'Alexander is very upset.'
'I'm not surprised.'
'Why, have you heard?'
'Heard what?'
'About that Leila Yorke woman.' '
What about her?'
'So you haven't heard. Then why did you say you weren't surprised that Alexander is upset?'
What had led Mr. Shoesmith to do so had been his familiarity with Oofy's habit of starting the day with a morning hangover, but he felt that it would be injudicious and possibly dangerous to put this into words. He replied that he was aware how delicate his son-in-law's digestion was.
'Eaten something that disagreed with him?' he asked with as much sympathy as he could muster, which was not a great deal.
Myrtle's breathing took on a snorting sound.
'My dear father, you don't suppose I came all this way to talk about Alexander's digestion. He's upset about this frightful business of Leila Yorke. I think she must have gone off her head. You know Alexander owns the majority stock in Popgood and Grooly, who publish her books?'
'Yes, you told me. A very sound firm, from all I hear.
Bessie alone---'
'Who is Bessie?'
Mr. Shoesmith assumed the manner which Freddie Widgeon disliked so much, his dry, put-you-in-your-place manner.
'An old friend of mine who writes under the pseudonym of Leila Yorke. She was Bessie Binns when I first knew her, and it is pardonable of me, I think, to refer to her by her real name. But if you would prefer that I do not do so, your wishes are law. I was about to say when you interrupted me - we were speaking, if you remember, of the financial stability of the publishing house of Popgood and Grooly - that Leila Yorke alone must be worth a good many thousands of pounds to them annually.'
A curious sound which might have been a hollow laugh escaped Myrtle.
'Yes, because up to now she has written the sort of---'
She hesitated for a word.
'Bilge?' suggested Mr. Shoesmith.
'If you like to put it that way. I was going to say the sort of horrible sentimental stuff that appeals to women. There isn't an author in England who has a bigger library public. Women worship her.'
Mr. Shoesmith cackled like a hen, his way of chuckling.
'I wonder what they would think of her if they met her. She certainly isn't like her work. But why do you say "up to now"?'
'Because she's planning to do something quite different with her next book. Her secretary called on Mr. Grooly yesterday and told him that the novel she's working on now is going to be grey and stark and grim, like George Gissing.’
'A fine writer.'
'I dare say; but he didn't sell. Imagine the effect this will have on her public. She'll lose every reader she's got.'
'So that is why Alexander is upset?'
'Isn't it natural that he should be? It means thousands of pounds out of his pocket. I was in the room when Mr. Grooly telephoned to tell him the news, and he turned ashy pale.'
An improvement, Mr. Shoesmith thought. He had never admired his son-in-law's complexion. Owing to a too pronounced fondness for champagne, Oofy had always been redder than the rose, and Mr. Shoesmith preferred the male cheek to be more damask.
'Has she written the book?' he asked.
'She's thinking it out. She has gone down to the suburbs to get local colour.'
'It may turn out to be very good.'
'But it won't be Leila Yorke. Can't you understand? When people see the name Leila Yorke on a novel, they expect Leila Yorke stuff, and if they don't get it, they drop her like a hot coal. How would you like it if you bought a book you thought was about company law and found it was a murder mvsterv?'
'I'd love it,' said Mr. Shoesmith frankly.
'Well, Leila Yorke's public won't. This book will kill her stone dead. She won't have a reader left.'
'I don't suppose she cares. She's been making twenty thousand pounds a year for the last fifteen years and saving most of it. It seems to me it's entirely her own affair if she spurns Popgood and Grooly's gold and decides to go in for art for art's sake. I don't understand the Popgood and Grooly agitation. If they don't want to publish the thing, they don't have to.'
'But they do. She's got a contract for six more books.'
'Then what on earth do you expect me to do?' said Mr.
Shoesmith, trying not to speak petulantly but missing his
objective by a wide margin. The conflict between Lord Blicester and the income tax authorities presented several points
of nice legal interest, and he was longing to get back to them.
