The Decayed Gentlewoman

by E. X. Ferrars

  She put down her empty glass and rested her head on her hand.

  “I know I’d have felt just as she did,” she went on. “All the same, I never thought she’d do what she did, I mean, bring you in. When she started bidding at the sale I thought it was just showing her teeth, giving Greer a bit of a warning that she was around. But that she’d blow the whole thing sky-high by getting hold of you just never occurred to me.”

  “So you blundered too,” Colin said.

  “That’s right, I did. But not like Greer. He made the really fatal blunder.”

  “So fatal,” Colin said, “that I wonder if he made it.”

  She reached for her glass again, saw it was empty, put it down and to have something to do with her nervous hands, started adjusting the screw of one of her heavy silver ear-rings.

  “You probably don’t believe any of this,” she said. “I didn’t really expect you to. Not at first.”

  “Greer didn’t strike me as a fool,” Colin was pleased with the appearance of calm that he had achieved. “And to cut Ginny out when, as you say he pointed out, she wouldn’t even be involved if things went wrong, seems just too stupid for him to have done it.”

  “I told you, he thought she could be scared,” Beryl said. “If not directly herself, then through Harriet. He was a fool, a stupid fool who’d never listen to anyone else! That’s why he’s dead!” There was suddenly rage in her voice. “As if you could ever get at Ginny through Harriet. She doesn’t give a damn for her—never has. D’you think she’d even have been looking after the café for her if she hadn’t known the sale was coming off that week?” She picked up her glass and pounded with it on the table. “Oh, for God’s sake, give me another drink!” Colin refilled her glass. “Why is Greer dead, Mrs. Lake? Why did you have to kill him?”

  “I?” she said shrilly. “Haven’t I said I don’t go around murdering people? I can prove it too. Luckily I’ve a very sound alibi for the whole of that evening.”

  “Supplied by Mrs. Winter? Didn’t she come to see you?”

  “I don’t have to rely on her. Joe and I were working in the saleroom all the evening, sorting out some new stuff. So the lights were on and anyone crossing the square would have seen us.” She drank some whisky. “Stringer killed him.”

  “Why?”

  “My idea is he got scared when he found you were coming back to Oldersfield, so he decided to get out, helping himself to what he could before he went. And Greer came in in the middle. Going by the papers—because naturally we haven’t been hanging around the place ourselves and the police haven’t got round to our connection with Greer yet—his safe had been opened and was empty and one or two locked cupboards had been broken open and everything inside messed about.”

  “Why didn’t Stringer take the picture?”

  “Too dangerous, perhaps. He may not have known where to sell it either. Of course…” She paused. “There’s another possible explanation. Perhaps he didn’t take the picture because it was gone already.”

  Colin nodded. “I thought we were coming to that.”

  She gave a smile which was almost sympathetic. “Oh, I wish you’d be your age, you poor thing! Haven’t you realized yet your turning up at Hopewood upset Ginny’s plans as badly as all of ours?”

  “How?”

  “Well, she wasn’t expecting you, was she? I’ve been talking to Harriet, so I know that. You didn’t come back to Oldersfield with Ginny, you came some time later. You weren’t even sure where she’d gone when you took that taxi to Hopewood. You were simply going looking for her.”

  “Well?”

  “So you must have met her somewhere when she was getting away with the picture and what could she do then but pretend she was taking it back to your aunts?”

  “Having just murdered Greer?”

  “I haven’t said so.”

  “Isn’t it the idea you’ve been working round to?”

  “I tell you, I don’t know.” There was a touch of fretfulness in her voice. “It’s true there are some things I don’t understand about the whole set-up. But if Greer wasn’t dead already when Ginny arrived, how did she get away with the picture—unless she killed him herself? If he was dead already, on the other hand, how did she manage not to fall over his body? It was found right at the bottom of the front steps.”

  “Falling over his body wouldn’t have been murder,” Colin said.

