“How mean!” said Ann. She was glad to say something, because she wanted most dreadfully to laugh.
“Mean?” said Mrs. Halliday on a trumpet note of scorn. “The meanness of young women is past belief! Not as she was young—never see forty again she wouldn’t—and artful. But she didn’t get Jimmy. The nearest to it was Sarah Hollins, and if I ever ’ated a girl in my life, I ’ated ’er—with all ’atred,” she added after a moment’s brooding.
“Why?”
“Because she nearly ’ad my Jimmy—got as far as talking about putting up the banns they did.”
“How did you stop them?”
“Told her he snored,” said Mrs. Halliday—“something cruel, like a fog-horn. ‘And no woman born as could stand it,’ I says to ’er, and she ups and sauces me and says she can put cotton wool in her ears if such was the case.”
“What did you do?”
Mrs. Halliday laughed grimly.
“I took and told ’im the same about ’er. ‘And do she really?’ says ’e. And I says, ‘She do—and I give you joy of it, Jimmy my lad.’” She sniffed and looked pointedly at Ann. “The banns never went up after all. None of ’em didn’t get Jimmy—and none of ’em ain’t going to.”
The manner in which Mrs. Halliday delivered these last words was portentous in the extreme. She waited a moment for them to sink in and then took up the knitting which had been reposing in her lap.
“I don’t want to hear no more of that there romance,” she said. “You find me a nice murder, Miss Vernon my dear.”
Ann felt that she had been warned.
After that it became imperative to discourage Jimmy Halliday—imperative, but very difficult. He waylaid her when she was going out after lunch and offered to take her up the loch. Twenty-four hours earlier she would have jumped at the offer. Now she wasn’t going out in any boat with anyone. If you don’t get into a boat, you can’t very well have a boating accident. It might be boring to be confined to the island, but for the moment Ann was off boats. She said she was going to walk, and then thought how silly that sounded. You could climb, scramble, or slither, but you couldn’t possibly walk on the island. However, one snub would do as well as another for Jimmy Halliday.
Jimmy wasn’t snubbed. He looked at her sheepishly between his short, thick sandy lashes, fiddled with a handkerchief which had a lively pattern of scarlet anchors on a ground of Reckitt’s blue, and once more invited her to come out with him on the loch.
An imp danced in Ann’s eyes. She said in a meek, poor-companion voice,
“I’m afraid your mother wouldn’t like it, Mr. Halliday.”
Memories of Bessie Fox, Mary Pott, Susan Moggridge, Polly Pocklington, Sarah Hollins and the rest convinced Mr. Halliday of the truth of this statement. He blushed a vehement beetroot red and muttered something which Ann did not catch.
“What did you say?”
“I said she’d come off it.”
“Do you think so?” said Ann. She shook her head mournfully. “I don’t. You’d better take Mr. Anderson or Riddle—it will be safer. I hope you’ll have a nice time.”
She went back towards the house. Coming out of it she met Gale Anderson with a smile on his face. This was such an arresting phenomenon that she stopped to admire it. He really was good-looking when he smiled. Not that she herself had much use for pale regular features and blue eyes in a man, but the smile certainly did improve them. It also showed a row of teeth which were almost too good to be true. She wondered if they were true. And then she wondered what she had done to deserve this lovely smile.
Mr. Anderson addressed her with a good deal of charm of manner.
“Isn’t it a beautiful afternoon?”
“Yes, isn’t it?” said Ann.
After the weather gambit—what? The knights’ move, with its stealthy sideways pounce? She wondered.
“It’s far too good an afternoon to waste.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” said Ann; and forthwith she was being invited for the second time that afternoon to enjoy the loch from a boat.
“How kind of you!”
Gale Anderson told the truth.
“Oh, not at all,” he said.
“What a pity I don’t like boating,” said Ann. Gazing with modest gratitude at the smile, she observed that it was no longer entirely effortless—a trifle fixed, a trifle strained—a hint of an approaching depression. “It is a pity—isn’t it?” she said.
