He was in an old raincoat and his face was averted. By his walk and the white hair that showed under his felt hat, it was possible to tell that he was an oldish man, but not much more. Yet there was something familiar about him, something about the fringe of white hair and the set of the shoulders, moving away from them, that stirred Colin’s memory. Change the raincoat for a white jacket, imagine beetling eyebrows and hard, supercilious eyes…
“It’s that man of Greer’s!” he exclaimed.
Yet as he said it, he became uncertain. Some other memory confused him, overlying this one with its shadowy image, as if he had exposed the same negative twice.
“Yes.” Ginny drew away from him, opened her handbag and took out a comb. She dragged it through her furry short hair with quick, vicious strokes, as if she were punishing it for something. There was no expression on her face except perhaps a trace of apprehension. “I suppose he’s been following us all day. And now he probably knows we know it. I’m afraid we overacted.”
“Did you?” Colin asked.
She put her comb back in her bag, closed it, and stood up.
“We were talking about John Clitheroe, d’you remember, whom you didn’t think existed?” she said. “And about how my mother knew the picture had been stolen. And so on, and so on. Such a lot of things. And I asked you what you were going to do next about the picture and you haven’t told me yet. But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.”
“What?” Colin’s mouth had become dry and his voice sounded harsh.
“I’m going back to Oldersfield.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Ginny, don’t.” He reached for her hand. “Don’t get some cock-eyed idea in your head you can steal the picture from Greer.”
“There are other things to do besides that.”
“Such as?”
“Talk to my mother. Find out if she knows Greer. Find out how she discovered the picture was valuable. Find out—”
She was trying to keep the detachment of her tone, but on the last words her voice quavered, “—what else she’s got herself involved in.”
“Yes, I see.”
“I’ve a lot of things to straighten out,” she said.
“But you won’t go near Greer yourself? Promise me that.”
Her voice rose. “What’s the point of a promise, Colin? I’ve broken plenty and I’ll go on breaking them when I feel like it. I’m not a trustworthy character, you’ve guessed that yourself. So I’ll do what I think best when I know what I’m up against. And you had better go back to Scotland.”
“I was just going to say,” Colin said evenly, as if he had not heard the note of hysteria in her voice, “it looks to me as if the next phase of the operation is in Scotland. We ought to find out what the aunts know about the picture and if Dickman’s right that the law about market overt is quite different there. So why don’t you come with me?”
“To Scotland? To Ardachoil?”
“Yes.”
She gave a dry little laugh, yet her face had lit up.
“I’m afraid I haven’t been invited,” she said.
“I’m inviting you,” said Colin.
“And that counts with the Lockie ladies, does it?”
“It had better.”
“When are you going?”
“I thought, tonight. But if you’ve got to go back to Oldersfield for luggage—”
“Oh, that wouldn’t matter. But—no, Colin.” The light died out of her face. “I think I’ll just go back to Oldersfield. That’ll be easiest for you, won’t it?”
Sharply disappointed, he said, “Will you promise me not to go near Greer?”
“If that makes you feel any happier.”
“Only you’ve just warned me you don’t keep your promises.”
“Some I do. But that one—well, it might be impractical.”
He stood up and they started walking back towards the gates.
As they did so, the man in the raincoat, who had been resting on a bench a short distance away, stood up and came strolling after them.
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHT
« ^ »
Seeing this, Colin said with a new urgency, “Ginny, come with me! We’ll take the train to Edinburgh and pick up my car and drive on to Ardachoil.”
“Because of that little man?” She laughed. “The right thing for us to do now is separate. It’ll be interesting to find out which of us he’s following.”
“If you insist on going back to Oldersfield, I’m going too,” Colin said.
“No, you’re not. We’re going to separate and you’re going back to Scotland to find out who persuaded your aunts to have the picture cleaned, so that I can find out what connection that person has with my mother. And we’ll both keep a watch over our shoulders to see which of us the little man’s following.”
“If it turns out he’s following you, I’m going to follow him.”
“No, don’t. I don’t want you to.”
“I’m not always going to do exactly what you want, Ginny.”
“But this time—please, Colin! You can’t help me with my mother and she’s what I’ve got to cope with when I get back. So please go home.”
She spoke with such force that he hesitated. In that moment Ginny jumped into a passing taxi.
Twenty yards away the man in the raincoat paused, lit a cigarette and studied a clump of snowdrops until Colin started to walk slowly towards a bus stop. Then he came strolling after him.
Colin went to King’s Cross. He had several hours to kill before the next train to Edinburgh, but he thought that he might as well go to the station and book a sleeper for the night.
The man in the raincoat travelled in the same bus with him. He got off at the same stop and followed Colin to the door of the reservations office. He did not seem to care that Colin obviously knew that he was being followed.
Inside the office there was a queue of some length. Colin took his place at the end of it and as he moved slowly nearer to the counter, had time to think about what had happened.
