“You mean you’re not going back there?”
“Only to pick up mah possessions. What’s left of them. Then Ah’m orf. Scarpering. Done with it.”
“Would ... would you like to come here?” Mr. Privett inquired. “Just till it blows over?”
“It won’t blow over,” Mr. Bloot answered. “Not this tahm. And not with me in charge.”
“We could put you up, you know,” Mr. Privett persisted.
But Mr. Bloot was too much preoccupied with his own misery even to say thank you.
“Not with friends,” he said. “Not any longer. Ah’ve got to face this aht alone.”
He turned as he said it and began to walk towards the front gate.
“Ah’m glad Ah told you,” he said over his shoulder. “Nahw you understand what Ah’ve been through.”
Mr. Privett went after him. He couldn’t bear to see his friend go away from him like that.
“Would you like me to come round with you?” he asked.
But again Mr. Bloot only shook his head.
“Better not,” he said. “If she’s still awake things may get ugly. Ah’d rather keep it prahvit.”
He closed the gate behind him, and paused for a moment.
“Juhst think of it,” he said. “Billy. And Tiddleywinks. Ah was going to exhibit him. And nahw ...” Mr. Bloot spread his arms out in a little gesture that indicated Fate and the unknown.
Book Four
Case of the Missing Budgies
Chapter Fourty-one
1
There was no sign of Mr. Bloot at Rammell’s next morning. No sign. No letter. Not even a telephone call. By ten o’clock Mr. Privett had already slipped down twice to see if his friend had arrived. And he might just as well have saved himself the trouble. Because, at five minutes past ten, Mr. Preece sent for him. Would he take over please in the front hall, he said, and hang around there until Mr. Bloot got in touch with them?
What was particularly alarming was Mr. Preece’s final remark. They had been phoning Artillery Mansions, he said, but could get no reply. In Mr. Preece’s view, this confirmed that Mr. Bloot must be somewhere on his way to Bond Street. Held up in the Underground, possibly. Or delayed at Oxford Circus, the temporary victim of roadworks and traffic jams.
No one took Mr. Bloot’s absence very seriously. No one, that is, with the exception of Mr. Privett. And he wouldn’t have said anything. It would have savoured too much of disloyalty. How could he start talking about mysterious conversations in the lamplight? And the danger of things turning ugly? And the temptation to do something desperate? And scarpering? And little fugitive budgerigars perishing on the London roof tops in the crisp October air?
It was the second time that morning that he had said nothing. The first time had been at breakfast. Mrs. Privett had still wanted to know why Gus had kept her husband hanging about in the cold instead of coming indoors like a reasonable human being. And Mr. Privett had not told her. Simply could not bring himself to divulge so much intimate misery. Instead, he had lied. Told her that the evening had grown suddenly warmer. Even close. That Gus had already had a cup of tea before coming round. That they hadn’t wanted to disturb the household by sitting about indoors, gossiping at that hour.
But already the strain was beginning to tell on Mr. Privett. He had not been able to sleep for thinking about it. And now as he stood there, with the long carpeted aisle of the store behind him and the black, shiny cars drawing up outside, it all came back to him. He’d heard enough about Hetty’s ungovernable temper to know the risks which Mr. Bloot had been running. Suppose under the influence of rage, drink and jealousy she had turned on him? With her nail-scissors. Or the breadknife. Or with one of Mr. Bloot’s own cut-throat razors ... The fears were so real and terrible that Mr. Privett could think of nothing else. He was nightmare-ridden. As a floor-walker he was entirely useless.
And worse than useless. Off-putting. With head thrust forward, leaving the gap between his neck and his collar more pronounced than ever, and his mouth drawn down at the corners, he scowled at people. In consequence, no one approached. The whole crowded business of Rammell’s, casuals as well as regulars, simply flowed past avoiding him.
