David looked from the page to Heather Down.
“Your name’s not here.”
She shut the Bible with a nervous jerk.
“Did you think it would be there?” she said.
CHAPTER XXVIII
David left Martagon Crescent with his mind set wholly upon the letter. He must go down to Fordwick and see if it had ever been received there. He kept his thoughts to this point with a most determined effort. If he relaxed, he found that he was remembering Heather Down’s quick sideways glance at her ring, or the way in which her voice had softened when she repeated Erica’s piteous cry to him on the Bomongo, the cry which only he and Erica had heard. He would not let his thoughts relax or take in more than the road to Fordwick, which he would travel as soon as it was light next morning, and the questions which he would ask of Mrs. Perrott, who had kept the post office there for five-and-twenty years. All through the watches of the night he travelled that road and asked those questions. A cold, grey dawn brought the relief of action.
It was only half-past nine o’clock when he walked into the post office and rapped upon the counter. The post office was also a general shop. There were tins of biscuits and tins of cocoa; garden seeds and garden twine; tin-tacks; bacon; tea; potatoes; acid drops, and peppermint bulls-eyes.
The door behind the counter creaked and Mrs. Perrott emerged, stout, comfortable, motherly, with a take-your-time-and-let-me-take-mine sort of air. She beamed on David, to whom she had sold peppermints and acid drops in infancy.
“Well, Mr. David—I never!”
“Good-morning, Mrs. Perrott,” said David.
“Nasty damp morning again, I’m sure—and so it was yesterday. But they say rain’s needed.”
Mrs. Perrott reached the counter and leaned upon it.
And what can I do for you this nasty morning, sir? Are you just off to town?”
“Just down from town.” David leaned on the counter too. “I’ve come down on purpose to ask you something, Mrs. Perrott.”
“Me, Mr. David! Well, I’m sure anything! can do for any of the family, and for you in special sir—”
“It’s about a registered letter,” said David quickly.
“Well now!”
“It’s a very important letter, and it was registered. I don’t know how long you keep the records of that sort of thing; but it’s some time ago, I’m afraid.”
“How long ago would it be, sir?”
“More than four years.”
Mrs. Perrott shook her head slowly.
“We don’t keep nothing more than two years. Didn’t you get the letter, sir?”
“No, I didn’t. I’ve only just heard that it was sent.”
“Well, I’m sure! And it was important?”
He nodded.
“Isn’t that too bad, now!” said Mrs. Perrott. “Where would it have been from, sir?”
“South Africa—Cape Town. I’ve got the receipt.”
He laid it down on the counter, and she took it in her hand, turning it this way and that as if the faded yellowish slip were a puzzle that might give up its secret if it were looked at long enough.
“Well, well, it’s too bad,” said Mrs. Perrott.
She watched David go out of the shop and start up his car. Then she went back to the room behind the shop, where her niece Etta, who did a little dressmaking, sat sewing at the bright blue stuff which Gladys Brown had just brought her in to make up.
Etta looked up as she came in, her pretty, pert face all screwed together.
“Gladys is going to look a fair show in this blue,” she said discontentedly. “Funny how a girl with a bad complexion never knows it. A fair show she’ll look. And if she thinks dressing bright is going to make Charlie look at her, well, she’s made a bit of a mistake.”
Mrs. Perrott looked indulgently at the blue stuff.
“Well, I liked a bit of bright colour myself when I was a girl—and Gladys has got a good heart if she hasn’t got a good skin.”
She took up her duster and began to dust the room slowly and methodically. It was a small room with a window looking out on a garden which was so full of cabbages that it was astonishing to think that Etta and Mrs. Perrott could ever exhaust the supply. Pressed closely against the glass were three fine geranium plants in pots, and on the mantelpiece, on either side of an old-fashioned wooden clock, there were hyacinths just coming into flower—a red hyacinth in a tall purple glass full of water, and a very bright pink hyacinth in a dark blue glass; their long stringy white roots showed through the coloured glass like seaweed moving in deep water.
Mrs. Perrott dusted the clock very carefully. It had belonged to her great-great-grandmother, Beulah Long, and she “thought a sight of it.” She didn’t hold with people who got rid of the things that come down to them and let them go to auction. She polished the face of the clock whilst she told Etta how Mr. David had come in about a registered letter that had never reached him:
“Four years ago and more. And, of course, I had to tell him we didn’t keep nothing more than two years.”
“Was there money in it?” said Etta, staring.
“He didn’t say—but he did seem put out.”
Etta was sewing with quick, jerky stitches.
“It’s just like that old machine to go wrong when I’ve got all this work in! There’s a wonderful bargain in The Lady—here, where’s it got to? Listen to this: ‘Banjulele, quite new. Would take sewing machine in exchange.’”
Mrs. Perrott swung round, duster in hand.
“No, you don’t, Etta, my girl!”
“But—Aunt—”
“There’s no buts about it. The machine was your blessed Aunt Emma’s, and if ever there’s an angel in heaven it’s her, though I’m her own sister that says it. And I wonder at you, Etta—yes, I do—to sit there and say to my face that you’d do an irreligious thing like selling your Aunt Emma’s machine to a stranger for a horrid Christy-minstrel banjo that’s only fit for a black-faced nigger singing vulgar songs on Margate sands!” Mrs. Perrott was quite red in the face as she finished.