Ginny had almost agreed to go to Ardachoil. She had wanted to go. Then suddenly she had decided against it and also that she did not want Colin in her way at Oldersfield. And because he had not quite believed that she meant it, had more than half-expected some change in her mood and her plan which would result in his having to go to Oldersfield with her whether he wanted to or not, he had let her get away. And now here he was, doing as she had told him, tamely setting off for Edinburgh with their shadow at his heels…
But why had she arranged this? What was her real reason for it? Was it that she was not going back to Oldersfield at all?
If so, he realized, there was not much point in his asking himself where she was going instead. He knew too little about her to be able to make any guess at an answer. It would be more useful to stick to the assumption that she was returning to Oldersfield and then think out why it mattered to her if he came along too. Always supposing that she had not simply got tired of him, got bored, decided that one kiss was enough and that it was time to go back to her mother.
Colin had his wallet in his hand as he thought of this and he was taking out some money in readiness to pay for his sleeper. He frowned at the notes, not really seeing them, but aware that they represented a necessity to make up his mind quickly about something or other.
Whether Ginny was returning to her mother or not, it didn’t seem to matter to the man in the raincoat. It was what Colin was doing that he had been sent to find out, and perhaps, while he was at it, to try a little intimidation. Was this business of being shadowed supposed to impress on the young university lecturer that he was getting into deeper waters than he was used to?
A disturbing thing connected with that idea, Colin found, was that the thought of the man outside on the platform did stir a kind of fear in him. He had felt it when the man had walked past in Gray’s Inn, leaving him with the confused conviction that this was not really G
reer’s man-servant at all, but someone else, who meant something quite different in Colin’s life.
Whoever he was, why be scared of him? What could he do in London’s crowded streets or the busy station? Pull out a gun? Throw a knife?
Deliberately crushing down that puzzling fear as he moved on a few steps in the queue to the counter, Colin started to think about Greer and what he was doing, alone in his fortress of a house at Hopewood. Actually, Colin had no evidence that Greer lived alone there. He might have a wife, children, his ancient parents, and a host of servants living with him. But even when Colin had admitted this to himself, he went on feeling certain that Greer lived alone except for his one sinister man-servant, the man with the pale, puffy face, the sly vicious eyes, the thick eyebrows…
A trickle of cold slid along Colin’s nerves. They had been dark, the eyebrows of the man lying in the middle of the lonely Highland road, but that would have needed only a few strokes of a pencil. And if there was nothing that he could do here in King’s Cross Station, there it had been easy. He had only had to lie and wait, while his accomplice hid in the bracken. His accomplice, Greer… ?
“Yes, sir?”
The clerk, whom Colin was now facing across the counter, was looking at him impatiently.
Hurriedly Colin pushed the two pound notes back into his wallet and the wallet into his pocket.
“I’m sorry, I’ve just realized I’ve got mixed up,” he said. “The wrong night. Sorry.”
He strode away, aware that the clerk was shaking his head and muttering something about the sort of people who were allowed out loose, while several people in the queue started grinning.
In the doorway, seeing his shadow turning over the pages of a magazine at the bookstall, Colin paused and grinned too. Not a pleasant grin. Not one that many of his friends had ever seen on his face. After a moment he turned away and went to the cafeteria.
He knew that what he had to do now was keep his head, not give in to the fury that was pulsing through him. But as he walked his way along another queue to buy a cup of tea, he let himself dream of picking the man up by the throat, shaking him till the eyes bulged out of his head, and throwing him on to the line just as an engine came along to crush him flat…
The man in the raincoat had come into the cafeteria a moment after him. He did not join in the queue between the counter and the railing. It would have been too easy for him to be trapped there if Colin had made a sudden dash for the door. Instead, sitting down with a grunt of weariness at a table between Colin and the nearest door, he lit a cigarette and opened an evening paper.
Colin did not look at him directly. He was afraid that his recognition, his recollection of that other meeting, would show too plainly in his face. He could feel his eyes giving him away, staring with an intensity that he could not control. The only thing to do with them was to fix them on his cup of tea. Perhaps in a little while he would let the man know that he had been recognized. On the other hand, perhaps not. He had to think that out.
Staring into his tea, stirring it mechanically, Colin wondered when the next train left for Oldersfield and what way there was of leaving the man behind here when he went to catch it. At first it seemed clear that he had to leave him behind. The air would be purer and his head clearer once he had shaken off the offensive presence. But after a few minutes he began to wonder if it would be worth the effort. Suppose he managed to dodge away in the crowd, the man had merely to go to Charing Cross and look for him on the Oldersfield train.
In any case, he and Greer would soon know that Colin had returned to Oldersfield, for it was unlikely that Colin would be able to see Ginny without Harriet knowing of it and Harriet would tell Greer.
If Harriet was the link.
But of course she was the link.
Colin drank his tea, stood up in a leisurely way, went out and got into a taxi, noticing, as he had expected, that as it left the station on the way to Charing Cross, another taxi followed close behind it.