2
But it wasn’t only Mr. Bloot’s disappearance that was causing anxiety in Rammell’s that morning. The private affairs of top management were in disorder, too. The affair between Marcia and Mr. Rammell was brought suddenly to a head. And by Nancy Parkinson. Nor could there be any turning back. Because in the end, it was to Mrs. Rammell personally that Nancy spoke. It had to be someone. And, from the moment Nancy chose Mrs. Rammell, she felt a great weight being lifted from her mind. It was all so simple that way. So straightforward. So transparently honest. If Mrs. Rammell had to be told somehow—and to leave her unwarned would in Nancy’s view be nothing less than treachery—how better than by her own sister?
Nancy therefore did not hesitate. She plunged in like an exhibition diver. At the deep end. And with a flourish. She kept nothing back. Told everything. Described the general alarm that Mr. Rammell’s sudden infatuation was creating. Outlined her own alternative schemes for rescue and retrievement. Emphasized a score of times that it was no affair of hers. That she didn’t want to intrude. That for her part she would rather have kept out of it altogether. That it was only her concern for Mrs. Rammell’s happiness that had made her speak at all.
And it was fatal. Mrs. Rammell resented everything about it. The approach itself. The manner of it. Nancy’s own ill-concealed excitement in being the chief instrument. The very fact that Nancy knew. And above all things, the source of her information. Mrs. Rammell shuddered—felt goose pimples of sheer shame running up her spine—as she reflected that her real informants were the wife of one of Mr. Rammell’s own floor-walkers and a teenage assistant, a Junior.
In consequence, she was simply horrid to poor Nancy. Peremptory. Offensively casual. Dismissive. When Nancy appealingly put her face up for a farewell kiss Mrs. Rammell deliberately avoided it.
“Now, you run along, dear,” she said. “And don’t bother your head any more about it. It’s all too ridiculous.”
That was while Nancy was still there. While there was an audience. She was a brave woman, Mrs. Rammell. But not so brave as all that. As soon as Nancy had left she went to pieces. First she flung herself back down on the couch where she had been sitting. Then she rushed over to her desk to see what the insurance cover-note really said. And Nancy had been perfectly right. The note did say “blue.” And Mrs. Rammell’s own mink was “natural.” She felt tears of rage coming into her eyes as she looked at it. To think that she could have been so stupid. To have had such evidence in her possession all the time and not have known it.
She got up from her desk and began walking to and fro. Over to the window. Then back to her desk again. Across to the fireplace. Over to the window, stopping on the way to pull meaninglessly at the flowers in the tall vase on the centre table. Back once more to the desk. Across to the fireplace again. Anything, so long as she was moving about. She reached for her handkerchief. At some point since Nancy’s disastrous intervention, Mrs. Rammell must have hurt her finger. The skin around the nail was all torn and frayed. It was bleeding.
It was while she was standing there, her handkerchief wrapped like a cocoon around her finger-top, that she made her decision. The most fateful one that any woman can make. She was going to divorce Mr. Rammell. Now that he had betrayed her, she wasn’t going to allow her present state of wifely reticence to continue for another single day. She would have to tell someone. And at once. But whom? Obviously her solicitor was the man. He would be the person to arrange everything. Have Mr. Rammell watched. Shadowed. Spied on. It was up to the solicitor to prepare the evidence. Institute proceedings. Take him into Court. Make a free, unhumiliated woman of her once more.
The only trouble was that her solicitor was not only hers. He was Mr. Rammell’s as well. And the other solicitors she used—Mr. Pitmoss for the Opera Gu
ild and Mr. Larrymore for the Ballet Lovers’ Association—were so obviously not the right sort. She couldn’t imagine either of them getting to grips with a divorce case. Nor, for that matter, could she imagine herself asking them. Mr. Larrymore least of all. He was deaf. Distinctly deaf. And though he was a help sometimes at board meetings, she refused even to consider bawling her most intimate private secrets into a hearing-aid. Besides, he might refuse. Tell her bluntly that he didn’t handle that kind of case.
At the sudden realization of how helpless women are, even in the twentieth century, of the extent to which this is still a male world organized exclusively for the convenience of man, Mrs. Rammell burst into tears again. With no warning. At one moment she was calculating. Self-controlled. Vindictive. At the next, she was desolate. Unsupported. Despairing.
