Outrageous Fortune

by Patricia Wentworth

  Caroline remembered why she had come. The burden had lifted for a moment; now she remembered again.

  “Please may I see an entry in the register? It’s a marriage—on the twenty-fifth of July.”

  “Last?”

  Caroline did not take his meaning. She looked at him with bewildered eyes.

  “The twenty-fifth ultimo?”

  Caroline remembered to have seen ult and prox occurring in conjunction with dates in business communications from Robert Arbuthnot. They conveyed nothing to her. She said,

  “Please may I see the register of marriages for the twenty-fifth of July?”

  “Last July?”

  “Yes—oh yes.”

  She stood and waited. She wasn’t afraid; she kept insisting on that. There was nothing to be afraid about—there couldn’t be. She was going to see Jim Riddell’s signature, and it would be the signature of a stranger. There wasn’t the very slightest possible doubt about that.

  She saw the clerk turn the pages of the register—big, stiff pages thick with the names of men and women who had gone adventuring into marriage through this drab back door. Perhaps if you loved someone very much, you wouldn’t notice the linoleum and the smell of disinfectant.

  The clerk turned another page, and a window flew open in Caroline’s mind. A very bright clear light shone in, and she knew that if she had come here to marry Jim, this ugly room would be a happy, holy place all golden with romance. The light shone in her mind and went out. The window closed.

  “Here you are,” said the clerk in his high weak voice. He stood aside and pointed at the left-hand page of the open book.

  Caroline, a little dazed with the light that had come and gone, looked down at the names. She saw Nesta’s name first—“Nesta Williams, spinster.” And then—“James Riddell, bachelor.” It wasn’t Jim’s writing—of course it wasn’t. What odd writing it was—like a child’s. No, it wasn’t. A child wrote round hand. This was more like shaky print.

  She looked up with a puzzled frown.

  “What funny writing!”

  “What?” said the clerk. “Oh, that? Written with his left hand, that was, on account of having his right arm in a sling—motor-bicycle accident, I think he said.”

  Caroline’s heart jumped; she didn’t quite know why. Jim hadn’t got his arm in a sling. Jim hadn’t had an accident. Jim hadn’t written that signature. Why didn’t she feel all happy and triumphant? Why didn’t she even feel relief? Why did she feel as if there was something horrid just round the next corner?

  The clerk was speaking, and she tried to give him her attention.

  “If you want a certified copy, it will be five shillings.”

  Caroline flamed. A copy of this abominable lie! She made her voice gentle and polite with a terrible effort.

  “No, thank you.”

  “You don’t want a copy?”

  “No, thank you.”

  The flame died down. she felt businesslike and rather tired. Jim Riddell’s address was given as 14 Saracen Row. Nesta Williams’ as 3 Grove Road. His father’s name was James Riddell too; her father’s name was Thomas Williams. She wrote down both the addresses and asked to be directed to Saracen Row.

  “Third to the left, second to the right, and third to the left again,” said the clerk.

  Caroline turned back at the door.

  “Do you remember this Mr Riddell—could you describe him?”

  The clerk’s pale, prominent eyes looked at her without intelligence.

  “He had his arm in a sling.”

  “Oh, can’t you tell me what he looked like?”

  “Why,” said the clerk, “we get them coming in all day. I shouldn’t remember about his arm if it wasn’t for the writing—said he’d never signed his name with his left hand before, and you can see what an awkward job he made of it. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t remember him.”

  “You can’t remember at all? Not whether he was dark or fair, or short or tall?”

  “No, miss, I can’t—and you might take that to mean that there wasn’t anything very much to remember. You take my meaning? I might have remembered red hair, or a squint, or bandy legs, or anything over six foot or under five, so you may take it he was just one of the average lot—and, as I said before, they keep on coming in. What with births, marriages, and deaths, they keep coming in all day, and after a bit you stop taking notice.”

  Caroline went out feeling very much discouraged.