  “True. But walking straight past it wasn’t such a very nice thing to do, was it? Not just the sort of thing a judge will commend her for at the trial.”

  “So now we’ve got to the trial. What comes next? The deal you’re ready to make? There has to be a reason why you’re telling me so much.”

  She stood up swiftly, came close to him, and looked up at him with a brilliant smile.

  “You aren’t taking me in, Mr. Lockie,” she said. “You’re being very calm, very unmoved. But what’s in behind it? All kinds of things and none of them pleasant. Of course you don’t believe more than a quarter of the things I’ve been telling you. You’re in love with the girl and the girl Mr. Lockie’s in love with isn’t a thief or a murderess. All right, let’s say she isn’t. I’m quite ready to leave you to solve your personal problems yourself. What I tell you though is that if you don’t get me the picture back the police are going to hear all about Ginny’s visit to Hopewood. They’re going to hear all about her showing me the letter from Foster-Smith. They’re going to hear the story just as I’ve told it to you.”

  “How can you tell them that without getting into trouble yourself, Mrs. Lake?”

  “It’d be nothing like the trouble Ginny would get into— a thought that would compensate for quite a lot!”

  Her closeness was working on Colin’s temper. He could feel the heat of hatred coming from her, inflaming the anger in himself. But in the same level tone as before, he remarked, “You’ve a tremendous confidence in love, Mrs. Lake. Do you really think I’d trade a picture worth thirty thousand pounds for a girl who’s done the things you’ve told me?”

  She laughed abruptly. “I told you, you aren’t taking me in. You’ll trade it to protect your faith that she didn’t do them. To protect yourself from having it all thrashed out in court. From having to face the truth they may arrive at.”

  “No,” he said.

  “I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  “Then I suppose you’ll have to do without one.”

  “That’s quite all right for the moment,” she said. “It’s what I was expecting. I’m going to give you a little time to think it over. You can have till this evening. Then if you don’t give me the answer I want, you’ll be in for trouble—you and Ginny.”

  She went to the door.

  “I’ll be back about ten o’clock,” she added over her shoulder.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  « ^ »

  Colin drank his whisky. It warmed his anger, gave it a sustaining strength, made decision easy. He went downstairs. There was a telephone in the hall for the use of Mrs. MacGarvey’s lodgers. It was uncomfortably public, but he had no time to worry about that. He dialled the operator and gave the Ardachoil number.

  Clara Lockie answered the telephone.

  “Aunt Clara—this is Colin,” he said and cut short the question she immediately started to ask him about whether he had yet been to Massie, Davitt and Gunn. “Listen, I want you to do something and do it immediately. I want you to get that picture down out of the loft, take it along to Sergeant Campbell, tell him I brought it, that it’s very valuable, that you’re afraid to keep it and that he must keep it in the police station, or send someone with you while you take it to the bank. Tell him you think there may be an attempt to steal it again. Then get out of the house yourselves. Go and stay with some friends for the next few days.”

  There was a slight pause, then Clara said, “And you—when will you be back?”

  “Not immediately. But will you do as I say?”

  “
Are you sure it’s necessary?”

  “I am.”

  “I must, of course, discuss it with the others.”

  “All right—so long as you make them do it, Aunt Clara.” He had just time to feel thankful that the aunts were too economical to have extensions to their telephone, otherwise he would have found himself having to persuade all three at once in one of their odd, shared-out conversations. “I’m very serious. There’s something else I’ve got to tell you, then you can tell Aunt Dolly. It’s about Willie Foster-Smith.”

  “Yes?” she said.

  “He’s dead. He was smashed up in a car accident last week. He died on Monday. I saw his sister this afternoon.”

  There was another pause. It lasted long enough for him to think that perhaps she had left the telephone.

  “Aunt Clara!” he said.

  “Yes, dear,” she answered. “I won’t ask you to tell me the rest of it now, but it was connected, was it not?”

