“Not marmalade on kippers, Papa,” I said hastily, arresting my parent’s absentminded hand. “Yes, you were saying?”
“They passed to Europe on—”
Here he broke down with a bad fit of choking, the result of an immoderate mouthful of kipper bones.
“But we must start at once,” he declared, as he rose to his feet at the conclusion of the meal. “There is no time to be lost. We must be on the spot—there are doubtless incalculable finds to be found in the neighbourhood. I shall be interested to note whether the implements are typical of the Mousterian period—there will be the remains of the primitive ox, I should say, but not those of the woolly rhinoceros. Yes, a little army will be starting soon. We must get ahead of them. You will write to Cook’s today, Anne?”
“What about money, Papa?” I hinted delicately.
He turned a reproachful eye upon me.
“Your point of view always depresses me, my child. We must not be sordid. No, no, in the cause of science one must not be sordid.”
“I feel Cook’s might be sordid, Papa.”
Papa looked pained.
“My dear Anne, you will pay them in ready money.”
“I haven’t got any ready money.”
Papa looked thoroughly exasperated.
“My child, I really cannot be bothered with these vulgar money details. The bank—I had something from the Manager yesterday, saying I had twenty-seven pounds.”
“That’s your overdraft, I fancy.”
“Ah, I have it! Write to my publishers.”
I acquiesced doubtfully, Papa’s books bringing in more glory than money. I liked the idea of going to Rhodesia immensely. “Stern silent men,” I murmured to myself in an ecstasy. Then something in my parent’s appearance struck me as unusual.
“You have odd boots on, Papa,” I said. “Take off the brown one and put on the other black one. And don’t forget your muffler. It’s a very cold day.”
In a few minutes Papa stalked off, correctly booted and well-mufflered.
He returned late that evening, and, to my dismay, I saw his muffler and overcoat were missing.
“Dear me, Anne, you are quite right. I took them off to go into the cavern. One gets so dirty there.”
I nodded feelingly, remembering an occasion when Papa had returned literally plastered from head to foot with rich Pleistocene clay.
Our principal reason for settling in Little Hampsley had been the neighbourhood of Hampsley Cavern, a buried cave rich in deposits of the Aurignacian culture. We had a tiny museum in the village, and the curator and Papa spent most of their days messing about underground and bringing to light portions of woolly rhinoceros and cave bear.
Papa coughed badly all the evening, and the following morning I saw he had a temperature and sent for the doctor.
Poor Papa, he never had a chance. It was double pneumonia. He died four days later.
Two
Everyone was very kind to me. Dazed as I was, I appreciated that. I felt no overwhelming grief. Papa had never loved me. I knew that well enough. If he had, I might have loved him in return. No, there had not been love between us, but we had belonged together, and I had looked after him, and had secretly admired his learning and his uncompromising devotion to science. And it hurt me that Papa should have died just when the interest of life was at its height for him. I should have felt happier if I could have buried him in a cave, with paintings of reindeer and flint implements, but the force of public opinion constrained a neat tomb (with marble slab) in our hideous local churchyard. The vicar’s consolations, though well-meant, did not console me in the least.
It took some time to dawn upon me that the thing I had always longed for—freedom—was at last mine. I was an orphan, and practically penniless, but free. At the same time I realized the extraordinary kindness of all these good people. The vicar did his best to persuade me that his wife was in urgent need of a companion help. Our tiny local library suddenly made up its mind to have an assistant librarian. Finally, the doctor called upon me, and after making various ridiculous excuses for failing to send a proper bill, he hummed and hawed a good deal and suddenly suggested I should marry him.