Etta gave a pettish jerk of her shoulder and said: “Oh, well—”
Mrs. Perrott went on dusting in an offended silence. It was about five minutes later that she suddenly exclaimed.
“What’s the matter?” asked Etta rather sulkily.
Mrs. Perrott sat down in the nearest chair.
“Well, I never! But I suppose it couldn’t have been that one.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, to be sure—but I don’t suppose it could have been.”
“Gracious, Aunt! Have you gone dotty?”
Mrs. Perrott looked at her reprovingly.
“There’s no one in the family on either side, nor as far back as I know, that hadn’t all the use of their intellects the same as the Lord meant ’em to have, right up to their last dying day. Very good strong mem’ries they all of ’em had, especially my great-uncle, Ebenezer William, that could always remember as he heard the bells rung in this very church for the battle of Waterloo. I don’t say I’m quick nor full of book-learning, and I don’t know that I hold with all this book-learning that goes on nowadays. There’s good books and there’s bad books, and I’m no scholar, nor ever was. I mayn’t be quick, but I’m sure. And it’s come back to me that there was a letter like Mr. David was asking for.”
Etta stared and said “Gracious!” again.
“It’s come back to me,” said Mrs. Perrott.
“But, Aunt, there’s hundreds of letters for Mr. David in four months, let alone four years.”
“There’s not so many registered letters. And I tell you how I remember about this one—if it was the one that Mr. David’s asking about. I’ll tell you how I remember it. It come the last week of September, and blazing hot weather. And old Masterson that gave up being postman at Christmas that year—let me see, it was 1922—September 1922 it was, and a very sudden heat—and Masterson comes in and he says, ‘Well,
missus, I’m in hopes as you haven’t no letters by afternoon post anyways.’ And he gives me the bag. And there was two or three bills, and I said, ‘They’ll wait nicely, and no one the wiser nor the worser off.’ And then there was the foreign letter for Mr. David, and I said, ‘This’ll have to go whether or no.’ And poor Masterson he leans on the counter and mops his face, and he says, ‘Missus, I’m done.’ I can tell you he frightened me a bit. But I got him to a chair, and I made him sit quiet, and I fetched him a drink.” Mrs. Perrott stopped speaking. Her duster lay on her lap; she began to pleat it into neat straight folds.
“Well? What happened?” said Etta curiously.
“Happened?” said Mrs. Perrott. “Nothing happened. I left Masterson to keep the shop, and I took the letter up myself. And that’s how I come to remember about it.”
“Then Mr. David got it?”
“I suppose he did,” said Mrs. Perrott, getting out of her chair.
She went on dusting until everything in the room was spotless. Then she went through into the shop, and with infinite care and pains, she wrote a letter.
CHAPTER XXIX
David reached his office at about eleven. There was a formidable amount of work waiting to be tackled; but the first thing that he did was to write a letter. He took pen and paper, dated the sheet, and wrote:
“DEAR MISS DOWN—”
There he stopped, and for a moment rested his head upon his hand. Miss Down—Erica—was he writing to Erica? He said, “No,” and had the feeling that he was pushing against a cold conviction that gathered weight as he withstood it. He straightened up and went on with the letter:
“I have just returned from Fordwick. I am unable to trace any registered letter posted over four years ago, as they do not keep the records for more than two years. I wish very much to see you again. I am sending this letter by District Messenger. I shall be in office till six. If I do not hear to the contrary, I will come to Martagon Crescent at nine o’clock.
“Yours sincerely,
“DAVID FORDYCE.”
When he had sent the letter off he addressed himself to his arrears of work.
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when Miss Barker opened the door and said:
“Miss March would like to see you, Mr. Fordyce.”
Folly had hardly waited to be announced. She scandalized Miss Barker a good deal by passing her in the doorway instead of waiting in the outer office to be told that Mr. Fordyce would see her. Miss Barker had, fortunately, closed the door before Folly perched herself on the corner of the table with her feet dangling.
David looked up with a very decided frown and saw her in her red hat and dress looking impishly at him.
“I say, look out! There are papers all over the place.”
“I don’t mind them,” said Folly. “I like kicking my heels. I haven’t got the red ones on to-day. You were quite right about my being followed in them; and I didn’t want anyone to follow me here.”
“You’ve no business to come here,” said David.
“Why on earth not? An office is a frightfully proper place, and that girl out there is the real chaperony sort—I should think even the Aunts didn’t mind your having her.”
“Did you come here to talk about Miss Barker?” said David gloomily.
“No-o—not specially. Are you busy?”
“I was.” David’s frown had become ferocious.
Folly opened her green eyes very wide.
“What an awful temper you have got, David! Doesn’t it hurt when you frown like that? I should think it would sprain your eyebrows. It would be horrid for you if you had to have them in splints. I do wish you’d be careful.”
“Folly, I really am busy. Why did you come?”
