by Cyril Hare
“Good afternoon,” said the young woman. “Sheila! Come away from him! I’m so sorry, Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop. I’m afraid she is rather a nuisance. Rufus is quite—Sheila! Come to heel!”
“Come along, Fritz! It’s only that she knows he’s frightened of her, you know. Of course, she’s really—I’m so sorry, Mary, I shall have to ask you to take her away. I shouldn’t have brought him with me, only he does miss his walkie-walks on Sundays, don’t you, darling?”
Rather sulkily, Mary grabbed the bitch by the scruff of her neck and dragged her indoors. Fritz, relieved of his fears, sat down and began to scratch himself. His mistress bent down to reprove him and then looked up to see Anne for the first time.
“Oh!” she said. “I must apologize. I suppose you’ve come to buy something and I’ve interrupted the deal. I didn’t see you were here.”
Face to face with the object of her coming to Lincolnshire, Anne found herself completely tongue-tied. Fortunately Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop was evidently quite accustomed to finding younger women speechless in her presence, and proceeded to put her at her ease by doing all the talking herself.
“Fond of dogs?” she inquired, as she led the way towards where the red setter was barking a welcome in the distance. “But of course you are! Every nice person is, I think. Well”—she looked over her shoulder at Mary, who was following in their wake—“Mary’s a very nice girl, though she can’t always pay her rent, and I’m out to help her all I can. All the same, don’t pay what she asks. You can always beat her down half a guinea or so! But don’t tell her I said so! Well, Rufus, my pet! Here’s your old missus come to see you! How’s the poor old fellow! There’s a poor mannie, then!” and she broke into a flood of the infantile endearments which the most intelligent people always seem to find necessary when conversing with the friend of man.
Martin appeared from nowhere and took Anne by the arm. He led her away a few paces and whispered, “Who is this?”
“Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop,” said Anne in surprise.
Martin looked puzzled.
“Surely not,” he said.
Anne stared at him for a moment before she guessed to what he was referring. Then she began to understand, and her bewilderment grew. There was no doubt that this woman was quite different to anything that Elderson’s report had led them to expect. Without any pretence to fine airs or graces, she was obviously a woman of breeding. She was of the type that might cause some amusement in Hampstead, but in a country village she was perfectly in the picture. And nobody—least of all such keen judges of social distinctions as hotel servants—could possibly say of her that she “acted unusual for a lady.”
“There must be some mistake,” she said at last.
“This wasn’t the woman at the hotel,” said Martin positively. “It couldn’t have been.”
“Perhaps she’s quite different when she’s away from home,” Anne suggested faintly.
But a moment later Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop settled the question herself. She ended her colloquy with Rufus, dusted her skirt where his eager paws had marked it, and observed: “Well, I’m a silly old woman, I suppose, to make such a fuss about him. But I can tell you this, Mary: when you’re my age and haven’t any children of your own, you get to depend a lot on your dogs.”
So that left the son also to be explained! thought Anne. She was burning with curiosity and at a loss as to how to set about satisfying it. And all the time the precious minutes were slipping away, as Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop exchanged a few last morsels of canine gossip with Mary before leaving the Kennels. Anne would have given anything to scrape acquaintance with her, and had not the least idea how it should be done.
It was Martin, unexpectedly, who came to the rescue. Evidently the mystery had whetted his appetite also, for he entirely abandoned his declared policy of leaving the investigation to her. At precisely the right moment, he injected into the ladies’ conversation a supremely shrewd piece of doggy knowledge—it was, he afterwards confessed to Anne, almost the only scrap of kennel-lore he possessed—and in next to no time he was one of the party. Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop was delighted with him, and demanded his name and Anne’s. The name of Dickinson evidently set her fumbling in her memory.
“Dickinson!” she repeated. “That reminds me of something—I heard the name lately—oh, of course!” She looked at Anne doubtfully. “Girls don’t wear much mourning nowadays,” she ventured.
“That was my father,” said Anne.
“Dear, dear!” She clicked her tongue in sympathy. “Well, it’s quite a good idea to buy a dog at a time like that. It takes your mind off things.”
How Martin managed it, Anne did not precisely know, but ten minutes later they were walking up the village street towards the Grange with her, having somehow escaped from the Kennels without having committed themselves to a purchase. She proved to be good company, and before they had reached the gates of the house Anne had learned a considerable amount about the agricultural depression, the vagaries of the vicar and the idiosyncrasies of the late Colonel Howard-Blenkinsop. But of Pendlebury Old Hall, not a word.
They were invited to stay for tea in the shabby, comfortable old house, which was much as Anne had pictured it, except, quite unaccountably, for a fine collection of Whistler etchings, probably worth as much as the rest of the contents put together. After tea they were taken out to admire what little a hot summer had left of the herbaceous border. At this point, Anne felt that they were on sufficiently good terms for her to take the plunge.
“Excuse my asking you, Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop,” she said, “but were you ever at Pendlebury?”
“Where did you say, my dear? Pembury? Where’s that?”
