Will O’ the Wisp

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Folly!”

  Folly woke up.

  “What is it? Is the house on fire? O—oh!” Her yawn was natural enough.

  “Folly—have you been out?”

  The imps woke up; one peeped rather sleepily at Eleanor.

  “Out?”

  “Yes—out.”

  “Out where?”

  “Folly, someone went out of the house and down into the woods. Was it you?”

  “’M—” She sat up and locked her arms about her knees. “I said I should like a walk—didn’t I?”

  “Folly! Was it you?”

  “’M—” said Folly again. Her pink diaphanous nightgown slipped from her shoulder. Her eyes were very wicked; she looked sideways at Eleanor. “Perhaps David went for a walk. Did he? It’s quite proper to go for a walk with one’s cousin. Now, if it had been Stingo—”

  “Folly! You didn’t go to meet that horrible man?”

  “David?”

  Eleanor shook her.

  “Mr. St. Inigo.”

  “No one calls him that—he’s always Stingo.”

  “Did you go to meet him?”

  Folly unlocked her hands and kissed all ten fingers to Eleanor.

  “Darling Mrs. Grundy!” she said. “I do love you!”

  “Did you?”

  “Pahssionately!”

  As she spoke, she whisked down into the bed and pulled the eiderdown over her head. Her muffled voice reached Eleanor:

  “Don’t you ask no questions, and you won’t be told no lies!”

  CHAPTER VII

  Folly was as good as gold next day. David went off early to town. Betty and Eleanor drove into Guildford, taking Folly with them. They lunched with Mrs. Norris, a cousin so distant that even the Fordyces might have considered the kinship negligible if she had not been Eleanor’s godmother.

  Folly, on her best behaviour and prepared to suffer boredom meekly, was a good deal cheered by the discovery that Mrs. Norris had a son living at home. He was a very personable youth, just down from Oxford, and casting about him for a job. He wore a brilliant red tie, and political opinions of an even more ferocious shade. He considered Lenin the greatest man of the century, and discoursed to Folly upon the Soviet system.

  Folly listened beautifully. The imps were under lock and key; an innocent yearning for information looked out of her limpid green eyes. Aubrey Norris’s admiration for the late M. Lenin became pleasantly merged in admiration for Miss Folly March. Altogether a successful lunch-party.

  On the way home Folly asked to stop at a hairdresser’s, where she kept the car, a patient Eleanor, and an impatient Betty for about twenty minutes. To Betty’s outraged “What have you been doing?” she returned a flighty nod and a “Wait and see!”

  David got back just in time to dress for dinner. He came into the drawing-room to find Eleanor and Betty there. A moment later Folly skipped down the stairs, whisked into the room, banged the door, and stood just inside it with modestly cast-down eyes. She wore a slip of a pale pink frock; her face was washed quite clean, her mouth had only its natural red; her little black head was bound with a silver fillet; from under the fillet, on either side, hung a cluster of shining black curls.

  Betty said, “Good gracious!” and Eleanor said, “Oh Folly, how pretty! I do like it!” David said nothing at all. But something tugged at his heart—perhaps it was one of Folly’s imps. He was frowning when she lifted her eyes and looked at him with a little clear colour in her cheeks.

  “’M—d’you like it? Aren’t I clever to grow them so quickly?” She put up a finger and just touched the curls. “Don’t you like them?”

  “They’re not bad.”

  Folly broke at the knees in a charity bob.

  “Thank you, David,” she said meekly.

  After dinner she sat curled in a chair with a book. Eleanor, passing behind her, caught the title and leant over her shoulder.

  “Folly, where did you get that? It’s a beast of a book. Why do you read it?” The low indignant whisper was pitched for Folly’s ear.

  Folly smiled at the page she was reading.

  “Why do you?”

  “To please Mrs. Grundy,” said Folly in a voice that was meant to carry across the room. She gazed artlessly at David, who was standing with his back to the fire reading the paper. “And Mr. Grundy,” she added.