  “I think so. So you’ll understand the importance of doing what I say. One of them—the people involved—was here just now. She’d been hunting for the picture. When I walked in, she told me a yarn about it that was supposed to keep me here for the evening while she or one of the others got over to Ardachoil. That’s what I make of it, anyway.”

  “I see. But about the legal position, Colin—”

  “Don’t bother about it. It doesn’t matter any more. The picture’s yours.”

  “And you and Ginny are not going to get into trouble?” He swallowed. “Not the slightest, Aunt Clara.”

  “Then good-bye just now.”

  “Good-bye.”

  He put the telephone down and turned. He had heard the sound of someone breathing heavily behind him.

  “Oh, Dr. Lockie, I couldn’t help overhearing,” Mrs. MacGarvey said. “Did I do wrong, letting that woman in? I’d never have let her get by if I’d had time to think, but she was up the stairs before I knew what she was at.”

  “No, it’s quite all right, I’m glad I had a chance to talk to her,” he answered. “I’ve got to go out again now. I don’t suppose you could cash a cheque for me, could you, Mrs. MacGarvey?”

  “A cheque?” she said, wrinkling her forehead. “How much would it be for?”

  “I need about ten pounds.”

  “Ten pounds—oh, I’ve nothing like that! I could let you have three or four, maybe.”

  “That’s better than nothing.” He took his cheque-book from his pocket.

  But when she brought him the three pounds ten that she decided she could spare, she told him not to bother with a cheque, but to pay her back when he had it. Colin stuffed the notes into his wallet, went out to the car, and drove to the garage where he usually had his own car serviced. They cashed a cheque for five pounds. Thinking that now he could just manage, he drove to Turnhouse Airport.

  All this time he was possessed by a feeling of complete certainty. He was completely certain that Beryl had been looking for the picture in his room, that her next step would be to look for it at Ardachoil, that for the sake of the safety of the three women there he had had to make the telephone call to Aunt Clara, that Ginny herself would have done the same, if she had been here. In fact, that call had been the clearest gesture of confidence in Ginny that he had known how to make.

  It was only when he was in the aeroplane on the way back to London, with nothing to do for the next hour but sit still, that the first doubts came trickling into his mind. Had he acted like a madman? Ought he to have stayed to hear what Beryl had to say when she returned at ten o’clock?

  Only she wasn’t going to return. But suppose she did…

  All of a sudden something that he had been trying not to think about pushed its way into his mind, filled it, allowed room for nothing else. It was the thought of Ginny’s crazy driving as they tore away from Hopewood, of her stopping the car and diving behind the hedge to be sick.

  “What of it?” his rational mind asked.

  He would probably be sick himself after committing his first burglary. But his memory and his imagination began to touch in the details of a picture of Greer’s house, of the doorway and the steps and of a body lying at the bottom of the steps. It had been a dark night, but the walk from the gate to the door was long enough for Ginny’s eyes to have adjusted themselves somewhat to the darkness and if the door had been ajar, as she had said, some light from the opening would have fallen across the steps, would even have seemed bright after the blackness. And if there had been a strange shape lying at the bottom of the steps in that shaft of light, how could she have missed seeing it? Even if Greer’s body had fallen to one side of the steps, Colin thought that it would still have been visible. To try to ignore that fact would not be useful.

  As the plane droned on through the darkening sky, and afterwards, when he was in the bus to Cromwell Road, then in the taxi to King’s Cross, where he was waiting at the barrier when Ginny came off the train from Edinburgh, Colin kept returning to the problem of what she had really seen. But when she caught sight of him standing there, when she gave a start and flushed pink, then darted towards him and clung to him as if he were the source of all strength and all safety, the questions that he had been preparing to ask her simply faded from his mind.

  “I’d been hoping, hoping you’d be here,” she said with her face against him, “although I didn’t see how you could be. I’ve been feeling such a fool for going off like that. But it seemed the only thing to do at the time. I meant to cope on my own.”

