‘‘What did you say? How did he leave you?’’
‘‘I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, I said I couldn’t believe there was a word of truth in what he said. In any case I’d have to have time to think it over.”
‘‘Good girl. And he …?’’
‘‘I suggested he might come to the flat next Sunday, but he wouldn’t do that. He said he’d call back here—to-night.”
I drank the thing she had mixed, and thought it out. She poured another, not moving from the table, though once or twice she looked up into my face.
I said: ‘‘Did he mention me?’’
‘‘No.”
‘‘Did he give the impression that we had better pay the money, or that you had?’’
‘‘That I had.”
‘‘Do you feel like a criminal being overtaken by your crime?’’
‘‘Yes.”
‘‘It isn’t hard, is it? You only need enough people to think you are and you start acting like one. If I’d allowed you to stay as innocent as you were a month ago you’d have gone straight out into the lobby and sent the porter for a policeman.”
‘‘I nearly did. But the rumour that you heard on Tuesday—I felt I couldn’t do anything until I’d seen you.”
‘‘What time did he say he’d be back?’’
‘‘About nine.” She stared at her glass.
‘‘Can you eat any dinner?’’
‘‘Not much.”
‘‘Well, let’s try. Perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing after all. At least it’s something we can fight. Perhaps we shall have, the answer to quite a lot of our questions, before to-morrow.”
We toyed with the meal and were back upstairs again before eight-thirty. Sarah said Mr. Jerome had been quite definite that they must meet again in the public lounge; so I let her go down and then followed in a few minutes and took a seat in the extreme opposite corner and tried to read Country Life. I didn’t want to scare him away if he was a timid bird.
The lounge was fairly empty at first, but it filled up towards nine, and I had quite a job to see Sarah’s dark curly head across all the other odd-looking coiffures that sprouted between. I suppose the English aren’t uglier or more eccentric than any other race; but the public lounge of a hotel makes you think so.
Quarter-past nine came, and every time the revolving doors began to move I thought, this is it. Although Sarah had given me a fairly good idea, I saw him paunchy and short-sighted, black-haired and suave. At half-past nine Sarah got up and came towards me. She looked white and tired.
‘‘Something’s put him off. He may have seen you and thought it was a trap.”
‘‘Perhaps he’s just unpunctual. Give him another fifteen minutes.”
She said: ‘‘You stay here. I’ll ask at the desk and then walk round the hotel.”
I agreed to that and sat down again. Country Life was full of big places for sale—other Lowis Manors—whose owners were able to take the more conventional course. I threw it down and put my hand in my pocket and took out Tracey’s ring and looked at it. So far I’d carried it with me all the time, though I never let Sarah see it again. I felt pretty much on edge, and wondered what the fine would be if I kicked Mr. Jerome down the steps. I wondered what I should do if I had to give up the insurance game. It wouldn’t be fair to stay if the rumour reflected on Michael and his father. In a way, with Sarah as my wife, the idea of starting absolutely afresh, perhaps in New Zealand, had a new and exciting appeal. I didn’t know what she would think——
A page boy was coming across the lounge followed by a man in a dirty mackintosh. They came straight up to me.
‘‘Mr. Branwell, sir? Gent to see you.”
The man was a tall chap, with a thin rather ugly face and prominent teeth. He uncovered them at me as the page boy turned away and said:
‘‘Mr. Oliver Branwell?’’
‘‘Yes.” I got up. ‘‘Are you Mr. Jerome?’’
He looked at me with a slight frown. ‘‘ No, sir. I’m afraid not. My name is Barnes. Detective Sergeant Barnes. Is there anywhere do you think we could go for a little private chat?”
Chapter Twenty
I was afraid Sarah would give something away when we met her on the stairs and I introduced him. But although she was under a big strain she was too finely tempered for that. She smiled at him slightly and her eyes flickered away to mine and then looked across the hall.
‘‘Is it something to do with your work, darling?’’