  Eleanor went back to her own chair. She was still picking up the stray threads of her embroidery when Folly ran across the room to David.

  “David—”

  David looked over the paper frowning.

  “What is it?”

  “David, Eleanor says this isn’t a proper book for me to read.”

  She held it out, and the frown became a scowl.

  “Where did you pick that up?”

  “George had it,” said Folly with downcast eyes.

  “George?”

  “’M—George March.”

  A scandalized Betty cut into the conversation:

  “You don’t call your father George?”

  “Always,” said Folly firmly.

  Then she turned back to David.

  “Is it as bad as all that? I’m glad I took it away from him. I have to be very careful about George’s morals.”

  David was torn between a desire to burst out laughing and a most raging desire to pick Folly up and give her a good shaking. He did neither. Instead, he dropped one side of the paper he was holding, took the book out of Folly’s hand, and pitched it behind him on to the blazing logs.

  “O-oh!” said Folly. “What will George say?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” said David, and went back to his paper.

  Folly made a face at the advertisement sheet of The Times, a little ugly, malicious face. Then she ran to Eleanor.

  “Darling, give me a nice book to read—the sort I’d read if I was Flora, all about a strong, silent hero and a fearfully good heroine who simply adores him and licks his boots.”

  Presently, as she sat on a cushion at Eleanor’s feet snuggled up over the “nice” book, one of the little bunches of black curls fell off and obscured the page. Folly came out with a monosyllable which the “fearfully good heroine” would not have used.

  Betty dropped a card, looked down her nose, and said: “Oh, Folly!”

  Eleanor patted the little shorn head, and Folly sighed with ostentation. Then she picked up the curls, sat them up very stiffly on the thin wire mount, tickled Eleanor’s hand with them, and finally stuck them bolt upright in the silver ribbon on the top of her head, where they waved like elfish court feathers gone black. Perhaps they were in mourning for Folly’s good behaviour.

  David did not take the least notice of them or of Folly. When he had finished The Times, he plunged into a book. When he said good-night to Folly, he looked over her head at Eleanor.

  Folly went upstairs with a little scarlet patch on either cheek. An hour later, Eleanor, coming late from Betty’s room, stopped at her door, opened it, and stood there listening. There was such a stillness that she felt her way to the bed and switched on the shaded light beside it.

  Folly lay crumpled up with her clenched fists under her chin like a baby; her little face was stained with tears, the black lashes all stuck together by threes and fours in little points; her lips were parted. She seemed to be sunk in the soundest depths of sleep.

  Eleanor put out the light and went away troubled.

  David came down to his early breakfast next morning to find that Miss Folly March intended to breakfast with him; and not only to breakfast with him, but to accompany him to town.

  “What on earth do you want to go to town for?”

  “’M—” said Folly. “I like driving up. And, of course”—very sweetly—“I like going with you.”

  David surveyed her with disapproval. The scarlet hat and suit he had seen before, but the black patent leather shoes with scarlet heels were a new horror.

  “My good girl, you can’t go up to town in those shoes
!”

  “I don’t think I’m anybody’s good girl. Am I?”

  She did a dance step to display the shoes, kicked up the little red heels with a flourish, and announced that they were dinky.

  David turned away and picked up the paper. His conviction that Folly wanted slapping passed into a strong desire to administer some of the arrears which he considered were a good deal overdue.

  “Of course, if you don’t mind being followed in the street,” he observed coldly. He shook out the paper. “You will be, to a dead cert.”

  “I get followed anyhow,” said Folly in a little whispering voice.

  David was not at all surprised to hear it. What did surprise him was his own furious anger. If the door had not opened, he might have spoken. A moment later he was blessing Carter’s timely entrance with haddock and coffee.

  Folly pounced on the coffee-pot and began to pour out. David, erecting The Times between them, replied as shortly as possible to inquiries about milk, sugar, toast, butter, and marmalade.