“No—Pendlebury. I mean Pendlebury Old Hall. It used to be in our family, but it’s an hotel now. It’s where my father—died.”
“Oh, dear me, no! What makes you think that?”
“Well, you may think it very odd of me to ask, but you see, your name and address are in the visitor’s book there.”
“God bless my soul! My name? Are you quite sure?”
“Oh, yes; there’s no doubt about it.”
“But this is most extraordinary! When am I supposed to have stayed there?”
“About the beginning of this month—for a fortnight. You and a young man who was supposed to be your son.”
“A young man!” Her face went purple. For a moment Anne thought she would have a fit. Then suddenly she cried: “A fortnight! The beginning of this month! Oh, my stars! But this is rich!”
And Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop, throwing back her head, let out peal upon peal of laughter.
“The impertinence!” she exclaimed when she could speak again. “For sheer, cool impertinence! Oh, my dear,” she went on, wiping her eyes with a man’s-sized silk handkerchief, “how I wish now I hadn’t quarrelled with the vicar! How he would have enjoyed it!”
She stuffed the handkerchief back into the pocket of the sensible coat, and said soberly: “Well, I’ll be blowed! Now come indoors, both of you. You must have seen quite enough of the garden. I’ll give you both a glass of sherry before you go, and tell you all about it.”
* * *
“There’s not much to tell, really,” she said, when the sherry had been poured out. “And if you didn’t know her, you wouldn’t see the joke. That’s why I regret the vicar so. But I must tell somebody. You see, I had a cook.”
“Do you mean to say that your cook stayed at Pendlebury under your name?” said Anne.
Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop nodded.
“That’s all,” she said. “It sounds very bald, put like that, doesn’t it? But if you could only have seen her! Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop, indeed! Really, I’m very cross about it. It’s just as well she isn’t here to get a bit of my mind. But”—she began to laugh again—“she was a character! I can just see her flaunting it in an hotel in her best clothes—old clothes of mine, incidentally! She always gave herself such tremendous airs, though I will say she was a good cook.”
She sighed a tribute to the departed.
“When did she leave you?” Anne asked.
“Why, only a week ago, as soon as she came back from her holiday. It was really a most extraordinary—but I’m telling this very badly. Let me start at the beginning.”
But instead of starting at the beginning, Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop suddenly looked narrowly at her guests and said: “Really, this is a very odd situation! Why should I tell you all this? What business is it of yours?”
“Please, Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop,” said Anne. “Please tell us. It really is a matter of importance to us, though it would take much too long to explain.”
“We’ve come here the whole way from London simply to ask you about this entry in the hotel books,” Martin put in.
“What? I thought you came here to look at Mary’s dogs!”
Martin shook his head.
“Simply a blind. I don’t know much about them, and Anne here hates the sight of them.”
Anne, who saw her hostess’s brow darken ominously, hastily interjected: “Oh, that’s not true, Martin. You know I simply fell in love with poor Rufus!”
“I really don’t know whether I’m standing on my head or my heels,” said Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop. “What is all this about?”
“I can tell you this much,” said Martin. “There’s a great deal of money involved.”
“Money? You don’t mean Mrs. March’s money, do you?”
“Mrs. Who?”
“Mrs. March—my cook. Of course, I forgot, you don’t know her.”
“Golly!” said Martin.
Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop looked at him with an expression so dubious that Anne felt it was time for her to intervene.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but you really must tell us all about this Mrs. March. It seems awful cheek on our part, I know, but it is most frightfully important to us. We are—we’re quite respectable people, honestly, but we’re in a great difficulty and you are the only person who can help us.”
Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop looked her up and down. Then: “Help yourselves to some more sherry,” she said. “You both look as if you needed it. I don’t know what all this is about, but if you can take Mrs. March’s money away, perhaps she’ll come back as my cook again and that will be something. Now, what do you want to know?”
“Everything,” said Martin, gulping his sherry.
“Well, then, Mrs. March has been my cook for the last ten years—ever since her husband died, in fact.”
“Oh! Then March was her husband’s name?” asked Anne.
“Certainly. He was a local man, a builder in a small way. There are a lot of Marches in these parts, you know.”
“I see,” said Anne disappointedly. “Then she wasn’t . . .”
“You don’t know her maiden name, I suppose?” Martin asked.
“Good gracious! Do you children want to go back into all that ancient history? She was a March too—she married her cousin.”
Anne breathed again. “Please go on,” she said.
“She had one son, who lived with her. She was devoted to him, but he was a little—you know, not quite right in the head. I used to give him odd jobs on the farm to do, but he was really not worth his keep. Doctors can say what they like, but cousins ought not to marry. Dogs are different, of course.”
“Excuse me, but are you quite sure he was a child of the marriage?” Martin asked.
“Really, what a question! Certainly he was. She and her husband were always—And anyhow, Philip is a March all over, and the image of his father to look at.”
“But there was another son, wasn’t there?” Martin persisted.
