Nothing Venture

by Patricia Wentworth

  An extraordinary flatness descended upon Nan.

  “Well, that’s a motion I’d like to second!” said Mr Fazackerley with some fervour. “If anyone can think up a hotter wear than a clawhammer and a boiled shirt, I’ll hand it to him—and, to come down to real steady bedrock truth, I’d appreciate the opportunity of a conversation with you, Mrs Weare.”

  Nan felt a little alarmed. What did he want to talk about? She walked beside him through the archway with the feeling that she was walking into unknown country.

  XIV

  Rosamund Carew settled herself into the corner of a gold sofa and lit a cigarette. The smoke hung about her like a bluish mist. Jervis had not spoken a single word. His lips were smiling, his eyes aloof and dark. For a minute or two Rosamund smoked in silence. Then she said lazily,

  “Nonie Carter and Enid Melliter have just come in. I hope we look companionable.”

  “I hope so.”

  She withdrew her cigarette for a moment.

  “Hadn’t we better talk?”

  “Oh, certainly. What shall we talk about—the weather? They say it will be hotter tomorrow.”

  She held her cigarette in the hand which rested upon her knee. The smoke went up in a delicate spiral; a fitful spark as fine as a needle-point fretted the edge of the paper.

  “I want to talk to you about my money,” she said.

  Jervis continued to smile.

  “Your money?”

  “Yes.”

  “What money?”

  She put the cigarette to her lips, drew lightly at it, and laid her hand again upon her knee.

  “You know as well as I do that Uncle Ambrose would have left me five hundred a year if he had not thought we were going to be married. He had his own ideas about the man having the purse-strings.”

  “Yes—very sensible ideas.”

  Rosamund’s lashes came down upon her cheek. She conveyed without further effort a complete indifference to Jervis’ approval.

  “Hadn’t we better keep to the facts?” she said. “He left me five hundred pounds. That’s nothing—I can’t live on nothing—and you have married someone else. Those I think are the facts.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Well?”

  The smoke went up between them.

  “My dear Rosamund, as you say—those are the facts.”

  She turned her head for a moment, sent a smile across the room to Lady Tetterley, and, still smiling, returned to Jervis.

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t listening. Mabel Tetterley caught my eye. Now—about this money. You will of course carry out Uncle Ambrose’s wishes.”

  “As?” said Jervis.

  “Well, I can’t live on five hundred a year,” said Rosamund.

  “I’m afraid you’ve—miscalculated. There was never any question of five hundred. The original figure was three. Page will tell you that.”

  Rosamund’s eyebrows rose slightly.

  “That is merely ridiculous,” she said.

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

  “I can’t live on three hundred.”

  Jervis’ eyes hardened.

  “I’m afraid we’re talking at cross purposes. My grandfather didn’t leave you anything at all except a sum down for your trousseau, so neither five hundred nor three hundred a year are in question.”

  She lifted her cigarette again. The ash broke and fell, powdering the gold of her dress. She was silent for a moment, inhaling the smoke. In the silence thoughts moved between them—violent, resentful, dominant, resisting. With half closed eyes Rosamund continued to smoke. Whatever happened, he should speak next. If it was a battle between them, she knew where her advantage lay. She sat entrenched in silence. In the end it was he who broke it.

  “I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by this discussion. You played me the dirtiest trick I’ve ever heard of—and now you want your legacy.”

  “And a bit over,” said Miss Carew, her blue eyes veiled.

  “I’m afraid you won’t get it. You can have the three hundred a year, but I won’t discuss the matter with you. You must see Page.”

  She held the cigarette a little away and opened her eyes upon him.

  “My dear Jervis, what do you expect me to do? One doesn’t live on three hundred a year!”

  “One might work,” he suggested.

  Rosamund’s riposte was swift.

  “I believe Mr Page has a vacancy for a typist. Shall I apply for it?” She smiled her exquisite smile, then leaned towards him. “I’m not clever enough, I’m afraid. What’s the good of quarrelling? Make it five hundred, and let’s be friends. Family quarrels are so exhausting, and there’s a heat-wave coming.” She paused for an answer, and got none. “Come—five hundred—and I’ll owe my dressmaker the rest.”