  They had finished breakfast, and Folly was slipping into a dark fur coat, when David, folding the paper over, found his eye caught and held. He had just said to Folly: “I suppose you know I’m staying the night with Frank and Julie. You’ll have to come down by train.” But he did not hear her answer; he had not, in fact, the very slightest idea whether she answered or not. He stared at the Agony Column, and then, rising with a jerk, he walked across to the window and stood there with his back to the room, looking at his own initials.

  It was the third advertisement in the column; if it had been a little lower down, he might easily have missed it. “D. A. St. K. F.”—David Alderey St. Kern Fordyce. The letters seemed blacker than the surrounding print; the whole message seemed to detach itself and to float a little above the paper upon which it was printed:

  “D. A. St. K. F.—Your wife is alive.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  David dropped Folly in Knightsbridge. She had sat by his side for thirty miles like the little image he had called her, and neither of them had said a word. Folly could see David’s face in the glass screen; its expression certainly did not invite conversation. She could see her own face too powdered and whitened as if yesterday had never been; the vermilion-red lips matched the hat that hid every vestige of hair.

  When the car drew up, she jumped nimbly out, fished out a suitcase which David did not remember to have seen before, nodded quite gravely, and was gone. He saw the twinkle of the scarlet heels, and he saw one or two people look at them. Then Miss Folly dived into a shop, and he forgot her and her suitcase for eight or nine hours.

  It was in the middle of the Aldereys’ dinner that Eleanor rang him up. Frank answered the telephone and spoke over his shoulder:

  “It’s Eleanor—she wants you.”

  David got up, wondering if the house were on fire. He wondered still more when he realized that Eleanor was trying to steady her voice and not succeeding very well.

  “David—can you hear me?”

  “Yes. What’s the matter?”

  “Folly hasn’t come back.”

  “Is that all?”

  “David, you don’t understand.”

  David remembered the suitcase.

  Eleanor went on speaking.

  “I rang up my flat, and she was there.”

  “Then that’s all right.”

  “No, it isn’t—it’s frightfully wrong. Do you know a man called St. Inigo?”

  David whistled.

  “I don’t know him. As a matter of fact I wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole. I know of him.”

  “David, that little idiot’s gone up to meet him. She’s been having a silly flirtation with him just out of sheer contradictoriness and because George for once in his life said ‘No.’ That’s why I was so anxious to get her down here.”

  “Well, I don’t quite see what we can do about it,” said David. “I expect she’s pretty well able to look after herself, you know.”

  “She isn’t. Girls aren’t—they think they know everything, and they don’t—Yes, another three minutes, please.”

  “All the same, my dear girl—”

  “No, David—listen. I want to tell you. I got on to the little wretch. And she’s dining with him, and then they’re going to a revue, and then on to a night-club to dance. That’s all bad enough; but she’s proposing to sleep at my flat.”

  “Well?”

  “She mustn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s nobody there. That’s what I wanted to tell you. The cook’s mother’s ill, and I said she could sleep at home; and the other girl’s having a holiday. She simply mustn’t come home with that man to an empty flat.”

  David whistled again.

  “Perhaps the cook will have stayed.”

  “No—she’d just gone. Folly told me so and rang off before I could say anything. I couldn’t get on again. If the last train hadn’t gone, I’d come up myself. Of course I could get a car and come. Only then Betty would have to know, and I don’t want her to. She’d tell one of the Aunts, and they’d tell Grandmamma, and the Family’d go on talking about it for the next hundred years or so.”

  “No,” said David. “You can’t come up. What do you want me to do?”

  “Well, if you could be there when they get back. The little wretch has got my key. It was in my bag, and she simply helped herself to it. What did you say?”

  “Never mind.”

  “No, don’t cut us off—I want three minutes more. David, are you there?”

  “Yes—go on. What am I to do with her?”

  “I thought perhaps Julie—she’s such a little dear, she won’t talk—I don’t want the Family to know.”

  “Good Lord—no! Look here, Eleanor, don’t worry. And don’t dream of coming up. I’ll fix something. Julie’s only got one spare room; but I can sleep at the office—I do sometimes. Now, is that all?”

