Outrageous Fortune

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Of course you needn’t tell me if you don’t want to.”

  He said haltingly, “I’m sorry—I didn’t get that.”

  “You didn’t what?”

  “I didn’t hear what you said—I was thinking about something else.”

  A bright carnation bloomed in Caroline’s cheeks.

  “You mustn’t think about anything else—you must listen.”

  He looked at her, and then looked quickly away. She was a new, enchanted Caroline, who took his breath with her warmth and beauty—enchanted, and enchanting.

  “Jim, you’re being stupid. I thought, if that’s what they’re saying, you—you ought to know. But you needn’t—you needn’t tell me anything you don’t want to.”

  Jim took hold of himself.

  “I didn’t hear what you said. I’ll tell you anything I can.”

  He looked no higher than the dust-sheet which covered the bed, but he knew that she was looking at him. He hadn’t the faintest idea what she had said, or what she was going to say. It came like a bomb-shell.

  “They think you were in love with Mrs Van Berg.”

  He looked up then with a sharply interrogative jerk of the head.

  “With Susie?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes were very bright. “Were you? You needn’t say if you don’t want to.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. What put it into anyone’s head that I was?”

  “That’s what I was telling you,” said Caroline earnestly. “Mrs Rodgers had just been up at Packham Hall. She’s a friend of the cook’s, and the cook is friends with the police because her husband was a policeman, so Mrs Rodgers had been having a lovely time and simply lapping up gossip, and that’s one of the things she lapped up. You see, Mrs Van Berg’s maid is going about saying that Mr Van Berg was shot because he found out something he wasn’t meant to—that’s to say, she doesn’t say it right out, she just drops hints. Mrs Rodgers calls her an ‘’inting’ ussy.’ And she says—she says perhaps the emeralds weren’t stolen at all, only hidden to make it look as if there had been a burglary.”

  “What damned nonsense!”

  “Jim, you didn’t think I believed her! It was only—I thought—you might have—cared for her—and there might have been—a quarrel.”

  “Well, I didn’t!”

  He got up and began to walk about the room. It was more than he could do to sit within a yard of Caroline and hear her ask him whether he was in love with another woman.

  She sat where she was, bareheaded, her old brown coat open over a cream shirt and shabby tweed skirt. Her eyes followed him.

  “There wasn’t any quarrel?”

  “How do I know?”

  It was damnable, but he didn’t know.

  “Jim—you don’t mind my telling you? The hussy says Mrs Van Berg used to have a photograph of you. She says it was always out until that night. She says it has never been out since.”

  He stood in the middle of the room frowning intently.

  “I gave her a photograph—they’d been awfully good to me. She may have had half a dozen reasons for putting it away.” He said it without conviction. Why should she have put his photograph away like that? You’d think a woman whose husband had just been shot would have something better to do. You wouldn’t expect her to be fiddling with photographs. It wasn’t like Susie either. She panicked easily—he would have expected her to be having a nerve-storm, with her maid dabbing eau-de-cologne on her forehead in a darkened room.

  He began to wonder whether Susie Van Berg knew that he had been with Elmer that night.

  “I was there,” he said. “Elmer and I had drinks together. I wonder if Susie knew that. In her statement she said that she came down to get a book and heard voices in the study. She may have heard more than she said—she may have recognized my voice.”

  “Wouldn’t she have said?”

  “I don’t know—we were pretty good friends—she’d know I wouldn’t—” He broke off sharp.

  Suppose by any horrible chance he and Elmer had had a row. Suppose Susie had heard them quarreling. And then Elmer Van Berg had been found shot. Would Susie have kept his photograph out after that? Or would she have pushed it out of sight with nervous, shaking hands?

  He lost a bit of what Caroline was saying—something about finger-prints. Then he got it. She was talking about Elmer’s finger-print book.

  “There was a page torn out,” said Caroline.

  He felt the shock of that as she had felt it.

  “When?”

  “Oh afterwards—when the police found it. You see, you were right about the drinks. There was a tray and glasses, and the police took the finger-prints. And then the butler told them about Mr Van Berg’s book. He told them it was on the table, but when they looked for it, it wasn’t there. They found it stuffed down behind the book-case. And there was a page torn out.”

  “A page torn out!” Then, sharply, “How did they know?”

  Caroline felt frightened; she didn’t know why. She had to tell him these things, but it hurt. She hadn’t known that it was going to hurt as much as this. She leaned against the dark carved bed-post and pushed her hands deep down into the pockets of the old brown coat.

  “The cook says she remembers the page. She hasn’t told the police yet. Mrs Rodgers says she won’t unless she is asked, but they might ask her at any minute. She says she remembers because there wasn’t any name on that page, only initials. I suppose she takes an interest in finger-prints because of her husband being a policeman. I suppose—”

  “What were the initials?”

  Caroline looked at him piteously. It hurt too much. Her carnation colour was all gone. Her voice was a whisper as she said,

  “J.R.”

  Jim laughed. His laughter had a hard edge to it.

  “We’re putting the rope round my neck all right—” he said.

  “Jim!”

