“All right, Masters,” she said, sharply, “I’ll come at once. I can be there by soon after five. I’ll catch the night train from the junction. Have the chauffeur meet me and we’ll drive straight there, do you understand?”
She put down the phone and looked at me without seeing me.
“Daddy’s had an accident, he’s in the hospital, seriously hurt!”
“What kind of accident?”
“I don’t know, Masters was very evasive, so I’ve got a strong suspicion Daddy’s already dead and he was trying to break it gently. I shall have to go up right away, Jan!”
“Of course,” I told her, slipping my arm around her shoulder, “but why catch the train? I’ll run you up in the Alvis. We could be there about the same time.” And I made to hurry into the hall for my raincoat.
“No, Jan!”
She stood quite still in the center of the big room, one finger plucking the corner of her mouth. “It’s your press day tomorrow and you’ve got so many things to see to down here. You can’t leave the paper just like that, the people you’re selling out to might think you’re letting them down and cry off the deal. If they did that I’d never forgive myself and it might spoil everything. You said you were under contract to keep it going until they got a substitute, and besides, I think I’d much sooner go by train. I’m tired and I can try to sleep. I shall have plenty to do tomorrow, God knows. Masters says everyone is in a terrible flap!”
“How about your mother?” I asked.
“He says she’s flying home but she won’t get into Croydon until midday and anyway, she’s not much good in a crisis.”
“I’d gladly run you up, Di,” I told her, “but in the circumstances maybe you’re right about going by train. I’ll stay here providing you’ll promise to ring me breakfast time tomorrow and fetch me if I can be of the slightest use to anyone. Will you promise that?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, and tried to smile. “Poor Jan! This was your big night and now …” Her smile faded, “Do you suppose there’s some sort of curse on us?”
“If there is, it’s not going to make a ha’porth of difference, you can rely on that!” I said grimly. Not even the thought that her father might be dying at this moment tempered my rage against him for snatching Diana away when we seemed at last to have emerged from the tunnel. “I’ll run you to the junction. You’d better get some things, just a few things!”
“I’m not unpacked,” she said. “I’ll change and be down in ten minutes.”
I occupied the time by phoning the junction and checking on the train. I had no real need to do this, for the train was the one that I had caught on my various dashes to town, after the Observer had been put to bed on Thursday nights, but I wanted to stop myself wondering how this thunderbolt would affect our plans and whether it would in some way postpone our wedding. There was a kind of desperation about my feeling for that coming-of-age date. For years now it had stood in the distant future, like a mountain peak that was clearly visible but unattainable. Only an hour ago it had seemed, at last, to be within walking distance, but now it had receded again and I was wretchedly uncertain of my ability to keep it in view. I told myself that this accident was a mere coincidence, that Diana had no real affection for her father and that we had agreed on the way down to the vicar’s that neither he nor Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton had any place in our immediate future, but these arguments did very little to reassure me and we drove to the junction in silence.
The train was in and I found her an empty compartment and bought two cups of thick railway tea. We sat sipping them and trying to make conversation until the guard walked along and slammed the door. I jumped out and caught her hands through the window.
“Di,” I said, piteously, for I was now in a turmoil of doubt and depression, “you’ll come back! You’ll come back the moment you can!”
She pulled me to her as the whistle blew and kissed me very softly on the mouth.
“Dear Jan,” she said, “don’t look so tragic. I love you and I’ll always love you. And even if I couldn’t come back, I’d need you and holler for you, the way I did last time!”
I was a little comforted by this and stood back as the train began to move. She remained rigid, framed in the window, not waving but just regarding me with the fixed gravity of a portrait staring down from a gallery wall.
Then a cloud of steam hissed up and she was gone, the last of the carriages snick-snacking past and beating out a metallic dirge. It thumped in my head all the way home and throughout the greater part of the night.
