Read Online Eternity Ring by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online

doing. The reason you were so frightened was because you had heard a dragging noise. Are you sticking to that?”
    Her hand was pressing down upon the pearls, and upon the upward surge of her breath.
    “Of course I am!”
    His eyebrows rose.
    “I haven’t measured the distance from the top of the dip to where you ran on to the path, but I should say it was all of two hundred yards. Are you going to say that you walked all that way along the edge of the wood in the direction of the noise which had frightened you so much?”
    Miss Silver saw her pull at the pearls and tangle them.
    “Why shouldn’t I?”
    “It seems a little strange.”
    She flared up suddenly.
    “What’s strange about it? Anything’s strange if you like to make it out that way! There wasn’t anything strange at all! I heard the noise like I said, and I ran off the road where the wood begins, before there’s any ditch. Well then, I stood a bit and listened, and the noise had stopped, so I went on again, but I kept in among the bushes just in case. I’m pretty good in the dark, and I thought if it was anyone who’d had a bit too much to drink, well, I could always dodge him in the wood. When I got down into the dip I heard the noise again, so I just stood still where I was.”
    “I see. So you’re good in the dark—”
    “Nothing wrong about that, is there?”
    “Oh, no—very useful. You stood there and watched someone drag a body out of the wood. If you’re so good in the dark you’d be able to see whether he was dragging it, wouldn’t you?”
    “That’s what I said.”
    “I seem to remember you being a little inclined to hedge. Well, what about it—was he dragging her, or wasn’t he?”
    “That’s what it sounded like. I said he might have been carrying her, and so he might.”
    That light stare of his persisted.
    “All right—he was dragging her, or he was carrying her. Which side of you was he—between you and the village?”
    She hesitated, angry and confused.
    “I tell you it was dark!”
    “But you’re good in the dark—you’ve just said so. Look here, Miss Stokes, you were coming from Tomlin’s Farm and you were on the way to the village. You simply must know which side of you this man came out of the bushes—behind you, or in front of you—between you and the farm, or between you and Deeping.”
    “It was between me and the village. You get me all confused.”
    His voice took an ironic inflection.
    “I should be sorry to do that. But if he came out between you and the village he must have crossed the ditch just where it’s wettest, at the bottom of the dip. I’m telling you that no one could have got across that ditch either dragging or carrying a body without leaving footprints—it couldn’t have been done.”
    Her fingers were motionless, pressing down upon the pearls. She said nothing. He went on.
    “You said in your statement that he put her down on the path, got out a torch, and put the light on her.”
    She gave a slight shiver.
    “Yes, he did.”
    “You saw what it was he had been carrying—or dragging?”
    She looked up and nodded. Miss Silver, watching, saw the angry expression change to a sick remembering one. But there was something else as well. The hand clenched on the pearls relaxed—came back to join the other in her lap.
    Mary Stokes was suddenly full of words. Her breath hurried, she couldn’t get them out fast enough.
    “Oh, it was horrible! She had been hit over the head—a lot of light hair, and blood on it, and her eyes open. That’s how I knew she was dead. Her eyes were open, and he flashed the torch in them—and they never moved. So I knew she was dead. And there was the earring, catching up the light—a real ring set all round with diamonds.”
    “What size was the ring? I’d like the most exact description you can give me.”
    “About the size of a wedding-ring—half an inch or three-quarters—I don’t know, I’ve never measured one, but that’s what it looked