In the train to Oldersfield he again became absorbed in the thought of Ginny. Almost he managed to stop caring about his shadow. It seemed to him now a matter of even greater importance than he had thought before to get Ginny away from her mother. For if Harriet was the sort of woman who worked with men like Greer, something drastic had to be done. To remain in that world would be both degrading and dangerous to Ginny. Colin could not stand the thought of it.
Yet she might not see the situation just as he did. She had an anxious, protective loyalty to her mother and when she found out what Harriet was involved in, her main thought was likely to be how she could help to keep her out of trouble, failing to see that it was already too late to do that.
When the train reached Oldersfield, Colin saw his shadow ahead of him in the crowd at the barrier. But the man did not linger to make sure that Colin was going to the Green Tree Café. He went straight to a car that was parked in the station yard, got in, and drove away. Colin found that it felt rather like being suddenly free of an unpleasant draught that had been blowing down his neck. It gave a lift to his spirits as he started the short walk to the market-place, passing Lake’s Saleroom, in which the lights were on, although the doors were closed, and he could see Beryl through the window, busy sorting and arranging, reaching the café, which was fairly full, the two Heavens sisters trudging round among the tables with plates of beans on toast and cups of tea.
For some reason they looked flustered at seeing him and one of them managed to get in his way as he went to the door at the rear of the café.
“If it’s Ginny you’re looking for,” she whispered to him, “she’s come and gone.”
“Gone?” he said helplessly. He had not been prepared for that.
“That’s right.”
“How long ago?”
“Couldn’t say. We’ve been that busy, I didn’t keep account of the time.”
“Was it half an hour? An hour?”
“Five or ten minutes, more likely,” said the old woman.
“Did she say where she was going?”
“Not a word.”
“Or when she was coming back?”
“Not a word, just went running out. Maybe she’ll be back again soon. She didn’t say she wouldn’t. If you’d like to sit down and wait—”
“What about Mrs. Winter?” Colin asked. “Is she in?”
Miss Heavens hesitated. “Well, she’s in,” she said reluctantly, “but she’s a bit poorly. She wouldn’t want to be disturbed.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Oh, there’s nothing the matter. Just that she’s taking it easy.”
“I think I’ll go down and see her then.”
He took a step towards the door. The old woman moved swiftly to stand in his way again.
“Like I said, Mr. Lockie, she’s resting, she doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“I shan’t disturb her for long.”
He put a hand on Miss Heavens’s shoulder, eased her aside, went through the door, across the kitchen, and down the stairs to the basement.
“Mrs. Winter!” he called from halfway down. He did not want to scare Harriet by appearing without warning.
“Mrs. Winter,” he said again outside her door, “it’s me, Colin. Can I come in?”
He heard a muffled answer from inside. He did not know what it was, but he pushed the door open and went in.
For a moment, except for the red bars of the electric fire, the room seemed totally dark.
“It’s all right, come on in, darling,” Harriet said thickly from somewhere near the fire. “It’s just that I don’t want anyone to see me. I’m a hideous sight, simply hideous. I couldn’t bear anyone looking at me when I’m like this.”
He went towards her. As his eyes became used to the dark, he saw her sitting in a low chair by the fire, crouching down with a handkerchief covering most of her face. Her eyes, looking up at him over the top of the handkerchief, reflected the red light of the fire.
“You’ve been crying,” he said, standing in front of her, feeling an immense embarrassment. He had not planned any interview with Harriet, particularly Harriet in the midst of an emotional storm. He only wanted to know where Ginny was.
“That’s right, darling, crying my bloody eyes out,” she answered with a sniff. “Well, wouldn’t you? I came in, all upset already because I’d just heard of the death of a friend, a very old friend, almost my very oldest and dearest, and I found Ginny standing here. Standing here in the middle of the room, looking round as if she hated the place. And she could see I was upset—she always can—she always sees straight through me. And d’you know what she said to me? She said, ‘I’m just going.’ That’s all. Literally, darling, that’s all she said. And then she went.” She gave a choking wail. “She was fond of him too, but she didn’t even stop to hear about it. She’s got a heart of stone.”
“Do you know where she went?” Colin asked.
“I don’t even know why she came,” Harriet answered. “I don’t know anything, except that everyone I care about dies. Yes, everyone. It isn’t fair. And Ginny comes back and takes one look at me and says ‘I’m just going,’ as if—as if she didn’t belong here—and then—then just goes!”
Colin could see the gleam of a bottle and glass on the floor near Harriet’s feet. He wondered if she had already done some drinking before she arrived home.
“Are you sure she really didn’t say anything else?” he asked.
“Not a word, not a single, solitary, kind word! Could you have done that yourself, Colin? Could you have done it to a dog? Oh, she’s my own daughter, I love her, but there are times when I could kill her, she hurts me so. I’d never be so unkind to anyone.”
“I don’t believe you would,” he admitted.
“Not meaning it, anyway.”
The Decayed Gentlewoman Page 9