My wife was going away for a month, joining some old friends at Grasse, in the South of France. The evening before she left she sprang the mine at the dinner-table.
“Darling, there’s something you must do. I’ve been so rushed this last day or two that I only this minute remembered it. It’s about Charlotte Craigne.”
My mind went blank. I think I was in such a sudden panic that my nerves were not functioning, for my face didn’t flush.
“I’ve seen her once or twice recently,” Bernice was going on, “and I told her I was sure you’d help. It’s about Rupert. She’s in terrible distress and doesn’t know which way to turn for the best. She has to be so discreet, too.”
“But how can I help?” I managed to ask.
“But you were a friend of his.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s the very point. I did happen to be what one might call friendly with Craigne, but that was long ago. I loathe the fellow and in any case I don’t see what I could do to help.”
“Darling, don’t be Pharisaical. I don’t like you when you talk like that. It’s Charlotte I want you to help, not him.”
“But why should I help Charlotte?” I asked warily.
“But you knew her, didn’t you?” Another quick panic on my part, and then at the next words it went. “I mean, you must have known her if you knew Rupert. Besides, she said she was sure you’d help her. It was she who suggested it. Besides, I like Charlotte, and I’m sorry for her, so it’ll really be helping me. And I do think there’s something in what Rupert Craigne claims.”
There was the chance of a lifetime to make a clean breast of everything, but I was too much of a moral coward to take it. Are you married? If not, skip these next few words which may make you wince. For what I should have said to Bernice was something like this.
“Darling, I want to talk over something with you. You know that you’re the only woman in the world as far as I’m concerned. There isn’t a woman living who could make me look at her twice. The most marvellous thing that ever happened to me was when you said you’d marry me, and there isn’t a day when I don’t tell myself how lucky I am, and how marvellous you are. All the same, a man who doesn’t marry till forty must have had all sorts of experiences—I mean if he is normally constituted. What I’m trying to get at is that Charlotte Craigne and I used to be very friendly once. . . .”
There might have been the tiniest storm in the teacup, and even tears, and yet I’m perfectly convinced at this moment that I should have heard no more about Charlotte Craigne. What I did say was something very different.
“My dear, you can’t possibly be serious! Rupert Craigne’s trial was perfectly fair and there wasn’t a shadow of doubt about his guilt. He’s just a poseur, and a dangerous one. All his life he’s flourished on flattery and conceit, and he has the flaunting impudence to make a public play of himself. The only decent thing he could do would be to disappear.”
I suddenly felt the atmosphere becoming exceedingly chilly.
“All the same, I’d do anything to help you, as you know, if you feel your own way about it. But why should Charlotte Craigne imagine I could help?”
The question was intended as a deft turning aside, and it served its purpose. Bernice definitely thawed.
“But, darling, she knew you were connected with Scotland Yard. Everybody knows.”
I gave a Whartonian grunt. I am not connected with Scotland Yard, as I have patiently pointed out to Bernice before. There are certain things I am supposed to know rather well and at various times the Yard—and it is no false modesty to say that I always wonder why—pays for the knowledge and the time employed.
“I’m very busy, as you know,” I said, “much as I’d like to help. What is Charlotte Craigne proposing to do about it—or about me? Is she going to write?”
“She’s going to telephone, darling. She’s making use of a friend’s flat, somewhere in Knightsbridge, and she thought you might spare her a few minutes to talk things over. I told her you’d love to.”
Now I had an idea that when Bernice came back from her holiday she’d have forgotten all about the Craignes, so as soon as I got back from Victoria the next morning after seeing her off, I gave my man Palmer very careful and confidential orders about the telephone. He was to answer all calls and if a voice resembling that of Charlotte Craigne asked for me, then I was out and the time of my return unknown. One or two fruitless calls, I thought, and Charlotte would give me up as inaccessible, or something might happen to make her regard me as no longer useful for whatever scheme she had in her mind.
Then absent-mindedness proved my undoing. Scarcely had I finished than the phone went and I lifted the receiver.
“Hallo?” I said, and the one word was enough.
“It’s you, Ludo, darling!” said the well-remembered voice. “Has Bernice told you about everything?”
“Depends what you mean,” I said guardedly. And then in the same moment I made up my mind. There would be no use in trying to put her off, so why not see her and get the whole thing over? Maybe there would be nothing after all that a few words couldn’t settle.
“Something about wanting to see me,” I went on.
“Don’t be so despondent, darling,” she said. Her voice had that husky quality that had always made the most trivial remark into part of an intimacy.
Two minutes later I had the address of the flat and a quarter of an hour after that I was in a taxi.
It was some years since I had seen her closely, but those years had stood more still with her than with me. Thirty-five can be an alluring age with most women, and it was most magnificently so in the case of Charlotte Craigne. She looked not a day older, and all the attractiveness was there, and the mannerisms. I don’t know if a rabbit ever admires a particularly attractive stoat while he cowers and waits, but the comparison is the only one I can make, for I found myself watching her every movement and gesture, fascinated as ever, but more and more scared as the minutes went by.
