by A. A. Milne
Right. The Hussar’s daughter began to make her plans.
1.She would get ready for bed by the side of the river. With a haycock behind her, and the stream, sheltered on the other side by trees, in front of her, she would be perfectly safe.
2.She would wash in the stream.
3.Teeth! (She thought for a little.) Yes. She would eat an orange for supper, and cut it with her nail-scissors, so that she had two orange-peel cups, and clean her teeth out of one of them.
4.She must be ready to start at once in the morning, with the knapsack already packed, so that if she suddenly saw the men coming, she could fly.
5.So she would have to sleep in her clothes. But wouldn’t that be rather horrid next morning?
6.Sleep in her clothes and change into the green set as soon as she was up and away? But she didn’t want to wear the green until they were dyed, because of getting over stiles.
7.Lovely idea! Sleep in the pyjamas with the stockinette over. Pack everything else in the knapsack, and have it ready by her side. As soon as she woke up, roll the pyjamas above her knees and slip on knapsack and shoes; then it would just look like the stockinette and bare legs, which anybody might wear.
8.Dress properly a little farther on after washing in the stream.
Jenny supped. The orange was good, the chocolate was good; but the dates, at close quarters, were disappointing. It seemed impossible that anybody should cross, or want to cross, the desert on a handful of dates; Mr. Sandroyd must have been misinformed about that. Jenny, licking her fingers after handling only two of them, turned with relief to her orange, and thought with pleasure of the wash which was to come. The orange cups made, she picked up her knapsack and went down to the river . . .
It was the hour between sunset and the dark. The flush had faded out of an innocent sky; pinks and blues were merged into a dappled grey; the world had lost its colour suddenly, its song, its laughter. Under the alders the river met the night, and began to send out tentacles of darkness towards the ghostly Jenny who leaned over it. Quickly she slipped on her clothes and hurried back to the haystack. Quickly, before the blackness was upon her, she prepared everything for the morning. Then Night came down and greeted her . . . enfolded her while still she knelt, a child on her castle, saying her prayers to God and her Hussar.
WEDNESDAY
Chapter Eight
Further activity in London
I
It was a pity that, from the nature of them, Aunt Jane would never read the best notices of her career. Everything, of course, was in her favour. To begin with, she was an actress; and in acting, alone among the arts, a certain standard of ability is assumed, so that the artist has to be found out, rather than discovered. Partly because (for this or that reason) she had accepted few engagements, partly because most of these engagements were limited to single performances on Sunday nights, Jane Latour had never been found out. On the contrary, this obvious reluctance of hers to commercialize her art seemed a sufficient guarantee of its purity; and, taken in conjunction with her surprising death (and the fact that most of her authors had been elaborating a new technique, which would really account for anything), it more than justified the enthusiasm of the obituary notices.
In dealing with the other side of Jane Latour’s life, criticism was naturally more restrained. If she did take snow in large and increasing quantities, certainly nothing more was said of it than that ‘she was a well-known social figure, particularly among the younger set’, and her ability as a harpist can only have been implied in the statement that ‘she was always ready to offer her services on behalf of any charity’. As for her matrimonial adventure with the Count, it lost itself so easily in a summary of her distinguished father’s services for the Empire that a careless reader would have supposed that she had married a Colonial Bishop.
So much for Jane Latour among the obituary notices. Jane Latour murdered had the front page to herself.
There was never any doubt that it was Murder. In inviting the co-operation of the Press and the Public, Inspector Marigold had not only been photographed in four different positions, but had put our readers in full possession of all the facts. Dr. Willoughby Hatch (the well-known expert) had yet to conduct his post mortem, or, at least, to communicate his findings through the Coroner to the nation. Opinion, therefore, to some extent was to be reserved. But the absence of a weapon and the presence of strange footprints and a strange handkerchief made the nature of the crime obvious.