‘‘Yes. We’ll be about ten minutes. I’ll find you in the lounge?’’
‘‘I expect so. You don’t want me, I suppose?’’
I looked at Barnes and he smiled deprecatingly.
‘‘No,’’ I said. ‘‘I’ll be down in a jiffy.”
Of course, it could have been something to do with my work. In our room I pushed a chair forward.
‘‘Take your mack off if you’re hot. What will you have to drink?’’
‘‘Thanks. Thank you; nothing on duty, you know.” He folded up on the chair and looked apologetic. He wasn’t any older than I was.
I offered the cigarette-box. ‘‘So it’s a duty call, is it? Well, what have I done, forgotten to take out a driving licence, or something?’’
‘‘Thank you.… No, nothing like that. As a matter of fact, it’s nothing you’ve done, Mr. Branwell. It’s really rather a matter of routine, you know; just checking up on a case. It’s an old case; one that we’ve been keeping an eye on, just in the ordinary course of business, as you might say. One or I two new facts have come along, and I’m going round picking up a pointer here and there.” He got out his lighter before me and stood up to hold it to my cigarette. ‘‘We thought you might be able to help us.”
‘‘Well. Anything I can do.…”
Barnes drew on his cigarette and then looked round for an ash-tray. ‘‘It’s that fire, you know. That fire at Lowis Manor, when Mr. Moreton lost his life. There are one or two things about it which we’ve always felt were ever so slightly unsatisfactory, and we wondered.… I believe you were a friend of Mr. Moreton, visited there etc.; knew them all pretty well; at least I suppose that’s not too much to assume in view of the fact …”
‘‘In view of the fact that I married his widow.”
He uncovered his teeth again. They were large and rather yellow. ‘‘I wasn’t going to say that, but still.… Oh, thanks.” He tapped his cigarette. ‘‘When did you meet Mr. Moreton first, Mr. Branwell?’’
‘‘It’ll be about two years ago. Two years this month. They had an outbreak of fire in his study at Lowis Manor, but they were able to put it out before it did much damage. I was sent down by my firm to assess the loss.”
‘‘I see. And was that also the first time you’d met Mrs. Morteon?’’
I hesitated and knew the next moment that I was a fool to have done so.
‘‘No. We met once before the war. Just for a few minutes. We’d completely forgotten each other.”
‘‘I suppose it was at a friend’s house or something—before the war?’’
‘‘No. She had a puncture in her car. I happened to be passing and mended it for her.”
He dug about in the pocket of his raincoat and took out a notebook.
‘‘Did you—lose touch altogether—or write occasionally—or?’’
‘‘Lost touch. I forgot her existence. She forgot mine. She never even knew my name. But I thought you’d come to ask me about the fire.”
He grinned apologetically. ‘‘Sorry. It’s the old flat-foot coming out in me. But it really leads up to how you became a friend of Mr. Moreton’s, instead of just a—just someone calling in the way of business, as you might say.…”
‘‘I don’t think it had anything to do with it. Moreton had been in the Desert War. So had I. We began to talk about it and he invited me to lunch.”
Detective Sergeant Barnes made a note. ‘‘Pencils are cheap muck these days, aren’t they? It’s practically imp
ossible to get a decent one, and I can’t get used to these ball-pointed pens. When you grew friendly, did he ever discuss the insurance of his house with you, Mr. Branwell?’’
‘‘No. Never.” Then I remembered that excuse I’d made to McDonald. ‘‘Oh I believe once I suggested that the place was under-insured for present-day prices.”
‘‘You knew what it was insured for, then?’’
‘‘Well, of course. It’s always given on the underwriter’s slip when a claim is made.”
‘‘Oh, of course. Naturally. What would be the last time you saw Mr. Moreton before he died?’’
‘‘About a week before.”
‘‘You went down there?’’
‘‘Yes.”
‘‘On a visit?’’
I said rather wearily: ‘‘We’d a long-standing date to go to the ballet together. In the end he couldn’t make it and only his wife came. Afterwards I drove her home and went in and had a drink with them.”
