We all stared at him.
‘What did you think you did with it?’ Mayhew asked.
‘Put it back in the case.’
‘Yes, well …’
‘It isn’t here,’ said Bob. ‘ I happened to open it as I was going to lock it away and …’
We all stared at the case which he held for us to see. It was lined with shiny blue silk and quite empty.
‘It’s only by chance I opened it,’ he repeated. ‘I was just going to put the case back in the safe and I clicked it open with my thumb …’
‘You dropped it in your pocket, probably,’ Lucille said.
‘No.’ He felt in his pockets. ‘I never put it in a pocket because it’s a bit delicate. Anyway, don’t you remember, I was called away to the phone and left it in here.’
Nora Mayhew gave a brief laugh and said, ‘My dear, let’s turn out our pockets, then. Perhaps somebody here has been absent-minded …’
At once Bob Loveridge was apologetic. Of course, nothing was farther from his thoughts than that anyone here should have pocketed it. In fact, he thought perhaps someone might be joking. Obviously, nothing could be farther from his thoughts …
We searched. We searched the room, we turned out the loose cushions from the chairs, we lifted the rugs, we moved the tables, we searched the study, where the telephone was, we even shook out magazines and newspapers in that rather senseless way one does when all the sensible places have been explored. Nothing. We stood there dusting our knees, not quite sure what the next move was.
Eventually Bob said: ‘D’you know I believe it is a joke. One of you is doing this to take the micky out of me.’ He smiled. ‘Honestly … it’s the only explanation.’
There was an uncomfortable silence.
‘Has anyone else been in the study?’ I asked. ‘The maid who served the coffee …’
‘No, that was before I took the ear-ring out. And even if I had carried it in there, there’s no way into the room except through this one. Violet only came in here to pick up the coffee things. She never went into the study at all.’
‘You should come on one of these yachting parlies sometime.’ Humphrey French said to Lucille in an undertone. ‘Fabulous fun. Just people of our own age, you know. Quite a ball.’
Nora Mayhew picked up her bag. ‘We’ve really got to go, Bob. I’m sorry, but it’s a full hour’s drive. I don’t know what you think about this – this loss, I really don’t. It’s terribly unfortunate to happen like this –’
‘I’m stumped. Completely and utterly –’
‘But I think I know what I want to do,’ Mrs Mayhew continued. ‘Or what I ought to do, anyhow. What we all ought to do.’ She laughed in embarrassment and went to the card table and cleared a space. Then she turned her handbag upside down and the contents fell out with a clatter – lipsticks, compact, hair grips, cigarettes, lighter, money, comb, aspirin, nail boards, eye shadow, safety-pins.
‘My dear girl –’
‘It’s the only thing, Bob. Really the only thing. Unless you want to call in the police –’
‘Of course not … At least, not in that way, and not yet –’
‘Well, calling them in later won’t be much use if one of us is to blame. Really, this is the only sensible thing to do – for our satisfaction, apart from yours. Darling, how would we feel if the ear-ring were never found?’
‘It’s on the floor somewhere,’ said Loveridge in exasperation. ‘ It’s been dropped, or slipped down …’
‘Well, you do see we can’t stay all night, and this is the only other way. The men can turn out their pockets too. Lucille, come and look through these things for me, will you. George, mere’s another table over there. Empty your pockets and let everyone see you do it.’
With Loveridge still muttering and protesting, Nora Mayhew insisted that her husband should turn out everything in his pockets, and when Bob refused to search him, George Mayhew took off his coat, pulled it inside out and offered himself to French.
So after about five very awkward minutes, the two Mayhews had made it pretty plain to everyone in the room that, unless they were a couple of professional pickpockets, they were not responsible for any funny goings-on in Hampstead. They then prepared to take their leave, with over-assurances of undying friendship on both sides. In fact it was quite hard to tell which were the more embarrassed, the Loveridges or their out-of-town friends.
When Bob came back into the room again, French was talking earnestly and without apparent constraint to Lucille and to me, and Peter had sat on the settee idly flipping the pages of a magazine.
