“The stars will protect her,” Benson suggested.
“It’s that type of remark takes my mind off everything else. That’s what happened on Friday morning. The moment he came back with the beer he knocked everything out of my head. Before he came back, as I sat down, I heard this word about astrology, not sinking in at once, but pulling my attention, and I became conscious one of them was saying to the other this thing about fishing. ‘My curiosity’s satisfied,’ he says, ‘and I didn’t like it.’ Then another says about not having had the opportunity until the beginning of last season and the first says who has in this country? And the second says it has merit.” He paused to wipe another rheumy drop from his old eyes.
“But how did the conversation go from astrology to fishing?” Lewis asked.
“Now that I can’t answer, except to be sure they began with astrology. It might have been one word, you know, it might have been only one word, but it caught my ear. I’m very keen, very keen indeed, at hearing. Then Benson comes back and spoils it all.”
Benson suddenly grunted. “Woolworth’s. That’s it. I was once an under-manager at Woolworth’s,” he explained.
“Yes?” Lewis encouraged.
“I’m not now. I’m a nursery gardener for my health. But I was sitting there quietly drinking my beer, which is not good for my health any more than smoking, when I heard that name again. Woolworth’s! If ever I drown I’ll see the red front and gold letters come up before my eyes. Even through Smith’s babbling I heard the name. Then one of these men addressed the other by name.” He stopped to light his cigarette stub again.
There was a battle of silence. Inspector Lewis lost.
“The name. What was it?”
“It began with an M. It was the thirteenth letter of the alphabet. Was it Morrison? Martin? Morley? If I’d been concentrating, I’d have known, being interested in names.”
“Morgan, Morton, Maurice,” Lewis suggested.
“It’s gone,” Benson said in regret. “I’ll swear to the M, but to nothing else. ‘Woolworth’s, what do you think about that?’ one of them said. ‘I’m afraid I can’t think anything. I didn’t see it,’ says the second. And the third says: ‘Woolworth’s? What’s all this? When did it happen?’ And that’s all. I’d have heard none of it if Smith hadn’t been dragging out his old chart, and from the time he began talking about his horoscope, everyone else in the world might have been dead, for all I could hear.”
Smith began to cackle. “Now I’ve got it,” he said. “They’d been fishing in a strange place. It was Ceylon they talked about. Now what would you think if you heard the word ‘Ceylon’?”
“Snake-charmers and elephants,” Sergeant Young suggested romantically.
“Tea,” Smith said. “Even my daughter knows Ceylon is tea. So first it was astrology, then it was Ceylon to make me think of tea, and then something about being depressed but what that was about I don’t know, then the fishing I’ve told you.”
“They’d been fishing in Ceylon?” the inspector asked with justifiable amazement. “Let’s go back over this again.”
They went back over it again, but without enlightenment. Both men stuck to what they had said, and refused to add to it. With all their peculiarities, they were honest.
Investigation (7)
The policemen returned to the Wades’ house expecting to find Marryatt there before them. They had not much idea of the kind of man he was, but they naturally supposed he would have enough social sense to be disturbed by their summons. They felt the normal official irritation at being kept waiting; they were prepared to put him in his place.
When he finally arrived, half-an-hour late, there was no hint of apology in his bearing. He was a young man, with heavy shoulders; a strong, dark face; black eyebrows. He had an air of independence, almost of insolence. His face carried the odd, uneasy familiarity of something that had been seen before. Perhaps it had been seen before, in a painting; a painting not of any contemporary; but of some aristocrat who had believed he owned the world; just as an Australian might believe it.
“You sent for me?” he said to Inspector Lewis, in a voice that rejected all respect for authority. He turned on Hester. “And I believe you told him to send for me.”
She looked at him as angrily as he had looked at her. “I did. People seemed to be accusing you of something. I thought, being what you are, you wouldn’t like anyone else to speak for you.”
“And what am I accused of?”
“You are not accused of anything. You are being asked to help,” Lewis said coldly. “In the first place, I tell you quite openly we’d have seen you anyway. We have a report from a Mrs Lightfoot—isn’t that the name, Sergeant Young?—yes, a Mrs Lightfoot, who breeds dogs, bull terriers, I think—a report of what she thought a peculiar incident on the road, about half-a-mile from this house. She took the number of the car. It happens to be the number of the car that Maurice Reid hired from the local garage. She made this report quite independently. She hadn’t heard of the aeroplane disaster. It was very easy to trace the car. Then when this question, the question of which man didn’t fly in the aeroplane, came up, we went into the matter a little more carefully. She described Maurice Reid quite well. At first she thought he was drunk. Then she thought he’d been assaulted, or that he’d been in a fight with someone. She had a glimpse of the other man; later, she saw someone in the village whom she thought was the same man. Well, sir, what we’ve been looking for all the time is a lead into any peculiarity in the lives of any of those four men who were supposed to fly in that aeroplane. What Sergeant Young here has always said is that if we can find the man among these four who had some urgent reason for vanishing, then we’ll know the man who took the chance to disappear when the plane crashed.”