Chapter Eleven
THE NEXT morning every London paper carried the story in headlines. There had been no accident but there had been a resounding stock-market crash, involving a group of large trusts and a string of other firms, some of which had names that were household words. It was a Hatry scandal on a smaller scale, but a scale big enough to prompt Gayelorde-Sutton, as one of the most prominent figures in the group, to attempt suicide. He had swallowed two dozen sleeping tablets and had been found unconscious by his secretary. Two of the papers carried a stop-press announcement that he had died soon after midnight.
I bought all the London papers and went into the office, locking the door and telling the foreman printer that I was not to be disturbed. The old fellow looked at me anxiously.
“You feeling all right, John?” he asked and his eye took in the bundle of papers I was clutching. One flaring headline was visible—CITY FINANCIER’S DEATH FOLLOWS MARKET CRASH—and the name Gayelorde-Sutton in the subsidiary headline. It was common knowledge in the printing shop that I had been mooning after Gayelorde-Sutton’s daughter for years. You could never keep a secret of that kind in a town like Whinmouth.
“Yes, I’m all right, Fred,” I told him, “but I’ve had a bit of a shock over this and I’ve got some important phoning to do. Keep everyone away for a bit!”
“ ’Ee b’ain’t caught you for aught, ’as ’ee?” demanded Fred, whose knowledge of stocks and shares were as vague as mine.
“Good God, no!” I snorted, and slammed the door on him.
I read the reports but they did not make very much sense to me. As far as I could understand, Gayelorde-Sutton’s firm, or the one in which he figured most prominently, had gone bankrupt for over half a million pounds, and their ruin involved other groups in which he and his partners were concerned. One of the partners had fled to the Argentine and it was on his account that the Fraud Squad had been called in. The story was written in the consciously dramatic style that Fleet Street bestows upon this kind of news. There were pictures of Gayelorde-Sutton and his wife at Ascot the previous year, and another at Heronslea, labeled: A financier’s place in the country. The caption implied a sneer and it was obvious that the journalists knew a good deal more about the scandal than they could safely print at this stage.
When I had read all I could find on the subject, I asked for directory inquiries and tried to get through to Diana’s town house but, as I suspected, the line was blocked and no calls could be put through, although I tried several times.
Afternoon came but no call from Diana. I raced through the most urgent of my work and then rang Hawthorne and told him that I had no alternative but to abandon the Observer to the printing staff and hurry to London. I just told him it was on account of an urgent personal matter, involving a relative’s sudden death, and I left instructions with Fred the foreman to answer Diana if she did ring and tell her that I was on my way. There was no through train until four P.M., so I filled up with petrol and drove across country to pick up the main London road, west of Yeovil. I kept my foot down and traffic wasn’t heavy. I was nosing my way into Hammersmith about eight o’clock in the evening and I made straight for Palmerston Crescent.
I had no need to look for the house. There were parked cars all around the entrance and a little knot of reporters and photographers picketing the short flight of steps to the front door.
“I’m a relative, not a pressman,” I told a photo
grapher who warned me that no one would answer the door.
“You could be King-Kong, chum, but you won’t make it!” he said, flippantly, and then, calling a thickset young man, told him that I was a relation and might have a new line on the story. Other reporters drifted over and I soon had cause to regret my feeble bluff.
“Where’s his wife?” they wanted to know. “Is she down in the country?”
“I’ve just come from there,” I said, “and the place is unoccupied. Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton was supposed to be flying in from France today.”
“She didn’t turn up,” said one of the reporters. “We’ve checked every airport.”
I tried the bell again but the door remained shut. Bewildered and uncertain, I left the group and drove to the office of the Illustrated. I had a vague idea that the editor might be disposed to help me, for now I was beginning to regret my precipitate dash to town. I had no means of finding out where Diana was likely to be and, as always, I could only hang about waiting for her to get in touch with me. The editor of the Illustrated was sympathetic and made half a dozen phone calls, without the slightest result. Nobody knew where the Gayelorde-Suttons, mother and daughter, were hiding, but Fleet Street was anxious to find out before the story went cold.
It was a long time cooling off. There was even more about it in the papers on the following day, so I rang Fred at the Observer office and satisfied myself that Diana had not tried to get in touch with me. Then, in growing desperation, I made an exhaustive tour of her haunts—Fortnum’s, Martinez’s, various hotels, and even the homes of some of the Set with whom she had associated daring her wild period.