  “They were my finger-prints—I remember making them and putting my initials there. But I’ll swear—” He stopped short.

  “What?” said Caroline quickly.

  He laughed again.

  “I was going to say I could swear I hadn’t torn the page out, but I can’t—I can’t swear to anything. Go on. Are there any more damning bits of evidence?”

  Caroline clenched her hands.

  “The cook’s nephew saw you in the drive. He used to caddy for you—a boy called Willie Bowman.”

  “Willie? He knew me?”

  “Yes, he did. He told his aunt—he said it was about midnight.”

  “That’s a bit of bad luck, but it can’t be helped. I don’t seem to have covered my tracks very well—do I?”

  He began to walk up and down in the room with a turn at one of the narrow windows and another turn at the fireplace. There were two spent matches lying on the hearth, one that he had struck himself, and one that had been struck by the burglar. His mind became obsessed by the burglar. Why start operations on this room, when a drawing-room, a dining-room, a library, and all the more important bedrooms lay between him and it? He had passed them by and come straight to this bare, unlikely spot.

  He turned again and saw the mantelpiece with its two plain china candlesticks. One of them had had the top broken off and lacked a candle. They were the only ornaments in the room. You can’t walk off with a four-post bed or linen-fold panelling—and there was nothing else in the room except a square of Brussels carpet which had once been blue, but was now worn and faded to a dreary shade of grey.

  He turned again, and saw Caroline looking at him with loving, anxious eyes. The candle light was bright on her ruffled hair. He looked away from her and spoke from where he stood with his back to the hearth.

  “I’ve got to make up my mind what I’m going to do.”

  “Yes.”

  He squared his shoulders.

  “What I should like to do is to open up the house, get in servants, and go about my affairs as I’ve a perfect right to do.”

  “Yes,” said
Caroline. Her eyes brightened. Jim at Hale Place—Jim quite near! It was like the most lovely dream. But she knew quite well that it was a dream.

  “That’s what I’d like to do. What I expect I ought to do is go up to town and see Robert Arbuthnot—” He paused. The pause lasted a long time..… “What I’m going to do is what will look most horribly damning if things go wrong and it comes to a trial. I’m going to mark time.” He began to pace the room again with a certain restless energy. “You see, if I come out into the open, everyone will ask me questions, and every time it’s a question I can’t answer, I’ll be making things worse. Where have I been—and what have I been doing—and was I on the Alice Arden, and why—and when did I see Elmer Van Berg last, and were those my finger-prints on the glass in his study—and what was I doing in the drive when Willie Bowman saw me—and so on. And if I go and see Robert, he’ll ask questions too—all those and a lot more. Then there’s Nesta Riddell. If she sticks to it that I’m her husband, I can’t prove that I’m not—till my memory comes back. If I could remember, I could stand up to the questions, but as things are at present, they’ll defeat their own ends. The minute I’m asked a question my head goes muzzy. You know how it is when you’ve forgotten something—the more effort you make, the less you can remember; but if you stop trying, it comes back to you. You see what I mean—I want a breathing space, I want to be able to let myself alone. Sometimes I’m on the edge of remembering. When I wake up it feels as if it was all there, and then before I can get hold of it it’s gone again. If Robert were to start cross examining me, it might go altogether. I want to give myself a chance—stay here—keep quiet—”

  Caroline interrupted him with a frightened,

  “Here?”

  “Why not? You said Mrs Ledger only came once a week. If she was here yesterday, that gives me five clear days. If I can’t remember things by then, I shall send for Robert and put myself in his hands.” He stopped in the middle of the floor. “And now you must go.”

  Caroline got up.

  “Have you got enough blankets? Are they aired?”

  He laughed—a real laugh this time.

  “Who do you think’s been airing my bedclothes for the last seven years?”

  “I don’t know,” said Caroline. “And you needn’t laugh—it’s nice of me to want you to have dry blankets. Don’t you think so?”

  She came up close and stood on tiptoe, putting up her face.

  “Good-night—darling ungrateful Jim!”

  He said,

  “I’m not ungrateful.”

  In the middle of the short sentence his voice changed. He would have stepped back, but she held him with a hand on either arm.

  “Perhaps you’ll be grateful when you see what a nice supper I’ve brought you. I bought the things in town. Good-night!”

  She kissed him as if it were seven years ago, and she a child and he her all but brother. But all of a sudden her heart beat quick and hard. When she had kissed Jim last her heart had not beaten like this. She stepped back, too confused and troubled by her own feelings to be aware of his. She wanted to be out of the room and out of the house.

  She went to the door and opened it. The dark passage lay before her. She stepped out into it with her thoughts still in great confusion. Why should it make her feel like this to touch Jim’s cheek with her lips? She had always kissed him. What was there to make this kiss any different from all the other kisses?

  His rigid silence escaped her. She was scarcely aware that he had taken up the candle and was following. They walked along the corridor and down the stair without a spoken word. Words unspoken clamoured in them both.

  He walked with her down the dark drive and through the sleeping village. At the cottage gate he broke the long silence.

  “You mustn’t come again.”