“That’s not logical,” Prudence said sternly. “If one of them wanted to disappear he probably would go to Ireland and dig peat or something. He wouldn’t want to miss the plane. He might miss it by accident, but that wouldn’t happen to him more than anyone else. Unless they all wanted to disappear, I think it’s a stupid theory.”
“Perhaps they did all want to disappear,” Moira intervened coldly. “Except Joe, of course.”
“And Harry,” Hester murmured.
“But, my dear, Harry always wanted to get out of his commitments. Surely you know that?” Moira said.
Marryatt, seeing, like everyone else, how Hester’s already pale face turned paler still, spoke quickly.
“Get on with the questions. I’ll answer them.”
“No,” Hester said. “It’s not fair to put everything on to you. Particularly after what you said to me. You’ve accused me of enough, you know. And this isn’t just a question of Maurice. It might be anyone. We don’t know it was Maurice. But Father and I have talked it over, in the last hour, and we’re going to tell the truth. The whole truth about the whole of Thursday. You can tell your part too, if you wish. Please remember,” she said coldly, “we are going to conceal nothing, and there’s no reason why you should.”
They looked at each other in mutual animosity.
“It makes no difference to me who knows my private affairs, now,” Marryatt said significantly. “Go ahead, I’ll listen and put my hand up when the time comes.”
“Don’t expect me to join in this soul-searching,” Moira said.
Hester looked sadly at the downcast roses on the table.
“Thursday…” she said.
Thursday (1)
It rained on Wednesday night, and on Thursday morning the sky looked as if it had been washed blue for a coloured advertisement. When Hester woke, the birds were celebrating. She looked out of the window with her usual morning happiness. She was amazed to hear a tap on her door. Prudence always charged through doors without knocking, and no one but Prudence ever came to her room in the morning.
“Come in,” she said, and Jackie ap
peared. He was carrying a cup of tea, and looked serious and dedicated.
“Good morning,” he said in a reverent voice. He put down the tea and tiptoed out of the room again.
Hester looked at the tea in dismay. She didn’t like to drink anything before she had brushed her teeth and washed and dressed; she liked even less to have the anxieties of the day appear embodied in her room while she was still in bed. She was remembering already that Harry had accused Jackie of carrying a gun. She wasn’t particularly nervous, but she didn’t want to be given morning tea by gunmen. She made up her mind that Jackie must go. She threw the blankets off and stepped out of bed. She washed and dressed quickly, mentally preparing her interview with Jackie.
She ignored the tea and forgot that the sky was blue. It was too late to send for the police. All that could be done now was to tell Jackie to go, in the most tactful terms. It would be better not to offend him. Perhaps he carried a gun only to help him in his robberies; it was equally possible that he loved his gun and longed to use it. As she brushed her hair she remembered that Harry had asked for the gun, but she wasn’t sure what had happened in the minute before she entered the kitchen. Harry had asked for the gun; she didn’t know if Jackie had given it to him. If Harry had the gun there was nothing to worry about, except that Jackie might be equally ready to use a bread-knife, or a poker. In any case, Harry would never shoot anyone; he was too good-natured.
She thought tenderly of Harry, and then with a rush of anger remembered how unfairly everyone treated him. She thought of the poets who had died of starvation, drink, drugs, neglect, tuberculosis, and drowning. She would save Harry from all of these. She put down the hairbrush and went to her bookcase. There was an issue of the Poets’ Journal devoted to Harry.
“The old earth groans and splits,
Out streams the fury of her bright-burning breasts.”
She sat down on the bed to read more comfortably.
Prudence came in, with the violence and speed of someone being pursued by the police. It was her usual method of entry in the morning.
“Reading?” she asked suspiciously.
Hester stood up, and slipped the magazine back into the bookcase. Prudence watched carefully, then examined the bookcase.
“Reading poetry at this time in the morning!” she exclaimed in wonder. “You’re a bit nuts, aren’t you?”
“Is that all you wanted to say?”
“No. I’m going to that tennis club dance thing tonight. Terribly dull, I expect, and the only one who asked me was that loutish boy Baron. You know, he’s going to be an accountant. He talks all the time about maths and the Pony Club. It’s going to be absolutely hideous, but I thought I’d go. So I was wondering if I could borrow that blue-and-white thing of yours.”
“I thought you despised all my clothes.”
“I’ve got practically none of my own. Father thinks when he’s bought me a gym blouse and hockey shorts that I’m provided with clothes till next summer.”
“Of course you can borrow it, Prudence. It would be nice to have a few more clothes,” Hester said, sighing.
“I told you I was going to take up dress-making. I’ll be able to make myself super things for next to nothing,” Prudence said cheerfully.
“You’ll still have to buy the material.”
“I’ll take it out of the housekeeping money. We cook in margarine from now on. And I believe you can live terribly cheaply on lentil soup and potatoes. It’s a healthy diet, too, if we take a little cod liver oil now and then.”
“It seems a bit hot today for lentil soup. Do you want to try on the blue-and-white?”
