by James Wilson
2, Hyde Park Gardens.
I wrote it down, then – slipping my notebook back in my pocket – got up and thanked him.
‘It’s been a pleasure, sir,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m only sorry I couldn’t tell you more.’
*
I went back to my cupboard of a room at the Bewicke Arms, and opened the casement to let in some fresh air. The sun had almost gone now, and the breeze had a hard edge to it. I shut my eyes, and stood for a minute or two thinking of nothing, luxuriating in the coolness on my cheeks and the smell of the dewy grass and the melancholy bleating of the sheep on the far side of the valley. Then I roused myself, lit the lamp, and lay down on the bed to consider what I had learnt.
Not a great deal, on the face of it – certainly nothing that seemed to take me any closer to explaining why Mary Wilson had had Henry Malden Studd’s prayer-book. But in some odd corner of my mind I was conscious, nonetheless, of that tantalizing sense you get when – after casting your line in vain for hours on end – you feel the first tentative tug of a bite.
In an effort to locate it, I went through everything John Pick had told me – projecting our conversation like a kind of spectral cinematograph film on the rough ceiling, in hope of catching the crucial gesture or expression. After no more than five minutes or so, I thought I had the answer. And, what’s more, I could see a relatively simple way of putting the matter to the test.
I washed and went down to the dining-room. When the landlady had brought my pie, and was turning to leave, I said, as casually as I could:
‘By the way, didn’t there use to be a Dr. Crane in Hallaton?’
She stopped, pirouetting back towards me so abruptly that she almost lost her footing. ‘Yes, sir, that’s right.’
‘I thought so. He was a friend of my uncle’s. Must be getting on a bit now, I suppose. He’s not still here, I take it?’
‘Oh, no, sir. He’s been gone a good long time, Dr. Crane has.’
‘How long?’
‘Oh, thirty year, it must be, now.’
The hairs on the back of my neck stirred.
‘Really?’
She nodded.
‘Well, you do surprise me, I must say. Surely he didn’t retire then, did he? He wouldn’t have been old enough?’
‘Oh, no. Just about your age now, I should say.’
I laughed. ‘Well, there you are: I’ve certainly no intention of retiring. So why did he go, do you know?’
She shook her head.
‘I mean, it’s quite unusual for a doctor in a good practice simply to up and leave like that, isn’t it?’
She flushed, and the muscles in her jaw hardened. ‘I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir.’
I had pushed her too hard, clearly. For the rest of the meal I left the subject alone – confining my conversation, whenever she appeared, to anodyne comments about the weather and the beauty of the countryside. Only when I had finished, and was half-way to the door, did I suddenly turn back and say with a laugh:
‘You’re not going to tell me he did something terrible, are you? Killed a patient with an overdose of chloroform, or cut off an arm instead of a leg?’
She did not even pretend not to know what I was talking about. Her neck stiffened as she bent over my table, and – without looking at me – muttered:
‘It was nothing like that, sir. He was a good doctor, as doctors go. No one had a bad word for him till Miss Studd come back. That was what did it.’
‘Miss Studd?’ I said. ‘But surely she was Mrs. Crane by that point?’
‘I’m not talking about that Miss Studd,’ she said – and vanished into the kitchen with a jangling stack of dirty plates.
I went back up to my room, re-lit the lamp, then opened my notebook, and – on a fresh page – wrote:
Emily Studd.
XIV
I took an early train from Hallaton the next morning, and by tea-time was back in London. At first I tried to persuade myself that I could justify putting up at the Great Western at Paddington, on the grounds that it was no more than a few minutes’ walk from Hyde Park Gardens; but in the end I settled for a small private hotel off the Edgware Road instead. And not just for reasons of economy – pressing enough though these were starting to become, as the costs of my travels steadily mounted. I was, I felt fairly sure, finally closing in on my quarry; and while I knew rationally that Emily Studd – assuming she were still alive – could not conceivably have the first inkling that I was looking for her, I nonetheless felt the hunter’s natural urge to keep to the shadows, and avoid advertising my presence more than was necessary. To have kept her secret successfully concealed for thirty years, she must have developed a wild animal’s nose for danger; and if, when I appeared, she had even the faintest intimation of why I was there, she would simply refuse to see me.
Not, of course, that I really knew what her secret was. It was a fair guess that she was Mary Wilson’s mother – though even that was far from certain; but who the father might be, and why they had gone to such enormous lengths to keep their daughter from knowing her true identity, I still had not the least idea. One possibility that occurred to me was that perhaps Miss Studd had originally hoped to avoid the issue altogether, and that that was why she had gone back to Hallaton: her brother-in-law, after all, was a doctor, and she could reasonably have expected that he might be able to help her induce a miscarriage. When he failed or refused to do so (I reasoned), it soon became impossible to disguise Miss Studd’s condition – and the consequent scandal drove the family to leave the village in disgrace. But – while it fitted the few facts I had – I had to admit that this was pure conjecture; and that even if it were true, it still brought me no nearer to answering the most fundamental question.