Not for the first time he was regretting that his daughter had
not married someone with a job out in, say, the Federated
Malay States, where leave to come to England is given only
about once every five years. If she has a contract---'
Myrtle was fumbling in her bag.
'I've brought it with me. I thought you might be able to find something in it which would prevent her doing this insane thing.'
‘I doubt it,' said Mr. Shoesmith, taking the document. He skimmed through it with a practised eye and handed it back. 'I thought so. Not a word even remotely specifying any particular type of book.'
'But isn't it implied?'
'Isn't what implied?'
'That she's got to do the sort of thing she has always done.’
'Certainly not. You don't imply conditions in contracts, you state them in black and white.’
'Do you mean to say that if Agatha Christie had a contract
with her publisher---'
'No doubt she has.'
‘---that she could suddenly decide to turn in something like Finnegan's Wake?’
'Certainly.'
'And the publisher would have to publish it?'
'If he had so contracted.'
'That is the law?' '
It is.'
'Then the law's idiotic'
'Dickens put it better. He said it was an ass. But even if you and he are right, there is nothing to be done about it.'
Myrtle rose, a thing which Mr. Shoesmith had begun to feel that she was incapable of doing. A new animation came into his manner.
'Are you leaving me?' he asked, trying to keep exhilaration out of his voice.
Myrtle gathered up bag and umbrella. Her face was set and determined.
'Yes, I am going to Valley Fields.'
'Odd spot to choose for a jaunt. Why not Surbiton?'
'This is not a jaunt, as you call it. Leila Yorke is living in Valley Fields, and I am going to see her and talk to her.'
'You think that that will accomplish something desirable?'
'I hope so.'
'I wonder. From what I know of Bessie, she is not a woman lightly to be turned from her purpose. Still, try anything once is always a good motto. Goodbye, my dear. Nice of you to have looked in. Give my regards to Alexander,' said Mr. Shoesmith, and was deep in the affairs of Lord Blicester, almost before the door had closed.
Dolly meanwhile, down at Castlewood with her notebook and her new camera, was finding her hostess charming. Leila Yorke, though she raged, like the heathen, furiously and muttered things better left unmuttered when one of them announced his or her intention of coming to see her, was always at her best with interviewers. She put them at their ease - not that Dolly needed that - and made a social success of the thing, feeling, for she was essentially a kindly woman, that it was not the fault of these children of unmarried parents if their editors told them to go and make pests of themselves. In her sob sister days she had had to do a good deal of interviewing herself, and she could sympathize with them.
Dolly she found unexpectedly congenial. Hard things had often been said of the light of Soapy Molloy's life by those who knew her - Chimp Twist, trading as J. Sheringham Adair, private investigator, was always particularly vehement when her name came up in the course of conversation - but she was unquestionably good company, and Leila Yorke took to her from the start. They r
oamed the parklike grounds of Castlewood in perfect amity, and she was delighted with the intelligent girl's attitude towards the change she was proposing to make in her approach to the life literary. Dolly left no room for doubt that she thoroughly approved of it.
'Onward and upward with the arts,' she said. 'Can't always be giving them the same old boloney. Look at a guy I---'
She paused. She had been about to say 'know', but felt it would be more prudent to substitute a less compromising verb. 'Look at a guy I heard about through working on papers, like you do hear about all sorts when you work on papers. Fellow named Easy-Pickings McGee, who had a business in Cicero, outside Chicago. Used to stick up filling-stations and drug stores and all like that and made a good enough living for years, and then one morning he says to himself, "I'm through with this small-time stuff. I've gotten into a rut. I ought to be striving for something bigger." So he goes right out and sticks up a bank, and from that moment never looked back. Got his own gang now, and is one of the most highly thought-of operators in Cook County. I know for a fact - because someone told me,' she added hastily, 'that he has fifty-six suits of clothes, all silk lined and custom made, and a different pair of shoes for every day in the year. Well, there you are. Ambition pays off.'
Leila Yorke said she had an idea that Horatio Alger had written a story of success on much these lines, and Dolly said 'Mebbe'. She had not, she explained, read very deeply in her Horatio Alger.
