The China Governess

by Margery Allingham

  ‘No,’ said Eustate testily. ‘You are simply telling us that it is a question of the time.’

  ‘No, I’m saying it is a question of evidence. The Police naturally want to make out a case. But if their suspect can prove where he was during the likely period for the crime to have been committed, they’ve got to think again haven’t they? They’ve got to widen their times or find another suspect.’

  Eustace sighed. ‘I can’t believe the police, our police, work like that,’ he said. ‘However, I hear what you say. May I know what you want to ask Tim?’

  ‘You want to know if I did it, don’t you, sir?’

  The young man who had been standing behind Julia’s chair put the question wearily. He looked very tired, standing with his hands in his pockets, the dark smudges across his eyes emphasizing their colour. ‘Well, I didn’t.’ He rubbed his hand round the back of his head and pulled his ear and laughed. ‘It was such a damn silly thing to do!’

  ‘A wicked thing!’ Eustace put in quickly. He was prompting openly, rather as if he were prodding a junior at a business conference when the opposition was not too intelligent.

  ‘But also imbecile.’ Tim spoke with sudden affection, his warmth noticeable beside the older man’s colder personality. ‘For one thing, they’re forced by law to be fully insured and the building was patently due for an overhaul. The fire may have saved their lives. No, if I had felt that I wanted to get my own back on the Stalkey Bros., and frankly it never occurred to me, I had only to tell the story to everyone I met. “Fuddy duddy firm of detectives beat up own client in fumbling zeal.” It couldn’t have done them any good wherever I mentioned it and they could hardly sue.’

  ‘All right!’ Councillor Cornish wiped his eyes with amusement. He appeared to be entertained out of all proportion to the joke. ‘I take the point. I’m satisfied. Now I want to hear exactly why you came to see me yesterday.’

  ‘I told you. I got your name from the cobbler in the Orient Road. That was before Ron Stalkey came in and we had the dustup. I was waiting there talking to him for about an hour I suppose. He’s a veteran of the 1914 war – a nice legless little bloke who talks and talks with his mouth full of tacks. Do you know him? I imagine most people in Ebbfield do.’

  ‘Yes, I know him. His name is Tom Tray. Did you meet his sister Dora?’

  ‘I didn’t see a soul there until Ronald Stalkey arrived. After we started belting each other there was a crowd, of course. I went back in the evening to square up for any damage we’d done in the shop, but Tray was quite happy about it and reminded me that he’d told me to go and see you. So I did.’

  ‘But that means you can prove that you were in Ebbfield earlier than Mr. Cornish here was able to tell the police?’ Eustace deman-manded.

  ‘Yes, I know. I told you. I did not set light to the Stalkey Office.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Eustace was persisting when the Councillor interrupted him in his own house.

  ‘I’ve got that,’ he said to Tim. ‘What I want to know is why? How did you think I could help you?’

  Miss Aicheson could bear it no longer. ‘But I explained all that to you when I was persuading you to come down to the Thurstable Inn police station this morning. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come, would you?’ She spoke from across the room, her voice more flutelike than ever. The Councillor coloured.

  ‘I’d like to hear it from the boy himself,’ he protested, making it a grievance. ‘Why did you come to see me, Tim?’

  His use of the Christian name jarred on the family and the young man himself did not answer at once but stood hesitating. It was a silent tussle between them. The whole room was aware of it.

  ‘Well?’

  Timothy shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

  ‘If you’ve already discussed the story with Miss Aicheson, do I really have to tell it again?’

  ‘About this belated search for your identity?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see. Having actually seen the squalor of your beginnings you’ve become violently ashamed of them. Is that right?’

  Cornish was trying to be offensive and succeeding. Eustace bristled and Alison made a little protesting sound.

  Tim laughed. It was a chuckle of irreverent amusement at the pomposity of the accusation. His eyes narrowed, his wide mouth turned up, and a rare shaft of gaiety which was not a normal part of his everyday make-up appeared for a flashing instant.