During the next five minutes Ann enjoyed herself a good deal. Gale Anderson, still smiling, expatiated upon the smoothness of the water, the steadiness of Jimmy’s boat, and the ravishing beauty of the surroundings as seen from the loch. At every pause she looked a little more mournful and repeated a little more earnestly, “Yes, I know—but isn’t it a pity that I don’t like going in a boat?” In the end the smile came off with a jerk. Mr. Anderson went striding away across the lawn, and Miss Vernon entered the house humming to herself:
“Clouds were all around
Sunny days were few.
Then, just when I least expected it,
I met you.”
She went into the parlour to look for a book. Mrs. Halliday and Riddle were napping, each in a horse-hair chair. Mrs. Halliday had her feet up on a large square foot-stool worked in cross-stitch with magenta roses on a crimson background. Each rose was the size of a well-grown cabbage, and the high lights on the petals were put in with shiny white beads. The rhythmic sound of two several snores rose and fell in the little room, Riddle’s a faint alto to Mrs. Halliday’s bass-baritone. The old lady had a white silk handkerchief over her face, and every time she snored it flapped against her chin.
“Golly!” said Ann to herself.
She picked her way to the book-case, avoiding Mrs. Halliday’s knitting and the thread of Riddle’s crochet, both of which had slipped to the ground. The book-case was in the corner between the window and the fireplace. It had scallops of green leather nailed along the edges of the shelves, and it held four rows of books. Ann knelt down in front of them with a sigh. Not a very promising lot, she was afraid.
She took out a book with no name on the back, discovered it to be the Collected Sermons of the Reverend Henry Macdougal, and put it back again on the bottom shelf. The remainder of the row appeared to be occupied by the works of Mrs. Henry Wood. Ann dipped into one of them, found herself in an intensive atmosphere of moral sentiment, said “Golly!” again, and abandoned this talented author without discovering her undoubted gift for telling a story. The title-page fell over as she was about to close the volume. In faint brown ink was the name, Jessie Paulett. Ann looked at it, frowning a little. Somewhere, if he was still alive, she had a great-uncle called Paulett. It wasn’t a common name. And Charles had said he knew a girl called Hilda Paulett. Funny if she had some relations after all.… She wondered who Jessie Paulett was, and as she knelt there with the book in her hand, she had the strangest feeling of an unseen family circle closing in upon her. She didn’t like it very much.
Jessie Paulett.… Like the faintest echo from that very far off time which was her childhood, she heard her mother saying in her pretty, tired voice, “I loved Aunt Jessie—but she died when I was fifteen.” Aunt Jessie.… Was it possible?
She picked out a book at random and opened it. Longfellow’s Poems, in brown cloth with a spray of gold lilies of the valley across the cover. Ann wasn’t interested in the cover. She turned to the fly-leaf, and there, written right across the page, stood her mother’s name in her mother’s writing, a little firmer and more careless than Ann had known it, but quite recognizable—“Eleanor Paulett.” Above, on the extreme upper edge of the leaf, very faint and spidery—“Dearest Nellie, from her loving Aunt Jessie.”
Ann sat back on her heels and stared at the page. How did these Paulett books come to be here? This was her mother’s book. Had her mother lived in this house?
She put Longfellow back and began to go through the shelves systematically, looking at the fly-leaf of every book. M
ost were blank, but there were two more “Dearest Nellies,” one in a Burns and the other in a Tennyson. There were also some volumes of The Canterbury Poets, little square green books with gold tracery on the backs and “Eleanor Paulett” inside—Keats, Shelley, Ballades and Rondeaus, and the Border Ballads.
A very sharp stinging pain made Ann’s eyes dazzle for a moment. Mummy—who had been Aunt Jessie’s “Dearest Nellie,” and had loved poetry, and had had such a hard, sad life of prose. It hurt frightfully for a moment. Why hadn’t Elias Paulett helped her? She had written to him, and he hadn’t even answered the letter—just because he was angry at her marrying an American.