Bob blew out a breath: ‘Phew! That was a difficult moment. God, I’m tired! Shall we call it a day?’
‘The difficult moment hasn’t entirely passed,’ said Peter, staring at his magazine.
‘Well,’ said French, yawning. ‘I have nothing to hide. Let’s get it over and done with.’
‘I’ve told you,’ Loveridge said, ‘this is unnecessary. The darned thing wasn’t insured, but if it’s gone, it’s gone. I don’t want to lose all my friends as a consequence.’
‘You won’t lose ’ em if you let them clear themselves,’ French said. ‘ Nora Mayhew was right. They’ll be much happier to turn out their pockets and have it all above board.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Peter.
We all looked at him in surprise.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I think Bob’s right about this,’ Peter said. ‘He invited us here as his friends. Something has vanished. Disappeared down a hole, maybe. That’s bad luck for everybody. But if we have to turn out our pockets just to prove that we haven’t stolen the thing, then for God’s sake …’
‘Exactly –’ Bob said.
‘Not exactly at all,’ French said. ‘Nora Mayhew was right. It’s plain common sense –’
‘For Heaven’s sake stop sheltering behind Nora Mayhew,’ Peter snapped. ‘If it’s your opinion, say so!’
French was still as cool as he’d been at poker. ‘All right, it’s my opinion, then. If I go now, without any check, and the ear-ring’s never found, then I could never come here again. Bob may be a trustful sort of chap, but he can’t help his thoughts.’
Peter Stevenson looked at me, but, much as I disliked French, I really had to agree with him over this. If you got a clearance now, well, then you were in the clear. Of course, they were both right in a sense. How can you choose between trust and proof?
Peter put down the magazine. ‘ It so happens that I don’t want to turn out my pockets. Right? The reason’s unimportant. I just don’t. You’ve known me for about nine months, Bob. You, Lucille, for about twelve. Well, I give you my word that I’ve never touched your ear-ring tonight. Will that be enough? Satisfactory? Or is it not enough?’
‘Of course –’
‘Of course,’ Bob said slowly. ‘I don’t want to –’
‘Well thanks,’ said French. ‘But I suppose you realize that it leaves us in a position of thinking anything we choose.’
He turned to the card table, which by now had been cleared of everything else and methodically emptied all his pockets. Having done that, he pulled his jacket inside out the way George Mayhew had done and then went towards Bob Loveridge in his shirt sleeves with his hands in the air.
Bob said: ‘No, no,’ so French then tamed to me, and to satisfy him I patted his trousers and under his arms. Then, because I certainly didn’t want to be saddled with any of the blame, I did the same. God knows, there wasn’t much in my pockets but an empty wallet, a handkerchief and a bunch of keys. When it was done and we had our coats on again French looked at Peter. I thought Peter was being an obstinate fool too and said, much to my later regret: ‘ Come on, it’s nothing; get it over. Bob doesn’t want it, but we ought to insist on it as a matter of common good manners. Then the whole thing can be dropped. Like the ear-ring. I think the bloody thing’s still stuck in the springs of one of the arm-chairs.’
Peter looked at me, an
d the way he looked gave me the first qualm. Until then I had only been anxious to clear him of any suspicion of bad temper, nothing more.
He abruptly jerked round and looked at Lucille, then he turned to Bob Loveridge.
‘Well, if you will have it you will have it! The reason I didn’t want to empty my pockets is that I have an ear-ring I brought to show you that’s just like the one that’s disappeared.’
We looked back at him, feeling pretty stupid ourselves, while he put his hand in his pocket and fumbled about and then took out a Swan Vestas matchbox. He put it down on the card table with a bang and opened the box, took out an ear-ring and slapped it on the table beside the box.
‘I’ve only just got hold of it,’ he said angrily. ‘It’s been in my family apparently for a time, but I hadn’t seen it before. I wondered if it was a match for the one you have, so I brought it along to show you and compare it. But as it happened I decided not to take it out when you showed us yours.’