  ‘My heart did not leap up when I beheld the gasworks, sir. Since you ask me, no.’

  His reaction was a relief to most people present, but the effect of it upon the Councillor was devastating. The man appeared to freeze. He stood rigid for an instant.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you,’ he said stiffly. ‘I was in the R.A.F. by the end of 1938. All we young apprentices were in the reserve. I didn’t get to know Ebbfield very well until the war was over. Surely some public records were saved?’

  ‘None,’ said Eustace. ‘Naturally we looked into that immediately.’

  His mind, which was always unhappy and fumbling when emotions of any kind were involved, seized on the purely factual point gratefully.

  ‘It was a tremendous story. I was fascinated when I went into it. When we first inquired during the war the books – ledgers, registers, or whatever they were – had been evacuated and were unobtainable; when we asked again later we were told they had been returned on the very morning before the first great raid which destroyed half the district, and were completely lost.’

  ‘Yes of course. Yes, I remember now. I’ve heard that in another connection.’ The Councillor was still subdued. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, speaking to Tim. ‘I can’t help. What are you going to do? Shall we expect to see you wandering about the district, looking for clues?’

  ‘Probably not.’ Eustace spoke blandly before the younger man could reply. He was smiling in his pleasant adult way and seemed disposed to be philosophical.

  ‘But you can understand the boy’s interest,’ he went on. ‘When one is a child one gathers scraps of information about oneself, little pieces of embroidery from nurses and so on, and one weaves perhaps a rather romantic story until the time comes when cool reason demands facts which are dull and even a trifle drab compared with a tale of fancy, all moonshine and romance.’

  The Councillor stared at him. ‘Romance!’ he exploded. ‘My God, if you want romance you must go to reality! The things she thinks up take the shine out of any old invention. I’m sorry I can’t help you. If the police need me again presumably they’ll contact me, or of course I shall be available to any lawyer of yours. That’s really all I can do at the moment. Good-bye.’

  He would have left without shaking hands had not Eustace put out his own, and Tim would have followed him down to let him out but there was an unexpected development.

  Julia got up and came over. She was smiling politely.

  ‘Councillor, I’m going the same way as you are, and I must go now. We’ll go together if you don’t mind.’

  Tim looked at her in amazement and there was a moment when Cornish hesitated and she stood placidly forcing him to think twice about being rude to her.

  ‘Why not?’ he said at last. ‘Come along.’

  They went out of the room with Tim behind them.

  Eustace smiled first at his sister and then at the others.

  ‘A funny fellow,’ he said mildly. ‘In many ways an extraordinary fellow. Did you notice he was so excitable and emotional he was almost in tears at one point? What a character Julia is, too! She got him out of the room in case he upset Tim any further. I like her, she has special courage. Very rare these days.’

  Alison looked at the menu in her hand.

  ‘Now I really must make my list,’ she said, ‘or everything nice will be off. What will Tim have, I wonder?’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Cobbler’s Shop

  COUNCILLOR CORNISH PAUSED at a bus-stop and glanced down at his companion dubiously.

  H
e was hatless and the charcoal-coloured raincoat flapping about his bones echoed the tint and texture of his fierce hair and eyebrows, so that he looked like a grey Irish elkhound slinking along silently beside an elegant child of whom he was privately terrified.

  He cleared his throat: ‘I get my bus here for Ebbfield,’ he said.

  ‘I do too.’ Julia did not look at him. There was a reckless obstinacy about her which he was trying not to recognize, it frightened him so.

  ‘What are you going to do in Ebbfield?’ He fumbled over the words and she moved as the red monster came bearing down on them and made a gesture to shoo him on to it ahead of her.

  ‘I’ve got business on the way there,’ she said and followed him on to the half-empty lower deck.

  As the acceleration jerked them into a seat far up in the front, he spoke grudgingly:

  ‘I hear your father is a man of drive. You take after him I suppose?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you about Tim.’