I was very much astonished. The doctor was nearer forty than thirty and a round, tubby little man. He was not at all like the hero of “The Perils of Pamela,” and even less like the stern and silent Rhodesian. I reflected a minute and then asked why he wanted to marry me. That seemed to fluster him a good deal, and he murmured that a wife was a great help to a general practitioner. The position seemed even more unromantic than before, and yet something in me urged towards its acceptance. Safety, that was what I was being offered. Safety—and a Comfortable Home. Thinking it over now, I believe I did the little man an injustice. He was honestly in love with me, but a mistaken delicacy prevented him from pressing his suit on those lines. Anyway, my love of romance rebelled.
“It’s extremely kind of you,” I said. “But it’s impossible. I could never marry a man unless I loved him madly.”
“You don’t think—?”
“No, I don’t,” I said firmly.
He sighed.
“But, my dear child, what do you propose to do?”
“Have adventures and see the world,” I replied, without the least hesitation.
“Miss Anne, you are very much a child still. You don’t understand—”
“The practical difficulties? Yes, I do, doctor. I’m not a sentimental schoolgirl—I’m a hardheaded mercenary shrew! You’d know it if you married me!”
“I wish you would reconsider—”
“I can’t.”
He sighed again.
“I have another proposal to make. An aunt of mine who lives in Wales is in want of a young lady to help her. How would that suit you?”
“No, doctor, I’m going to London. If things happen anywhere, they happen in London. I shall keep my eyes open and, you’ll see, something will turn up! You’ll hear of me next in China or Timbuctoo.”
My next visitor was Mr. Flemming, Papa’s London solicitor. He came down specially from town to see me. An ardent anthropologist himself, he was a great admirer of Papa’s work. He was a tall, spare man with a thin face and grey hair. He rose to meet me as I entered the room and taking both my hands in his, patted them affectionately.
“My poor child,” he said. “My poor, poor child.”
Without conscious hypocrisy, I found myself assuming the demeanour of a bereaved orphan. He hypnotized me into it. He was benignant, kind and fatherly—and without the least doubt he regarded me as a perfect fool of a girl left adrift to face an unkind world. From the first I felt that it was quite useless to try to convince him of the contrary. As things turned out, perhaps it was just as well I didn’t.
“My dear child, do you think you can listen to me whilst I try to make a few things clear to you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Your father, as you know, was a very great man. Posterity will appreciate him. But he was not a good man of business.”
I knew that quite as well, if not better than Mr. Flemming, but I restrained myself from saying so. He continued: “I do not suppose you understand much of these matters. I will try to explain as clearly as I can.”
He explained at unnecessary length. The upshot seemed to be that I was left to face life with the sum of £87 17s. 4d. It seemed a strangely unsatisfying amount. I waited in some trepidation for what was coming next. I feared that Mr. Flemming would be sure to have an aunt in Scotland who was in want of a bright young companion. Apparently, however, he hadn’t.
“The question is,” he went on, “the future. I understand you have no living relatives?”
“I’m alone in the world,” I said, and was struck anew by my likeness to a film heroine.
“You have friends?”
“Everyone has been very kind to me,” I said gratefully.
“Who would not be kind to one so young and charming?” said Mr. Flemming gallantly. “Well, we
ll, my dear, we must see what can be done.” He hesitated a minute, and then said: “Supposing—how would it be if you came to us for a time?”
I jumped at the chance. London! The place for things to happen.
“It’s awfully kind of you,” I said. “Might I really? Just while I’m looking around. I must start out to earn my living, you know?”
“Yes, yes, my dear child. I quite understand. We will look round for something—suitable.”
I felt instictively that Mr. Flemming’s ideas of “something suitable” and mine were likely to be widely divergent, but it was certainly not the moment to air my views.
“That is settled then. Why not return with me today?”
“Oh, thank you, but will Mrs. Flemming—”
“My wife will be delighted to welcome you.”
I wonder if husbands know as much about their wives as they think they do. If I had a husband, I should hate him to bring home orphans without consulting me first.
“We will send her a wire from the station,” continued the lawyer.
