Sir Henry pushed his chair back. Lacy Manning gave a little faint scream. Cotty dropped his pince-nez and sat groping for them. Sir Cotterell slowly withdrew the hand which had been stretched out to take Pearl Palliser’s statement. He took hold of the edge of the table and got to his feet.
“The identity disc? Nonsense!” said Sophy Abbott at the top of her voice.
“Go on, Evelyn,” said Manning.
“I got it from Anna Blum.”—Evelyn spoke simply and clearly—“She had it all the time. She gave it to me. Not the first time I went to Cologne, but this time—the other day—a week ago.”
“The identity disc?” The words were just an unsteady whisper, but suddenly Sir Cottercll stood up straight; the colour came back into his lips and the fire into his glance.
“That’s final!” he said. “That’s what I’ve wanted. Henry, that’s final. Even Cotty won’t say that the disc isn’t evidence. Evelyn—my dear——” He ended on a note of appeal.
Evelyn moved the hand that had been clenched against her breast. She brought it down open on the table, and in the palm was a little bag of gold brocade.
Manning came up to the table and took it from her hand. Nobody moved or spoke whilst he untied the thread that fastened it and tipped out a packet covered with yellowish linen, Evelyn put her finger on it for a moment. She said, “Wait!” with a catch in her voice. Then she spoke across the table to Sir Cotterell:
“I haven’t looked at it. Anna gave it to me. But I didn’t look at it—I didn’t want to look at it.”
Sophy Abbott’s angry laugh rang out:
“My dear Evelyn, do you really expect us to believe that?”
For an instant Evelyn turned her eyes upon her. They were very darkly blue. They looked in Sophy’s direction, but they did not seem to see her. She spoke quite gently:
“Yes, Sophy, I ask you to believe it.” She paused, and added with extreme simplicity, “It’s true.”
Then she turned again to Sir Cotterell.
“It’s for you. I don’t want to see it. I know.” She took her hand from the table. “I won’t stay. No, I don’t want anyone to come with me—please.” The last word was for Manning, who had put his hand on her arm.
He let her go, and she went out of the room without turning her head. The door closed behind her. Lacy Manning began to cry softly.
“Open it,” said Sir Henry in his quiet, courteous voice.
Manning broke the stitches, took out the paper-covered disc, unwrapped it.
Sir Cotterell came round the table and stood at his elbow. When the last fold of the paper was gone, he snatched at the disc and held it. His other hand pressed hard on Manning’s shoulder. The room, the disc, the printed words, swam together.
“I can’t see—I can’t read it—Manning—Manning.”
In a dead silence Manning took the disc and read the name aloud.
XXXI
Laydon left the Manor without any very clear idea of where he was going. His immediate need was to get away; he could no longer bear to be under one roof with Evelyn. A twenty-mile tramp through the night had brought him no farther than this. Laydon woods and meadows, the stream he had fished as a boy, all this spring warmth and burgeoning, were alike intolerable.
He arrived in London, and drove to the hotel at which he and Manning had stayed. The relief of losing himself, of being a casual stranger in the midst of a perfectly indifferent crowd, was very great. Yet with relief there came some prickings of conscience. He must write at once to Sir Cotterell. But after sitting and frowning a long time at a blank sheet of paper, he got up and made his way to the telephone exchange.
It was Manning who answered his “Hullo!”
“I’m speaking from town,” said Laydon abruptly, and heard Manning suppress an exclamation.
“Well, so long as you are speaking! I don’t mind telling you that Sir Cotterell was a good deal peeved at your going off.”
A pause. Then Laydon, rather strained:
“Yes, I was afraid he wouldn’t like it. Monkey, I had to go.”
“H’m—Evelyn had to go too.”
“Evelyn!”
“Had to go too. Is the line bad your end? I can say it louder if you’d like me to.”
Silence. Then Manning again:
“Hullo! Are you there?”
“Yes. Monkey—why did she go?”
“Why did you go, for the matter of that? I shouldn’t wonder if—no, never mind. Yes, I want another three minutes. Hullo, Laydon, don’t let them cut us off—tell the lady your end that you’ll go the limit. Hullo! You are there, aren’t you? Well, we’ve had another nice little family party down here—Cotty and Sophy, and a statement signed by the versatile Miss Palliser all complete. You were well out of it.”
“A statement! What statement?”
“Oh, the lady said you were her husband—that’s all—her husband, Jim Field, And Evelyn——”
“Monkey, what’s this nonsense? Evelyn didn’t——”
“My dear chap, Evelyn up and cast a bomb into our midst, and having cast it, departed. The last anyone saw of her was the back of her car heading for town at about a hundred miles an hour.”
Laydon’s hand clenched on the receiver.
“What happened?” he said slowly.
“She cast her bomb, and went. We’re still picking up the pieces here.”
“What did she do?”
“You’d better ask her. And look here, old man, here’s a bit of good advice for you—Don’t be a mug.”
Laydon heard the click of the receiver. The line went dead. He came out of the box and shut the door behind him.
Evelyn reached her flat to find Jessica Sunning out. She went to her room, took off her things, changed into something thin and cool, and sat down empty-handed to wait. She seemed to have come to a place where everything left off. Fear, doubt, emotion, pain—everything had come to an end. It was as if she had been wandering in a maze, led first this way and then that, until a sudden turn had brought her to the centre. She remembered wandering once in such a maze, and she remembered the blank feeling with which she had come out upon the little open patch of grass in the middle. This was the feeling that possessed her now—blankness, a sense of having come to the end.