She was the most flagrant and the most graceful of liars. Yet I could never make her admit it, for her explanations and excuses were always so dexterous, ingenuous or even amusing, and so bolstered up by a new series of fabrications with fresh wiles and artifices expended on them, that suspicion seemed treachery and protestation sheer brutality. She could be witty, mordantly malicious, and utterly unscrupulous; fabulously generous and then incredibly selfish, intensely loyal in all sorts of things and wholly unreliable in the rest.
She was not handsome. Her mouth was too big and the jawbones too prominent, but when she smiled, and that was often, you thought hers the most expressive mouth you had ever seen, and as for the hardness of jaw-bones and chin, they gave an arrogant, patrician poise to the head. Her eyes were lovely and she had the most beautiful head of hair, which she would mass and curl in what I’d call a tomboy fashion, and as her nose was the least bit retroussé, the whole effect was roguish and altogether charming. I should call her neither a man’s nor a woman’s woman, but the sole property of Charlotte—at least till she became infatuated with Craigne. As for the sexual side of life, it had no real attraction for her and was merely one more mood.
You will pardon me for having dwelt at such length on Charlotte Craigne, and yet I wish I had said more, for she is not only the most important character in this tale, but almost the tale itself. And if you wonder how I could have become involved with such a woman, or have stood her for three years—and it was she who left me and not the other way about—I can only plead that in those years between wars and before the army took me mercifully again in hand, I was something of a prim intellectual. I have said Charlotte was my life’s one indiscretion, and I add that for the sole reason that she was the only woman who ever attempted to exert any wiles on me or tried to prove to me that I had attractions very remote from the scholarly, In fact, she was the perfect antithesis, and we had just that one point in common which was needed to stay as flux—a perpetual urge to thumb our noses at convention.
With me it had been an abstract wish, for in public I had been timid in my manifestations, but when I was in Charlotte’s company, all the inhibitions were released. Jekyll and Hyde again, though a Hyde with considerable reservations.
“Here you are, and how lovely to see you,” she said. She was taking my hat and gloves, but suddenly was turning back to me. Her hands went to my shoulders, and I feared she was going to kiss me, or rather that I should have to kiss her. “You’re older, you know.”
“Of course I’m older,” I said. “The amazing thing is that you’re not. Hitler doesn’t seem to worry you a bit.”
“Come and sit here,” she told me soothingly, and patted a cushion in the angle of the chesterfield. “And don’t look so portentous, darling. I haven’t brought you here to seduce you.”
“A few years too late,” I said with an attempt at flippancy.
She laughed, or rather gurgled, which was the nearest she ever could come to a full-blooded laugh.
“That’s much better. Cigarette? Or would you rather have your pipe. But, darling!” She was taking the pipe out of my hand. “I do believe it’s one of those I gave you and you’ve been saving it up till now.” She smiled endearingly. “Now I know you’re going to be friendly.”
“And why shouldn’t I be friendly?”
“Every reason, darling.” Now she was picking dropped petals off the side-table. “Did Bernice go this morning?”
“Oh, yes. You knew all about her trip?”
“Of course,” she said, and sat in the chesterfield angle to face me. As she lighted herself a cigarette I noticed that her finger-nails were the old shade of maroon, and they matched the buckle thing that held the low V of the black frock. I’d always told her she looked her best in black with a touch of red.
“Did you ever tell Bernice about us?” she suddenly asked.
“I didn’t,” I said curtly. “But what’s Bernice to do with us at this moment? I mean, I’m waiting to hear why it was you wanted to see me so urgently.”
She flicked the ash from the cigarette and got to her feet.
“Bernice may have quite a lot to do with it. And don’t look so glum, darling. I knew you hadn’t told her. A woman can always tell. And perhaps we shan’t have to bother poor Bernice after all.”
“Keep Bernice out of it,” I told her angrily. “And let me tell you, Lotta, that I’m an uncommonly busy man. I wish you’d come to the point. What is it you want me to do?”
“Help me and Rupert,” she said. “What do you think of him? Since he came out, I mean—if that’s what they call it.”
“You want a frank answer?”
“Why not?”
“Then he’s doing himself an incredible amount of harm. He was guilty as hell, whatever he may have induced you to believe, and so, if you’ve still any influence with him, for the love of God get him out of the country.”
“That is frank, isn’t it?”
“You asked me to be,” I said. “And now you tell me something. Did you and do you believe that yarn of his about being an innocent victim of some mysterious person higher up?”
She patted a cushion for herself, and once more sat facing me in that opposite angle of the chesterfield.
“I trust you, Ludo,” she said, and I couldn’t help a little curl of the lip at the pathetic smile she gave me.
“You’re up to some trick, Lotta. Please don’t go round in circles. It’s so tiring. What is it you want?”
She refused to smile. “If I hadn’t trusted you, I wouldn’t be speaking to you now. That’s why I don’t scruple to tell you that I’m a pretty desperate woman, and I’ve made up my mind to play a dangerous game.” She smiled. “Sounds like something out of Ouida. But it isn’t funny at all, darling. It’s something damnably dirty, but you’re going to help me all the same.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, darling. You’re going to help me.”
