Nurse Marg'ret," said Cherry seriously. "Tochatti didn't.

She made a wax dollie of her once, and she only does that when she doesn't like peoples."

"A wax dollie?" Anstice was honestly puzzled. "My dear child, what do you mean?"

"She did," said Cherry stoutly. "She maded an image like what they have in their churches, because I saw her do it--out of a candle, and then she got a great long pin and stuck it in the gas and runned it into the little dollie." As Cherry grew excited her speech became slightly unintelligible. "And I know it was Nurse Marg'ret 'cos she wrote a great big 'M' on a bit of paper and pinned it on to show who it was meant for."

Her words made an instant and very unexpected impression on her hearer; not alone as a revelation of Tochatti's mediaeval fas.h.i.+on of revenging herself upon an unconscious rival--though this method of revenge was amazing in the twentieth century--but as a strangely apt confirmation of those doubts and suspicions which had been gathering round the Italian woman in Anstice's mind during the last few days.

If Cherry had spoken truly--and there was no reason to think the child was lying--then Tochatti's supposed inability to write was an error; and once that fact were proved it should not, surely, be difficult to unravel the mystery which had already caused so much unhappiness.

But first he must make sure.

"Tell me, Cherry"--he spoke lightly--"how did you see all this? Surely Tochatti didn't show you what she was doing?"

"No." For a second Cherry looked abashed; then her spirit returned to her and she spoke boldly. "It was one night when Nurse Marg'ret had gone to bed--she was awful tired, and Tochatti said she'd sit up with me ... and I was cross, 'cos I didn't want her, I wanted Nurse Marg'ret,"

said Cherry honestly, "so I wouldn't speak to her, though she tried ever so hard to make me, and she thought I'd gone to sleep, and I heard her say something in 'talian.... I 'spect it was something naughty, 'cos she sort of hissed it, like a nasty snake once did at me when I was a teeny baby in Injia," said Cherry lucidly, "and then she looked up to be sure I was asleep, so I shutted my eyes ever so tight, and then she made the wax dollie and I watched her do it." Wicked Cherry chuckled gleefully at the remembrance.

"But the letter 'M'--how do you know she wrote that?" Anstice put the question very quietly.

"'Cos she couldn't find nothin' to write with, so she crept into Nurse Marg'ret's room next through mine and came back with her pen--one of those things what has little ink-bottles inside them," said Cherry, referring, probably, to the nurse's beloved "Swan." "And I watched her ever so close, 'cos I wanted to see what she was going to do, and she wrote a big 'M' on a bit of paper and pinned it into the dollie----"

"Into?" For a moment Anstice was puzzled.

"Yes, 'cos you see the dollie was all soft and squeezy," explained Cherry obligingly, "and it hadn't got no clothes on to pin it to, so it had to go into the soft part of the dollie."

"I see. But"--Anstice was still puzzled--"why do you say the dollie was meant for Nurse Margaret? Mightn't it have been somebody else?"

"No--'cos when Tochatti hates anyone she makes wax dollies end sticks pins into them," returned Cherry calmly. "I know, 'cos she once told me about a girl she knew what wanted somebody to die, and she did that and the person died."

"Oh, my dear little Cherry, what nonsense!" Anstice, whose mother had been an Irishwoman, had heard of the superst.i.tion before, had even known an old crone in a little Irish cabin high up in the mountains who had, so it was said, practised the rite with success; but to hear the unholy gospel from Cherry's innocent lips was distinctly distasteful; and instinctively he tried to shake her faith in Tochatti's teaching.

"'Tisn't nonsense--at least I don't think so," said Cherry, rather dubiously. "Of course Nurse Marg'ret didn't die.... I don't think she even got ill--but p'raps Tochatti didn't stick the pins in far 'nuff."

"Well, I'm quite sure if she stuck in all the pins out of your cherry-tree pincus.h.i.+on it wouldn't affect Nurse Margaret or anybody else," said Anstice, putting his arm round her shoulders as he spoke.

"And you really mustn't get such silly notions into your head, Cherry Ripe!"