Ann knelt there and wondered how you went on being angry with anyone for years and years and years. She could do a good hot boil up herself, but the idea of going on boiling for years or slowly freezing in a cold hell of resentment was absolutely staggering. She went on taking out books, and found two with Elias Paulett’s name in a big square writing—one a thin paper pamphlet entitled New Markets for Old Trades, and the other a Ready Reckoner.
Ann put the books back carefully. She kept the Border Ballads with her mother’s name in it, and was making her way towards the door, when Mrs. Halliday choked half way up a snore and sat up. The silk handkerchief fell off into her lap. She eyed Ann sternly and said,
“Who made that noise?”
Ann being at a loss for an answer, she transferred her stare to the unconscious Riddle.
“Snores something shocking—don’t she? She did ought to have ’erself more under control. I’ve no patience with people making noises like that. Gave me a real start, she did.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Ann. And then, “Mrs. Halliday—who does this house belong to?”
“How do you mean, belong to?” Mrs. Halliday settled her cap, which was very crooked, and looked suspiciously at Ann.
“I mean the furniture, and the books, and everything. I’ve found some books with ‘Paulett’ in them. Used the Pauletts to live here?”
“What do you know about Pauletts?” said Mrs. Halliday sharply.
“I wondered whether they lived here.”
“Why shouldn’t they?”
Ann laughed.
“I don’t know. Did they?”
“Seeing as how the place belonged to them, they did. And if the books have their name in them, it’s no more than they’ve got a lawful right to.”
“Does it belong to them still?”
Mrs. Halliday nodded.
“Belongs to Mr. Elias Paulett as lives in Glasgow—something in the shipping line, and a pile of money, so they say. My ’usband sailed in one of ’is ships, and my Jimmy done the same, and when he’d made his pile along of being clever and thrifty, he’d a fancy to take this place for his summer ’oliday. Take it he did, and we’ve come here every year. Pauletts haven’t been near it, not in donkeys’ years. And if you’re going out, Miss Vernon, I’d be glad if you was to go and let me ’ave my nap—if so be that there Riddle don’t wake me again, the snoring grampus!”
Chapter Nineteen
Ann took her book and went round the house and up the winding path to the knoll at the top of the island. It was a very still, warm afternoon. The water of the loch lay like a sheet of blue looking-glass with the hills mirrored in it. So sharp, so clear, and so unblurred was the reflection that she could see every stone, every stain, every rift, and every cleft exactly repeated. There was not a cloud in the sky. There was a scent of heather and a scent of pine.
Ann sat down and began to read in the little green book with her mother’s name on the fly-leaf. The ballads took her into another country—a country of hills, and haughs, and magical running streams—a kinder country than this. There were no lochs there with waters going down into terrible unknown depths. The nearest you got to it was in the company of Thomas the Rhymer.
“O they rade on, and farther on,
And they waded thro’ rivers aboon the knee,
And they saw neither sun nor moon,
But they heard the roaring of the sea.”
The sea didn’t roar here. It lipped and lapped at the stones of the island, and sometimes when the tide was rising it came lifting in between the boulders with a strange sucking sound, and then it looked green with a foamy edge. Now it was all blue—smooth unbroken blue. The words went through her mind and broke suddenly, because for an instant the blue of the loch had been broken. Something dark showed and was gone again. Ann was left wondering whether she had really seen anything. She certainly couldn’t have said what she had seen. The blue had been broken; that was all. She went on looking for a long time, but she saw nothing except the sun shining on the water, and the clear reflection of the hills. Perhaps what she had seen was the image of something moving upon the hillside … No—because it was the blue that had been broken, and not the many-coloured reflection of the hills.
She went on looking for a little longer, and then went back to her book.
“It was mirk mirk night, and there was nae stern light,
And they waded thro’ red blude to the knee.”
Ann looked up with a shiver.
