The Decayed Gentlewoman

by E. X. Ferrars

  Admitted by a man almost as old as the one who had admitted them at Vickerman and Ogg, he and Ginny were taken to a waiting-room as small, as dim and dusty as the other and left there while the old man went to find out if any of the partners could see them. It all felt very much like the visit to Vickerman and Ogg, except for the splendour of the staircase up which they were presently taken, when eventually they were fetched to see Mr. Davitt.

  He rose to greet them from behind a very neat desk. He was a slender, neat-looking man, who moved and spoke quietly and precisely and was very much more like what Colin felt a solicitor should be than either Mr. Ogg or Mr. Dickman, except for one thing. He had a black eye. A conspicuous, rather rakish-looking black eye. Shaking hands with Ginny and Colin and settling them in chairs on either side of the desk, he asked a few questions concerning the health of the Lockie ladies, observed that they were wonderful people, fixed Colin with his single usable eye and said, “Well now?”

  Wishing that Mr. Davitt would explain the black eye, because it was a little distracting, Colin began, “I want to ask you a hypothetical question.”

  Mr. Davitt nodded as if he was not unaccustomed to such beginnings.

  “Suppose,” Colin went on, “something of some value was stolen in Scotland. Suppose it was taken to England and lost sight of there for some time—”

  “One moment,” Mr. Davitt interrupted. “We are not by any chance discussing the Stone, are we?”

  “No,” said Colin.

  He thought the lawyer relaxed slightly. “Please continue.”

  “Suppose this thing reappeared in England,” Colin said, “and was bought by somebody in the open market.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Davitt said. “Yes. The open market.”

  “Suppose, in fact, it was bought in market overt.”

  Mr. Davitt nodded his head silently.

  “That would make the purchaser the owner of this thing we’re talking about, wouldn’t it?”

  “So I believe.” The lawyer’s tone conveyed that such strange foreign customs were not his province.

  “Well now, suppose someone who thought that the thing still belonged to its original owners—or anyway that it ought to, as it would if all this had happened in Scotland—suppose he took possession of it, brought it back to Scotland, and returned it to them.”

  “I see, yes.”

  “What attitude do you think the Scottish police would be likely to take when the situation was brought to their attention?”

  Briefly Mr. Davitt’s single eye gleamed, perhaps with interest, perhaps even with amusement. Then his face regained its impersonal gravity.

  “I think I should like to have notice of this question,” he said. “Even then I doubt very much if I could give you anything but a very tentative answer.”

  “A tentative answer will do to be going on with,” Colin said.

  “Well, let me be sure I understand your question. When the person you referred to, who was acting on behalf of the original owners of the object in question, took possession of it after the sale, was this against the will of the purchaser in market overt?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Well, as it happened in England, the English law would of course apply. The Scottish courts and the Scottish police would have little to do in the matter, except that the English magistrate’s warrant would have to be backed by the Sheriff in whose jurisdiction the original owner was. However, I think the Sheriff would have no option but to do this. But the High Court of Justiciary has an overriding equitable jurisdiction and it’s possible that the owner might make an application to that court to prevent his being handed over.”

  “And what would happen then?”

  “The application might or might not be successful. Such an event has never, so far as I know, happened. My own personal opinion is that it would fail, though no doubt there would be some grumbling from one or more of the judges— ineffective, of course. If the owner were handed over to the English authorities and prosecuted in an English court, I think he would be bound to be convicted.”

  Colin turned towards Ginny. “So there we are. It doesn’t sound too good, does it?”

  “Unless Greer’s afraid of taking any action against us,” she said. “That’s what I’ve been counting on all along.”

  “Greer?” Mr. Davitt said.

  “The man who bought this thing we’re talking about—it’s a picture—in market overt,” Ginny explained. “We think he was mixed up in the theft of it from the Lockies.”

  “Greer,” Mr. Davitt repeated thoughtfully, as if he were wondering where he had heard the name before.

  “Edmund Greer,” Colin said, “of Hopewood House, Hopewood, in Kent.”

  “Good God—Greer!” Except for the livid patch round one eye, the rest of Mr. Davitt’s face turned exceedingly pale. “Excuse me a moment,” he said in a voice that had gone suddenly hoarse. He got up hurriedly and went out.

  Colin and Ginny looked at one another.

  “What now, I wonder,” Colin said apprehensively.

  In a moment Mr. Davitt returned. He was holding a copy of The Scotsman, fluttering the pages, hunting through them, muttering, “I’m sure… I’m almost sure… It happened to catch my eye this morning. Yes, here it is.”

  He folded back the pages and handed the paper to Colin, pointing at a small paragraph near the foot of one column.

  Ginny got up and went behind Colin’s chair to read the paragraph over his shoulder.