“If only there were someone” she kept repeating. “Someone I could talk to. Someone who would understand.”
Mrs. Rammell was still so much preoccupied by her own misery that she did not hear her own butler when he entered. She was aware merely of a disturbance somewhere in the room behind her. Nor could she very well turn round. Her handkerchief was by now screwed up into a tight, sodden ball. And she knew that her eyes must be looking terrible. Completely give-away. All bloodshot. And with red rims, probably.
But, even if she could not see the butler, she could still hear him. And what he was saying was unthinkable. Utterly unthinkable. Bad enough at any time. At the present moment it was beyond contemplation.
“Sir Harry to see you, madam,” were the words that he had just said.
What made it even worse was that she could not trust herself to speak. All that she could do was to shake her head. When, however, he did not go away, she realized that she would have to make the effort.
“Dot id,” she said in a strange, catarrhal voice not in the least like her real one. “Dot dow. Say I’b out.”
But it was no use. She had been reckoning without Sir Harry’s natural brashness. His exuberance. Instead of waiting quietly in the small green-and-gold morning-room where the butler had tried to put him, he had insisted on following the man upstairs. He was edging his way into the room already. Talking hard as he came. And what he was saying set her teeth on edge.
“Don’t you bother yourself,” she heard. “If her Majesty’s here she’ll see me all right.”
Her Majesty! It was precisely that kind of practically senile skittishness on the part of her father-in-law that always set her teeth on edge. There was something so indescribably common about being facetious in front of servants.
But it was obvious that he was unstoppable. There was, in fact, a note of even more than usual excitement in his voice. That was because he had just had a new idea. An idea that would affect Mrs. Rammell vitally. And he had rushed round to tell her about it. There was something in music, he had just realized. Remembering that Tuesday was always their slackest day, why not a series of Tuesday Concerts in the Palm Court? Chamber Music and Recitals. Big stuff. Top names. Barbirolli at the piano. Beecham with his violin. Boult, too. Like a Festival Hall. Only better. Do it at lunch-time. Serve light refreshments. Finish up with a dress parade ... And he’d get Mrs. Rammell herself to fix up everything on the musical side. Give her a real break. Full fees all round. Nothing off for the publicity. She could even alternate with a bit of ballet if that was the way she fancied it.
“Ah, there you are,” he said deliberately, as he finally got round the butler. “I’ve got something for you. Right up your alley. Put you on the map in one go.”
When Mrs. Rammell did not reply. Sir Harry came nearer. He could see that there was something wrong, something odd about the way she was standing. Shoulders all humped up. Hands pressed against her face. Then, when she turned, he understood. Understood immediately.
“Hallo,” he said. “Hay fever. Ought to go and see my man. Got his number on me somewhere.”
It was while Sir Harry was thumbing through his little notebook that Mrs. Rammell spoke. Her voice was clearer by now. Clearer and stronger.
“Go away,” she said. “I don’t want to see you. I don’t ever want to see anybody again. I’ve had it.”
I’ve had it! The vulgarity of the phrase astonished her. Astonished and appalled. But it was not the Mrs. Rammell whom she knew who was speaking. It was a different woman altogether. A hurt, angry, hysterical woman whose words came tumbling out all anyhow.
She went towards the door as she was speaking, but Sir Harry blocked the way.
“Upset about something?” he asked.
Mrs. Rammell laughed. It was a shrill, horselike whinny. Scarcely a laugh at all, in fact.
“You may ask,” she said, using another of the strange, hideous expressions that she had always imagined were foreign to her.
She paused.
“I’m on my way to see a solicitor,” she added. “Now.”
The word “solicitor” had slipped out. Entirely unintentionally. And disastrously. She had shown her hand before she’d had time to play it.
Not that Sir Harry seemed unduly concerned.
“That’s the ticket,” he said. “Pick a good-lookin’ one.”