  ‘I’ve told all I know. I’ve given a statement to the police. He was at my house from approximately seven-thirty to eight o’clock. I’ve done all I can.’ He was keeping his voice down, for a London bus is no place to shout in, and kept looking at her in a kind of horror. She had trapped him, he saw; even a teashop would not have afforded more restraining conditions. He could not storm out from a vehicle jolting and swaying over the ancient stones of Scribbenfields at forty miles an hour.

  Julia turned her head and regarded him with an accusing stare.

  ‘It’s not that. You think you know who his family is, don’t you?’

  ‘I certainly don’t! You’re off your head, young woman —’

  He did not finish the sentence; the need to keep reasonably quiet was hampering him but even so his reaction was unconvincing to himself. He was silent for a moment and she continued to look at him.

  ‘You do, don’t you?’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Because it’s the same family as yours.’

  She spoke hastily, and leaning back suddenly in her seat ran her hand up behind her head and brought it down to pull her ear. It was a curious gesture which was very distinctive yet familiar to him.

  ‘I don’t do it very well,’ she remarked. ‘But you and Tim do it all the time, whenever you’re embarrassed. You’re doing it now.’

  ‘You’re mad!’ He pulled his hand down from his ear and sat gaping at her. ‘That’s the most absurd and dangerous accusation I ever heard in my life. I should advise you —’

  She sat frowning, looking at him. ‘I don’t see why you’re so excited,’ she said, and her innocence becoming suddenly apparent set the ground quaking under his feet. ‘Surely you’ve got some relations? Tim is a very nice person. They might be very glad to know.’

  ‘I can’t say anything about that.’ He felt as if he were shuffling his feet.

  ‘Of course you can’t,’ she said with enormous reasonableness. ‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you alone. Haven’t you got brothers or sisters or even cousins? You see, I don’t know if you know but family characteristics, gestures particularly, are liable to crop up most unexpectedly. I know my father had a Canadian cousin who came over in the army in the war. They’d never met and their parents hadn’t met since they were literally babies, and yet the first thing this man did when he came into the house was to push his hair, which was quite short, back over his ears with both hands. No one had ever seen anyone but Daddy do that. It was quite meaningless too, because neither of them had ever worn their hair long, and —’

  ‘You’re sure you’re right about young Timothy?’ he interrupted her gently. ‘About the ear-pulling?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She smiled at him with complete assurance. ‘I watch everything Tim does. I’ve seen him do it hundreds of times and so when you did it too I watched you too. Besides, you may not know it, but you smile the same way and the big planes at the sides of your faces are identical. It wouldn’t be so extraordinary if you were distant relatives, would it? You both come from the same place apparently.’

  ‘No,I don’t come from Ebbfield,’ he said woodenly. ‘I was born in Norfolk. I came to London as an apprentice. I can’t help you in that way at all. If the police want to put him through it again he can call on me. That’s as far as I can go.’

  ‘I see,’ she said bleakly and continued to ride beside him in silence. ‘It’s very good of you,’ she ventured at last. ‘Please don’t feel we’re not very grateful.’

  He grunted and looked out over her dark head at one of the least beautiful main roads in the world; there was mile upon mile of it, a wide-worn ribbon lined with shabby two-storey shops and shabbier open spaces.

  ‘Have you ever been in love before?’ He put the question so reluctantly that it sounded angry.

  ‘No. Not really.’ She flushed and shot an apologetic smile at him. ‘Not with a real person.’

  ‘I see.’ He was smiling despite himself. ‘And how long has it lasted so far?’

  ‘Oh, ever since I first saw him. It’s an “always and forever”: one usually knows, I think. Don’t you?’

  He drew his eyebrows together and sat for a moment framing a question which, when it came, was utterly unexpected.

  ‘You say you watch him all the time?’ he began at last. ‘Did you happen to be looking at him when he made that damn silly remark about the gasworks? I’d been taking the mickey out of him and he suddenly spiked me with a certain kind of flippancy, with a funny sort of grin on his mouth . . .’