It was all useless. Both Diana and her mother had vanished, and I came to the dismal conclusion that if the professions in Fleet Street could not trace them my own chances were negligible.
On the third day I trailed back to the West, where I took old Hawthorne into my confidence, but he wasn’t much help. All he could suggest was that I should ask the telephone people to put through all the evening calls to the cottage where I was now sleeping. I did this as a precaution, and then hung about, racking my brains for a lead, any sort of a lead that would offer the slightest hope of tracing Diana.
Suddenly I found one, a folded slip of paper that had been in my pocket all the time, overlooked in my mad rush to and from London and forgotten under the merciless cudgeling I had given my brains during the last few days. It was the letterhead that Gayelorde-Sutton had handed to me during our interview and it gave the phone number of his solicitors. As I read it I heard his voice saying “Good firm … sound people … go to them if you want to.”
I could hardly wait to get in touch with them and put through a call one minute after nine the following morning.
A dry, impersonal voice answered, saying that he was the managing clerk. I tried to speak quietly and reasonably, telling the clerk that I was an agent of the family, resident in Devon. Certain complications had arisen, I said, in respect of a farm Gayelorde-Sutton was purchasing, and as I was reluctant to worry the family at a time like this I had thought it best to contact the London solicitors. I gave the impression that I was in almost direct contact with mother and daughter.
The clerk went away and was gone for a few minutes. Then he told me that he was putting me through to Mr. Fellowes, one of the partners, and I repeated my story to him.
“I see,” said a fruity voice. “Well then, I think perhaps you had better come to town and discuss the matter with us. None of our client’s property can be sold or disposed of in any way, you understand, Mr. Leigh?”
I said that I realized this and made an appointment for the following day. Then I went up to the cottage and had the first real sleep I had had in more than a week.
2.
Mr. Fellowes, the owner of the fruity voice, was a heavily built man, about forty-five. He was so courteous, and made such a pleasant impression on me, that I decided to take him into my confidence. After presenting the letterhead as a kind of bona fides I told him how things stood between Diana and myself. I had to exaggerate the cordiality shown me by Gayelorde-Sutton, and I hinted that the family had intended to set up Diana and me in a farm newly acquired by the estate. I would have told any story to get to Diana and this was only half a lie.
Fellowes seemed keenly interested and when I had finished, and admitted frankly that Diana had vanished after I had put her on the night train at Whinford, his attitude became genuinely sympathetic.
“Why do you suppose she hasn’t got in touch with you?” he asked. “Could it be she’s ashamed of what’s happened?”
This had not occurred to me and privately I thought it very unlikely.
“Young women are very unpredictable about that kind of thing,” he went on, “and her father has come out of this business rather badly. I’m afraid a lot of people have lost a great deal of money. I’ve lost a few hundreds myself, come to that! How about you?”
I said that I had never owned a stock or a share in my life and he smiled.
“Wise young man,” he said lightly, but I could see he was summing me up and was by no means certain what to make of me.
“Excuse me for a couple of moments,” he said, at length, and rang through to the outer office for Gayelorde-Sutton’s file. A typist brought it in and he sorted through it, drumming his fingers and humming tunelessly. Presently he plucked out a large, sealed envelope.
“I thought the name rang a bell,” he said. “This is addressed to you. It came in ten days ago, actually on the morning of the crash. Perhaps you’d like to open it in my presence?”
I was dumfounded. Not only did my name appear on the envelope, but Aunt Thirza’s address was there and beneath it, in brackets, the alternative address of the Observer. Then I recalled Gayelorde-Sutton’s admission—“I know a great deal more about you than you imagine.” Well, here was proof of it. Inside the envelope was a single sheet of notepaper and another sealed envelope, with bulky enclosures. On the notepaper, in Gayelorde-Sutton’s spidery handwriting, was a brief note:
DEAR LEIGH:
I was impressed by our talk. When you get this I shall be in no position either to oppose or assist your somewhat prolonged courtship. In the event of your taking my advice, however, I am making you a personal bequest of one thousand pounds.
