A Tangled Web

by Nicholas Blake

  “I’m keeping her to myself for keeps,” said Hugo.

  “Oho. Good for you.” Jacko’s voice was high, rather throaty, with a croon in it. “And when is the happy event to take place?”

  Hugo, for once, was quite put out of countenance. “Oh well, I—”

  Daisy rescued him from his floundering. “We’re not thinking of getting married just yet, Mr. Jaques.”

  “How right you are,” he said, beaming at her. “What’s the hurry, after all? You’re still so young. Both of you. Marry in haste and repent at leisure.” It was adroitly done—the temporary embarrassment at once smoothed over. Jacko’s whole attitude was so cosy, so solicitous, that Daisy could not understand why she began to feel a faint uneasiness, as if a sore spot had been deliberately probed.

  “Well, it’s a nice little hide-out you and Hugo have,” Jacko was saying. “I like these seedy bits of London myself. And have you ever thought what a beautiful name it is?—Maida Vale.” He crooned the name again. “Maida Vale. So pastoral. Just the spot for an idyllic romance. Daphnis and Chloe. You really ought to have a flock of sheep, Miss Bland. Or was it goats?—you should know, Hugo old boy, with your classical education. I wonder is there any law against keeping sheep in Maida Vale. Wouldn’t they be useful for drawing wool over people’s eyes?”

  Daisy laughed. She had not followed much of this; but a swift glance at Hugo showed her that his silence was not a disgruntled one. He looked happy, approving—the smaller brother proudly showing off the big brother to an admiring audience. She gazed at the thin, swarthy face, the eyes that could communicate to her such a current of recklessness, and was contented because he was. With Jacko here, she seemed to be seeing Hugo afresh, from another angle: this is what he is like when I’m not there, she thought. It was like getting another birthday present—this new picture of him, and she felt a little rush of warmth towards his friend.

  “Smoked salmon!” cried Jacko, as she brought in the first course. “My favourite food. How clever you are!”

  “It was Hugo’s idea,” she said in her forthright way, smiling at him. “But I can cook.”

  “I bet you can.”

  “A good plain cook, Daisy is,” said Hugo.

  “Plain cook? My dear chap! What do you call a beautiful cook, then?” Jacko rubbed his hands in glee. “Don’t you realise you’ve got a treasure, a pearl, you base Indian?”

  “Oh! Hugo’s not an Indian, are you, pet?”

  “But I know a pearl when I see one.”

  “I should hope so,” chuckled Jacko, with a flick of a glance at his friend. Hugo found this an excellent joke. He was laughing a lot now, and Daisy realised that, unusual for him, he was getting a bit tiddly. What with all the gin and french before supper, and the champagne now, Daisy herself felt muzzy enough. Jacko kept refilling their glasses, having appointed himself, as he said, wine-waiter to the snowy-breasted pearl of Maida Vale. He raised his own now.

  “The time is ripe for a toast. To Daisy! Many happy returns. You’re the luckiest chap in the world, Hugo!”

  She saw her lover’s eyes, full of tenderness, regarding her over the rim of his glass. “Don’t I know it,” he said, to her alone. For a moment they were enclosed together, the two of them, in the circle of their love. Then, flushing, Daisy turned to Jacko. She wanted desperately to do justice to this moment, draw him into it, express her gratitude for everything; but it overflowed any words she could think of. With a little, self-conscious toss of the head, in a voice shy and quaintly dignified, she said:

  “Thank you very much. It’s very kind of you. To come here, I mean, and”—she tried again—“I don’t deserve—it’s really Hugo you ought to—”

  “No, I mean it,” said Jacko, in an earnest, confidential way, his large soft eyes beseeching her. “You’re obviously wonderful for him. I’ve never seen him look so well and happy. The whole thing’s perfect.”

  “I’m glad you’re the first—the first of Hugo’s friends—”

  “Am I really?” He took the point quickly, eagerly. “I say, old boy, you have been keeping her close.” Hugo frowned a little, and Jacko went on, “Quite right too. One shouldn’t put temptation in people’s way.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

  “I see I’m even more privileged than I’d thought.”

  “Oh, she’s safe enough with you, Jacko.”

