For some moments after Chippendale’s departure Willoughby sat dumb and motionless, as if in a trance. Then, reaching out for the whisky, he uttered a single word.
‘Amazing!’
That Chippendale’s heart should have been so set on immersing Constable Simms?’
‘No, that Crispin should have had the nerve and know-how to carry through such a delicate operation without a hitch. I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him. What a lesson this should be to all of us never to write off a man as an incompetent poop simply because all his life he has behaved like an incompetent poop. Often he merely needs an incentive to bring out his hidden qualities. The crisis comes and his executive ability is revealed. He acts, as Crispin has done. It’s really extraordinary. I could tell you stories of Crispin as a boy and in early manhood and for the matter of that even lately which would make you marvel that he ever escaped the loony bin. And yet in an enterprise which would have taxed the skill and ingenuity of an professional criminal… Crips!’ cried Willoughby, for the head of the family had tottered in and was gazing at the whisky decanter with the air of one who has come to journey’s end. That gargoyle who calls himself a butler has just been telling us of your magnificent conduct.’
‘Eh?’ said Crispin. He seemed dazed.
‘At the brook.’
‘Oh, at the brook?’ said Crispin.
‘And I was saying to Jerry here that I never would have suspected you of such courage and adroitness. Didn’t your nerve fail you for an instant?’
‘No,’ said Crispin. ‘It had to be done, so I — er — did it. Any man would have done the same.’
‘I disagree with you. It was —’
Willoughby was about to add the word ‘heroic’, but at this moment Homer Pyle entered the library. He had seen Crispin climbing the stairs and had followed him in order to fill him in on the subject of mice and bedrooms. He had got as far as ‘Oh, Mr Scrope, I am sorry to trouble you’, when his eye fell on Willoughby.
‘Why, Mr Scrope,’ he exclaimed. ‘I did not know you were here.’
‘Just arrived. I drove down. I had to see someone oh business. Miss Hunnicut.’
‘A charming young lady.’
‘About a legacy she has had.’
‘Ah yes, she was telling me about that only this morning.’
‘I’ll bet she didn’t tell you all, because she wouldn’t have known about the latest developments. But never mind that. How are you, Mr Pyle?’
‘In excellent health, thank you. I find the quiet of Mellingham soothing to the nerves.’
‘Did you have a good time in Brussels?’
A shadow flitted over Homer’s globular face, and for an instant he forgot mice and bedrooms. He was remembering dinners with Vera Upshaw, walks with Vera Upshaw and talks with Vera Upshaw when, if he had only been able to muster up courage, he might have asked her to be his.
‘It was very educational,’ he said. ‘By the way, Mr Scrope, you got my message?’
‘Message?’
‘I telephoned your office after you had left for your golfing holiday and told them to tell you that I had put your miniature in the middle drawer of your desk. I will explain in more detail when we are alone. For the moment I will merely say that I thought it safer,’ said Homer significantly. ‘I think you will understand what I mean. I was afraid that it might fall into the wrong hands if left on the mantelpiece. So after considerable reflection I came down at one o’clock in the morning — or it may have been nearer two — and transferred it to the middle drawer of the desk in your study.’
When he was strongly moved, as sometimes by the vagaries of the office boy Percy, ‘Willoughby’s rather florid complexion always took on a deeper hue. It turned now to a royal purple, presenting a picture which would have interested a doctor in his blood pressure. His eyes bulged. He stared at Homer as a snail might have stared at another snail which had said something to shake it to its depths. His very ears had reddened, and it was evident from his manner that he was finding a difficulty in believing them.
‘You mean…’ He choked. ‘You mean it’s been there all the time?’
‘Exactly.’
Then what’s the one your sister gave the vicar?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Mrs Clayborne gave a miniature to the vicar for his jumble sale in aid of the Church Lads Annual Outing.’
‘Oh, that one?’ said Homer, and permitted himself a light laugh. ‘She told me about that. She bought it for five shillings at a pawn shop and had intended to give it to you as a little token of her gratitude for your hospitality, but she felt that it was such an insignificant object that it was not worthy of inclusion in your collection. The reason I wished to see you, Mr Scrope,’ said Homer, changing the subject and addressing Crispin, ‘is that there is a mouse in my bedroom. It comes out at night after I have gone to bed and makes a scratching noise which is very disturbing. But I see that you are occupied just now, so perhaps you will give me a few minutes later on.’
It was soon after he had left that Willoughby, who was still purple, was struck by a thought which did much to bring his complexion back to normal. Interrupting himself in the middle of a critique of Homer in which he stressed his disapproval of the latter’s officiousness and practice of meddling in things that were no business of his, he said:
‘Well, this saves me two hundred pounds,’ and Crispin, grasping his meaning without difficulty, uttered a bleating cry which drew from his brother a sharp reproach.
‘Don’t make those animal noises, Crips. You surely aren’t expecting me to pay out large sums of money for nothing.’
‘But, Bill!’