  Jervis rose to his feet and offered her his arm.

  “Nothing doing, I’m afraid. Shall we dance?”

  Ferdinand Fazackerley had taken Nan by way of a long corridor into one of those immense rooms with gilt mirrors and brocaded furniture which are, mercifully, only to be met with in hotels of the more expensive sort. They sat down in a window-seat framed with rose-coloured satin curtains looped with gold. Their feet rested upon a carpet an inch thick, also rose-coloured.

  “Well!” said Mr Fazackerley, “If we aren’t grand! Now last time I had the pleasure of a conversation with you—”

  Nan coloured a little, but her dimple showed.

  “Is that my cue? What do I say?”

  “You say, ‘Last time?’”

  “Do I?”

  “I should say you do. And I—”

  “Yes, you?”

  “I come in with, ‘Last time we weren’t as grand as this.’”

  Nan caught the corner of her lip between her teeth.

  “Have we met before, Mr Fazackerley?”

  “Oh yes, Mrs Weare.”

  “Have we? Are you sure?”

  “Oh, quite sure. I’ve been quite sure since twenty minutes past four this afternoon.”

  Nan caught her eyes away from his. They were twinkling, but under the twinkle he was dead serious. She looked down into her lap, and then of her own free will she tilted her head and looked back at him.

  “Well?” she said. Her lips just parted on the word, and then closed in a firm, sweet curve that was not quite a smile.

  “If you’ll go back in your mind,” said Mr Fazackerley, “maybe you’ll remember that after I’d picked Jervis out of that pool on Croyston rocks, I came back for the plucky kid who’d saved his life by holding him up in the water. She’d got herself out without my help, and she was standing there wringing out her skirt and dripping as if she’s just come out of the Flood. Perhaps you can remember what I said.”

  “Me?” said Nan. “No.”

  “Well,” said Ferdinand, “I put my arm around her and I said, ‘You’re the durned pluckiest kid I’ve ever struck—and that’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’ And she said—you know what she said.”

  Nan shook her head.

  “Supposed to be suffering from loss of memory,” murmured Mr Fazackerley. “She grabbed me with both hands and said, ‘Is he dead?’ And I said, ‘Not within eighty years of it, thanks to you.’ Come—you remember that.”

  “I?” said Nan.

  “Yes, you. I said, ‘I’d like to know your name,’ and she said, ‘Nan.’ And when you said ‘I’m Nan,’ this afternoon at twenty past four at Victoria Station—well, I knew you at once—so what’s the good of all this in and out fighting? I’m not an inquisitive man, but I’d like to know what’s behind all this, and why Jervis don’t know you saved his life.”

  “Well, I think you saved it,” said Nan.

  Ferdinand shook his head.

  “He’d have been gone long before I got him out of the water if it hadn’t been for you.” The bright darting eyes went through her armour. “You were clever at dinner, but I saw the scar before you moved your arm—just where I kne
w it was bound to be. Well, now I’m being impertinent—but why doesn’t Jervis know?”

  Nan was silent for a moment. He was certainly impertinent, but she wasn’t angry. He cared about Jervis, and that was all that mattered. She said quite simply,

  “I don’t want him to know.” Then, as if putting all that on one side, “Mr Fazackerley, I want to talk to you. I—I must talk to someone, and—perhaps Jervis will listen to you.”

  “Won’t he listen to you? I should have thought—”

  “No. Please don’t talk to me like that. It’s serious—it’s very serious.”

  “What is it, Mrs Weare?”

  Nan clasped her hands in her lap.

  “I’m very frightened about Jervis,” she said. “He’s in danger, but he won’t believe it.”

  “Danger?” said Ferdinand. “That has a very intriguing sound.”

  “You’re laughing at me,” said Nan in a despairing voice.

  “How can I, when I don’t know the first thing about the situation? What’s the matter with it anyway?”

  “You don’t believe me,” said Nan. “But it’s true. He tried to kill Jervis ten years ago, and he tried to kill him again today.”