Who was the mysterious Jenny? Was she indeed the murderess; or was she (a theory held in many well-informed quarters) another victim? Suppose (said Our Special Investigator beneath a photograph of Chukrapoota, where the dead woman’s father had resided at one period), suppose Jenny had been lured by somebody engaged in the White Slave Traffic to what he had thought to be a deserted house. Suppose that the dead woman, who, as Jane Windell, had herself resided there at one time, had interrupted them. Suppose—and nobody who knew Miss Jane Latour would be surprised at this—that she had bravely intervened to save the intended victim. What happens? Callously the ruffian strikes her down. Then hastily rendering Jenny unconscious with a whiff of chloroform, he lets her out of the window, jumps after her, and half-drags, half-carries her to where his car is waiting. But he has made two little slips, just those little slips which have brought so many murderers to the gallows. Unknown to him, she has dropped the handkerchief with which she was endeavouring to stanch the injuries of the dead woman. Unknown to him, she has left her footprints in the bed. [‘Flower-bed,’ corrected the Night Editor, feeling that the sex-interest was getting too strong] . . . This theory, held as it was in many well-informed quarters, might or might not be the correct one; but obviously, correct or not, the first thing to do was to identify the mysterious Jenny. Who was Jenny?
Miss Nancy Fairbrother knew the answer to that. Reading a paper on her way to Bloomsbury this morning, she saw that it would not be long before the police knew. The afternoon papers would give a full description of Miss Jenny Windell in the clothes which she was wearing on that fatal morning; the clothes which were now hidden away in Nancy’s flat. Everybody would be looking for a fair girl of medium height, grey eyes, attractive appearance, in green georgette with biscuit-coloured picture-hat. Well, that wasn’t going to help anybody. And even if they caught her, she could still persuade certain well-informed quarters that she was victim, not villain.
But could she? Not Jenny Windell. Jenny was too simple, too straightforward for that. If only it had been Nancy Fairbrother!
For nobody could pretend so well as Nancy. She combined the imagination of the novelist with the technique of the old-fashioned actress, transmuting herself into everything which went through her mind. She thought, as it were, in inverted commas. If, in her imagination, she met the Prince of Wales, and they talked together, then she was the Prince of Wales, talking like a Prince (of Wales) who had just met the secretary of an author, and she was Miss Nancy Fairbrother, talking like a girl who was secretary to an author, who had just met the Prince of Wales . . . which was all very different from the Prince of Wales just meeting Miss Nancy Fairbrother. So, had she been in Jenny’s position, it would have been easy for her to have told Inspector Marigold the whole story of that terrible scene in Auburn Lodge; but she would have found it difficult, if asked for Miss Latour’s actual words to the leader of the White Slave Gang, not to have given a much too brilliant impression of Miss Latour actually saying them.
Well, she was not Jenny. But she was Jenny’s right hand; the girl who was to save Jenny. Also she was Mr. Archibald Fenton’s private secretary, and somehow she had to pawn Jenny’s watch to-day. Walking from the omnibus to Mr. Fenton’s house she became a girl with a watch to pawn; a watch that had once belonged to her little sister Joyce.
II
Mr. Fenton was feeling pretty pleased with himself this morning. There were several reasons for th
is. First of all, it was his day for weighing himself, and owing to some mechanical defect in the bathroom weighing-machine, he had gone down to thirteen stone seven. Secondly, Ursula had now definitely got measles, so that her three little sisters would have to be taken by their mother to Bognor Regis to keep out of danger. Thirdly, Stephen’s half-term report had just arrived, and he was top in Divinity. To one who had to leave all that sort of thing to his wife and children, this was extremely gratifying. Fourthly, the photographs in the Bookman had come out well, particularly the one of himself and Lady Claudia and Fanny at Brocken, in which Fanny, being partially obscured by the fountain round which they were grouped, looked younger than she had been for many years. Lastly, and most importantly, he began to see his way through the new book. It was going to be All Right.
‘Good morning, Miss Secretary,’ he said cheerily to Nancy, as he came into the work-room.
‘Good morning, Mr. Fenton,’ said Joyce’s sister bravely.