‘I pay by results. Business is business.’
Jerry put a question, on the answer to which much depended. His agitation, like Crispin’s, was extreme.
‘Does that apply to me, too?’
Willoughby considered the point, and relieved his mind.
‘No, it’s different with you. You’ll get your money, and if you’re going to marry Jane Hunnicut, you’ll need it.’
To preserve my self-respect, you mean?’
‘Self-respect be blowed. You’ll need it to pay the household bills.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You will. By the way, where is she?’
‘She went to London. She told me her New York lawyer had come over and wanted to see her.’
‘I saw him this morning. Then he’ll have told her.’
Told her what?’
‘That she hasn’t a penny to bless herself with.’
‘What!’
The ejaculation proceeded from both Jerry and Crispin simultaneously, Crispin’s having the greater volume. His voice, as he went on speaking, had in it the suggestion of coming from a tomb which it had had when he was announcing Mrs Bernadette Clayborne’s donation to the vicar’s jumble sale in aid of the Church Lads Annual Outing.
‘You told me she was a millionairess and might buy the house.’
‘Well, she isn’t a millionairess and she won’t buy the house. I was exaggerating when I said she hadn’t a penny, but she won’t have much.’
‘I think I’ll go and lie down,’ said Crispin.
The comparison, made earlier, between the younger of the brothers Scrope and a staring snail would have been equally applicable to Jerry as the door closed behind Crispin. His eyes bulged as Willoughby’s had done, and he seemed to be experiencing the same difficulty in believing his ears.
‘But what’s happened? Have they found another will?’
‘Hidden behind the third brick on the left in the kitchen wall? No, nothing like that. Jane Hunnicut gets everything, but the United States Federal sharks will see to it that that isn’t much. The late Mr Donahue appears to have been one of those men who don’t approve of income tax. He hadn’t paid his for fifteen years. You can imagine what the sharks will do with a case like that. They’ll have a field day. Add debts, liabilities for surtax, capital gain
s tax, death duties and all the rest of it, and there won’t be a lot left. The same thing happened with a client of mine the other day. His gross estate was four hundred thousand pounds, and they whittled it down to something like seven thousand net. If Jane Hunnicut gets away with about that, she’ll be lucky.’
‘How absolutely wonderful!’ said Jerry. ‘How simply topping!’, and as he spoke Chippendale entered. He was carrying a small brown paper parcel.
Willoughby eyed him austerely.
‘What do you want?’
The question amused Chippendale. He cackled like the fowl he so resembled.
‘What do I want? It’s what you want, cocky. If you’ve forgotten what you sent me to fetch from beneath my summer underwear, you ought to see your medical adviser. Here it is, mate, but before we go any further I’ve been thinking it over and I’ve decided to make a slight adjustment in the matter of terms.’
‘What are you talking about, you blot?’
The arrangement was that you were to cough up two hundred in the event of success attending the enterprise. It’s not enough. Considering all I’ve been through on your behalf, shut up in small rooms with man-eating tigers and straining my brain to the utmost, we’ll make it three hundred.’
That pretty shade of purple had begun to creep once more into Willoughby’s cheeks. ‘Three hundred!’
‘Nice round sum.’
Willoughby heaved himself to his feet, breathing stertorously. He laid a large hand on Chippendale’s shoulder.
‘Come here,’ he said, and led him to the window. ‘See that lake?’
Chippendale admitted to seeing the lake.
‘Well, go and jump in it, curse you,’ said Willoughby. ‘And one more thing. Before doing so, be sure to tie a good heavy brick round your repulsive neck.’
6
Having suggested this course of action, Willoughby made for the door. But while plainly anxious to remove himself as soon as possible from the society of Chippendale, he paused for a moment to throw a word at Jerry.
‘I’ll give you a cheque tomorrow,’ he said, and was gone.
Chippendale, though taken aback as most people are when told to jump into lakes, was able to deduce the reason for his brusqueness. He had always been a man who could put two and two together.
‘I opened my mouth too wide,’ he said regretfully. ‘I ought to have stuck to the original terms.’
‘No, it wasn’t that,’ said Jerry. ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference, whatever you had asked for. It was the wrong miniature.’
‘How do you mean, it was the wrong miniature? It looked all right to me.
Jerry would have preferred not to linger and embark on long explanations, for Jane had said she would be returning in the evening and he wanted to be at the gate to welcome her, but it seemed unkind to leave his former ally in a state of mystification. Even when a partnership has been wound up the partners have obligations.
‘What happened was this,’ he said.
He narrated the story briefly but well, and when he had finished Chippendale said, ‘Cor stone the crows’, not mentioning which crows or who was to cast the first stone.
‘Are you telling me all my labour and toil has been for nothing?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘He won’t brass up?’
‘No.’
Chippendale mixed himself a whisky and soda and stood brooding for a space. When he spoke, it was with the same regret in his voice.
‘I ought to have had a written contract.’
‘Yes.’
‘Though I might get him on the verbal agreement. Ought I to sue?’