  Under the not very arresting headline, murder in kent, they read:

  A body, identified as that of Mr. Edmund Greer, of Hopewood House, Hopewood, Kent, was discovered early yesterday morning at the foot of some steps leading up to the front door of his house. Death had been caused by several shots, fired at close range through the head and chest. The police wish to interview Mr. Herbert Stringer, a manservant at Hopewood House, who was last seen in the village on Monday and who it is thought may be able to help them with their inquiries. They also wish to interview a man who took a taxi from Oldersfield to Hopewood House, on Monday evening, arriving there at about 8 p.m. He is described as six foot three inches tall, age 27-30, brown haired, wearing a grey tweed overcoat, carrying a briefcase and speaking with a Scots accent.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  « ^ »

  Colin felt Ginny’s hand clutch his shoulder. She was shaking. He stood up quickly and thrust her into his chair. Her face was papery white.

  “That open door…” she whispered. “The steps!”

  Mr. Davitt reached for the newspaper, refolded it neatly, and laid it down on his desk.

  “You were there, then,” he said.

  Colin nodded without speaking.

  Ginny caught hold of his hand. “He must have been there all the time, only it was so dark I didn’t see him. I must have gone right past him.”

  “I think perhaps a cup of tea…” said Mr. Davitt. “Excuse me again for a moment.”

  As he went out, Ginny drew Colin closer to her.

  “Colin, what are we going to do?”

  In the midst of wondering what on earth they could do, Colin could only think about the way that she had turned to him and now rested her head against him.

  “I’ll have to go to the police,” he said, running a finger gently through her soft hair.

  “And tell them everything?”

  “I suppose so. I don’t know. Perhaps not. We’ll have to think.”

  Mr. Davitt returned.

  “They’re sending us in some tea,” he said briskly, sat down at his desk, straightened a block of paper and a couple of pencils in front of him and fixed his single clear eye on Colin. “Now don’t you think it might be wise to forget hypothetical questions and tell me what really happened?”

  Colin was going to agree when he felt the tightening of Ginny’s fingers on his. He changed what he had been going to say.

  “I think Miss Winter and I will have to talk things over first,”
he said. “This news is quite a shock.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “I’ll go to the police, of course.” More than ever, Colin found himself distracted by a wish that he knew how the lawyer had come by his black eye. He couldn’t see him getting it in a brawl. He couldn’t see him either as the sort of man who, in absent-mindedness or intoxication, would walk into a lamp-post. Yet after his own experiences of the last few days, why should either of these things seem unlikely? Nothing was quite what it seemed, apparently. Anyway, the black eye gave Mr. Davitt a rather sinister appearance as he sat watching them across his desk.

  The tea was brought in. Drinking it, Ginny began to recover.

  “At least it looks as if we needn’t worry any more about the picture,” she said.

  “How do you arrive at that?” Mr. Davitt asked in a tone that sent a quiver along Colin’s nerves.

  “The Lockies having it back and Greer being dead,” she said. “He was the only person who’d be likely to fight over market overt. Besides, whoever killed him didn’t take the picture, but just left it hanging where it was, so it can’t have had anything to do with his murder, can it?”

  “I hope you’re right.” Mr. Davitt’s voice was full of a profound lack of conviction. “At least let me advise you not to delay in going to the police.”

  “Oh no, we won’t.” She spoke with a readiness and brightness that made Colin uneasy. She stood up. “Thank you for the tea and for telling us the worst, Mr. Davitt. I generally like knowing the worst. It’s the best cure for unreasonable anxiety.”

  “If it is the worst,” he said discouragingly.

  He went out with them and down the handsome staircase.

  At the door below, with the bitter wind funnelled along George Street nipping their ears, his hand at last went to his black eye. After all he was not going to let them depart with heaven knew what suspicions about how he had come by it. He touched it gingerly.

  “An extraordinary thing,” he observed. “I was fishing last week-end, got a fish-hook through my eyelid. Very unpleasant. But no doubt I’m lucky it was no worse. Well, let me know if I can give you any further help, Mr. Lockie, and please give my regards to your aunts.”

  The door closed.

  Taking Ginny by the elbow, Colin hurried through the rain to the car. The world felt a little more normal than it had a moment ago and he himself a little less at sea. For a fish-hook through the eyelid was about the one way of acquiring a black eye that did not go contrary to all his instinctive feelings about Mr. Davitt, not to mention Massie and Gunn in the background.

  They got into the car. But when Colin’s hand went to the ignition, Ginny caught hold of it again.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, “please.”

  Realizing that he did not know where he had been thinking of going, Colin sat back and waited.

  After a moment she said, “When you saw my mother—the time when you said her face had been hurt—she told you she was crying because a friend had died, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She gave a shiver. “Greer!”

  “I suppose it must have been,” he answered unhappily.

  “But she said I knew him.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “I didn’t, Colin. I never met him in my life until that beastly sale.”

  “Perhaps she didn’t mean him, then. You said yourself she could have had something out of the past on her mind.”

  “I know. But I hadn’t heard about him then.”

  “You aren’t afraid that it was she who went out there… ?”

  “No, no, no! That man must have done it, Herbert Stringer. But she must have heard about it already and she must have cared…” She shivered again. “I must have walked right past him in the dark. All the time I was ringing the bell and calling out to him, he must have been lying within a few feet of me.”

  “We’ll have to go to the police,” Colin said.

  “Here or in Oldersfield?” she asked.