‘Hallo!’
‘Yes, Mr. Fenton?’
‘What’s the matter with our Miss Fairbrother this bright and breezy morning?’
‘Matter, Mr. Fenton?’
‘Come on, let’s hear all about it.’
‘Really, Mr. Fenton, if you think I’m going to interrupt your morning with my own silly troubles——’
‘You’ll interrupt it much more, if you sit there looking like St. Agnes or St. Agatha or somebody, just before the lion came in.’
‘A lion has just come in,’ said Nancy, with a flutter of her eyes.
‘That’s better. Now then, what is it?’
Nancy swallowed and said: ‘It’s my little sister, Joyce.’
‘I say, not dead? I’m terribly sorry. I wouldn’t have said that, if I’d known——’
‘Oh no, no!’ said Nancy. She thought of saying ‘Worse than death’, in a sad sepulchral voice, but stopped herself just in time. If once she began like that, there was no knowing where she (and her little sister Joyce) would get to. ‘But she’s in trouble.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Fenton sympathetically, quite understanding. A pleasing picture of Nancy also ‘in trouble’, and himself the cause of it, flashed through his mind.
‘Not that sort of trouble,’ said Nancy primly.
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Fenton, disappointed. ‘Well, what?’
‘Money.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Fenton coldly. He might have known.
‘She’s sent me her watch to pawn, and I—I don’t know how to do it, and——’
A revived Mr. Fenton held out his hand.
‘Let’s have a look at it.’
As he examined it, and noted the little ‘J’ in diamonds (for ‘Joyce’), Nancy went on hurriedly: ‘You see, she’s in an office in a cathedral town, and I don’t know if they do have pawnbrokers there, but Joyce daren’t go to one, because she might be seen, and if once it got about, I mean her employer is so very strict, and besides it looks bad, doesn’t it, I mean it shows that you’re spending more money than you ought to, and——’
‘Real diamonds?’ said Mr. Fenton.
‘‘m.’ Nancy gave another gulp. ‘Uncle George gave it to her on her birthday. She was his favourite. He’s dead now, so—— I mean he wouldn’t mind, but I’ve never been to a pawnbroker, and——’
‘D’you know how much he paid for it?’
‘I think twenty pounds, Joyce said Aunt Emily told her, because she was rather annoyed about it, I mean Aunt Emily, but I don’t know. It looks very good, doesn’t it, and if only she could get ten pounds, because you generally get half, don’t you, and——’
‘When you say “pawn”, do you mean you want to redeem it later, or do you just want to sell it?’
‘Sell it to a pawnbroker, I thought,’ said Nancy.
Mr. Archibald Fenton was thinking. Until two years ago he had been a Realist, thus sharing with most critics and Court Painters the conviction that photography is the highest form of art. To describe with such accuracy that even the village idiot, looking over the artist’s shoulder, would say ‘Danged if it tident Farmer Bassett’s old sow’: surely authorship could go no higher than this. He discovered that it could. It could bring back a Rabelaisian robustness to the English novel; even if in so doing (as the man who looked after them in Langley’s circus wrote to tell Mr. Fenton) it made three distinct errors in the toilet of a female elephant. Mr. Archibald Fenton ceased to be a realist . . . but at times he had misgivings. What it came to, he decided at last, was this. Elephants didn’t matter because very few people knew about elephants, but with horses you would have to be careful.
Would you have to be careful with pawnbrokers? Hardly . . . except, of course, for the cheap editions . . . And serial rights . . . Serial rights: that settled it.
‘How would it be’, said Mr. Fenton, ‘if I took it to a pawnbroker for you?’
‘Oh, Mr. Fenton!’ said Joyce’s big sister.
‘That’s all right,’ said Mr. Fenton airily. ‘I’ll do it this afternoon.’
‘It is good of you. Joyce——’ she gulped. ‘I hardly know how to thank you.’ She just touched her eyes with her handkerchief. Pretty little thing she was.
