The Stratton Story

by Elizabeth Cadell

  She walked towards the inn, and after a slight hesitation, Mrs Stratton and Sir Hugo followed. Mr. Guzzman stared after them with a frown of bewilderment, and then turned to address Julian.

  “This lady, this big lady, you are akin to her?” he asked. “A grandson, maybe?”

  “Godson.”

  “This blanks, I don’t understand.”

  “Drawing a blank, the way I always figured it,” Mr. Cotter said, “meant. .. well, drawing a blank. This time it was different. This time, if you drew a blank, you were in. See?”

  “No.”

  “It is very simple,” Mrs. Guzzman told him. “The gentleman just told you. You did not keep your head on what he was saying. The blanks ... he explained all that.”

  “If you and your wife would like my blank,” Gail said to Mr. Cotter, “I’ll be happy to—”

  “No, thanks. It’s real kind of you, but I guess four of us would have taken up practically all the hotel rooms,” he said. “We’ll go along with this fellow here.”

  He led his wife away; the children were already halfway up the slope, riding the donkey. Julian handed Mrs. Westerby’s luggage to the landlord of the inn and drove to a distant house, its owner crouching nervously in the seat beside him.

  Gail went into the inn. At a telephone at the end of the corridor she could hear Sir Hugo giving somebody a piece of his mind—a French piece. The matter, he was informing his listener, would be taken up at a high level by him personally; he would see to it that the highway authorities were called to account.

  The landlord appeared and led Gail upstairs to one of the rooms opening on to a narrow balcony. There was no partition separating her half of it from that of Mrs. Wester by, who was in the room next to hers. Across the small, dark, uncarpeted landing was Mrs. Stratton’s room and, next to it, the Guzzmans’; next to them was Sir Hugo.

  There was only one bathroom; Mr. Guzzman got to it first and stayed in it so long that his wife went to pound protestingly on the door. Gail changed into slacks and a sweater, took a wooden chair on to the balcony and sat down, pad on knee, to scribble a letter to her sister. Below her she could see the roughly-terraced entrance on which the landlord was busy placing a few small, round tin tables and chairs.

  She looked up as Mrs. Westerby came out on to the balcony.

  “Comfortable?” she asked.

  “My dear, I never allow discomfort to worry me. I daresay I shan’t sleep a wink on that bed—it’s years since I came across one of those feather mattresses—but I do so hate people who grumble, unless grumbling can alter things. Sir Hugo”—she leaned forward and lowered her voice—“is furious."

  “I know. He was on the phone when I came in, telling them who he is.”

  “He began to tell me that you had led him into this by refusing to stop when he sounded his horn. I told him not to talk nonsense. Anita, I’m glad to say, seems to be taking it all extremely well. She—Oh, here’s Julian coming.” She leaned perilously over the low railing. “Julian, come on up and look at my room. What is yours like?”

  He had changed into a shirt and jeans; his hair was damp. He glanced up and spoke briefly.

  “Needs new straw,” he said.

  He came through Mrs. Westerby’s room on to the balcony.

  “Straw apart,” Gail said, “what’s it like?”

  “It’s got a nice, clean animal smell. If there has to be a smell, that’s the smell I like to have. The river runs past the end of the garden; I had a quick bathe. Cold, but nice and fresh.”

  “Has anybody any idea when we shall be able to get away tomorrow?” Gail asked him.

  “Stevens and Susie seem to be in the know; their tent’s behind the house of the brother of the man whose wife’s sister’s married to the foreman in charge of the blasting operations. They get their news straight from the tunnel’s mouth, and they say the road’ll be clear about nine tomorrow. Tag Junior’s got his own sources of information and he agrees with that.”

  “He’s a very intelligent little boy,” Mrs. Westerby said.

  “He is,” agreed Julian. His face was expressionless. “He reckons the draw was rigged.”

  “The draw was . . . Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, of course he would think that,” Mrs. Westerby said. “Everybody but the prizewinners always thinks that. Why, everybody saw me arranging it! There was no concealment of any kind whatsoever, and if that little boy says there was, he should say it to me.”