‘‘Did he seem—quite happy then?’’
‘‘Happy isn’t the word to use. He was always off colour—asthmatic; and he had a bit of a grudge against the way things had turned out for him. If anything that night he was more cheerful and more talkative than usual.”
‘‘What did you talk about?’’
‘‘Chiefly about the repairs and decorations he was having done. Is this important?’’
‘‘Well, one likes to know; sometimes these little indications … Tell me, Mr. Branwell, did you ever see Mr. Moreton go off into a faint?’’
‘‘No, never.”
‘‘Or look like it?’’
‘‘No. Wouldn’t his doctor be able to tell you about that?’’
‘‘Well, I’m just asking you to tell me about it, if you see what I mean.”
‘‘Frankly I don’t.”
Barnes put down his pencil and picked up his cigarette. He drew at it a minute. He didn’t seem discouraged.
‘‘You’ll remember the night of the fire, I suppose, Mr. Branwell? May the sixth. Do you remember what you were doing that evening, whether you were in London or …?’’
‘‘I remember very well. I stood on a chair in my flat and slipped off it and sprained my ankle. I spent the next two days in bed.”
‘‘What time would it be when you had the accident?’’
‘‘Just about seven.”
‘‘You had a doctor, I suppose?’’
Careful. ‘‘ No. It didn’t seem worth while. I was hobbling around by the Wednesday.”
‘‘So when was the first you heard of the fire?’’
‘‘My partner, Mr. Abercrombie, phoned me on Sunday morning and asked me to go down. I explained I couldn’t; so he went instead.”
‘‘I suppose you—you phoned Mrs. Moreton, or got in touch with her somehow?’’
‘‘No.”
He didn’t speak, but waited with an inquiring look. ‘‘I felt there was very little I could do,’’ I said. ‘‘Mr. Abercrombie was there to help in any way that was necessary.”
‘‘So when was the first time you communicated with Mrs. Moreton—after that?’’
‘‘I was at the inquest,’’ I said. ‘‘ Look, is this getting you anywhere; because it’s not amusing me. Can we cut it short and come to the point?’’
He looked apologetic for the last time and rubbed out his cigarette. ‘‘I don’t think I can come to any point, Mr. Branwell. You can’t, you know, on these sort of jobs. It’s a question of accumulating all the material you can and then laboriously sifting it through at headquarters. You probably know that, being a sort of detective—an insurance detective—yourself.” He uncovered his teeth again. I didn’t smile back. ‘‘But if it would assist you in any way I can tell you one of the circumstances which left us a little dissatisfied as to the manner of Mr. Moreton’s death. You remember the medical evidence?’’
‘‘Very vaguely.”
‘‘The pathologist said that Moreton had only about one per cent of carbon monoxide in his blood. You remember? Well, that’s no more than you would expect to find in a smoker—herbal or tobacco, it’s the burning vegetable matter that counts. So that left nothing at all for any other smoke he might have inhaled. Now you remember Moreton is supposed to have telephoned the fire station, and the fire officer claimed they were on the scene within twelve minutes—so that he could only have sent the message when the house was well ablaze. I expect you know where the phone was?’’
‘‘I have a general idea.”
‘‘It was in a small cloakroom between the main kitchens and the baize door. There was only the one; no extensions. Well, we carefully worked it out. It seemed quite possible for Mr. Moreton to have stayed in one of the bedrooms and come out suddenly, have found the house on fire, and jumped to his death with no extra contamination of the blood stream. But it was impossible, we thought, for him to have telephoned from a room which must have been full of smoke, to have fought his way upstairs, and then to have died with no excess of carbon monoxide at all.”
There was silence for a bit. I said: ‘‘And what do you deduce from that?’’
‘‘We think someone else may have been in the house and done the phoning, perhaps in order to confuse the issue or give the impression Moreton was alive a lot later than he really was.”