You will find Emerald a handful and I wish you joy. I believe you are interested in horseback riding and my advice, for what it is worth, is to keep her on a far tighter rein than I did!
Sincerely,
ERIC GAYELORDE-SUTTON
Inside the second envelope were ten hundred-pound notes.
I was so astonished that I sat staring at the letter until Fellowes reminded me of his presence by a discreet legal cough. I passed the letter to him and he read it, his eyebrows shooting up.
“Did you have any inkling about this?” he asked.
“Not the faintest notion,” I told him.
“Then stuff that damned envelope in your pocket,” he said, gruffly. “I’ve mislaid my damned glasses again—can you see them anywhere?”
I pocketed the money and handed him his horned-rimmed glasses that lay on the desk before him. He blew out his cheeks, like a motorist who has just avoided running over a dog.
“Will everything Gayelorde-Sutton owned have to be sold up?” I asked.
“Even his clothes,” said Fellowes. “The creditors might get five shillings in the pound and then again they might not! He didn’t own Heronslea but there’s a fortune in antiques down there and he did own the London house and a place in Nice.”
“What about Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton?” I asked. “Surely she had money of her own?”
“She had until a few months ago,” he told me, “but when things got sticky she transferred all of it to one of the companies. I heard from her yesterday. She’s penniless!”
I digested this for a moment, then I said:
“Look here, Mr. Fellowes, I don’t need this money and I …”
“What money?” he d
emanded, looking straight at me.
I thought for a moment. “Right, have it your way! Put me in touch with her and I think I might be able to help her,” I said.
He looked hard at the ceiling. “I’m not authorized to give her address to anyone,” he said, slowly. “If the press got on to it the story would take another week or so to die a natural death! You’ve been a journalist, I don’t have to tell you about that, do I?”
“No,” I said, “but it seems to me that if I find her I might trace Diana, and I’m going to trace her if it costs me a thousand pounds! Talking of figures, is that very much, measured against the sums involved in these deficiencies?”
He smiled, then swiftly composed his features. “Like giving a donkey one oat,” he said.
As we talked I noticed that he was fidgeting with the open file in front of him. A small sheet of notepaper, similar to the one I had given him as a bona fides, was now detached from the main pile. It edged across the desk, until it was about halfway between us. It was the top sheet of a letter written in a strong, feminine hand. At the top of the page was an address:
21 Drayford Gardens, Holland Park, W.9. Having noted the address I stood up.
“Well, I don’t seem to have got much further, do I?”
“No,” he said, blandly, “but I’m sure I wish you luck, Mr. Leigh! Don’t forget this, will you?” And he returned Gayelorde-Sutton’s note.
We shook hands and he showed me as far as the outer office, where we parted. He was the most human solicitor I have ever met.
I took an 88 bus along the Bayswater Road and on the way I thought about Gayelorde-Sutton’s gift in relation to our interview of a fortnight ago. Some of the things that had puzzled me so much were now becoming clear—his talk of going away, which I recognized as a conventional smoke screen for suicide; his anxiety to get Diana settled and cushioned, to some extent, against the disaster that was then only forty-eight hours away; his frantic desire to be rid of me in order to concentrate on the phone call probably the final nail in his coffin. For all that, his last-minute efforts on behalf of Diana failed to impress me. Looking back on his grotesque heartiness, and knowing what was in his mind at the time, his clumsy bluff was like the action of a drunk urging a slightly less tipsy companion to do something calculated to make him look foolish in the eyes of the sober. His letter was not the kind of letter a man should have written a few hours before taking his life. There was a sneer behind every word and the sneers suggested that, to some extent, he blamed his wife and daughter for the position in which he found himself at that moment. Pondering this I realized that nothing would induce me to use his money, that I had to get rid of it as soon as possible. If it was able to buy information regarding Diana’s whereabouts then I was prepared to use it for that purpose, but in any case I had to get rid of it, soon!
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