'But you see what I mean. You're in the same kind of spot he was. You're doin' all right for a mountain girl, as the song says, but you feel the time has come to show 'em what you can do when you spit on your hands and go to it. You just carry on, honey, the way you want, and if anyone makes a holler, tell 'em to drop dead.'
This so exactly chimed in with Leila Yorke's sentiments that she beamed on her visitor and cordially allowed herself to be photographed in a variety of attitudes, though if there was one thing she disliked more than another about these interviews, it was being propped up against something and told to smile. And it was as she relaxed from the last pose - leaning with one hand on the bird bath and gazing brightly over her left shoulder - that the leaden sky, which had hitherto not spoken, suddenly burst into sound. Thunder roared, lightning flashed, and rain began to descend in the manner popularized by Niagara Falls.
Dolly, being nearest to the french window of the living-room, was the first to reach it, with Leila Yorke a close second. They stood looking out on the downpour.
'This realm, this England!' said Miss Yorke bitterly.
'Yay,' Dolly agreed. I’ll bet that guy who returned here after wandering on some foreign strand kicked himself squarely in the denier e jot being such a chump as to come back. I wish I had the umbrella concession for this darned country. Well, seeing we're indoors and no chance of getting anything more in the garden, how about some interiors? Tell you what I'd like to have,' said Dolly, struck with an idea, 'and that's a shot of your bedroom. Kind of intimate, sort of. Mind if I go up?'
'Certainly. Room on the left at the top of the stairs.’
‘I’ll find it,' said Dolly, and at this moment the front door bell rang.
With an impatient grunt, for this, she supposed, could only be Mr. Cornelius again, Leila Yorke went to answer it, and Dolly, about to follow and mount the stairs that led to Eldorado, was frozen in mid-step by a voice she had no difficulty in recognizing.
'Miss Yorke?' said the voice. 'Can I come in and speak to you on a matter of importance? My name is Mrs. Alexander Prosser.'
It is inevitable, as we pass through life, that we meet individuals whom we are reluctant to meet again. Sometimes it is the way they clear their throats that offends us, sometimes the noise they make when drinking soup, or possibly they remind us of relatives whom we wish to forget. It was for none of these fanciful reasons that Dolly preferred not to encounter Myrtle Prosser, and for an instant, knowing that she was on her way in and 'ere long there would be a recognition scene which could not fail to be painful, she stood transfixed. Then life returned to the rigid limbs, and she was her resourceful self again. There was a whirring sound as she dashed back into the living-room, dashed through the french windows and dashed across the garden and over the fence that separated it from that of Peacehaven.
In Peacehaven, if the back door was not locked, she would find the hide-out which on occasions like this is so essential to the criminal classes.
15
STANDING before the mirror in his bedroom at Peacehaven, George was brushing his ginger hair with unusual care and wondering whether a drop of Scalpo, the lotion that lends a lustre, would not give it just that little extra something which stamps the man of distinction. He was wearing a blue flannel suit with an invisible stripe, and his shoes, so different from regulation boots, shone with the light that never was on land or sea, for he had wangled a night off from his official duties and was taking Jennifer Tibbett to dinner and a theatre. It was not often that he was able to do this, and his heart was light and his attitude toward all created things kindly and benevolent. If a burglar were to enter Peacehaven at this moment, he felt, he would give him a drink and a ham sandwich and help him pack his sack.
And by one of those odd coincidences he became aware, just as this thought floated into his mind, that a burglar had entered Peacehaven. Down below somebody had sneezed, and as Freddie would not be back from his office for at least another half-hour this sneezer could only be an unauthorized intruder. Replacing the hair brush on the dressing-table, he went down, the milk of human kindness still surging within him, to play the host, and was interested to discover in the living-room the golden-haired young woman with whom he had had such a stimulating conversation on the previous day. The sight of her increased the respect he always felt for Freddie's ability to fascinate the other sex. Wherein lay his cousin's magic, he could not say, but he certainly acted on the beazels like catnip on cats. This girl obviously could not keep away from him, drawn as with a magnet. Like the moth and the candle, thought George.