  “He didn’t say there was any concealment whatsoever; he just said the draw was rigged. Where did Sir Hugo join you?” he asked Gail.

  “The publishers asked him to keep an eye on Mrs. Stratton on the plane. So he did. Then he decided to go on to Chandon. He’s got a room at the hotel there.”

  “Actually got it, or hopes to get it?” Mrs Westerby enquired. “It’s usually full for the whole of June.”

  “He’s got in,” Gail said.

  “Then he was very lucky.” Mrs. Westerby rose from the wicker chair on which she had been seated. “I’m going inside; I think the bathroom is free at last. I can have a bath, and then—” She stopped, her eyes on two figures which had appeared on the terrace below them. Sir Hugo and Mrs. Stratton left the inn and walked slowly along the path that wound round the foot of the hill. “No, I’ve changed my mind; I shall have my bath later,” she ended. “A little walk will do me good.”

  Gail and Julian watched her marching determinedly after the retreating pair; she caught them up and there was a short halt and then the three figures went on in Indian file along the narrow track.

  “Maybe she thinks it’s too soon after Edward,” Gail murmured. “Do you like Anita—Mrs. Stratton?”

  “She isn’t at all as I’d pictured her.”

  He said no more. They saw the Cotters appearing from a distant house, carrying towels and walking down to the river. Mark Stevens and Susie emerged from their blue nylon tent and hurried to join them. From across the landing could be heard a low, regular snoring: Mr. and Mrs. Guzzman at rest.

  “I suppose we go on in convoy tomorrow,” Julian said into the silence.

  Gail hesitated.

  “No, not in convoy,” she said at last. “I think Mrs. Stratton would rather we went separately.”

  “Wasn’t Sir Hugo trailing you on the way here?”

  “Yes. I’m going to try and shake him off tomorrow.”

  “He won’t like that.”

  Gail stared at him.

  “You and Mrs. Westerby—both of you—don’t like him hanging round her, do you? I suppose you think it’s too soon, too. Or do you just feel you ought to be on Mrs. Westerby’s side.”

  “Who’s talking about sides?”

  “I am.”

  “Then don’t. Wait till there’s a row before you start talking about taking sides.”

  She felt her temper rising, but before she could speak, her attention was caught by the sound of a motorcycle. Watching it as it approached the inn, she saw that two men were seated on it—one was a workman still dressed in dust-covered clothes. The pillion passenger was a policeman.

  “What’s a gendarme doing here?” she asked. “He looks angry.”

  The motorcycle stopped. The gendarme got off; in his hand was a length of material which he shook out and waved wrathfully at the workman.

  “This-you see?” he said. “Now we shall find out.”

  Gail’s eyes fixed themselves on the dangling remnant; slowly she recognised it. She opened her mouth to speak, and felt Julian’s hand gripping her arm warningly. Glancing at him, she saw to her amazement that he was staring down at the two men with something like fear on his face.

  They were not more than fifteen feet above the rough terrace on which the men were standing. Julian took a cautious step backwards, drawing her with him and motioning her to silence. They heard the gendarme’s summons to the landlord; they heard him explaining the reason for his visit, and they knew that he was waving the piece of material as he spoke. This, he said, had been
found wrapped round the notice which had been placed beside the road to warn motorists of blasting, and telling them not to approach the village unless they intended to stay in it. This, and not a workman’s mistake, was the cause of the trouble. This was a scarf, and this Englishman who had complained would be able to judge whether it belonged to a poor workman. This was a woman’s scarf; a foreign woman’s scarf. Find out who owned this, and you would find a madwoman - for who but a madwoman would wind a scarf round a warning notice?

  Gail’s eyes met Julian’s; he seemed to be asking her how much she understood. The answer was on her face.

  The landlord, impressed but nervous, said that the Englishman was out walking; he would return soon, and the matter would be dealt with. There was no need for the workman to wait; he could go home; he, the landlord, would get out his motorcycle later to take the policeman back — but first there was time for him to have a drink.