  ‘I know. Like a cat laughing.’ He saw to his relief that she had not thought the question in the least extraordinary. ‘He doesn’t do it often. It’s always when someone is being a bit pomp – or a bit grand, you know. That’s not like your family surely, is it?’

  He laughed briefly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not like my family or me. Not at all.’ Once again he looked out at the dismal road and there was water suddenly in his fierce eyes. ‘Not at all,’ he repeated.

  Julia was not listening to him. ‘What worries me is that it must be someone,’ she remarked. ‘Someone really is doing these awful things . . .’

  ‘Setting light to office buildings?’

  ‘Or tearing up old people’s homes. You know Tim was asked where he was when that flat down here in the East End was smashed up? We simply couldn’t understand it at the time. The police were awfully polite and cautious, and since Tim didn’t know then that the Kinnits were employing the Stalkeys to ferret round Ebbfield the questions sounded insane. We’d never heard of Ebbfield. He soon satisfied the detective that he hadn’t been out of Oxford that week at all and the man went away.’ She paused and sat looking at him with wide-open eyes. ‘It must have been the flat-wrecking that the police were investigating though, because it happened about then and the Stalkey who was making the inquiry was staying in it, wasn’t he? I only heard about that last night from Tim’s old nurse, Mrs. Broome.’

  ‘Where had she heard of it?’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t know. Alison Kinnit, perhaps. But Tim must have heard it yesterday from the Stalkey brother who attacked him. I expect that was the real reason why he was so difficult when the police began to question him again. Being wrongfully suspected of some crime you don’t know anything about is all very well if it happens once, but it’s rather different if they do it to you twice. It’s so frightening. Suppose they pin something on him?’

  ‘When he’s innocent?’

  ‘Of course. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Someone is doing these dreadful things. Who is it?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘But don’t you?’ Her gentle persistence appalled him. ‘Can’t you think round and see who it might be? Can’t you guess?’

  ‘Why should I? What are you talking about?’ His voice rose in panic and the old working man dozing on the seat beyond them opened an eye and regarded him with idle curiosity.

  Julia sighed. ‘I don’t know. I�
�m just at the end of what I can bear, I think. I was sitting there in that pink room, looking round at all those people and thinking how well they all meant and how useless they all were, and wondering who was there who could possibly help us. And I looked at you and I thought that you really were awfully like an older Tim and you’d been dragged into the business by a sort of Act of God anyhow, and I felt suddenly that I could make you think of something which could give us a lead.’

  ‘Do you know what you’re saying?’ He was looking at her in a kind of horror. ‘Can you hear yourself?’

  Tears came into her eyes. ‘Oh don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t bully. Just try to help.’

  The fact that she was strained to a point beyond reasoning, and was proceeding by intuition’s reckless compass alone, came home to him. He remained quiet, watching her warily and she returned his stare, her eyes utterly without guile. At last he became convinced that she was only conscious of making a vague but passionately felt appeal for help and he spoke cautiously.

  ‘You’re thinking that because I live down here and know the people I might be able to find out something? Is that it?’

  ‘You’ve got some authority.’

  ‘Suppose I find some suspect and can’t prove anything? What do you expect me to do then?’

  He had begun to breathe again and it was a return to his normal manner, just a fraction aggressive and unsure.

  ‘But you know what to do.’ The protest was inspired. ‘You told everybody less than an hour ago. You said the only thing to do was to avoid the ordinary police and go to the very top flight. That’s what I came with you to tell you. I know one of them. He’s a Mr. Charles Luke, a senior something or other at New Scotland Yard. I’ve met him and I think you’re right and one could tell him anything. He’s larger than life but —’

  ‘I know Luke.’

  ‘You do?’ She smiled with radiant relief. ‘That’s miraculous! That’s what people mean when they say a thing is “meant”. Start thinking who it might be and if it comes to you – and I’ve got a hunch it will – then you go straight to him. You will, won’t you?’