  She turned to the left, and she turned to the right; then she turned to the left again and arrived at Saracen Row. It was a narrow street of prim, decent houses. No 14 was about half way down on the right-hand side.

  She rang the bell, and presently the door was opened by a thin middle-aged woman in a lilac overall. Her drab hair was curled across her forehead under a net. She looked as if she had been interrupted in the middle of her cooking, for her face was flushed and damp, and there was a dab of flour on her sleeve.

  “I’m so sorry to trouble you,” said Caroline, “but was a Mr James Riddell living here in July?”

  “You’ve made a mistake,” said the thin woman, and moved to shut the door. The smell of cabbage came up behind her.

  Caroline took a quick step forward. With one part of her mind she wondered why people who lived in small houses nearly always had cabbage for lunch; with another part she was thinking, “I mustn’t let her shut the door.”

  “Oh please,” she said—“won’t you try and help me?”

  “I don’t take gentlemen lodgers.” She had a tight voice and a polite accent.

  “He gave this address,” said Caroline. “You don’t know the name at all?”

  “Sorry I don’t,” said the thin woman, and made such a decided movement to shut the door that Caroline stepped back and next moment found herself looking at the shabby letter-box. The cabbage was shut in, and she was shut out.

  Whoever Jim Riddell might be, it seemed pretty clear that he had given a false address. She wondered what had made him pitch on this one. Perhaps the name had stuck in his mind. Saracen Row—it was the sort of name that might stick. And as for the number, 14 was as good as any other.

  She went back to Grove Road and rang the bell of No 3.

  Here was quite a different type of landlady—a stout rolling person with a bibulous eye and an easy, jolly tongue. Of course she remembered Miss Williams—“Why, she was married from here—and a pity she couldn’t have a proper wedding with white satin and orange blossom, and a good heartening glass of champagne to make things go, same as I had meself. After all, you can’t get married that way only once, with a wreath and a veil, and white satin slippers. A small four was what I took, though you wouldn’t think it now—but that’s being on me feet all day, and once you’ve given in to elastic-sided shoes you’re done as far as looks is concerned. But a four it was, and a small one at that, and me waist a bare eighteen inches. Stays were stays in those days, and when I’d got mine laced, I’d as good a bust and as smart a waist as any of your society beauties.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Caroline. “And about Miss Williams?”

  “Ah! She’s in the handsome, haughty style. I was more clinging—a way with me, if you understand what I mean—a bit on the playful side. It goes down with the gentlemen—especially if they’re in the strong silent way themselves. It’s the little fellows that fall for the big upstanding girls.”

  Caroline’s heart jumped. She said quickly and breathlessly.

  “The man Miss Williams married—was he small?”

  “Never set eyes on him. Yes, you may well look surprised. Now thirty years ago she might have been afraid I’d cut her out.” She laughed, a broad chuckling laugh. “Well, it wouldn’t be that now, and I’m the first to admit it! ‘The mystery man,’ I called him, and fine and angry she was—‘And what do you mean by that, Mrs Hawkins?’ ‘Why,’ I said, ‘when a young lady keeps her young gentleman as dark as you do yours—meeting him round the corner and not so much as letting him
see you home—well, she must expect remarks to be passed, and whether she expects it or not, passed they will be.’ Really, you know, she’d a violent temper, for I’d hardly got the words out of my lips, when she was through the door and banged it so hard that my first-floor-front came out on the landing to know what was up. ‘Tempers,’ I said. ‘And mystery or no mystery, I’m sorry for the man that marries her, for she’s one of those that’ll have the upper hand or bust herself.”

  “Was she here long?” said Caroline.

  “Took the room for three weeks and came and went. You’ve got to live three weeks in a district before you can get married there, so she left a bag, and she’d be here for a day and gone for a week—and I’m not saying I wasn’t just as pleased, because the opinion I got of her was that if she’d been here the whole three weeks, she’d have been running the show, and me doing odd jobs and cleaning the boots and knives.”