Someone was coming up the hill. She felt a certain degree of relief when she saw that it was Jimmy Halliday. She preferred him to Gale Anderson, and felt quite sure of being able to keep him in his place. He came up the slope, seated himself upon a large stone, and remarked upon the beauty of the day.
“It’s a beautiful afternoon.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” said Ann.
Jimmy Halliday cleared his throat.
“It’s a pity you didn’t come out in the boat with me. It’d be grand on the water.
Ann shook her head.
“I don’t like boating.”
“I’d teach you to like it if you came out with me.”
Ann shook her head again.
“It’s too deep—you said it was yourself. I don’t like lochs that go down for miles. Suppose I fell in and was drowned.”
“I wouldn’t let you.”
“I don’t think I like boating.” She dropped her eyes to her book and read on.
Jimmy Halliday coughed.
“You and me’s got to have a talk.”
“Have we?”
Jimmy’s voice became a good deal louder.
“I said we’d got to have a talk, and I meant what I said. If you’d known me a bit longer, you’d know that I always do.”
“When you talk to girls?” said Ann brightly.
Her book slid off her lap. She had the pleasure of seeing Jimmy’s colour rise.
“Look here, Miss Vernon—I want you to listen to me. A man’s got a right to be listened to, hasn’t he? You can say what you like afterwards, but you’ve got to listen to me first.”
“Very well, Mr. Halliday, I’ll listen.”
Mr. Halliday ran a finger round inside his collar. The sun was hot. Mr. Halliday felt hot, and not unpleasantly embarrassed. There was a vein of sentiment in his nature which in time past had led him to succumb with fatal ease to the advances of Miss Bessie Fox and the other young women enumerated by his mother. From the moment that it had occurred to him how much pleasanter and more profitable it would be to marry Ann than to allow Gale Anderson to murder her this vein had fairly gushed. If Ann were murdered, Gale Anderson’s wife came into Elias Paulett’s money, and if Gale Anderson did the sharing out, Jimmy was under no illusion as to who would get the lion’s share. If, on the other hand, he, Jimmy, married Ann, it would be he who would divide the spoil. And there would be no risk. Everything would be perfectly straight, legal, and above board. This was a great point. For some years now he had been living on the dangerous side of the law. He made large profits, but he ran great risks. The drug trade was no longer what it had been. The law was terribly active, and sentences ran high. Jimmy wanted to retire. A share of a hundred thousand pounds and a pretty young wife were gifts from the gods. Jimmy felt very warmly disposed towards Miss Ann Vernon, who was gazing at him with polite attent
ion. He could have wished her plumper—he liked a good armful—but there it was, you couldn’t have everything.
He cleared his throat and began.
“You’re an unprotected young lady, and such being the case, it’s natural you should look round for a chance to get settled in life.”
That little warning sparkle came into Ann’s eyes. It made them very bright. They were somewhere half way between grey and blue in colour, and they were shaded by very long fine lashes of a darker brown than her hair.
“Did you want to be settled in life when you were my age, Mr. Halliday?”
“Boys are different,” said Jimmy in a moral tone of voice. “A young lady like you ought to think about getting settled.”
Ann shook her head. The sparkle danced high.
“I don’t want to be settled a bit—not for years and years and years. There are masses of things I want to do first. I want to go round the world, and fly to America, and shoot a rapid, and refuse a Prime Minister, and see Noel Coward’s last revue. I’m not quite sure about the Prime Minister. Perhaps a Lord Chancellor would do, or I might have to put up with a plain Cabinet Minister. It’s rather fun to think of all the things that might happen to one. For instance, I could vary the programme by flying with the Lord Chancellor, or shooting a Cabinet Minister.”
Jimmy listened with disapproval tempered by the fact that Ann looked very pretty when she talked nonsense.
“A young lady like you doesn’t want to get herself mixed up in any shooting affairs,” he said.
Fear by Night: A Golden Age Mystery Page 13