‘That’s all right.’ He patted her shoulder encouragingly. ‘Well, let’s get on with Chapter Five.’
It is, of course, at the end of Chapter Five (as Nancy well knew) that Eustace Frere pawns his cuff-links.
III
Mr. Watterson’s authority for what was happening in the great world had always been The Times. Mrs. Watterson’s authority for what the Radicals were up to had always been Mr. Watterson. At Bath Station, on the morning after the wedding of his grandson, Mr. Watterson proposed to buy a copy of The Times and take it and Mrs. Watterson into a first-class carriage with him.
‘What do you want The Times for, dear?’ said Mrs. Watterson.
‘To read,’ said Mr. Watterson, in the voice of one who thought the question unnecessary.
‘But it’s waiting for you at home, dear. It seems a pity to have two copies.’
Mr. Watterson had been married for fifty years, and knew that the urgency for his need for The Times was one of those things which his wife would never understand.
‘My dear, I can afford the extra twopence,’ he said mildly.
‘It seems such a waste. Why not get one of the other papers, dear?’
‘There are no other papers,’ said Mr. Watterson, believing it.
‘Nonsense. There are plenty. Look, there’s the Morning Post.’
From time to time Mr. Watterson had read the Morning Post at his club, and from time to time Mr. Watterson and the Editor of the Morning Post had agreed upon this or that, but not until the Editor of The Times and Mr. Watterson had agreed upon it first.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I won’t get a paper.’
‘Oh, but you must have a paper, dear. Only it seems so silly to——’
‘I don’t want a paper, I don’t want a paper, I don’t want a paper,’ said Mr. Watterson fretfully.
‘Oh well, dear, you know best. Will you get me the Illustrated London News?’
The wedding champagne still disagreeing with him, Mr. Watterson bought two copies of the Illustrated London News, one for each of them. Mrs. Watterson sighed and said nothing. She had been married for fifty years, and knew that men would always go on being children. This accounted for War and Politics and Sport, and so many things.
They reached home a little after midday, and as soon as Mr. Watterson had opened the door, Cook and Hilda and Alice were in the hall. There had been an argument about this at breakfast.
Cook said that it was her place to break any domestic news, good or bad, to the Mistress.
Hilda said: ‘When I broke that what d’you call it varse, you didn’t break it, catch you.’
‘Well, you broke it,
’ said Cook unanswerably.
Alice said: ‘It’s me the Police will want to know about what she’s wearing what I put out for her being her maid as you might say.’
Cook said: ‘All in good time, Alice. I’m not talking about when the Police comes, but when the Mistress comes.’
Hilda said: ‘Well, I’ve got to be in the ’all to get the luggage in and all, ’aven’t I?’
Cook said: ‘I’m not saying for that.’
Alice said, sniffing slightly: ‘I’m the only one as reely cares about poor Miss Jenny, being her maid, as you might say.’
Cook said: ‘Alice! How can you sit there and say things like that, knowing what we all think about Miss Jenny, and never was a sweeter, more innocent young lady, and Dear knows what——’
Hilda said: ‘Well, I’ve got to be in the ’all, ‘aven’t I, to get the luggage in and all,’ just as Alice was saying: ‘Well, I was the one as wanted to ring up the police, only you wouldn’t let me, being her own maid, well almost.’ So naturally Cook said: ‘Well, if we all speak at once like that, nobody will know ’oo’s missing. That’s all I’m thinking of.’
‘Well, I’ve got to be in the ’all,’ said Hilda, ‘that’s all there is to it, and you two can do what you like.’
This was what they did; and so, as soon as the door opened, Cook and Hilda and Alice were in the hall crying: ‘It’s Miss Jenny, ma’am!’
‘Miss Jenny?’ said Mrs. Watterson. ‘What?’
‘She never came home, ma’am.’
‘Never came home?’ said Mr. Watterson, edging towards The Times. He picked it up, as if accidentally, and opened it, but still with the air of one listening to something else, in the middle, at the leading articles.