  “Thank you kindly, sir, for those words. Those famous last words. But not in this case.”

  Jacko’s tone remained light and droll. Daisy thought she must have imagined the momentary change of expression on his face just now: too much champagne was playing tricks with her eyes.

  “I think the wine must be going to my head,” she remarked, with somewhat owlish grandeur. “Will you have some more game pie, Mr. Jaques? I do beg your pardon—Dr. Jaques, I should say.”

  “Mister is correct,” said Hugo. “He’s a surgeon, you see. Sort of.”

  “Oh, good,” she remarked vaguely, beginning to clear away. “Can you eat iced pudding, Mr. Jaques?”

  “I can and will. If it kills me.” Jacko’s hand sketched a distended stomach in front of his own.

  “Not that it’ll be very iced,” Daisy went on. “Hugo brought it back hours ago, and we haven’t got a frige.”

  “Anent which,” said Jacko in his droll manner, as she took the plates out, “did you see Paula Lamerle lost her ice last night, Hugo?”

  “It’s terribly runny,” said Daisy, when she returned with the pudding. “We’d better pretend it’s soup. Who is Paula Lamerle?”

  “Cabaret star,” said Hugo shortly.

  Jacko was watching him with an expression which, under other circumstances, might have been described as an egging-on look. Since Hugo vouchsafed no more, Daisy asked:

  “What d’you mean, ‘lost her ice’?”

  “Ice means diamonds, in the circles Jacko moves in,” Hugo explained.

  “Someone, to put no finer point on it, pinched them.” Jacko enlarged upon it, gazing interestedly at the girl. “While she was doing her cabaret turn. Midnight last night.”

  “Oh. Do you know her?” Daisy asked him. “Is she very famous?”

  “I’ve met her.”

  “Jacko could probably get you her autograph. He has attended her professionally.”

  Though she could not have put her finger on any reason for it, the girl felt dimly that the two men were ganging up on her. She was accustomed to being teased by Hugo, but this was somehow different: they were like two schoolboys with a private joke, using it to unnerve a third. Rather miserably, she turned to her liquefied ice. Hugo was spooning his up, and at the same time reading the account of the burglary in an evening paper which Jacko had brought.

  “One advantage of being poor and humble nowadays,” the latter remarked to her affably, “is that one is spared the visitations of these burglarious gentry.”

  “I suppose so,” Daisy replied, feeling stupid and inadequate.

  “No doubt, like artists, they feel the world owes them a living.” The little man’s tortoise head turned and poked forward at Hugo. “Do you do any painting nowadays?”

  “What? Me? No.”

  “I never knew—” Daisy began.

  “Oh, Hugo’s a versatile chap. Turn his hand to anything.”

  Daisy, needing comfort, got up and stood behind Hugo’s chair, leaning over him. His hands made the beginning of a movement, as if to close the newspaper, then desisted. She read it over his shoulder. Cabaret Singer’s Flat Burgled. Paula Lamerle in an interview with our Crime Reporter said… on returning after the show I found my bedroom had been ransacked… £5000 diamond necklace stolen… the thief must have entered by climbing.

  The print jigged in front of Daisy’s eyes. There was a photograph of the block of flats, a dotted line indicating the burglar’s supposed route up the back wall, along a ledge, then using a drainpipe—the sight of it made her feel dizzier than ever, and she suddenly gripped Hugo’s shoulders.
/>   “Steady, old girl! What is it?”

  “He might have broken his neck.”

  Hugo laughed. “Served him right if he had.”

  Jacko’s face, swimming before her as she looked up, for an instant resembled that of a woman she remembered at an all-in wrestling match to which Hugo had taken her—mouth open, eyes drinking in the sweat and pain.

  “A glutton for punishment,” she heard herself incredibly saying. “Oh dear, I have drunk too much.”

  “Go and make some black coffee, love. We all need it.”

  “All right. I hope they don’t catch him.”

  “Catch whom? Oh, the burglar. Don’t you worry about him. Off you go.” Hugo slapped her smartly on the bottom.

  Jacko said, “Criminals always get caught, sooner or later. They’re so damned stupid, most of them.”

  “They get caught because they can’t keep their traps shut,” said Hugo, “and because they won’t vary their methods. Leave the same old trade-marks every time, silly mugs.”