  “Great Wall Street!” said Mr Fazackerley; and then, “Who did?”

  “Robert Leonard did.”

  Mr Fazackerley beat with the flat of his hand upon his knee.

  “Is that so?” he said. “The guy with the bulging brain-box and the jaw-bone of an ass?”

  “Yes, he did,” said Nan.

  “Great Bronx!” said Mr Fazackerley with simple fervour. “He did, did he? Why?”

  “Rosamund would get all the money,” said Nan.

  Mr Fazackerley sat back.

  “Mrs Weare, you’re not handing it to me that that beautiful lady is out gunning for Jervis!”

  “I don’t think she knows.” She threw out her hands in a passionate gesture. “Oh, she can’t know!”

  They were alone in the huge formal room. Nan’s little voice quivered in it, and was smothered by the silence and the emptiness. To say the word murder in this gilded, rose-coloured room, with its soft carpet, its glittering chandeliers, its painted ceiling, was like firing a revolver shot in a puppet show. Mr Fazackerley looked at her. He was in the grip of the most profound curiosity.

  “I’m not an inquisitive man,” he said, “but if you’d begin at the beginning and give me an idea of what this is all about, I’d appreciate it very much.”

  Nan leaned back too.

  “It’s all so tangled up—but I’m frightened—I’ll tell it as well as I can—it goes a long way back.”

  “Take your own time,” said Ferdinand. “Nobody’s thought of taxing that yet, so you can have as much as you like.”

  “It goes right back,” said Nan. “I don’t know how you recognized me—it was very clever of you. I want to tell you how I came to find Jervis.”

  “I’m listening.”

  The colour stood high in Nan’s cheeks. She didn’t care whether he was listening or not. She wasn’t going to tell Ferdinand Fazackerley that ten years ago she had had a child’s adoration for Jervis which had made her follow him like an unseen shadow. She cast about for an opening. It would be quite easy if she could only get started. She began without any proper beginning at all.

  “I saw Jervis come across the rocks. He was going down to bathe—he had a towel over his shoulder. He went behind those rocks where the pool was.”

  “What were you doing?” said Mr. Fazackerley.

  “I was sitting on the beach,” said Nan with her chin in the air. “There was a way down the cliffs just beyond me. A man came down it and went across to the rocks where Jervis was. I didn’t see his face. I think he was walking on the cliff and saw Jervis and came down. He went behind the rocks, and in about five minutes I saw him again. He wasn’t coming back, he was going straight on. There’s another path up the cliff before you come to Croyde Head. He went up that. I saw him half way up it. I never saw his face at all.”

  Mr Fazackerley’s eyes were brightly attentive.

  “Go right on,” he said.

  “I waited a long time. The tide began to come up. I wondered where Jervis was. I climbed up on to the path and looked out to sea, but I couldn’t find him. The rocks hid the pool—I want you to remember that—I don’t think anyone on the cliff could have seen it.”

  Mr Fazackerley nodded.

  “That’s so.”

  “I got frightened about Jervis. I went down to the pool, and he was lying half in and half out of it with his head bleeding and the tide coming in. The water was up to his shoulders. If I hadn’t come then, he would have been drowned. If you hadn’t come later, we should both have been drowned.”

  “What are you meaning?” said Mr Fazackerley.

  “That man went behind the rocks and came out again,” said Nan rather breathlessly.

  “Now what do you mean by that?”

  “You know what I mean—but I don’t mind saying it. I mean that the man went behind those rocks because he knew that Jervis was there and that they couldn’t be seen from the cliff. I mean that he picked up a bit of rock and struck Jervis with it, and went away and left him there with the tide coming in.”

  Fazackerley’s eyes went to the painted ceiling and down again. He did not shrug his shoulders, but the right one twitched.

  “You can’t prove that, you know.”

  “Of course I can’t,” said Nan. “But you can be sure of lots of things you can’t prove.”

  “That’s so. But you didn’t see him strike Jervis—you didn’t even see his face; and now you say he’s Mr Robert Leonard—and I take it you mean the Mr Robert Leonard who is with Miss Carew tonight.”

  Nan nodded.

