Free The Governess by Evelyn Hervey

but what went with?’
    ‘No. No, I got it now. It weren’t mean at all.’
    Miss Unwin’s spirits, hardly stirred by this quest even when it looked as if it might lead her to understand something of Sergeant Drewd’s aims, sank back abruptly into hopelessness.
    ‘No,’ said Vilkins, failing to notice that her friend had flopped back miserably on to her pillow. ‘No, it weren’t mean at all. It were lots on ‘em. It were means, he talked about. Means. Yes, means.’
    Miss Unwin straightened up as if a galvanic shock had jerked through her.
    ‘Means?’ she said. ‘Did the Sergeant say that I had had the means to commit murder?’
    ‘Yes,’ Vilkins replied, her eyes brightly shining. ‘Yes, them was his very words almost. She had the means, he said, an’ – an’ she had the – the – the opportunity. But what is lacking is…’
    ‘Is what, Vilkins?’
    Vilkins’s fiery dab of a nose sank floorwards.
    ‘Can’t remember, Unwin. Can’t bring it to mind at all.’
    But Miss Unwin was hot on the scent now. Her grasp of logic, if it had been smothered by her troubles before, was firmly back in place again.
    ‘Means,’ she said. ‘The means to commit the crime. That must be the paper-knife that was so conveniently to hand there. That’s one necessity. And opportunity. That there was no one else present, or so the Sergeant believes. That’s the second necessity. So the third …? The third …? Yes, I have it. A reason, a motive, for my supposed act. Yes, a motive.’
    ‘That’s it. That’s it, Unwin. You ain’t got no motive. That’s what he said. You ain’t got no motive, or not anything he knows about. An’ without a motive, whatever that may be when it’s at ‘ome, he ain’t a-going to risk arresting you.’
    ‘Well, I suppose there’s something to be thankful for there.’
    ‘Yes, but all the same, what’re we going to do? That’s a poser if you like.’
    ‘Yes. Yes, it is. I can think of nothing but to hope the Sergeant never succeeds in finding me a motive for having done that horrible thing. Yet I cannot believe he will not find something sooner or later. I very much suspect he is the sort of person who must have success, cost what it may.’
    ‘Yes, I dare say you’ve the right on it there. He’s got the look.’
    Vilkins lapsed into a gloom almost as thickly pervading as Miss Unwin’s.
    But she it was, strangely, who came out of it first.
    After two or three minutes of grim, if companionable, silent misery she suddenly lifted up her big nose like a dog scenting dinner.
    ‘There’s only one thing for it, Unwin,’ she said. ‘Only one thing for it.’
    Miss Unwin scarcely stirred. But Vilkins went on undismayed.
    ‘Only one thing to be done. An’ you’re the one to do it. You’re the one what solved the mystery o’ the missing sugar-mice, an’ you’re the one what’s got to solve the mystery o’ the dead Master. You’ve got to do it, to save yore own skin.’
    ‘No. No, Vilkins, you don’t understand. The sugar-mice were one thing. But this … This is serious, deadly serious.’
    ‘Why then, all the more reason why you got to settle it. You can do it. I knows that. I knew you when we was only a pair o’ tiddlers, don’t forget. I knows as how you got the brains for anything. I knows that from long ago. But it’s up to you to use ‘em, Unwin. That’s just up to you.’
    Miss Unwin sat there on the edge of her narrow bed, and bit by bit into her mind there crept a feeling of resolution.
    Until at last she looked up.
    ‘Yes, Vilkins,’ she said, ‘you’re right. And bless you for making me know it. You’re right. I am the only one who can help myself now. It is up to me to find who did kill Mr Thackerton before Sergeant Drewd charges me with the crime. It’s up to me, and I will do it.’

Chapter Seven
    Miss Unwin, her resolution taken, found herself overwhelmed at once by immense tiredness. She was hardly able to mutter to Vilkins how much she longed