  Daisy heard Jacko chuckle, as she went into the kitchen. She put the kettle to boil and set the cups on a tray, aware of the men’s voices through the door, which she had not quite shut behind her, as a confused burble. She wondered what they were talking about. What did men talk about when they were alone together? Hugo’s friend was very nice to her, really—not a bit stand-offish or disapproving. But did she like him? Why didn’t she like him?

  Daisy warmed the jug, spooned in the coffee, poured boiling water over it slowly, stirred. When she had finished, the sound of conversation from the next room came back, amplified but still blurred. Perhaps they were talking about her. What would Jacko be saying about her? On an impulse she moved to the door. Jacko’s voice:

  “… give you a sweet alibi.”

  “No, I wouldn’t drag Daisy into it. Not on your life.”

  Hugo’s voice, though he had spoken not much above a whisper, sounded unnaturally loud in her ears, like a noise heard at the moment of waking. And Daisy had awoken. At last. The wheel stopped whirling and the balls fell exactly into their slots: yes, everything that had puzzled her, disquieted her, intrigued her—everything fitted in. The pattern was now clear, but she dared not yet look at its detail. She was beyond any emotion—fear, resentment, pity, shame; beyond mortification at her own blindness or the way he had consistently deceived her. She was, quite simply, stunned. The dream had fallen about her ears: and like a survivor picking her dazed way over the rubble, she walked into the other room, set down the tray on the dining-table, held out her hand to the guest, and said:

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Jaques, but I must go and lie down. I’m not feeling very well. No, you mustn’t think of going yet. Stay and talk to Hugo. No, it’s all right really—I’ll just take some aspirin. I’m not used to so much drink”

  She moved like a pale sleepwalker past Hugo, who had risen from the table, his face full of concern, and walked carefully over the debris into her bedroom.

  6. The End of Innocence

  Daisy lay on the bed, still dressed, in the dark, sensation coming back to her. She lay on her back, quite rigid, and steeled herself to probe the wounds. The superficial wounds first—her own blindness, stupidity: she felt Hugo’s deception, poor girl, as a wound not to her pride but to her love. If I’d loved him truly, I’d have guessed, known the truth. I knew he was trying to tell me something, yet I never helped him out with it. “I’m a bad hat, Daisy”—that was at Kew, our first day. Then paying for everything with £1 notes: crooks always do that, so the newspapers say. And my funny feeling, on our holiday, that we were running away, being chased. Perhaps the police were after him then. And running away from them at the fair-ground. A woman’s instinct is always right. But when you love a chap so much, it goes to sleep. He tried to confess, to make me guess his secret. Running up that wall. Cat burglar. Like last night. And, afterwards, in the bluebell wood, “Would you marry me if I was a murderer?” and “if you were a criminal type, would you ask a girl you loved to marry you?”

  It helped, to remember that. He’s got some decency left. Oh, you nasty wicked thing, to think of him like that, when he’s always been so loving and considerate.

  Blank incredulity returned. It was impossible that he—her wonderful Hugo—could be a common crook. The talk she had heard just now between him and Jacko must mean something else. But it could not. Poor sweetheart, with your nightmares, your fear of being trapped—“buried alive”—perhaps he was in a real prison, not a prisoner-of-war camp: “there’s no such thing as a prison without bars.” … Then trying to swipe those beer-mats: he didn’t even seem to understand it was wrong: there must be something missing in him. Oh God, those flowers he brought back for me last night: he said he’d pinched them, and I thought it was a joke. How can I believe anything he says now—anything he ever said? Stuffing me up with tales about his business deals. He must have had a good laugh, the way I swallowed it all. Having a good laugh with that Jaques chap now, I shouldn’t be surprised. Don’t be a bitch, he’d never laugh at you, not in that way: don’t you see, he’s been trying to protect you all along.