  The workman went away; the gendarme sat down at one of the tables. On the balcony, Gail and Julian stood silent and motionless. She did not know what he was thinking; her own mind could grasp only one shattering fact: the scarf was Mrs. Westerby’s.

  She stood trying to clear the confusion from her brain. She heard the scraping of a chair, and with Julian, peered over the railing. They saw the table, and on it a crumpled scarf, half-hidden by the policeman’s hat. The policeman had gone into the inn.

  What followed was so swift that she was never fully able to believe that it had taken place. The silence, the speed, above all the success of the action combined to make her feel that she had acted in a dream. She saw Julian go into the bedroom and look round desperately and then seize and detach the cord that held back the woven curtains. At one end was a metal hook. He leaned over the railing—lower and lower—and then it became clear that the cord would not reach the table below. Without warning, he drew Gail forward and pushed the cord into her hand. The next moment he had caught her by the waist, up-ended her and hung her over the balcony, holding her thighs in a hard grip.

  Helpless, outraged, she nevertheless endeavoured to retrieve the scarf. The hook dangled, slipped and then gripped; she pulled, and the scarf moved. But for all her efforts to move it gently, it dislodged the gendarme’s hat and sent it rolling to the ground. After that there was nothing to do but draw up hook and scarf and wait for Julian to release her.

  On her feet once more, she faced him with eyes blazing with anger —but he gave her no time to speak. He drew her into the bedroom, restored the curtain cord to its place and thrust the scarf into the pocket of his jeans. As he did so, a commotion broke out below.

  They listened. How, the gendarme wanted to know, could so light a wind have whisked the scarf out of sight? But how else could it have gone? Could it fly by itself? the landlord demanded. The evidence had gone, blown away; without it, the story sounded too thin, too fantastic to be worth recounting to the Englishman. It would be better to go away and say nothing.

  The gendarme wrestled with the problem; Gail faced her own. She was quite certain that the scarf was Mrs. Westerby’s; she was equally certain that it was the scarf that had been wrapped round the warning notice. If Mrs. Westerby had put it there, she could also have turned the arrow to point in the wrong direction. And appalling as these thoughts were, it was obvious that Julian shared them.

  Below, the arguments continued, but with diminishing force, and at last it was agreed that, without the evidence, there was no point in waiting to confront the angry Englishman. The best thing would be to go away and forget the incident.

  The landlord fetched his motorcycle; the gendarme clambered on to the pillion seat; the sound of the engine faded into the distance.

  “And now,” Gail said, “we can talk.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” he said. “I’ll be glad if you’ll say nothing to anyone about what happened just now.”

  She stared at him, stupefied.

  “Say nothing about . . . say nothing . . .”

  “That’s right. Say nothing to anybody.”

  “You know as well as I do,” she said, “that that scarf belongs to your godmother. It’s Mrs. Westerby’s, and she—”

  “I recognised it, and didn’t want to involve her in any kind of questioning—and so I tried to get hold of it, and with your kind help, succeeded. And as far as you’re concerned, that’s all there is to it.”

  “You mean I’ve got to accept, calmly and without saying anything to anybody, the fact that your godmother’s scarf was found wrapped round a notice telling us all to keep away from here? I’m entitled —we’re all entitled to know just how it got wrapped, aren’t we? We’re all entitled to ask questions.”

  “I’ll ask all the questions.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “You realise what you’re saying, don’t you?” she asked “You’re admitting that Mrs. Westerby did it.”

  “I’m admitting nothing whatsoever. I’m merely asking you not to start a trail of rumour that might lead to trouble.”

  “But you believe she did it.”

  “I think it’s fantastic to suggest anything of the kind.”

  “So do I. But fantastic or not, it’s her scarf, and I saw your face when you realised — ”

  “Could I persuade you to mind your own business?”

  “This is my business. I’m stuck in a beastly inn in a seedy French village and as far as I can see, it’s your godmother who got me here. If she wrapped a scarf round a warning notice, she’s crazy —and it isn’t the first time I’ve thought so.”