I unpacked, changed my shirt, and set off for Hyde Park Gardens immediately. I had revolved a number of different plans in my mind, but in the end decided that my best hope was again to use the prayer-book as my entrée. It might seem eccentric, to say the least, that a perfect stranger should go to the trouble of trying to find Henry Malden in order to return his property to him – but the story had the advantage of simplicity, if nothing else; and his name on the fly-leaf should be enough to convince them that it was true, and to dispel any suspicion that Emily might be my real target. And if it turned out – as John Pick had suggested – that he was still in India, then it would be natural enough for me to ask for his sister’s address, so as to be able to give the book to her instead.
But when I reached Hyde Park Gardens itself my nerve failed. The fronts of the houses were shut away behind a private garden overlooking the park, so that all you could see were the backs: towering cliffs of brick and stucco, approached by blind little entrance doors that seemed to have been added on as an after-thought – as if it were only as the most grudging concession to necessity that the architect had been persuaded to allow any communication with the outside world at all. The whole place, in fact, might have been expressly designed to keep the lives of its inhabitants hidden from view. And staring up at the blank walls, I suddenly knew, almost beyond doubt, that if Henry Malden had given his prayer-book to the young Mary, then at least some of the other members of the family must have been aware of it, and would immediately guess that I had got the thing from her. I might artfully slip in some reference to having found it in a second-hand bookshop, of course, but I doubted if they would believe me: the natural assumption, after all, when you buy something second-hand, is that the previous owner has no further use for it, and it was hard to think of a plausible reason why anyone but a lunatic would deliberately set out to re-unite him with it.
I paused in front of number 2, debating what I should do. While I was standing there, I noticed a slight movement out of the corner of my eye; and, looking towards it, saw a shadow moving across the ceiling of one of the rooms on the second floor. Fearing that someone might come to the window and spot me, I bent down and performed a dumb-show of removing a stone from my shoe. Then I retraced my steps
into Clarendon Place, stopping only when I had gone far enough to be sure I could no longer be seen from the house.
What I needed, it finally struck me, was another John Pick: an elderly servant, who knew the family well, but was not sufficiently privy to its secrets to understand the full significance of what I was asking. And the easiest way to find him – or her – would be to watch, and wait for a suitable candidate to emerge from number 2.
Behind the houses ran a large mews. I crossed the road, and stationed myself immediately opposite the entrance. Then, to avoid looking like a detective policeman, I took the prayer-book from my pocket, and – as soon as I heard anyone approaching in the street – opened it, and began earnestly studying whatever page had presented itself to me.
Though it brought me some curious looks, this device worked well enough for half an hour or so. But then one man, instead of glancing nervously at me and hurrying by, stopped in front of me and ducked down to see what I was reading. When he stood up again, he cleared his throat and said:
‘Hullo! What’s the matter?’
He was about fifty, wearing a light suit too big for his lean frame, and with a bony, sun-darkened face sheathed in a dense black beard. It seemed oddly familiar, somehow, but I could not
for the life of me say why.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘I’ve an eye for people who’re lost. And you have the look of one to me.’
‘Oh, no, really, I’m perfectly all right, thank you.’
He smiled, and tapped the book.
I shook my head. ‘Ah, that. No, I was just reminding myself, that’s all. Good thing to do every once in a while. Such marvellous language.’
‘Marvellous language?’
He leaned towards me, searching my face. His dark eyes seemed to fix themselves to mine, making it impossible for me to look away, and giving the unpleasant sense that something was burrowing inside my brain.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘The spirit of the thing, as well, of course. The Psalms …’
‘Are you a Christian?’
‘I … well …’
He took the book from me, riffled through until he found the Creed, then held the page up in front of me.
‘Can you say that?’
‘Of course. I know it by heart.’
‘I mean, can you say it and mean it?’
My neck flushed with anger. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t see that’s any of your concern.’
‘Ain’t it, though?’
‘No.’ I held my hand out. ‘May I have that back now, please?’
He continued staring at me for a few moments, then smiled and started to close the book. But then, at the last second – doubtless hoping to learn my name – he glanced quickly at the fly-leaf, and stopped dead.
‘Where did you get this?’ he said, looking up.
I felt a sudden rush of annoyance. Without pausing to think, I snapped:
‘Look, I’ve no idea who you are, but we’re not living under the Inquisition. And you really have no business interrogating me like –’
He smiled. ‘Studd.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘That’s who I am. C. T. Studd. And whoever you are, it ain’t my half-brother Henry.’
A desert wind seemed to blow across me, searing my cheeks and drying my mouth.
‘Ah,’ I said.
He looked towards the mews, then squinted at his wristwatch.
‘I think’, he said, ‘that you and I should take a walk together.’
He pinched my sleeve, and started leading me towards the park. I felt like a spy, deep in enemy territory, who – having imagined his disguise to be impenetrable – suddenly finds himself humiliatingly exposed. But I knew it would be as pointless to try to flee a world-class cricketer as it would have been to run from the groom at Hallaton Hall; so I went along meekly, and concentrated all my resources on trying to work out what I should tell him. By the time we had tacked our way across the Bayswater Road and entered the park gates, I had more or less made up my mind: I would not lie, because there was too great a danger of being found out, but neither would I volunteer anything that I felt might compromise either me or Mary Wilson.