  “Yes. David—don’t be very angry with her.”

  David fairly snorted.

  “She wants a good leathering!”

  He hung up the receiver and came back to the table.

  “Who are we taking in instead of you?” said Frank with a laugh. “Is it Eleanor?”

  “No—Folly March. She’s got herself stuck in town, and Eleanor’s fussed.”

  “I like Folly,” said Julie.

  David was surprised to find himself liking Julie the better for it. He couldn’t imagine why. He finished a rather tepid helping of beef-steak pie, and as soon as the maid had left the room, he told Julie pretty nearly everything that Eleanor had told him.

  Julie was deeply interested.

  “Of course I’ll have her. But how are you going to get hold of her? Oh! I’ve got a lovely plan! Let’s go to all the night-clubs.”

  “Us!” said Frank with vehemence.

  “You and me and David, Franko. I think it would be tremendous fun.”

  “Nothing doing,” said Frank. “Look here, David, Julie’s not on in this. We’ll take Folly in, though, if you can collect her. What did you say the man’s name was?”

  “I didn’t say—but it’s St. Inigo.”

  Frank’s eyebrows went up, and he exclaimed sharply:

  “St. Inigo! She’s rather going the limit, isn’t she?”

  “She’s a little fool.”

  “St. Inigo’s a member of The Soupçon. You’ll probably find them there—if the committee hasn’t kicked him out yet. I happen to know they’re going to, because Mordaunt told me so—can’t hold his tongue to save his life, and he said St. Inigo had been making the place too hot to hold him. What on earth’s George March about to let the girl pick up with a fellow like that?”

  “I gather that she picked up with him because George said she wasn’t to.”

  “George is a damned fool,” said Frank Alderey with contempt.

  Julie sat with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. She wore a pale blue velvet wrap with fur on it. Her cheeks w
ere pink, and her eyes bright with excitement as she looked from Frank to David.

  “Look here,” said Frank. “I’ll get on to Mordaunt and say you want to look in at The Soupçon. That’ll make it all right for you. When you get there—”

  David laughed a little harshly.

  “When I get there! Well, what do I do then? As a matter of fact I can’t do anything.”

  “Oh, but you’ll go?” said Julie eagerly.

  David laughed again.

  “Oh yes, I’ll go.”

  CHAPTER IX

  When David came into the room with the crowded dancing-floor and the little tables set close to the wall all round it, the first person that he saw was Tommy Wingate, plump and rosy. His large round eyeglass—Tommy’s monocle always looked larger and shinier than anyone else’s—winked joyously at the many lights. His hair had gone a trifle farther back in the three years since David had seen him last. Otherwise the same Tommy.

  David was very glad to see him now. He smote him on the shoulder, hauled him to a table, and ordered drinks.

  “You with anyone?”

  “Meeting a man. He’s late, or I’m early. Man called Devlin. Said he’d introduce me. I’m a pilgrim, I’m a stranger. Oh, David, it’s good to get home! Anyone”—he leaned forward and struck David painfully on the knee—” anyone—”

  “Tommy, I’ll break your head if you do that again!”

  “Then you’ll get chucked out. They were raided a month ago, and we don’t break heads any more. What I was going to say when you interrupted me was that any blooming fellow can have the whole blooming East as far as I’m concerned.”

  He began to warble:

  “I ain’t going back no more, no more,

  Oh, I ain’t going back no more,

  Tarara!”

  The last word was so startlingly loud that it achieved an audience. Tommy was in admirable form.

  “What are you doing? Leave?”

  “Just a spot. I’m for the Staff College and the midnight oil—not this sort, worse luck. I failed till they got tired of failing me and gave me a nomination. Er—” Tommy’s voice dropped from its loud and cheerful note. “Er—how’s everything?”

  “Oh, all right.”

  Tommy let his eyeglass fall, picked it up, squinted through it with his other eye, and remarked absently: