Well there—she had put her foot in it. And it wouldn’t matter how she tried now, Mrs. Simpson would have it out of her. She might have changed in her looks, but she hadn’t changed about things like that. Louisa coloured up and tried to pass it off with a laugh.
“Of course I don’t know where you live.”
“Don’t you? I think you do.” Mrs. Simpson was still smiling. “It isn’t a crime, Louie. But I’d dearly like to know how you found out. Did you engage a detective?” Her tone was light and amused, with an undercurrent of irony. Louisa remembered that too, and how she had hated it sixteen years ago. She was on the defensive as she said,
“Why, it was easy enough, Mrs. Simpson, and no reason against it that I can see. I take that bus every week going down to see a friend of mine, and next time I went I got talking to the conductor. He’s been on that route all this year, and if the bus is empty we have a bit of a talk. Well then, he’d noticed when I spoke to you, so I got telling him I’d known you sixteen years ago, and he said, ‘That’s funny.’ and he told me you were a regular passenger. So I asked him if he knew where you lived, and he said you always got down at the corner of Sunderland Place, and he said he’d seen you go in at the third or fourth house in Sunderland Terrace. It all came out quite natural, just in the way of talk.”
“I see—” said Mrs. Simpson gently. “But, Louisa, how did you speak of me? Because, you know, I married again, and if you called me Mrs. Simpson—”
Louisa shook her head with decision.
“There weren’t any names mentioned, neither by him nor by me. I just said it was a lady I’d lived with a long time back. And we talked about how you came across people years after you’d stopped thinking about them.”
“So we do,” said Mrs. Simpson. “You’re quite sure you didn’t mention my name?”
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Simpson, I’m sure I didn’t.”
Mrs. Simpson manner changed. Her voice became brisker.
“That’s all right, Louisa. And now—how stupid I am—I haven’t asked you how you found your brother. Did you have a nice time with him?”
Louisa Spedding felt a sort of shock. She had said to Peter that it wouldn’t surprise her if it had been Mrs. Simpson who had telephoned and told her to go round and see Jimmy at the Edenbridge Hotel. She had said that, and she had meant it, but when it came to finding out that she was right she got a shock. Somehow, meeting Mrs. Simpson and talking to her had taken her right back into the safe comfortable days before Jimmy went wrong, when she didn’t have to suspect anyone or think before she spoke. But now, with this sense of shock upon her, it came to her that she ought to have been thinking what she said, and not letting her tongue run on. She said,
“Oh, yes, I saw him. We had a good talk.” And then she fetched a heavy sigh and said, “I wish we could all go back and be the way we used to be.”
Mrs. Simpson took no notice of this. She looked sharply at Louisa Spedding.
“You did see your brother?”
“Oh, yes, I saw him.”
“Then what’s the matter—isn’t he well?”
“So far as I know. He didn’t say. Oh dear me—why couldn’t he settle down respectably?”
Mrs. Simpson made no answer to that. She was smiling again.
“And now we will have our lunch. There’s a nice little place just round this corner, but I must telephone to my house first to let them know that I shall not be back.”
They were nearing the end of the narrow street. A telephone-box was visible at the corner. The broad and noisy thoroughfare lay beyond. Mrs. Simpson opened the door of the box and beckoned Louisa inside.
“There’s just one other call I ought to make, and I wonder if you would look up the number for me. I’m afraid I can’t see well enough with these glasses, and you always had such good sight. The name is Hirstman—H-I-R-S-T. I can be getting my coppers ready.”
It was a close fit for the two of them inside the box. Mrs. Simpson stood behind Louisa and pulled the door to. The noise of the traffic receded miraculously. Louisa bent over the directory and drew a gloved forefinger slowly down the HIRs.
Mrs. Simpson opened her bag. She looked up the street and down the street. There was a lot of heavy traffic in the road. There were not many pedestrians, because it was lunch-time. And old man went by with a dog on a lead—a man and a girl—three girls talking nineteen to the dozen—and then for thirty yards or so nobody at all. Mrs. Simpson’s hand came up from her bag with something muffled in a woolen scarf. She pressed this something against Louisa’s neck just under the right ear and pulled a trigger.
Louisa Spedding did not cry out at all. She did not know what had happened. Her body slumped down upon the floor of the box. Mrs. Simpson helped it down. Then she put the pistol away in her bag and walked out of the kiosk.
She went back by the way they had come. There was no one in the narrow street. The fog had thickened and the air was dark. She stepped into an opening about half way down and removed the large black veil which poor Louisa had thought so old-fashioned. It rolled up tight and went into her bag. She changed the tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles for a pair of tinted pince-nez, and she took off her raincoat and hung it over her arm.
When she stepped back into the street she was quite a different woman from the one who had accompanied Louisa Spedding—different in appearance, in dress, and in her walk. There was bright colour in her hat and in the scarf about her throat. Her coat and dress were black. The drab raincoat was tucked out of sight over her arm. The tinted pince-nez made an extraordinary difference in her appearance. She walked mincingly, but at a considerable speed, to the end of the street and turned the corner.
CHAPTER XXIII
Terry Clive was having lunch with Fabian Roxley. And she was beginning to wish that she hadn’t come, because it wasn’t being at all a comfortable sort of meal. When a young man sits beside you wrapped in gloom and takes no interest in his food, it generally means that you are in for a scene. And Terry was hungry. She wanted her lunch, and she wanted it to an accompaniment of pleasant friendly talk. It was just like a man to propose to you before you had finished your soup. And what happened then—if you refused him? How could you decently take any interest in a mushroom omelette or a brown-bread ice? And what did you talk about—or didn’t you talk at all?
Terry had never yet been proposed to at lunch, so she did not know, but she had a horrid suspicion that she was going to find out. She thought she would make sure of the soup anyhow, because it was mulligatawny, for which she had a passion. She looked at Fabian’s gloomy face and said,
“Uncle Basil says it’s frightful of me, but I do love mulligatawny.”
Mr. Roxley roused himself. He took a spoonful of soup and said,
“Why?”
“Why do I love it—or why does Uncle Basil say it’s frightful?”
“Uncle Basil,” said Fabian.
Terry laughed.
“Too hot, too strong, too everything. No palate left—all the finer shades destroyed. He says the only excuse for it is being a retired colonel who hasn’t got a palate anyhow.”
She was just beginning to feel she was doing rather well, because here they were, talking about colonels and palates and mulligatawny—and could anything be safer than that?—when the situation suddenly slipped. Fabian put down his spoon, and said in one of those purposeful voices,
“Look here, Terry. I want to talk to you.”
Terry clung to her spoon and continued to take soup. She had very nearly finished it, and a most pleasant warm glow made her feel much better able to confront a proposal than when she had come in all cold out of the fog. She finished the last spoonful, gave a thankful sigh, and said,
“I thought we were talking rather nicely.”
Fabian Roxley looked at her.
“I want to talk to you seriously—very seriously.”
“Must you—at lunch? I mean, wouldn’t afterwards do?”
“No, because I’ve go to
get back and do some work.” The waiter came to remove their plates. “Are you sure you won’t have anything but omelette?”
“I adore mushroom omelette,” said Terry.
“And an ice afterwards?”
“A very large brown-bread ice.”
If they could only go on talking about food. But the omelette would take ten minutes, and the moment the waiter was gone Fabian began again.
“Terry, I must ask you—do you really mean to go to the police tomorrow?”
Terry put her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. You are not allowed to do this at school, so you naturally take every opportunity of doing it afterwards.
She looked very directly at Fabian and said,
“What’s all this about? Why don’t you want me to?”
He had an elbow on the table too. They were so close that cheek came near to touching cheek and words had hardly to be spoken. He said,
“I’m going to tell you. I hate doing it, but I can’t let you go to the police. There’ll be too much mud stirred up.”
“Go on,” said Terry.
“Look here, I’ve got to know what you saw. I can’t go on until I do.”
“Nothing doing,” said Terry—“absolutely and utterly nothing doing. I’m not telling anyone except the police. And I want to know what all this is about, because I don’t like it. You ought to want me to go to the police—not try to keep me back.”
Fabian commanded himself.
“I think you ought to have spoken at once, but since you didn’t—well, isn’t there something rather cold-blooded about it?”
“I don’t mind if there is. I want Mr. Cresswell to get his picture back. You know it’s not the money—he really loves it. And I don’t want Emily to get hurt. If that’s being cold-blooded, then I am.”
“You know what I think about you. But, Terry, don’t you see, if it was one of the guests—if it was—Norah Margesson—” He watched her face.
She took her chin out of her hand and sat up. He was too near. His eyes were too near. Her own dazzled. She leaned back.
“Why Norah Margesson?”
“Because I happen to know she is desperately hard up.”
“She always is. So are lots of people. What about you?”
She was smiling, and her eyes sparkled. But Fabian Roxley turned rather white.
“What do you mean by that?”
Terry laughed.
“You said Norah Margesson was hard up, and I said what about you. Aren’t you hard up? I know I am.”
His hand had been pressing into his cheek. The pressure relaxed. He said,
“Most people are these days, my sweet. Do you know, I thought you were going to accuse me of pinching the picture. It was a bit of a jar, and I was just wondering what one could say. A little hard on one’s lunch, don’t you think?”
Terry’s eyes continued to sparkle.
“Oh, darling, I’ve been much too nicely brought up to fling bombs at my host in the middle of lunch—I really have. I should certainly have waited until we had had our coffee.”
Fabian laughed. He had really had a shock. Terry touched his emotions. It was a relief to laugh.
“Why should you be hard up, my child? Don’t they give you any of your own money to play with until you’re twenty-one?”
“Some. But of course it’s not enough—money never is.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
“And Uncle Basil says it doesn’t amount to much anyway, because of things going down, and exchanges—what would the exchanges be doing?”
He laughed again, without strain this time.
“Well, they might be down, or they might be up.”
Terry said, “Something like that,” and the waiter arrived with the mushroom omelette.
Whilst he was serving them, Fabian looked at Terry and thought her fresh and pretty in her blue suit and odd little tilted hat. Fresh and pretty, but no fresher than dozens of girls whom he knew, and not as pretty as half a dozen he could name. But she stirred him as he had not meant to be stirred. The last thing on earth he had ever intended was to fall in love with Terry Clive. A banal expression, a most banal experience. And just when he needed all his wits about him to reach another rung on the difficult ladder he had set himself to climb.
When the waiter had gone away he came back to Norah Margesson.
“You see, my dear, it would make an absolutely crashing scandal. Emily Cresswell wouldn’t bless you for that.”
Terry was ruffled. Why was he trying to bounce her? Why couldn’t he take a hint? And why wasn’t she being allowed to eat her mushrooms in peace? She said with a little warmth,
“You know, darling, this isn’t the sort of scandal I really like talking about at lunch. It’s not spicy enough.”
“You may not like it, but—”
Terry lost her temper.
“Look here, I just won’t go on talking about that horrid picture all through lunch! And I never said it was Norah Margesson, so I don’t know why you’re going on about her.”
“All right, all right—we’ll talk about anything else you like. What shall it be? Ants—bric-à-brac—Cochin China—delicatessen—eels—or the latest factory act? The life-story of the eel is enthralling, but I expect I’ve forgotten some of the best bits.”
They talked amiably about a great many things for the rest of the meal. Fabian could make himself very agreeable when he chose. Terry’s annoyance subsided, but over the coffee she began to feel a little nervous again.