  And he might have killed himself last night, climbing up to… Brushing the old suit when he got back, in case I noticed marks on it, dirt: the suit with the poacher’s pocket, and the knobbly satchel inside it: burglar’s tools—what do they call them?—jemmies, skeleton keys and such. I wonder is he frightened when he breaks into places. Worth it, for a diamond necklace, and…

  Daisy winced away. This was the mortal wound. Then she forced herself to examine it. The brooch was on her dress still. It had made her birthday and seemed to mark a new stage in her life with Hugo, admitting her into the mysterious, precious circle of his past. Why did he have to tell her it was his mother’s? That was a gratuitous insult, a piece of cruel mockery. She could have forgiven him for being a thief, for any other lies: but to have passed off as his mother’s a jewel-case he had stolen—that was a cheap, rotten thing to do. It made him utterly unreliable, made nonsense of his love. You could never again trust a person who did that.

  The girl fell into a passion of sobbing. She tore the brooch from her dress and hurled it into the darkness, with a spasm of physical loathing, as if it were a scorpion. It struck the door and fell clinking on the floor-boards. Ten minutes later, when Hugo came in, he trod full upon the brooch, shattering it.

  “What the devil?” Harsh light from the naked bulb overhead violated the room. Hugo bent down from the switch. “Oh, Christ, it’s my mother’s brooch! What’s it doing here? It’s ruined. Daisy, you’ve not undressed yet. Are you all right?”

  “I threw it there.”

  “You what?”

  “I threw it there.”

  Hugo stared at her, incredulity turning to anger on his face. She gazed implacably back, sitting bolt upright now in the bed, her eyes screwed up against the glare.

  “Threw it? Have you gone mad?”

  “Your mother’s brooch! I suppose it belonged to that tart—”

  He was at the bedside in two swift strides, and had struck her a terrible blow across the face. Without a cry or a whimper, the beautiful head slowly bowed forward into her hands, covered away from him.

  Hugo stood for a moment irresolute, as if he might hit her again or fall on his knees beside her. Then he turned away, began to take off his coat and tie, and when he had mastered his voice, said coldly:

  “Will you please tell me what all this is about?”

  “I heard what you and that man were saying.” Her voice came out muffled from behind her hands and the thick hair drooping over them. “I know what you were doing last night.”

  “Oh?” Hugo sat down, and went quite still, like an animal shamming dead in a snare. The silence stretched between them till Daisy felt her mind must snap. Painfully she lifted her head, gazing full at him. He did not avoid her eyes, but he did not seem to be seeing her. She groped for the right thing to say, knowing that anything else would be the end for them
. She felt too young, too tired, to manage this situation; yet it was in her hands—she must give the lead. Hugo’s mouth twitched. For an instant it was not Hugo there but her little brother, the baby of the family, whom she had loved most and mothered. A shaft of compunction, compassion, went through her. He was a thief, and a liar: he was hers.

  “Hugo. I love you,” she said, holding out her arms.

  He came stumbling into them, sightlessly. “I’m glad you know. I tried to tell you, but I couldn’t. I was afraid you’d leave me.”

  “I know, my dear love, I know,” she soothed him, recognising, with a wisdom beyond her years, with a woman’s tender, indulgent scorn, the tones of masculine self-pity—so facile, so sincere. “I understand,” she said. “Don’t you take on so, sweetheart. It’s all right now. I shan’t leave you.” His body was shaking convulsively, as though some furious engine had broken loose inside it. She crushed his head tighter to her breast, desperately trying to bury thus her reproaches and his betrayals.

  “I hurt you, darling,” he muttered.

  “I don’t mind. That’s over now.”

  And presently, when he had grown calmer and was stroking her bruised cheek, she let herself say:

  “It wasn’t that that hurt me. Not hitting me.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You told me it was your mother’s.”

  “My mother’s? Oh, your brooch. But it was, darling. All those trinkets I showed you.” He broke off, flushing painfully. “Oh, I see now. You thought I’d stolen it. You really believed I’d do a thing like that?”

  “I was so miserable,” she answered drearily. “How could I believe anything you said, after—”

  “After—?”

  “Well, those flowers you brought to me for my birthday.”

  “But I told you I’d pinched them.”

  Daisy sighed. “I thought it was a joke, and you let me think it was.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” he said ingenuously. “But the brooch was different. I’m not all that of a clot. I do draw the line somewhere. Don’t you believe me, love? Look, I can prove it. I’ve got the letter my father sent, saying mother wanted me to have—”