She sat quite still, her head thrown back against a dark cushion, her hands lying loosely in her lap palm upwards. Time seemed to flow by her like the flowing of a stream whose murmur is so much one with consciousness that it is no longer heeded. She heard the door open. The sound seemed to come from a long way off. If it was Jessica, it did not matter. If it was Ponson, she would go away again; she did not matter either. The door was closed.
Evelyn lifted her eyelids and saw Laydon standing at the far end of the room. She saw him as one sees someone in a dream. She was so much at the end of everything that she could look at him like that. As she looked, she was vaguely aware of how much he had altered in the last few weeks, even in the last few hours. The unnatural pallor where cheek and chin had been covered with the thick beard was gone, merged into the general tan. The heavy peasant mask was gone.
Laydon, watching, felt his heart contract. He said, “Evelyn!” And at the sound of his voice, sharp with anxiety, she woke a little from her strange mood and smiled.
“How did you know?”
“Monkey told me.”
“Monkey?”
“I rang up. He said you’d gone.”
“Did he say anything else?”
He came nearer, and stood looking down on her, one big shoulder just touching the white mantelpiece.
“He said there’d been a scene.”
“Yes, I suppose there was a scene.” Her voice slid away into silence.
“Evelyn—he didn’t say what had happened.”
The dream began to fall away. After all, she had not come to the end. She had to speak, to tell him. Up to this moment she had not moved at all. Now she lifted her hands and laid them on the arms of the chair.
&nb
sp; “He didn’t tell you—what happened?”
“No, he didn’t tell me. He said that you would tell me.”
Evelyn sighed. The long breath seemed to shake her. Then she got up and stood quite near him, facing him, her eyes on his.
“Anna gave me the disc,” she said.
“Evelyn!”
She took hold of the edge of the mantelpiece to steady herself.
“No—wait. She had it all the time. She gave it to me. I didn’t look at it.”
“Evelyn.” He spoke in a voice dropped to its lowest note, shaken, hardly audible.
“I didn’t look—I didn’t want to look. I left it for them—for Sir Cotterell. I didn’t want to look at it.”
There was a very, very deep silence. It was broken at last by Laydon.
“Evelyn—do—you—know?”
Evelyn smiled. This was really the end. They had come to the place where they could speak the naked truth. She said in a still, effortless voice,
“I want to ask you something.”
And as she said the words, she knew that there was no need to ask. The answer was in Laydon’s eyes.
“Evelyn, who am I?”
“I think you know.”
“But you? Do you know?”
“Oh, yes. You are—you. Isn’t that enough?”
She saw his face become rigid.
“No!” The word was loud and harsh.
Evelyn came a little nearer; her hand touched his arm.
“Why does the past matter? Why do you care about it?”
“It matters.”
“Why?”
His hands came down heavily upon her shoulders.
“I must know. You cared—I must know who you cared for. Evelyn—who was it? Was it Jack?”
She felt the strength of his big hands, the iron force with which he steadied his voice. There was pity in her eyes.
“Does a girl of eighteen care very much for anyone but herself?”
“You cared.”
“I thought I cared for Jack. I cared for what he stood for—all sorts of romantic dreams. I thought my heart was broken when I woke up and found the dreams were gone.”
He said, “Lacy was right,” in a dull, toneless voice.
“Was she?”
She felt his grip relax. His hands fell to his sides.
“Yes. I’ve been a fool. She said you cared for Jack.”
“I’ve told you what I cared for. I married Jim.”
“Yes. Why?”
“I think”—her voice shook a little—“I think, because he made me feel so safe.”
He made a sharp movement, seemed about to speak, then turned to her,
“Eve——”
Evelyn put out both her hands. She had begun to tremble very much. She said in a whispering, sobbing voice,
“It doesn’t matter—it doesn’t. Why do you let it matter?”
She felt his arms close round her.
“Are you safe—now?”
She laid her face against his, and did not speak.
“Who am I, Eve?”
“The man I love. Oh, no one but you has ever called me Eve.”
“Who am I?”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes. Eve, who am I? Say it! Say it! I want you to say it first, before anyone else does. It’s ten years since anyone’s said my name. Eve, I thought I’d lost you—I thought I’d lost everything. I saw that damned paragraph, and I thought—What could I think? Ten years—and you—how could I just come back as if nothing had happened? I thought you were gone—I was trying to let you go. I can’t believe——” His voice broke for an instant, and then rose to the old eager, boyish note, “I can’t believe it’s true. Say it, Eve, say it quickly!”
Evelyn put her lips against his cheek.
“Jim!” she said. “Jim!”
About the Author
Patricia Wentworth (1878–1961) was one of the masters of classic English mystery writing. Born in India as Dora Amy Elles, she began writing after the death of her first husband, publishing her first novel in 1910. In the 1920s, she introduced the character who would make her famous: Miss Maud Silver, the former governess whose stout figure, fondness for Tennyson, and passion for knitting served to disguise a keen intellect. Along with Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Miss Silver is the definitive embodiment of the English style of cozy mysteries.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1926 by Patricia Wentworth
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3333-6
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10038
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The Amazing Chance Page 23