  “As she isn’t crazy, we can assume that she didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “If she isn’t, then she knew what she was doing. And if she knew what she was doing—”

  He walked to the door and opened it.

  “Would you mind continuing this cross-examination outside?” he asked.

  She hesitated—and then she went downstairs and he followed her. Outside, all was quiet. They walked slowly towards the river, and saw the two American children floating on an improvised raft; the grown-ups were collecting towels and preparing to leave. From the near-by woods came Mrs. Stratton and Sir Hugo; Mrs. Westerby was between them.

  Gail sank on to a patch of grass warmed by the last rays of sunshine, and stared at the slowly-approaching trio.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t understand anything.”

  “Do you have to understand?” Julian asked.

  “I can’t be left hanging in mid-air, can I? I’ve got to think; I’ve got to work things out—and if you refuse to help me, I have to work them out my own way. I think that scarf was wrapped round the notice. It’s your godmother’s scarf. If she didn’t do it, the scarf must have been stolen from her.”

  “Not necessarily. It could have blown out of the car. If you weren’t disposed to jump to conclusions, you’d see that there could be several explanations.”

  She made no reply. Julian’s eyes were on the approaching figures, but she could read nothing from his expression.

  “Julian, how lazy of you!” Mrs. Westerby called as they came near. “We’ve been for a splendid walk while you two have just sat about. Go and stretch your legs—you’ve been cramped up in cars too long.”

  “Any news about the road-clearing?” Julian asked.

  Sir Hugo answered; he looked sullen, and less assured than he had done earlier in the evening.

  “We should be able to leave early tomorrow morning,” he said.

  A deep breath, not quite a sigh, came from Mrs. Stratton.

  “Tired?” Gail asked.

  “Very,” Mrs. Stratton said, and there was a kind of desperation in her voice. On an impulse prompted by pity for her, Gail heard herself speaking words she had not meant to utter.

  “Has anybody lost a scarf?” she asked.

  “Did you find a scarf?” Mrs. Stratton asked in her turn.

  “Yes.” Gail looked at Julian, and he drew it slowly from his pocket. “A man brou
ght it. He found it on the road. He—”

  “Mine!” Mrs. Westerby shouted. “Mine!” She took the scarf from Julian’s hand and tried to shake out the creases. “Ruined, I’m afraid. Julian, I hope you gave the man some small reward?”

  “Where did you lose it?” Julian asked.

  “I always think that’s such a silly question,” Mrs. Westerby said. “To know where one lost a thing is nearly always to know where it is—unless it has been removed or stolen. I can only tell you that the last time I had this scarf was when you and I, Julian, were sitting on the terrace of that little cafe—do you remember? The one we stopped at just a little way before the road-mending. I left you for a moment, and I had it with me. I daresay the wind whipped it off and carried it away—it’s very light, as you see. How much did you give the man who found it?”

  “I didn’t give him anything.”

  “You should have done, my dear boy; it was very honest of him to have brought it back. It’s only a scarf, but scarves can be worth quite a lot of money.”

  Gail opened her mouth to tell her where the scarf had been found—and then something on Julian’s face made her close it again. Examining her feelings, she found that she was less anxious than she had been earlier to discover the truth. She had an uneasy feeling that she was on the fringe of something dark and tangled; the less she knew, she decided suddenly, the less possibility there was of her being drawn in. She regretted her impulsive mention of the scarf.

  Mrs. Stratton and Sir Hugo were going towards the inn.

  “We shall all meet at dinner,” Mrs. Westerby called to them. “I’ve told the landlord to arrange a table in a nice corner for the five of us. A warm corner,” she added to Gail and Julian. “Once the sun goes down, you’ll find it remarkably chilly. Did you think Anita looked a little tired? I did. I hope she’ll get a good rest tonight. And now, my dears, shall we sit down and have a drink before getting ready for dinner?”

  Julian did not move.

  “The scarf,” he said slowly, “was found wrapped round the notice warning people not to come to this village.”