My few personal belongings were soon packed. I contemplated my hat sadly before putting it on. It had originally been what I call a “Mary” hat, meaning by that the kind of hat a housemaid ought to wear on her day out—but doesn’t! A limp thing of black straw with a suitably depressed brim. With the inspiration of genius, I had kicked it once, punched it twice, dented in the crown and affixed to it a thing like a cubist’s dream of a jazz carrot. The result had been distinctly chic. The carrot I had already removed, of course, and now I proceeded to undo the rest of my handiwork. The “Mary” hat resumed its former status with an additional battered appearance which made it even more depressing than formerly. I might as well look as much like the popular conception of an orphan as possible. I was just a shade nervous of Mrs. Flemming’s reception, but hoped my appearance might have a sufficiently disarming effect.
Mr. Flemming was nervous too. I realized that as we went up the stairs of the tall house in a quiet Kensington square. Mrs. Flemming greeted me pleasantly enough. She was a stout, placid woman of the “good wife and mother” type. She took me up to a spotless chintz-hung bedroom, hoped I had everything I wanted, informed me that tea would be ready in about a quarter of an hour, and left me to my own devices.
I heard her voice slightly raised, as she entered the drawing room below on the first floor.
“Well, Henry, why on earth—” I lost the rest, but the acerbity of the tone was evident. And a few minutes later another phrase floated up to me, in an even more acid voice: “I agree with you! She is certainly very good-looking.”
It is really a very hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.
With a deep sigh I proceeded to do things with my hair. I have nice hair. It is black—a real black, not dark brown—and it grows well back from my forehead and down over the ears. With a ruthless hand I dragged it upwards. As ears, my ears are quite all right, but there is no doubt about it, ears are démodé nowadays. They are quite like the “Queen of Spain’s legs” in Professor Peterson’s young day. When I had finished I looked almost unbelievably like the kind of orphan that walks out in a queue with a little bonnet and red cloak.
I noticed when I went down that Mrs. Flemming’s eyes rested on my exposed ears with quite a kindly glance. Mr. Flemming seemed puzzled. I had no doubt that he was saying to himself, “What has the child done to herself ?”
On the whole the rest of the day passed off well. It was settled that I was to start at once to look for something to do.
When I went to bed, I stared earnestly at my face in the glass. Was I really good-looking? Honestly I couldn’t say I thought so! I hadn’t got a straight Grecian nose, or a rosebud mouth, or any of the things you ought to have. It is true that a curate once told me that my eyes were like “imprisoned sunshine in a dark, dark wood”—but curates always know so many quotations, and fire them off at random. I’d much prefer to have Irish blue eyes than dark green ones with yellow flecks! Still, green is a good colour for adventuresses.
I wound a black garment tightly round me, leaving my arms and shoulders bare. Then I brushed back my hair and pulled it well down over my ears again. I put a lot of powder on my face, so that the skin seemed even whiter than usual. I fished about until I found some lip salve, and I put oceans of it on my lips. Then I did under my eyes with burnt cork. Finally I draped a red ribbon over my bare shoulder, stuck a scarlet feather in my hair, and placed a cigarette in one corner of my mouth. The whole effect pleased me very much.
“Anna the Adventuress,” I said aloud, nodding at my reflection. “Anna the Adventuress. Episode I, ‘The House in Kensington!’ ”
Girls are foolish things.
Three
In the succeeding weeks I was a good deal bored. Mrs. Flemming and her friends seemed to me to be supremely uninteresting. They talked for hours of themselves and their children and of the difficulties of getting good milk for the children and of what they say to the dairy when the milk wasn’t good. Then they would go on to the servants, and the difficulties of getting good servants and of what they had said to the woman at the registry office and of what the woman at the registry office had said to them. They never seemed to read the papers or to care about what went on in the world. They disliked travelling—everything was so different to England. The Riviera was all right, of course, because one met all one’s friends there.