'Oh, hullo,’ he said. 'You popped in again? Want to see Freddie? He ought to be arriving shortly. Stick around, is my advice.'
'I will, if you don't mind,' said Dolly, fighting down the womanly tremor she always felt when in the presence of the police. She eyed him closely, taking in with some bewilderment the flannel suit, the neat red tie and the shining shoes. 'You'll excuse me asking,' she said, 'but what are you made up as?'
'Just gentleman, English, ordinary, one. I'm off duty.' 'That's good,' said Dolly, breathing more freely. 'I mean for you.'
'Yes, it's nice to get away from the old grind once in a while. One needs an occasional respite, or the machine breaks down. Ask any well-known Harley Street physician.'
'Who's attending to all the murders?'
'Oh, a bunch of the other boys. They'll carry on all right in my absence. I say,' said George, making a discovery which Sherlock Holmes certainly and Scotland Yard in all probability would have made earlier, 'you're wet.'
His observant eye had not deceived him. The trip from Castlewood to Peacehaven, though not a long one, had been long enough for the rain to get in some pretty solid work, and Dolly had been exposed to it for some unforeseen extra moments owing to falling while climbing the fence. George, who was given to homely similes, thought she looked like a drowned rat. Being also somewhat deficient in tact, he said so, and Dolly bridled.
'Drowned rats to you, with knobs on,' she said coldly. 'You're no oil painting yourself.'
'Why, yes, if you put it that way,' said George, ‘I suppose you're right. Well, unless you want to get a nasty cold in the head, you'd better change.'
'Into what?'
'Ah, that's rather the problem, isn't it. Into, as you say, what? I know,' said George, inspired. Nip up to Freddie’s room and swipe a pair of his pyjamas. I’d offer you mine, but they wouldn't fit you. Bedroom slippers can also be provided. Come along up, and I'll show you. There you are,' he said a few moments later. 'Pyjamas and slipper
s, precisely as envisaged. Your kit'll be dry by the time you're ready to leave. Anything else I can do for you in the way of hospitality?'
'Will it be okay for me to make myself a cup of hot coffee?'
'Perfectly okay. This is Liberty Hall. You'll find all the ingredients in the kitchen. And now I'm afraid I must tear myself away. I'm taking my betrothed to dinner,' said George, and with a kindly smile removed himself, feeling like a boy scout. Doing this little act of kindness had just put the finishing touch on the mood of yeasty happiness that always uplifted him when he was going to watch Jennifer Tibbett eat lamb cutlets and mashed potatoes. It made him feel worthier of her.
His departure left Dolly a prey to mixed emotions. As a man she liked George and found him an entertaining companion, but she could not forget that for all his suavity and the sparkle of his conversation he represented the awful majesty of the Law and, were he to learn of her activities in the Prosser home, would have no hesitation in piling on the back of her neck and whistling for stern-faced colleagues to come and fasten the gyves to her wrists. Better, then, that they should part. His going had deprived her of the pleasure of listening to his views on this and that and wondering how he could talk the way he did without having a potato in his mouth, but she had also lost the unpleasant feeling that centipedes were crawling up and down her spine which always affected her when hobnobbing with the gendarmerie.
It did not take her long to remove her wet dress and slip into the something loose represented by Freddie's pyjamas, and she was on the whole in reasonably cheerful mood as she went down to the kitchen for the cup of hot coffee which she had mentioned. A certain chagrin was inevitable after she had come so near to success in the object of her quest and failed owing to an Act of God at the eleventh hour to achieve her aims, but hers was a resilient and philosophical nature, and she was able to look on the bright side and count her blessings one by one. She was short, yes, of Prosser jewellery, and that, she would have been the first to admit, was in the nature of a sock in the eye, but she had at least the consoling thought that she had made a clean getaway when for an instant all had seemed lost.
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