‘So,’ he said, striking south in the direction of the Serpentine. ‘Here’s my story: I was on my way to my mother’s house when I found a fellow I’ve never clapped eyes on before loitering near the mews, reading my brother’s prayer-book. What’s yours?’
‘I was standing looking at a prayer-book when a fellow I’ve never clapped eyes on took it from my hand and began interrogating me about my religious beliefs.’
He laughed. ‘Ah, and what, you think that makes us pretty well square, do you?’
‘Pretty well.’
‘Well, I suppose if you put the matter before the readers of the Daily Mail, three-quarters of them would probably agree with you. But they’d be wrong. It’s my business to win souls, you see. If it’s your business to loiter a stone’s throw from my mother’s house with her step-son’s prayer-book, I’d be very glad to know why.’
I rehearsed several different replies in my head. Finally I said:
‘You might say I’m trying to do much the same thing.’
‘What?’
‘Save a soul. Or two souls. Or even three.’
‘Whose souls?’
‘Ah, well, that’s not so easy to explain.’
He didn’t press me to elaborate, but walked on in silence, staring abstractedly at the trees fringing the lake. After a few seconds, he nodded suddenly, and said:
‘All right. Can you at least tell me how you happened to have the prayer-book?’
He sounded less suspicious now, for some reason, and more genuinely curious. I took a calculated risk and said:
‘It was given to me in France.’
‘Was it, indeed? By whom?’
‘A woman.’
‘A French woman?’
I nodded. He waited a moment for me to go on. When I didn’t, he waved his hand impatiently and said:
‘Oh, don’t worry, the name would mean nothing to me in any case. And why did she have it, do you know?’
‘It had been given to … to someone she looked after, many years ago.’
He gave me a sharp sidelong glance, raising his eyebrows. ‘A child?’
‘Yes.’
He nodded again, exhaling slowly through his teeth. ‘Well, I think I’ve an idea who these souls of yours may be. But I still haven’t a clue who you are. Or what your connection with them is.’
I hesitated only a moment. ‘My name’s Corley Roper.’
He took my hand, then leaned back and scrutinized me, his eyes wide with surprise.
‘The Mr. Largo Frog kind of Corley Roper?’
‘Yes.’
He started to laugh. ‘Well, that answers the first question, at least.’
‘I …Well, the truth is, Mr. Studd, I met a woman. Purely by chance. And was so … moved by her predicament that I decided to try to help her.’
‘When you say a woman, you are talking about the … the child, I take it?’
‘Yes. Only she’s not a child any more.’
‘No, no, of course not. She’d be, what, thirty now?’
‘About that.’
‘And what has become of her?’
Since he had guessed so much already, I could see no reason not to tell him.
‘She’s married. Not very happily, I think. To a curate in Derbyshire.’
‘Ah. And your reasoning is, what, that if she could be reconciled with her mother, she might be less unhappy?’
‘More or less.’
‘I see.’ He hesitated, then added: ‘And the mother too, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps. But of course, I don’t know her. What sort of a person she is.’
‘A stiff-necked sort of a person. But we can none of us be happy if we don’t acknowledge our sins, and ask God to forgive them.’
For perhaps half a minute he didn’t spe
ak again, but seemed to be pursuing some train of thought of his own, leaving me to reflect on what he had said. Thirty, would she be now? A stiff-necked sort of a person. It was as if, entirely unexpectedly, he had been giving me a kind of a shadow-play performance of Mary Wilson’s story, in which the characters were faceless, and yet it was taken for granted that we both knew who they were. And the miracle was that, thanks to the hints and scraps I had picked up on the way, I did know – enough, at any rate, to follow the broad gist of what he was telling me. It was frustrating, of course, that I could not understand more; but I feared that if I revealed the extent of my ignorance by asking him to be more explicit, he might clam up altogether.
‘Do you know what I thought?’ he said, turning to me suddenly, with a laugh. ‘I thought you must be a blackmailer, and I should have to box your ears, and call the police. But you didn’t seem quite the type …And then when I heard your name …You do quite well enough out of yarn-spinning, I imagine, not to have to resort to that sort of a crime.’
‘You make it sound as if the yarn-spinning’s just another sort of crime.’
He laughed again, more loudly. ‘Do I? Well, I have to say, there was a time, when our girls were small, that I might have thought so. You could put them to bed and tell them a story about the young Jesus, but there’d be no chance of getting them to go to sleep until they’d had a visit from Alcuin Hare and Mr. Largo Frog. I began to despair, thinking we’d spawned four little heathens. But they soon all decided for Christ, thank God, so that was all right.’ He paused in front of a park-bench, and, patting the back, said:
‘I say, would you mind waiting here for a moment?’
I sat down. He walked fifty yards on to the grass, then dropped to his knees and began to pray. I looked away, towards a cavalcade of riders on Rotten Row; but there was something so fascinatingly alien about a man who was prepared to make such a public spectacle of his private convictions that, embarrassed though I was, I could not keep my eyes from drifting back to him.