Mrs. Rammell did not flinch. That perpetual cocky cheerfulness of Sir Harry’s kept him completely insulated from any kind of real emotion. Shallow psychologically, was how she had long since diagnosed him. But she was not going to be put off. It would be enough if once, just once, she could puncture that complacency.
“You may care to know,” she went on, “that I’m divorcing Eric.”
“Thought you must be,” Sir Harry replied. “Have you told him?”
“I’ve told him nothing,” Mrs. Rammell answered. “I don’t have to.”
But again this was not what she had intended. Of all people, to be confiding in Sir Harry! It was the first time in the whole twenty-three years of her marriage that she had done so. And on such a subject. She turned hurriedly away.
“It’s not the slightest use trying to dissuade me,” she went on. “My mind’s absolutely made up.”
“Well, that’s that then.”
Sir Harry removed his fancy-patterned cigar-cutter from his pocket and began playing with it. He was not actually cutting anything. Just going snip-snip, snip-snip.
“Whatcher goin’ to live on?” he asked.
He put the question casually as though the answer either way meant nothing to him.
But the answer was not in the least casual. It came snapping back at him almost before he had finished speaking.
“Alimony,” she said.
And then the other voice, the one that she did not recognize as her own, continued for her.
“And I’m going to get all I can out of him,” she added.
Sir Harry went snip-snip again.
“You’re entitled,” he said. “He gets plenty.”
For a moment, the vision of Marcia—pale, beautiful, dreamlike—rose before Mrs. Rammell’s eyes. It was in a long, white brocaded dress, one of Rammell’s own model creations, that she saw her. With a wreath of artificial orange blossom in her hair like a bride. It was horrible.
“To think of it,” she exclaimed. “One of his own shop-girls!”
Snip!
Sir Harry’s patent cutter froze stationary in mid air.
“One of what?” he asked.
“One of the girls out of the store,” she said. “Someone on his own payroll. It’s disgusting.”
“What’s her name?”
Sir Harry’s voice had suddenly lost its earlier cheerfulness.
“It’s one of the models,” she told him. “The tall stupid one. The one who calls herself Marcia.”
Sir Harry looked grim.
“That old tart,” he said.
She winced. It was the choice of words that was so offensive. Offensive to her as well as to Marcia. Once more it showed how fatally wrong, how stupid, it was even to attempt to discuss anything with Sir Harry. And in face of such behaviour Mrs. Rammell was rapidly
becoming herself again.
“Thank you,” she said; “but I’d rather not discuss that aspect of it.”
“Just as you say,” he replied. “All I want to know is what ’appened.”
He was leaning forward as he spoke. Leaning forward, and breathing heavily. The dropped “h” was symptomatic. Mrs. Rammell had noticed long ago that whenever Sir Harry became really intense about anything he reverted to that dreadful social limbo that had been his substitute for polite childhood.
“I’m not discussing it,” she said firmly.
“Oh, yes, you are,” Sir Harry told her. “It’s Eric’s business what he does with women. And good luck to him. But if ’e brings the firm into it that’s different.”
“Not to me, it isn’t,” Mrs. Rammell replied. “Not in the slightest.”
Sir Harry had got up by now. He was standing with his back to the fireplace. Staring at her. And Mrs. Rammell was staring back at him. She could not help noticing what extraordinary vitality there was in the old man. In the face of this unprecedented family crisis he seemed suddenly to have become younger. He was rocking backwards and forwards on his heels as he stood there. Positively enjoying himself.
“If a line of this ever gets into the papers,” he said, “out ’e goes.” Sir Harry gave a broad sweeping gesture with his right hand. “Like that. On his ear.”
“Oh, it’s outrageous!”
The words had slipped out involuntarily. And, as soon as she had spoken, Mrs. Rammell saw how foolish it was. She could hardly go down on her knees and ask Sir Harry to overlook the incident. Beg him to make everything all right for her own husband and that dreadful model woman. On the other hand, to cut off Eric’s career just as the moment when he was about to step into the inheritance, to have an unemployed enemy instead of merely a divorced husband on her hands—it was disastrous.
And already Sir Harry was speaking again.
Bond Street Story Page 40