‘Waste of money, don’t you think?’
‘Perhaps you’re right. What did he mean by saying my repulsive neck?’
‘He was very much moved. Spoke wildly.’
‘All the same, I shouldn’t wonder if it wasn’t slander. I’ll have to consult my solicitor. Only I heard someone say he’s one.
‘He is.’
‘Then it’s no good. They all stick together. I’ll have to let it go. You know,’ said Chippendale, his grievances apparently forgotten and the sunny side of his nature coming uppermost, ‘I can’t help laughing when I think of us wearing ourselves to a shadow trying to get the ruddy miniature and all the time it was the ruddy wrong one. Strikes me as funny, that.’
Had someone told Jerry that the time would come when he would find himself thinking highly of Chippendale and regarding him with affection, he would have scouted the idea as too far-fetched for consideration; but as he heard these gallant words his heart warmed to him. If Chippendale couldn’t help laughing when Fate deprived him of a large sum of money, it seemed to him to indicate a nobility of character that demanded respect. He stood revealed as the sort of man Rudyard Kipling wrote ‘If’ about.
‘You take it very well,’ he said admiringly. ‘I don’t think I would have been as cheerful if Uncle Bill hadn’t given me my money.
‘Was that what he was talking about when he said he’d be giving you a cheque?’
‘Yes.’
‘Much?’
‘Quite a lot.’
It was Chippendale’s turn to admire. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was a bloke who would touch easy. Did you hypnotize him?’ Jerry laughed.
‘It wasn’t a touch. My father left me a packet in trust, with Uncle Bill as a trustee. I couldn’t get it without his consent. He’s now consented.’
‘And it’s all yours?’
‘Yes.’
Then I take it we now go to the pub and you stand drinks?’ It was an attractive idea, but Jerry shook his head. ‘I’d love to, but I have a very important appointment. I’ll tell you what, suppose I give you five quid and you go and do the drinking for both of us.’
‘Five quid!’
‘I should have said ten. Will that be all right?’ Chippendale removed any doubts he may have had. He said it would be more than all right. In an impassioned speech of acceptance he described Jerry as one of Nature’s noblemen.
How long his eulogy would have continued one cannot say, for it was interrupted at an early stage by the entrance of a girl in maid’s costume.
‘Mr Chippendale, Mr Scrope wants you in the study.’
‘Any idea what for?’
‘It’s something to do with Mr Simms.’
‘I thought it might be.’ Chippendale turned to Jerry. ‘I may have to call on you as a witness, chum. Where’ll you be?’
‘Somewhere by the main gate.’
‘Right. I probably won’t need you, but it’s as well to know.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1
Barney, as she returned from the scene of her waterside activities, was filled with the glow which comes from work well done. If, mingled with a pardonable self-satisfaction, there was a pang of womanly pity for the victim of those activities, it was only slight, for a man, she reasoned, who joins the police force must be aware that he is going to get new experiences and that these cannot all be agreeable. And, after all, a wet constable can soon be converted into a dry constable. Time the great healer, she felt, would see to it that Officer Simms would ere long be himself again. It only needed some brisk work with bath towels.
For the most part it was on the intelligent workings of Providence that she mused. As a girl at a fashionable New York seminary it had often been a source of regret to her that she was not petite and slender like so many of her schoolmates, but now she realized that Providence in fashioning her on more substantial lines had known what it was about. Those fellow students might have looked like bantamweight fairy princesses, but would they have been able to push a two hundred pound constable into a brook? They would not have so much as stirred him from his base. It would have been as if a butterfly had alighted between his shoulder blades. But thanks to her impressive physique, when she herself had applied the pressure, he had flown through the air like something shot from a gun. There are compensations for being the large or king size.
The inner glow increased as her thoughts turned to Crispin. Attracted to him at their first meeting by the fact that he was so unlike her first husband, in the days that had passed she had found that affection turning to something deeper. What in the beginning had been a mere impulse to stroke his head had grown into a fixed determination to take him for better or for worse and spend the remainder of her life with him. England was full of people who would have ridiculed the possibility of anyone falling in love with Crispin Scrope, the firm that did the repairs about the place heading the list, but she had managed it.
She had reached the front door and was about to go in, when he came out. He had changed his mind about lying down, reflection telling him that if he did lie down he would merely toss and turn and heave and twitch, and there was nothing to be gained by behaving like a Welsh rarebit at the height of its fever.
For a moment, eager to impart the good news, she did not observe his tragic aspect. Then it impressed itself on her, and she gave a cry of dismay.
‘Crips! What’s the matter? What is it? What’s wrong?’
To this Crispin replied succinctly, ‘Everything. Let’s walk,’ he said, and they turned down the drive towards the main gate.
Tell me,’ she said.
‘I’m in an awful fix,’ said Crispin.
Her alert mind leaped to the obvious explanation. ‘Money?’
‘Yes.’
‘A bill?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much?’
The Girl in Blue Page 15