  Caroline felt an affection for the bibulous lady. She felt that way about Nesta herself. She was a little cheered; but at the same time she didn’t really seem to be making any progress.

  “And you never saw the man she married?”

  “No one in this house so much as set eyes on him,” said the fat woman regretfully.

  XVIII

  It was after six when Caroline got back to the cottage. She found Pansy Ann sitting pensively on the hearthrug. She had a thimble on the middle finger of her right hand, and some blue velvet, a needle-case, a reel of silk, and two pairs of scissors in her lap. But she was not sewing; she did not seem even to have got as far as threading one of the needles. When the door opened, she was gazing into the fire, which was on the point of going out. Without turning her head, she said,

  “Is that you? Have you had tea?”

  Caroline had expected to be assailed with fussy questions. Pansy Ann was a most dreadful fusser. She had armed herself against a torrent of questions. To be asked only one, and that in a decidedly absent tone, was odd and a little damping. She said,

  “I had a cup of tea at Ledlington. I had to change there and wait ten minutes.”

  Even then Pansy didn’t say, “Where have you been?” Instead, she spread out the bright blue velvet on her lap, turning it this way and that.

  “Three-cornered pieces are so difficult to do anything with—but I thought I might get one of those new tight caps out of it. Do you think it would matter if there was a join? I thought perhaps piped with that silver ribbon Bessie Holmes gave me—I’ve never been able to use it for anything yet. What do you think?”

  Caroline sat down on the bottom step of the stairs. She did not know how tired she was until she sat down; then she felt as if it was going to be too much trouble ever to get up again. Why not just spend the rest of one’s life sitting peacefully on the bottom step and letting everything happen just as it liked? She felt as if she had been trying to stop the heavy wheels of the world. But why try—why not just let them go on? A voice in her mind said, “Juggernaut.” And then the queer minute passed, and there was Pansy Ann, frightfully peeved at not being attended to.

  “I think you might answer when I ask you a question.”

  “Sorry, darling—I wasn’t there. Say it again.”

  Pansy said it again.

  “You see what I mean about the piping—round the edge and along the join, so that it would look as if it was meant.”

  Caroline shuddered.

  “Darling, you can’t! Make it into pin-cushions for the deserving poor—you know, the sort you stuff with bran and stick into a shell. I know someone who’d love one.” She thought of Mrs Rodgers, and her voice stopped.

  Pansy had twisted round and was looking at her across the bright blue velvet. Her colour was high and her glance a little evasive.

  “Robert Arbuthnot has been here,” she said in a casual way.

  “My poor thing! What’s gone wrong now?”

  “I don’t see why anything should have gone wrong.”

  “Robert doesn’t generally come unless it has. Why, it’s only about a month since he dropped in to say your Beet Sugar bonds had passed their dividend. What is it this time?”

  Pansy was pleating the bright folds of the velvet.

  “Robert came to lunch.”

  “He always does—and breaks the glad news over the coffee.”

  Pansy’s head came up suddenly.

  “Why do you always make fun of Robert? I think it’s very wrong of you! I’m sure it’s very good of him to take so much trouble over our affairs.”

  “Good gracious, Pansy Ann!”

  Miss Arbuthnot’s already high colour was now considerably higher.

  “I suppose it’s never occurred to you that he needn’t! I suppose it’s never occurred to you that it would be much easier for him to write—much easier and much pleasanter, if it wasn’t—if it wasn’t that he wanted to come!”

  “Golly!” said Caroline to herself. If she hadn’t been so tired, it would have said itself out loud. Was it possible that Robert had an Ulterior Object? Caroline dwelt with joy on Robert under the Influence of a Tender Passion, of Robert Pursuing a Courtship, of Robert Proposing and Being Accepted. She forgot that she was going to sit on a bottom step and let the world go by. Her eyes sparkled. She swooped down upon the hearth-rug beside Pansy.

  “Pansy Ann—what have you been up to? What has Robert been up to? How could you be so indiscreet as to have him to lunch in the absence of your chaperon? A gay young man like that! Tell your Aunt Caroline all!”