  “Let me go on. After you’d got us out of the pool you went to get help, and I stayed with Jervis. As soon as I heard you coming back, I got away up the cliff path. You see, Cynthia and I were down at Croyston with an aunt, and we were going back to town by the afternoon train. I got into a most frightful row when I turned up at our rooms dripping wet with my dress spoilt and my arm cut. I was bundled into dry things, and we just caught the train. And afterwards I was ill—I believe I was very ill—and all the time I kept seeing that man, and Jervis in the pool. I want you to understand how it was that I could recognize him ten years afterwards. He was printed into my mind. All these years I’ve only had to shut my eyes and think about it to see him walking away, and Jervis in the water.”

  Ferdinand saw her eyes darken in a face that had lost all its colour.

  “You say you recognized him,” he said.

  She gave another of those quick nods.

  “Yes—at once. There was a photograph in Jervis’ study—a picture of the garden at King’s Weare, with old Mr Weare and Rosamund on the lawn and Robert Leonard walking towards them. It didn’t show his face; it showed him walking away from me, just as I’d seen him in my mind all those years. I recognized him at once, and Jervis told me his name.”

  “Ten years is a long time,” said Ferdinand, “and—there’s a good proverb about letting sleeping dogs lie.”

  “They’re not sleeping,” said Nan. “He tried to kill Jervis ten years ago, and he tried to kill him again today.”

  Mr. Fazackerley leaned forward, resting his weight on his right hand.

  “That’s a whole heap more interesting!” he said. “I’m listening.”

  Again Nan found it difficult to begin. She couldn’t tell Ferdinand Fazackerley what had made her walk up and down in front of Rosamund’s house in Leaham Road. As before, she plunged.

  “I saw Robert Leonard get out of a taxi. He was with Rosamund Carew. She went into the house.”

  “What house?”

  “Her house. She went in; but he came back and spoke to the driver. I was on the other side of the taxi. I wasn’t trying to listen, but I didn’t want them to see me. Robert Leonard said, ‘It’s the four-fifteen. You’ll have to hurry. He’s sure to walk
, because he’s got a craze for exercise. Let him come out of the station and get-well away.’”

  “No names?”

  She shook her head.

  “No.”

  “What made you think—”

  “I didn’t at first. Let me tell you. The driver said, ‘Suppose he takes a taxi.’ And Robert Leonard said, ‘You must just do the best you can.’ Then he turned as if he was going away, but the driver stopped him. He said he wasn’t as keen on the job as he had been. And then he said five hundred pounds was five hundred pounds, but jug was jug—that’s prison, you know. And Robert Leonard said, ‘What’s a couple of months for dangerous driving?’ And the driver said it might be a lot more than that, but he’d do it because he was a man of his word.” Her voice stopped. It had shaken a little.

  “Is that all?” said Mr Fazackerley.

  “No,” said Nan. She held her voice steady with all her might. “I met Jervis at Victoria—he came by the four-fifteen from King’s Weare. I told him, and he wouldn’t believe me; but because he was late for his appointment with Mr Page he went by tube instead of walking. He would have walked. And when he came out of his house on his way here, a taxi knocked him down. He saw it coming and jumped, or he wouldn’t be here tonight.”

  “You saw this?”

  “No. He was getting a taxi for me. He told me. His arm was cut—he had to go back and change.”

  “But you never heard any names, Mrs Weare. What made you think this Robert Leonard was talking about Jervis?”

  “I don’t know—I just knew it. Don’t you ever know things like that?”

  “I’ve had hunches,” admitted Mr Fazackerley. “I shouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t.”

  “Well, that’s what I had,” said Nan—“a hunch.”

  “A hunch isn’t evidence. You know, Mrs Weare, there wouldn’t be much left of that story of ours if you took it into court. Any clever counsel would have you tangled up inside of five minutes so you wouldn’t rightly know whether you were on your head or your heels. And then, what does he want to kill Jervis for? What’s the motive? You must have a motive.”

  “The money,” said Nan in a small frightened voice.

  “But he doesn’t get the money.”

  “No—Rosamund gets it.”