“Because I really, truly had to see you.”
“Why?”
She crossed one knee over the other.
“I thought of something. I’ve been thinking of it a lot, and I thought I ought to tell you about it.”
“What is it?”
Her voice arrested his attention; there was a little stammer of hesitation in it.
“David—that advertisement.”
“Which one?”
“Not yours; the one with the initials and ‘Your wife is alive.’”
“Yes?”
“Do you know who put it in?”
“I thought, of course, that it was Miss Smith or—her niece. But they didn’t seem to know anything about it; they seemed surprised—really surprised.”
“’M—I expect they were. Would you like to know who put it in?”
David stared at her. She had clasped her hands about her knee and was leaning a little towards him.
“What do you know about it?”
“I know who put it in.”
“How can you possibly know?”
“I do. I can tell you who put it in—and it wasn’t Miss Smith or her niece.”
“Who was it?”
“Betty,” said Folly in an odd, wavering tone.
She jumped down from the table as she said the name, and stood a yard from David watching his face. A dark anger passed across it.
“What on earth do you mean?”
Folly stood her ground.
“I mean what I said—Betty put it in.”
“Is this a joke? Do you think this is a subject to joke about?”
“I’m not joking. I came to tell you something because I thought you ought to know. But if you’re going to look at me like that and go through the roof like a bomb—well, you can just find out for yourself; I won’t tell you anything more!” She stamped an angry foot, and on the last word her breath caught in something uncommonly like a sob.
The anger went out of David’s face.
“Folly—are you serious?”
He saw the glint of tears.
“I’m never serious—am I? No one ever takes me seriously.”
David got up and stood between her and the door.
“Look here, you’ve gone too far. You can’t say things like that about Betty unless you’re prepared to substantiate them.”
The tears were gone. This time it was a different kind of glint that he saw.
“Ooh! You do use long words! What does sub-what’s-his-name mean? It sounds horrible!”
“Prove,” said David impatiently. “You’ve said a thing about Betty, and I can’t let it pass. You’ve got to prove it.”
Folly went back to the table and leaned against it. With a little cool nod she said:
“All right. I came here to tell you, so I will. It’s not because of your saying ‘must,’ you know.”
“Well?”
“Betty did put it in—at least I think she did. And I came to tell you because I thought you ought to know. I didn’t tell anyone else—I didn’t tell Eleanor. But I thought you ought to know.”
“Go on,” said David.
“That advertisement came out on Thursday—the day I went up to town and Stingo was a beast. I looked in the paper afterwards and I saw it—after Eleanor told me, you know. I went through the old papers and looked till I found it.”
“Yes, it was Thursday.”
Folly nodded.
“On Friday night, after we came back to Ford, Eleanor took me into her room and scolded me—after we went up to bed, you know. And I lost my temper—I do lose it sometimes, but not nearly so often as you do—and I damned out of the room. And I went away into my own room, and hours afterwards I thought I’d go along and see if Eleanor was awake, because a dreadfully good feeling came over me and I didn’t feel as if I could bear her to go on being dreadfully angry with me all night and perhaps have a dream about being angry with me—because I do truly love Eleanor, and when I truly love someone I can’t, can’t bear them to be angry with me.”
As she said this Folly’s hands came together and pressed one another and her eyes were full of light; her face was very pale. The light in her eyes hurt David with a sudden piercing pain. He looked away, and then looke
d back again.
“Go on,” he said.
“I opened my door,” said Folly, “and I heard someone else opening their door, away on the left. So I looked; and it was Betty’s door. The door was open when I looked, and there was a light in the room, so that I could see her come through the door. I did see her, David. But she didn’t see me. I didn’t want her to see me, so I shut the door all but a chink, and I heard her go past my door and down the stairs. I waited for her to put the light on, but she didn’t; and when I looked out her door was shut, and all the passage was dark, and all the house downstairs was dark, and—and I didn’t like it a bit—I didn’t,” said Folly. “You wouldn’t have either. Nobody would.”
“Well?”
“Ooh! It was horrid! I didn’t feel as if I could shut my door, and I didn’t feel as if I could open it. And I waited a most frightful long time, and Betty didn’t come back, and I began to think about people disappearing in the middle of the night, and burglars, and all the creepy-crawly stories I’d ever heard. And I got so frightened I simply had to do something, so I opened my door, and I went on tiptoe to the top of the stairs, and I listened. And it was like vaults and caverns and dark places in the sort of dream where you can’t see anything; and there wasn’t a sound. I wanted to go back to my room most awfully, but I thought I’d go a little way down the stairs first and see if there was a light anywhere. I thought if Betty was in her sitting-room she’d have a light and I should see it under the door. I went halfway down, and I hung over, and I looked, and there wasn’t any light, but I could hear Betty talking. I couldn’t hear what she said, only just her voice going up and down. Then she stopped, and a man said something.”
David exclaimed sharply:
“Folly! What are you saying?”
Folly screwed up her face.
“I nearly fell over the banisters. You needn’t look so shocked—it was only Francis. But I didn’t know that till afterwards.”
Will O’ the Wisp Page 15