  Pansy began to cry. Her face worked. Tears came rolling down her cheeks. She sniffed loudly between angry sobs.

  “You’ve never done him justice! I’ve had to put up with your making fun of him always! I didn’t say anything—because it wouldn’t have been any use saying anything! You only think about your own affairs—you don’t confide in me—you never have! I’m sure if you’d been engaged to Jim, you couldn’t have shut me up more—when I asked the simplest and most natural questions—though if I’d chosen—” She stopped and dabbed her eyes with the blue velvet. She was not quite prepared to claim Jim as a lover. She plunged hastily back into the original grievance. “You always make fun of Robert! If you were older, you’d appreciate him as I do. He has a very high sense of duty and a pure Roman nose. It isn’t you he wants to marry, so it doesn’t matter what you think of him!”

  Caroline was appalled.

  “Pansy darling—don’t! I never, never, never meant to hurt your feelings. Darling, you know how one laughs at all sorts of things one respects most frightfully—like bishops—and the Bank of England—and—and Parliament.”

  Pansy continued to sob.

  “Robert isn’t an—institution!”

  That was exactly what he was. But never, never, never again must Caroline say so. She hugged the weeping Pansy.

  “Darling, I respect him most frightfully. He’s as safe as the Bank of England and as good as a bishop. Are you going to marry him? Has he asked you? Have you said yes? Here’s my hanky—you’re simply ruining that blue velvet.”

  Pansy blew her nose on the proffered handkerchief.

  “There’s nothing settled,” she said in a muffled voice—“nothing at all. Only he said—he did say—his mother thought—he ought to marry. He’s such a good son—and he said he would like to please her—and did I think forty-seven was too old—and when I said no, it was just the prime of life, he said he was very glad I thought so—because he valued my opinion very much. He said that twice—and then he asked me—whether I had any views about—cousins marrying—and I said I didn’t think it mattered so long as they weren’t very near.”

  “Darling! That was practically a proposal!”

  Pansy gave a final sob.

  “I—thought—it was—because he got up and looked out of the window—and then he said, ‘Your great-grandfather was second cousin once removed to my grandfather.’ And then he said he must be going—and then—just at the end—he pressed my hand—and said, ‘You will hear from me in co
nfirmation of this interview.’”

  Caroline sprang up hastily. If she laughed, Pansy would never forgive her. She went quickly towards the stair, saying,

  “I’ll just take my things off and come down again.”

  “You do think he meant something?”

  “It sounds like it.” Caroline was gathering up her bag and gloves.

  “Of course he said he’d come down to ask us about Jim.”

  With her foot on the bottom step, Caroline stood rigid. What had Robert Arbuthnot wanted to find out? She made an effort and said,

  “About Jim?”

  “Yes. Someone has told him about that broadcast, but they’d forgotten the name of the hospital. He wanted to know whether we had any reason to suppose that Jim was on the Alice Arden.”

  “And you said?”

  “I said you thought he might have been. I told him it was the Elston cottage hospital, and that you had been over and found the man wasn’t Jim. I told him the name wasn’t Randal at all—it was a man called Riddell, and his wife had fetched him away.”

  “He was quite satisfied?”

  “He went on asking questions. He’s so thorough. I think it’s wonderful to be so thorough and conscientious.”

  Caroline leaned on the old oak balustrade. The cottage had been there for three hundred years, and for three hundred years the hands of men, and women, and little children had been rubbing the baluster smooth. Caroline’s hands slipped on it now. She came down a step and stood against the newel. What sort of questions had Robert been asking, and what sort of answers had Pansy given him?

  “What did he want to know?” she said.

  “When you heard from Jim last—and what his plans were—and whether we’d seen him since he landed.… Oh, and most particularly, whether we’d heard from him, or about him, since the wreck of the Alice Arden. And of course I said no, we hadn’t. And then he said a most awfully curious thing.”