  “I must,” said Caroline.

  “No, you mustn’t.”

  “I shall come to-morrow,” said Caroline, and was gone before he could answer.

  XXI

  The first post in the morning brought a proposal in due form from Robert Arbuthnot. Pansy Ann glowed and blushed over it as if it had been the most ardent of love-letters. She read it aloud in snatches, with agitated and enthusiastic comments. It began:

  My dear Pansy,

  You may perhaps be surprised at receiving a letter from me which does not concern your business affairs or my position as your trustee—

  “I don’t think I’d better say I’m not surprised. Do you? Robert might think I oughtn’t to have guessed. Do you think it would be deceitful if I didn’t tell him? He does think such a lot of people being truthful.”

  Caroline gave her deep gurgling laugh.

  “What a horrible problem! Are you always going to tell Robert everything?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Golly!”

  Pansy went back to the letter.

  This is an entirely personal and private letter, and one which has cost me much thought—

  “It’s rather wonderful, isn’t it, to think he has been thinking of me like that—Robert!”

  She turned a crackling page. Robert employed the stiffest and most legal looking blue paper for his private correspondence. It was neatly typed, and upon one side only.

  I am well aware that you have been accustomed to think of me as a relative, no longer young, who has stood towards you for many years in a position of trust. I am writing to ask you whether you could bring yourself to think of me in another and, may I say, a more intimate capacity—

  “I think he puts it beautifully! Don’t you? And as to trusting him, I’m sure anyone would trust Robert with anything.”

  With her feet on the firmest of firm ground, Caroline agreed. Robert was undoubtedly the most trustworthy of men.

  Pansy went on reading, her eyes full of happy tears.

  I have, for some time, been considering the question of matrimony. I hope you know me well enough to be sure that I should give such a subject the most serious consideration before taking what I regard as an irrevocable step. From the tenor of your conversation yesterday I gather that you would not consider a distant degree of relationship, such as subsists between yourself and me, as an insuperable bar to marriage. May I therefore ask whether you could entertain the idea of accepting me as your husband?

  Pansy broke off and dabbed her eyes.

  “He makes it sound so solemn—doesn’t he? I think it’s a wonderful letter. Don’t you?”

  I know I need not urge upon you the serious nature of the step. I would only urge my own deep affection, and hope, my dear Pansy, that you may find it worthy of your acceptance.

  The usual signature followed in an upright formal hand—“Robert Arbuthnot.”

  Pansy dabbed her eyes again.

  “I don’t know how to answer it. I can’t write a beautiful letter like that.”

  “I shouldn’t try,” said Caroline. “That’s Robert’s sort of letter. You write your own sort, and perhaps he’ll sit down at the other end and wonder how you did it.”

  “Do you think so? Do you think I could just say that he’s made me very happy—would that do?”

  “Beautifully,” said Caroline.

  As she said it, the telephone bell began to ring. A scarlet Pansy caught up the receiver.

  “Caroline—if it’s him—what shall I say?”

  Then as Caroline, laughing and shaking her head, was about to run out of the room, there was a change in voice and manner. A puzzled look came over Pansy’s face; her colour receded, and her voice took on a tone of disappointment.

  “Oh … Yes, she’s here. Who shall I say? … Oh … Very well, I’ll call her.”

  She turned from the instrument, which was fastened to the wall at the foot of the stair.

  “Caroline—someone wants you. She won’t give any name.”

  Caroline took the receiver with some impatience. It was so stupid of people not to give their names. If you were cut off, you never knew who had been calling you. She si
mply hated that.

  There came to her along the wire an almost inaudible voice.

  “Is that Caroline Leigh?”

  “Who is speaking?”

  “Is that Caroline Leigh?”

  “Yes. Who is speaking?”

  “Will you come and see me? I want to see you very badly.”

  “But who are you? I didn’t hear—”

  “I didn’t say. I want to see you—about—Jim.” There was a faint desperate catch in the voice before the name came out.

  It took Caroline a moment to get her own voice steady.

  “Are you—no, you’re not—Nesta?”

  “Who is Nesta? No, never mind. I’m Susie. You know now, don’t you? Will you come and see me?”

  Caroline’s heart leapt. Susie Van Berg wanted to see her. Why? Of all things in the world, she wanted most to see Susie Van Berg. She wanted it so much that she was afraid to say yes. Could she go—might she go? Was there any possible hurt to Jim in her going? She couldn’t see any.

  Susie Van Berg spoke again, a little louder, a little more insistently.

  “Are you there? Will you come?”

  “Yes,” said Caroline, and had the feeling, like Robert, that she was taking an irrevocable step.

  “How will you come?” said Susie Van Berg. “I would send the car—but then the servants would talk—”

  “They’ll do that anyhow,” said Caroline with the ghost of a laugh. “But you needn’t bother—I’ve got my own little car. When shall I come?”

  The voice said, “At once.”

  Caroline’s thoughts moved rapidly. She said,

  “Not if you don’t want to make talk. It isn’t as if I knew you very well. It would be better if I came in the afternoon—anyone can come in the afternoon.”