I got up and strolled to the window. ‘‘You’re assuming rather a lot. Fires are very capricious. I should hesitate to predict how one was going to burn or how one had burned.”
‘‘It’s a little speculative, of course. But it does give room for dissatisfaction. That and other circumstances.” He got up too. ‘‘Well, thanks for your help, Mr. Branwell. I’ll be getting along now. You’re here to stay?’’
‘‘No. We’re moving into a flat on Saturday. I’ll give you the address.”
‘‘I expect the hotel will have it if I need it, won’t they?’’ At the door he stopped. ‘‘Oh, there was one other thing. What make of a car have you got, Mr. Branwell?’’
I said: ‘‘A grey Wolseley saloon. The Council offices would tell you.”
‘‘Not a new model?’’
‘‘Oh, dear, no. Three years old.”
‘‘Go all right?’’
‘‘Yes. Fine.”
He nodded and went out. I stood and watched him down the corridor. I gave him three minutes before I went to rejoin Sarah.
Mr. Jerome didn’t turn up.
Loving Sarah just then was like loving somebody under the shadow of a closing hand.
Perhaps I hadn’t killed Tracey, with her knowing all about it and encouraging me; perhaps I hadn’t set fire to the house to cover up what I’d done. But, like it or not, where the law’s concerned it isn’t what really happened that counts, it’s what a sufficient number of other people think happened.
In sensible moments I reasoned it out, and so did she. But it isn’t always reason that has the last say. The hunch that you’re being followed and watched and overtaken, that something is pending, that a sort of circumstantial evidence exists and is being gathered up and made ready for use, that a number of other people know more than you do and so you can’t guard against any moves they may make—all these feelings get under your skin and under your good sense and make you jumpy and at stretch.
Yet in my marriage itself, which was something separate, something much more at the centre of things, I found only one flaw. It was that in spite of Sarah’s apparent love and loyalty I couldn’t rid myself of a sense of impermanence, as if she wasn’t here to stay.…
The awful part of all this was that it made you feel you could have killed Tracey, if this sort of bewitched happiness could come of it and if by doing so it could be made to last.…
On the Friday I met McDonald.
The Hammersmith fur claim hadn’t got any further, but Abel, acting for Collandi, suddenly decided to push things along by making a formal, protest to the brokers that I was obstructing the claim unfairly. The broker was McDonald, and he passed the matter to Ber
keley Reckitt. While I was out on another thing Reckitt rang through and asked to speak to Michael, though he knew darned well that I was on the assignment. I went out to lunch feeling ruffled and edgy, and knowing I ought to call in and see McDonald sometime during the afternoon. A broker’s natural concern is for his client, and it was really up to me to go along and have a chat, explaining why I was holding things up. But I couldn’t face the thought of seeing McDonald.
At lunch I met Charles Robinson again, and we carefully talked about nothing but cars and motor-racing. After lunch I went into the men’s lavatory with Charles and found McDonald there, in his shirt sleeves, wiping his hands on a towel.
His flabby face changed its shape when he saw me, and he just nodded frostily and went on using the towel. There was nobody else in the place except Charles. I thought now the opportunity was thrust at me I must take it; so much better than a phone call, and a third person present would make it easier.
I said: ‘‘ I was coming to see you this afternoon.”
Perhaps because I didn’t feel friendly it didn’t sound as friendly as I intended. He gave the towel an extra tug and carefully wiped between each finger. He stared at me and said: ‘‘What for?’’ and then before I could answer he turned back to the basin and picked up a comb and passed it once or twice through his hair.
‘‘About Collandi. I really can’t recommend a settlement yet. The whole claim is very unsatisfactory.”
‘‘Well, you’ve made your views perfectly plain in your report. I don’t see what good will be served by coming to see me about it.”
‘‘I thought I could try to explain to you a bit more fully.”
He looked at himself in the mirror. ‘‘What is there to explain? There’s no doubt about the robbery, is there?’’
Fortune Is a Woman Page 17