Their table was set in a recess. A small orchestra was playing dance music, syncopated song-hits, and movie melodies. The Sahara could have offered them no greater privacy, and whether it was the singing, swinging rhythms or something more compelling, Fabian had begun to look at her in a quite horribly tendentious manner. It was like suddenly finding the fire too hot and not being able to move away from it. She didn’t like it, and she couldn’t run away, because there was the coffee, and when you’ve been properly brought up you can’t just leave your coffee and go.
She said quick and light, “And now you can tell me all about ants and bric-à-brac.”
But Fabian shook his head.
“I’m afraid not, Terry, I’m afraid I want to talk about you.” After a pause he added, “And me.”
Nothing is more annoying than to blush when you most particularly want to be cool, calm, and sophisticated. She said,
“I’d much rather you didn’t.”
“I’m afraid I’ve got to. I—I can’t just go on like this. I expect you know how I feel about you.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t,” said Terry.
“Well, I’ve got to—I can’t help myself. Terry, don’t you think—”
Terry hadn’t really known what she would think. Fabian was in love with her, and Fabian would propose to her if she let him. She hadn’t really got farther than that. She certainly didn’t want him to propose to her now, but he seemed to be doing it. And right there Terry knew why she didn’t want him to do it. She admired him and she liked him, and they had had a lot of good times together. But marry him—Never, never, never in the world! She felt the most frightful embarrassment, because she ought not to be listening to his voice with that tone in it. And the things he was saying—they were for someone who loved him, and not for Terry Clive who wanted to put her fingers in her ears and run away.
She did actually push her chair back a little way as she said, “Oh, please, Fabian—I don’t want you to—I told you I didn’t.”
“What’s the use of saying that? I love you. I’ve got to tell you that.”
“No, you haven’t—not if I don’t want you to. And I don’t.”
Fabian Roxley looked at her. All his lazy calm had fallen away. His feature seemed to have sharpened. The muscles of neck and jaw were taut, and his eyes were fever-bright. He looked at Terry who was out of his reach, and saw some other things withdrawing and withdrawn. Things that make a life—things expected, carelessly welcomed
, prized without thought, prized despairingly as they withdrew.
He said, “Terry!” and something in his voice hurt her at the very quick of her heart. It was the first time she had ever heard that note of desperate, utter need. And Terry, who flowed out in comfort to any hurt thing, had no comfort to give. Tears stung her eyes. She said,
“Please, Fabian, please. I can’t—I really can’t.”
There was a brief silence.
Fabian Roxley pulled himself together.
“If you change your mind—” he said. And then, “I can’t change mine.”
Terry pushed her chair right back and got up. It was no good trying to be cool and sophisticated. It was the horridest thing in the world to have to hurt someone like this, and the only thing she could do was to go away as quickly as possible.
And of course because they were civilized people Fabian had to get up too, and come downstairs with her, and put her into a taxi. Neither of them spoke. Terry’s cheeks were burning and her eyes stung. This was going to be goodbye, and they had had good times together.
She got into the taxi and said her thought aloud.
“We have had good times—haven’t we?”
He said, “Marvellous,” and stood back, lifting his hat. In the cold, foggy light he looked suddenly ten years older.
He gave the address to the driver, and she saw him turn away.
CHAPTER XXIV
Terry felt what a great many other people have felt in their time, a passionate desire to skip the next two days and arrive at Wednesday morning, when either James Cresswell would have got his picture back or she would have been to the police and told them what she had seen. You can always turn over the pages of a book and avoid what is tedious or painful, but the dull and ugly days have to be lived through, one slow minute at a time.
A quarter of an hour after she got home Norah Margesson rang up.
“Is that Terry Clive?”
Terry said it was, and wondered what Norah had got to say to her.
“I wanted to speak to you.” Miss Margesson’s voice had an aggressive note.
“Well, I’m here,” said Terry.
“I suppose you didn’t really mean what you said yesterday—all that about going to the police?”
Rolling Stone Page 12