Bob Loveridge was looking hard at Peter while he spoke. We all were some distance from the table. Nobody made a move.
Peter said irritably: ‘For God’s sake look at it! There it is. That’s the one I brought. It isn’t yours, Bob, but I think it makes a pair.’
Bob Loveridge walked slowly to the table and picked up – well, picked up – the ear-ring. He held it for us all to see, turned it round, smoothed a thumb and finger over the pearl. His face was quite white, like someone who’d had bad news. Then he suddenly offered it to his daughter. Lucille’s hair shook in a violent negative.
Humphrey French moved across and stared at the ear-ring but didn’t touch it. Then he shrugged and looked expressively across at Peter. I did not move.
Peter said again: ‘I think it makes a pair. That’s if we ever find the other one.’
Loveridge said slowly: ‘I suppose you – meant it as a joke.’
‘Daddy,’ Lucille said, ‘if we –’
‘A joke?’ said Peter. ‘No, it was no joke.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you,’ said Loveridge. ‘I was only trying to find a – a reasonable excuse for you for trying on – such a – such a damned silly trick.’
‘Silly trick!’ Peter said between his teeth. ‘That’s my ear-ring!’
‘Can you prove it?’
‘Why the hell should I?’
‘I’d like to hear you try.’
‘Well, you’re going to be disappointed! It’s exactly what I said before – either you trust and believe in someone or you don’t –’
‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ Bob said. ‘We’ve got a little beyond that, I’m afraid. I don’t like what’s happened and I’m not going to pretend to.’
‘I’m sorry, too,’ said Peter, staring directly back at him.
Bob said: ‘Can you find your own way out?’
Peter glanced around – at me, at Captain French, briefly at Lucille.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right. I’ll go. Good night and be damned to the lot of you!’
And he went. As he moved I spoke his name, having some unformed impulse to try and save the complete break. But whatever I had said at that moment would have been useless. Maybe the only one who could have stopped him was Lucille, and she was as tongue-tied as any of us.
The front door slammed.
The following day I had a visitor. The place I’d rented from my friend was the top floor of a Victorian house in Fulham-pretending-to-be-Chelsea. It wasn’t huge even by the standards of today: a poky bedroom with a shared bath, but the studio was big and had a north light, and one cooked one’s meals on a gas-ring in the corner.
It was Lucille Loveridge, whom I might have expected but somehow hadn’t. I’d never really reached the heart-missing-a-beat stage with her; but welcoming her there, stained shirt and brash in hand, I thought how exactly right she was for me, the shape, the colour, the smell, the grace of good moving and a personality that immediately went click-click with mine. She lit the whole place up.
We talked for a bit generally, and she drew her cheeks in over a nervous cigarette while she looked at some of my recent pictures. I’d recently gone through a Fauvist phase and was just coming out for air at the other side. I tried to explain this to her and she nodded and was dutifully intelligent, but I knew only about a third of it registered either way.
Eventually, when she’d corkscrewed the stub of her cigarette in a British Railways ashtray, she said: ‘ Well, Bill, wasn’t that a mess last night!’
I tutted in sympathetic agreement. She said: ‘I felt so sick. I could have been as sick as a dog. I got to sleep about five, but then only for a couple of hours.’
I said: ‘ You haven’t heard anything from Peter?’
She shook her head. ‘Nor will, if I know him. It’s the end between us. And all because of a filthy little ear-ring that couldn’t have mattered less!’
I looked at her cautiously. ‘ In a way, it had to matter. Because it worked out as a question of trust, didn’t it?’
‘But why should he take the ear-ring in the first place? He’s not a thief – never could be! The money he lost was an awful lot, I know, but it wasn’t that important. Good Heavens, I would have advanced it him out of my quarterly allowance if he had wanted it!’
‘He didn’t want it,’ I said. ‘He wanted trust, didn’t he? And he didn’t get it.’