  “That’s a rather bad habit you’ve got,” he mumbled happily.

  “Yes, isn’t it? Well, what are we going to do now? Go to the police, or flee abroad together?”

  “We might be able to fit in both with a little organization. But I’m afraid the police will have to come first.”

  “In Oldersfield?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “In that case we could look in on my mother first, couldn’t we?”

  “Yes, I think we should,” he answered. “I think if we can find out a certain thing from her, we ought to be able to tell the police quite a lot.”

  “I’ve been thinking hard for the last six hours,” Ginny went on as they walked to the taxi queue. “A train, when you’re alone, is a good place for thinking.”

  “So is a plane,” said Colin.

  “I’ve been thinking, however irresponsible she is—I’m talking about Mother—she doesn’t do deliberately evil things. In a certain sense, you can trust her. I believe so, anyway. So I’ve been making up my mind, even if things look bad, I’m going to trust her. It’s a thing you have to do with everyone you know at some point—make up your mind about that, I mean.”

  With his eyes on her face, which looked very tired in spite of the pink flush of excitement, Colin replied, “Yes, I know.”

  “And that means that even if she knew Greer and was crying because she’d heard he was dead, I haven’t got to be afraid she’s mixed up in things so deeply that I daren’t tell the truth about what I know.”

  “Ginny, she wasn’t crying for Greer,” Colin said. “She probably didn’t know he was dead. She may not even have known him.”

  “But you told me she said she was crying for someone who’d died.”

  “Yes, but it was for Willie Foster-Smith. He was knocked down by a car last week and died on Monday. She must have tried to ring him up for some reason that day, while we were in London, and been told the news by his sister.”

  He saw the shock on Ginny’s face. Her lips fumbled soundlessly with the word, “Willie?”

  He went on quickly, “It was all arranged while she was abroad, Ginny—his death and the sale. I’m sure now she didn’t know anything about it till she came back. She may not even understand what happened.”

  “Then it was murder?”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “Because he’d have recognized the picture when Greer put it up for sale?”

  He nodded.

  “And we do
n’t even know yet what the picture is.”

  “Beryl says it’s a Rubens.”

  They were at the head of the queue now and a taxi was coming towards them. Ginny had been stepping off the curb, but she spun round to face him again.

  “When did you see Beryl?”

  He took her by the arm, opened the door of the taxi, thrust her in, and told the driver to take them to Charing Cross.

  “I found her in my room after I’d been to see Miss Foster-Smith,” he said.

  “And she told you the picture was a Rubens?”

  “And a lot of other things, which I’ve had time to think over on the plane. I came to almost the same conclusion as you came to on the train.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “That there’s always a point when you have to make up your mind how far you trust a person.”

  “Trust Beryl, do you mean?”

  “I do not.” He reached for her, gathering her into his arms. “Can we forget Beryl for a bit?”

  “I can easily forget her for always, if you can.”

  “There’s just one thing…”

  “What?”

  “Ginny, is it true you’re a schoolmistress?”

  Drawing closer to him, she gave a muffled laugh. “Yes, it is.”

  “Well, God damn it, why make a secret of it? What’s the matter with it?”

  “Nothing, except that I’m rather too proud of it,” she said. “In a private sort of way. I mean that I’ve turned out quite good at it and that I’m capable of sticking to it. I’m slowly finding out that I’m a much more stable character than I ever used to think. But it’s such a precious discovery, I think it’s safer not to talk about it. And if that sounds like nonsense to you—”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Well, whether it does or not, there’s the point that I can’t let the two lives overlap, can I? I expect that’s obvious. I don’t actually enjoy keeping them so separate, but it seems to be the only solution for the present.” She was silent for a moment. “Colin, in spite of what I said just now about trusting Mother, I’m still frightened for her. I’m worried about Joe too.”