I listened and contained myself with difficulty. Most of these women were rich. The whole wide beautiful world was theirs to wander in and they deliberately stayed in dirty dull London and talked about milkmen and servants! I think now, looking back, that I was perhaps a shade intolerant. But they were stupid—stupid even at their chosen job: most of them kept the most extraordinarily inadequate and muddled housekeeping accounts.
My affairs did not progress very fast. The house and furniture had been sold, and the amount realized had just covered our debts. As yet, I had not been successful in finding a post. Not that I really wanted one! I had the firm conviction that, if I went about looking for adventure, adventure would meet me half way. It is a theory of mine that one always gets what one wants.
My theory was about to be proved in practice.
It was early in January—the 8th, to be exact. I was returning from an unsuccessful interview with a lady who said she wanted a secretary-companion, but really seemed to require a strong charwoman who would work twelve hours a day for £25 a year. Having parted with mutual veiled impolitenesses, I walked down Edgware Road (the interview had taken place in a house in St. John’s Wood), and across Hyde Park to St. George’s Hospital. There I entered Hyde Park Corner Tube Station and took a ticket to Gloucester Road.
Once on the platform I walked to the extreme end of it. My inquiring mind wished to satisfy itself as to whether there really were points and an opening between the two tunnels just beyond the station in the direction of Down Street. I was foolishly pleased to find I was right. There were not many people on the platform, and at the extreme end there was only myself and one man. As I passed him, I sniffed dubiously. If there is one smell I cannot bear it is that of mothballs! This man’s heavy overcoat simply reeked of them. And yet most men begin to wear their winter overcoats before January, and consequently by this time the smell ought to have worn off. The man was beyond me, standing close to the edge of the tunnel. He seemed lost in thought, and I was able to stare at him without rudeness. He was a small, thin man, very brown of face, with blue, light eyes and a small dark beard.
“Just come from abroad,” I deduced. “That’s why his overcoat smells so. He’s come from India. Not an officer, or he wouldn’t have a beard. Perhaps a tea planter.”
At this moment the man turned as though to retrace his steps along the platform. He glanced at me and then his eyes went on to something behind me, and his face changed. It was distorted by fear—almost panic. He took a step backwards as though involun
tarily recoiling from some danger, forgetting that he was standing on the extreme edge of the platform, and went down and over. There was a vivid flash from the rails and a crackling sound. I shrieked. People came running up. Two station officials seemed to materialize from nowhere and took command.
I remained where I was, rooted to the spot by a sort of horrible fascination. Part of me was appalled at the sudden disaster, and another part of me was coolly and disapassionately interested in the methods employed for lifting the man off the live rail and back on to the platform.
“Let me pass, please. I am a medical man.”
A tall man with a brown beard pressed past me and bent over the motionless body.
As he examined it, a curious sense of unreality seemed to possess me. The thing wasn’t real—couldn’t be. Finally, the doctor stood upright and shook his head.
“Dead as a doornail. Nothing to be done.”
We had all crowded nearer, and an aggrieved porter raised his voice. “Now then, stand back there, will you? What’s the sense in crowding round?”
A sudden nausea seized me, and I turned blindly and ran up the stairs again towards the lift. I felt that it was too horrible. I must get out into the open air. The doctor who had examined the body was just ahead of me. The lift was just about to go up, another having descended, and he broke into a run. As he did so, he dropped a piece of paper.
I stopped, picked it up, and ran after him. But the lift gates clanged in my face, and I was left holding the paper in my hand. By the time the second lift reached street level, there was no sign of my quarry. I hoped it was nothing important that he had lost, and for the first time I examined it. It was a plain half sheet of notepaper with some figures and words scrawled upon it in pencil. This is a facsimile of it:
On the face of it, it certainly did not appear to be of any importance. Still, I hesitated to throw it away. As I stood there holding it, I involuntarily wrinkled my nose in displeasure. Mothballs again! I held the paper gingerly to my nose. Yes, it smelt strongly of them. But, then—
The Man in the Brown Suit Page 2