‘Should he have? With the thing in his pocket? Should we all have said absolutely nothing and let him take the ear-ring away? It’s just past my comprehension! Why he should ever have done it!’
‘You don’t think there was any truth in his story?’
She blinked at me with her cloudy eyes and lit another cigarette. ‘No. How could there be? It was such a feeble excuse. Nobody’s born as young as that, Bill; not any more.’
I liked her every way. Even in her wooden-headed approach to this problem of Peter, which was so much like her father. I liked the look of her brassiere strap showing through the shoulder of her thin blouse. I liked her ankles and legs. I coveted them. I coveted her. I knew I could teach her so much about life without harming or altering the essential, obstinate but charming female who answered to the name of Lucille Loveridge.
And at that very moment I was very much tempted, because I knew just how she felt and how easy that spirit-level bubble of love could be given a tilt in my direction. ‘Look, my sweet,’ I’d say, and put my arm round her, ‘ forget it for a day or so. Have lunch with me and then come back here and we can make plans for the evening. I’m free as air, and the only way to face life when it kicks you in the face is to grin and kick back. Can’t I help you to kick back?’
Something like that but a little less obvious. Maybe words wouldn’t be necessary at all, once one had made the right gestures …
She was looking at me. Well, I was tempted like Hell. But what’s always been wrong with me in my life is that I’m not a big-timer.
I said: ‘Should I go and see Peter?’
No great smoker at normal times, she drew at this second cigarette as if she had a real grudge against it. ‘It wouldn’t do any good, would it? I mean, what good would it do? What could you say? What could he say?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what we’d have to find out.’
‘You don’t think there’s anything in his fantastic story, do you?’
‘Seems very doubtful. But if we both agree that he’s not the natural thieving type, I think we ought to try and find what the true explanation is.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. If we only had something to go on.’
When Peter Stevenson came out of the school gates at Beckenham I fell into step beside him. He looked startled, and then hitched up his collar and walked on.
‘I want a word with you,’ I said casually.
‘Go to Hell!’
It wasn’t good advice considering how I’d felt a few hours ago, but I put it down to ignorance.
‘Was that story you told last night the truth?’
‘What does
it matter!’
‘I thought it did.’
It was beginning to rain. He turned into the car park.
‘You must admit,’ I said, ‘that it was a pretty odd coincidence.’
We came up to his dingy Morris 1000 and he began to fumble in his pockets. ‘Of course it was a coincidence,’ he said. ‘I’d never seen the damned thing until Tuesday.’
‘Which? Yours or theirs?’
‘So you do believe me?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re a bit thick at times, Peter, but you’re not a liar. You haven’t got the right lobes to your ears.’
He didn’t think much of my humour and bent to unlock the door of the car. ‘Can I give you a lift somewhere?’
‘Yes, the nearest tube station. I only came out to see you.’
He clicked my door and presently I got in. He put the key in the ignition but did not switch on. ‘An old aunt of mine died,’ he said. ‘Last week. I was the only relative. I went down to the funeral and then again on Tuesday to look over some things. There’s some good Meissen that will make a show in the sale rooms. No money except what was in a tin box under the bed. That was what I lost. Odd how these old ladies exist on a shoestring, with an old age pension and no capital, but with about a thousand pounds’ worth of china in daily use. Her jewel box was full of trinkets but nothing valuable except this ear-ring. As soon as I saw it I thought, good Lord, that’s exactly like the Loveridge’s, and took it to show them and compare it. I knew Bob would be sure to bring his ear-ring out if there were strangers there, and I thought it would set him rocking on his heels if I matched it. As good as a straight flush at poker. The one I didn’t quite get.’ He brooded, staring at the pockmarks of rain on the windscreen.
‘Then when it came to the time,’ I said, ‘when Bob took out his ear-ring you were feeling too bloody-minded to produce yours.’
He looked at me. ‘How did you know?’
‘The crystal ball never lets me down.’
‘I suppose it was obvious, wasn’t it?’ He added quickly: ‘It wasn’t so much losing the money I minded.’
The Japanese Girl Page 6