  That was something that he had not thought out yet. “I’m not sure,” he said. “There’s a thing I’d like to do first in any case. It won’t take long and it may help us to see things more clearly.”

  “What is it?”

  “Go to see Willie Foster-Smith.”

  “No,” she said swiftly. “No, I won’t do that. I don’t want to see him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t.”

  “Ginny—”

  “Oh, please try to understand,” she implored. “I couldn’t go to see anybody at the moment. I’m feeling horribly scared and rather ill. I’d like to go somewhere quiet and try to calm down and think rationally about what I ought to do. Not necessarily what you ought to do. The two things may be quite different.”

  He frowned helplessly at the rain-streaked windscreen. “Well, would you wait for me while I go to see Foster-Smith?” he asked.

  “Here?” she looked round inside the little car with desperation on her face.

  “You could go to my rooms,” he said. “Will you go there and wait for me?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “How do I get there?”

  “The easiest thing will be to take a taxi.” He started the car. “There’s a rank over there. I’ll take you to it and I’ll follow you as soon as I can. I’ll probably not be long.”

  “You don’t know Willie,” she said. “If he talks at all, you won’t be able to stop him.”

  That was more or less how Colin remembered him too. Foster-Smith had been diffident but excitably emotional, silent or stammeringly confused if there was more than one other person in the room, but eager to pour out his heart to any single listener. Perhaps a rather tiresome man, really, though pleasant with children and almost certainly wax in the hands of a woman like Harriet Winter.

  Unless it had been the other way round.

  Colin realized that he found it difficult to imagine Harriet as anything but wax herself. Soft, melting wax, yielding warmly and easily to any will stronger than her own.

  He gave his key to Ginny, saw her into a taxi, gave the driver his address, got back into the Mini-Minor and started out for the address that Clara Lockie had given him. Foster-Smith lived in a stone-built Victorian terrace in Morningside. All the windows of his house were heavily veiled in net, which gave it a primly secretive look, to which the untrodden white of the doorstep and the brilliance of the brass knocker added little touches of cautious pride. Colin tried the knocker when ringing the bell three times had brought no response. He felt as if the clatter that he made must rouse the street, yet when the sound died, he heard no sound of movement in the house.

  He was turning away, wondering how soon it would be worth coming back to try again, when he saw that the door had silently opened a few inches and that a woman was looking out at him.

  She was grey-haired and dressed in black. Her face was white, except for the redness of recent tears round her eyes. She gave Colin a dazed, questioning look and said huskily, “Yes?”

  “Is it possible for me to see Mr. Foster-Smith?” he asked.

  “Mr. Foster-Smith?” she echoed vacantly.

  “Yes. My name’s Lockie—Colin Lockie. I’m not sure if he’ll remember me. It’s a long time since we met. But he knows my family. If I could see him for a few minutes…”

  “No,” she said. “No, no, no.”

  She started to close the door.

  Colin did not quite put his foot in it, but he went so close to the opening that instinctively she took a step back.

  “It won’t take long,” he said. “I think he’d probably want to see me.”

  She shook her head. Her swollen eyes filled with tears. “Then you haven’t heard… I suppose it’s my fault.” She spoke in an almost inaudible whisper. “I’m his sister, you see. His only sister.”

  Colin’s heart had missed a beat. “Has something happened to him, Miss Foster-Smith?”

  “Yes, on Monday. They told me he was
improving, so I came home. I’d been there at the hospital almost all the time since the accident. I hadn’t had any sleep for—oh, I don’t know how long it was. I’ve got in a muddle about everything.” Her hand went to her forehead. “But they said he was improving, so I came home. I wouldn’t have, if I’d known. I’d have stayed.”

  “He died?” Colin asked. “On Monday?”

  She nodded.

  “After an accident?”

  “Yes. He went out to take the dog for a little walk before going to bed—he always does—did. Lockie, you said?” His name seemed at last to reach her consciousness. “That’s the name of those friends of his in the West, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come in, Mr. Lockie. I’d have asked you in at once, only I’m so confused.” She opened the door wider, moving to one side so that Colin could come in, then closed it again as softly and quietly as she had opened it and tiptoed across the narrow hall to a door. “The funeral’s tomorrow,” she said. “People say you feel better after the funeral, when it’s all finished and done with. I don’t know.”

  Feeling brutal at forcing himself on her, but that now it was more important than ever to find out certain things, Colin followed her into a big, unheated room and took the chair she indicated beside the empty fireplace. There was a chill in his veins already because of what she had told him, which the cold of the room seemed to magnify almost to a pain. He supposed it was the ache of a kind of fear, of horror at having to face the facts that he had already guessed. He looked round the room so that he could avoid looking too steadily at the woman’s grief-stricken face.

  It was a collector’s room, so full of furniture, of china, of glass, of pictures, of cases full of ancient coins, of embroidered samplers, that to do any living in it, any talking with friends, would probably create fearful hazards for its contents. But Colin could easily visualize the man whom he remembered moving around eagerly and delicately, duster in hand, and when everything had been picked up, caressed with the duster, and put down again, going back to the beginning and starting all over again.