“Please.” She went to the wardrobe and looked in. “I must say you haven’t got very many clothes, either. Have you been reading all those articles about how to dress well on ten pounds a year? They’re awfully good so long as you don’t mind wearing a sleeveless cotton frock and sandals at Christmas and you have a rain-coat already. Oh, Hester, aren’t you excited? Father’s going to make piles of money. Maurice is helping him, and we’ll all be rich and have special clothes for looking at football matches.”
Hester sat down on the bed again. “I wish you wouldn’t believe in fairy stories, Prudence. The only talent Father has with money is for losing it. You must have noticed. I’m not going to let him have anything to do with this scheme of Maurice’s. I’m going to stop him.”
“I won’t let you,” Prudence said, from the heart of the blue-and-white dress. “It’s our only chance. Otherwise we’ll moulder away for years, drinking lentil soup and making petticoats out of old flour bags.” Her head came out of the top of the dress. “Do you think it’s too tight?”
Hester looked at it critically. “No, really not. It shows you up a bit, but you have quite a decent figure to show. I wish you wouldn’t think about money all the time, Prudence. It’s not right. There are lots of things in life more important than money.”
Prudence looked at herself in the mirror. “If I can’t get on the stage I might be a model,” she said appreciatively. “You get paid lots of money, marry a millionaire, and have your photograph in the papers nearly every day. In fact, you get far more publicity than Florence Nightingale ever had. How many people ever pinned her up over the dressing-table?”
“You have to learn to walk and wear clothes first.”
“Walking and wearing clothes are things that practically the entire human race can do, so I suppose I could learn.”
There was another tap at the door. “Breakfast is served, Miss,” said a solemn voice.
They went down to breakfast, which consisted of strong tea and fried bread. “Still, it’s nice not having to cook it,” Prudence said.
Hester looked at the fried bread with hatred and began again to rehearse her scene with Jackie.
Her father was filling a notebook with small, neat figures. “Maurice is coming over early,” he said. “We have business to consider.”
Hester postponed the discussion with Jackie, and began to make plans for the interception of Maurice.
Thursday (2)
Maurice stepped out of the car. His square, clean face was good-humoured, happy, and appreciative, as it so often was. He looked up at the trees and the sky, participating in the beauty of the summer morning. He seemed as solid and dependable as a pewter mug. Hester, coming through the garden to meet him, found his appearance infinitely reassuring.
“Good morning, Maurice. Have you the time—could I talk to you for a few minutes?” Although she knew that she trusted him, her voice was less cordial than usual.
“Of course, Hester,” he said readily, and she wondered if she heard wariness behind the warmth.
They walked through the garden towards the roses which were rashly opening their hearts to the sun.
“It’s so hard to say what I want to say,” she murmured in confusion.
“Am I wrong, Hester, in thinking you want to ask my advice about Harry?” he asked her quietly.
“Yes, Maurice, you’re wrong, absolutely wrong. The last thing I want to hear is more advice about Harry.”
“I don’t want to be a bore, Hester, but you won’t marry him, will you?”
“So you think that would be a mistake?”
“I do.”
“Everyone thinks it would be a mistake. They keep trying to see what it would do to me. They never think at all what it might do to Harry. They don’t stop to consider that Harry may be more important than me.”
“But, my dear Hester, he isn’t.”
“Keats was more important than Fanny Brawne. Shakespeare was more important than Ann Hathaway.”
“Hester, you’re not seriously comparing Harry to Shakespeare,” he protested with a humorous under-tone that she deeply resented.
“You’re not even trying to be serious, Maurice, and I don’t want to discuss Harry. Don’t look so anxious,
Maurice. If I decide to marry him that’s my business. I may even wait until he asks me before I make up my mind.”
“If you don’t want to discuss Harry, what do you want to discuss?” he asked patiently.
“Oh, nothing,” she said in a wretched voice, and turned away from him, knowing that the easy mood of confidence had been kicked out of shape like a battered football.
“You can talk to me, Hester, even if you do think of me as an ageing idiot,” he said in an avuncular manner. “Or you can march off indignantly, then I’ll have to cut the grass to reinstate myself. Shall I get the lawn mower? I’d much sooner talk.”
“It’s too hot for cutting the grass,” she admitted. “I’ll tell you what I want to say.” She looked away from him. She didn’t want it to seem that she was accusing him. “Don’t let Father take any of his money out of securities. He’s got so little. He can’t afford to lose it.” She looked round anxiously, searching for something that might ornament the bald request. “It’s such a lovely morning. I do apologise for talking about money.”
“Money is my business, but I don’t want to bring business into the garden. Hester, surely you know me well enough to trust me. I’ve spent the last three months persuading your father not to join in my wild affairs.”
“But, Maurice, of course you have. Would you like a button-hole? Here’s a lovely rosebud.” She bent to pick it, admiring its undeveloped curves, preparing her next remark. She stood up, offering the rosebud. “Father seems so determined this time.”
“Thank you, Hester, it’s very pretty.” He put the rosebud in his button-hole. “You wouldn’t approve of his turning three shillings into a pound?” he asked her, smiling.
“Not if there’s any chance at all of his losing the three shillings. It’s time that these overblown roses were cut. I must do it today. And I should cut some buds for the house.”
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