She reached for an ashtray and stubbed out the cigarette. Then she was on her feet again, marking time for the next move.
“You see the position I’m in. Joe’s making me an allowance.” She always alluded to her stepfather as Joe, or our Joe. “It’s on condition that I have nothing whatever to do with Rupert—”
“Just a minute, Lotta. There’s something I’d like to know. You’re just as much in love with Rupert as ever?”
“Heaps more,” she said soberly. “After all, I helped to spend his money and land him in the mess, and now it’s up to me to get us both out.”
“Good,” I said relievedly. “And the position is that you can’t help him because of Joe.”
“Yes. I daren’t even see him. I believe Joe’s perfectly capable of having me watched. What I’m going to do, therefore, is to get some hold over Joe. Frankly, I propose to blackmail him.”
“Good God!”
She gurgled. “Don’t be shocked, darling. I mean every word I say. And what you don’t know is that Rupert isn’t half as mad as you take him to be. There was someone higher up, as you called it, and that someone was our Joe.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“I can’t prove it,” she went on. “It’s intuition and a whole lot of odds and ends, such as the way he reacts when I drop hints, and the way he occasionally avoids a conversation. Also he’s afraid of me. To a very minor extent I can blackmail him already, but that’s nothing to what I propose to do. And that’s where you’re going to help me.”
“I?”
“Darling, don’t be obtuse. You’re going to get the proofs, and you’re the only one I can trust. Bernice told me all the perfectly marvellous things you’ve done since I saw you, and I always did think you had the most marvellous brain—”
“Now, now, Lotta,” I had to cut in. “If you don’t mind I’d rather not hear any more about it. Even if I were disposed to do what you suggest, which I’m most certainly not, I’m far too busy to give up the time.” Then I was shaking my head exasperatedly. “But why discuss it? It’s too preposterous for words. If you’re serious—then you’re—you’re—”
“Mad, darling. Is that the word? But I’m not mad. I’ve thought it out and I don’t give a hoot in hell what happens. I’m desperate, and I’m prepared to be utterly unscrupulous.”
“With whom?”
“With you, if necessary.”
I stared. “With me? But how? And why?”
She came over and sat by me again. “Look at me,” she said. “Don’t be squeamish. I’m not going to mesmerise you. You always said you could tell from my eyes if I was serious or not. Very well, am I serious now?”
“Don’t blether so much,” I told her annoyedly. “Get on with what you were saying. Why are you going to be unscrupulous about me?”
“I’m not, if you listen to reason. If you get me the evidence, then we’re friends. If not, then I tell Bernice all about us.”
“Tell her and be damned,” I said, and began getting to my feet.
Her hand held me back. “Don’t be impulsive, Ludo. You don’t know all I may have to tell her.”
“And why don’t I?”
“Because you don’t know it yourself.” She frowned. “At least I don’t think you do. Sometimes I thought you had me followed”—she smiled—“what a quaint word! I mean, you knew where I’d gone and why. When we decided to end things and I had a long holiday abroad.”
“As far as I’m concerned you’re talking Greek.”
“Good,” she said. “That gives me all the more hold over you. And please don’t be shocked, darling, when I tell you what I was really doing. Actually I was having a baby. Isn’t it all frightfully domestic!”
I had stared and gaped. Then my lip curled. “What a delicious story. Who is it this time? Mrs. Henry Wood?”
“I wouldn’t laugh, darling,” she told me. “I happen to have all the proofs, including the best proof of all. The boy’s marvellously like you.”
“You’re lying,” I told her amusedly, but somewhere inside I was not so sure.
“Write and be damned,” I told her again. “Or, if you like, let me see these proofs.”
She smiled. “Oh, no. I popped them into my bank just before you came. They’re far too precious.”
“Proofs! There aren’t any proofs.” I got to my feet and was making for my hat. “The story’s so melodramatic that I can’t even congratulate you on its composition.”
“Very well, darling. Have it your own way.” Then she was opening her bag and handing me a snapshot. It was of a small boy, and somewhere in the south of France or Italy, for there were mimosas for a background and terraces of young vines. I had a good look at it and then shrugged my shoulders.
“A fine-looking boy, but might have been fathered by anybody. How much did it cost you?”
She wasn’t at all annoyed, and that was a bad sign. “It’s what it may cost you, Ludo darling. Bernice will see a resemblance soon enough. A sherry? Or is it too early?”
“Nothing, thanks,” I said frigidly, and picked up my hat and gloves. “Now I’m going, I’d like to tell you this. You can do what you damn please. I came here prepared to help you in any reasonable way, but I’ll not be mixed up in blackmail, and, what’s more, I’m damned if I’ll be driven or submit to blackmail myself.”
“How pious of you, darling!” A touch of annoyance was in her tone for the first time. “You were always a bit of a Galahad—a trifle shop-soiled, perhaps, but always very pi.”
The Case of the Magic Mirror: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 3