“Now what on earth made you say that? I really didn’t expect people from London to come down here and rake up our village scandals. It isn’t even a village scandal, for that matter. The Marches kept very quiet about it and nobody here knew anything about it, except the vicar, and he very properly told me when I proposed taking her into my service. The child wasn’t born here, you know. Her parents had moved to Markshire, and then when this thing happened they sent her to live with her uncle and aunt because she couldn’t face the people there any more. You know what they are like in villages, among the respectable classes. Then, later on, she married Fred March, who was a good deal older than she was, and a very good wife she made him.”
“But the child?” Anne asked. “What became of him?”
“He was brought up somewhere—I never asked her any questions about it, though she knew I knew about him. The father paid something for his maintenance, and I rather fancy that old Fred, who was a broad-minded sort of man, contributed a little too. She used to go and see him sometimes, and I do know that in later life he caused her a lot of anxiety with his wild ways. That didn’t prevent her making a terrible to-do when he died, though.”
There was a pause, in which Anne heard herself echoing stupidly, “When he died?”
“Yes. About six months ago. I gave her two days off to go to the funeral, I remember. It was very inconvenient, because I had arranged a dinner-party just then.”
Feeling a little dazed, Anne reached for her handbag.
“Thank you very much,” she contrived to say. “I really think that is all we wanted to know.”
“Wait a bit, though!” Martin broke in. “You haven’t told us, why did Mrs. March leave you?”
“I should have told you a quarter of an hour ago, if you hadn’t kept on interrupting,” answered Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop tartly. “She left because she had come into money. No notice—she even offered to pay me a month’s wages. Me! Well, perhaps it wasn’t quite as ridiculous as it sounds. I dare say she is a richer woman now than I am, though it was difficult to make head or tail of what she was saying.”
“You mean, the money seemed to come as a surprise to her?” Martin suggested.
“A surprise? For a cook when she inherits a fortune? Think, my boy, think! I never saw a woman more flabbergasted in my life. It was a bit of a shock for me too, as you can imagine. Of course, she was always a bit better off than most women of her class. Old Fred didn’t leave her penniless, and she used to give herself airs about it. But I think that most of that money went on her holidays. She had a fortnight every year, and used to take Philip away with her.”
“Yes,” said Anne. “You are reputed to have stayed at Pendlebury several years running.”
“Tchah!” snorted Mrs. Howard-Blenkinsop. “Don’t remind me of it! I suppose it tickled the old ruffian to go back there and pass as a lady, where she had been—But that reminds me. Of course! Pendlebury! Now I remember! My dear girl, why didn’t you tell me before? It was at Pendlebury that—That’s why I recognized your name. I had read about it in The Times, just a short paragraph, you know, it made no particular impression on me, and then when Mrs. March came back, in addition to all the excitement about her legacy—the lawyer’s letter was waiting for her when she returned—she had some fantastic rigmarole that I couldn’t fathom, which seemed to have something to do with it.”
“Do please try to remember what it was,” Anne urged her.
“Let me think, now. You know when you are suddenly losing a cook who has been with you ten years, you’re in no state to pay much attention to anything else. . . . Yes—I think I’ve got it. It was something to the effect that an old friend—only she didn’t put it quite like that, I forget the expression—an old friend had been staying in the same place, and she had never known it, he was so changed. And then he had killed himself, and she had been at his funeral, and now she had all this money—it was an inextricable jumble, you know, what one might expect from an uneducated woman. But that was the gist of it. Of course, I didn’t understand then that it was he who had left her all this money. . . .”
She looked inquiringly at Martin and Anne, but they kept their own counsel.
“Ah, well!” she said at last. “If you do manage to upset the will, or whatever it is that you’re after, it will be a consolation to me to have
Mrs. March back, even if she did behave so badly on her holidays!”
After which, there was clearly nothing to be done but to thank her for her forbearance and drive back to London.
* * *
“Well,” said Martin, as they got into the car, “that disposes of Fannyanny, anyway.”
“Yes,” said Anne. “And of Richard too. We seem to be getting through our suspects pretty quick.”
“Parsons, Vanning, and Carstairs left. I wonder whether old Steve will have brought home the bacon from Brighton?”
“The Carstairs people seemed the most innocent of the lot, so far as I could gather. But don’t forget, we haven’t really disposed of the Joneses yet.”
“Oh, them! They were nothing but a couple out on the—”
“Shut up!”
Chapter Thirteen
Sunday at the Seaside
Sunday, August 27th
Stephen walked out of Brighton station among a throng of holiday makers. He allowed them to carry him with them in the direction of the front. The beach was a mass of warm, untidy humanity, the sea scarcely audible above the clamour of thousands of chattering, laughing, screaming voices. To a philanthropist the spectacle would have been a pleasing one. It made Stephen feel slightly sick. He was reminded of pictures he had seen of a colony of nesting gannets. The same ridiculous herding instinct, the same insensate noise, the same abominable mess that would be left behind them when they were gone. The only difference was that their droppings were newspapers and cigarette cartons, and in that respect the advantage seemed to him all on the side of the birds. Guano was of some use, at all events. . . .
He remained for some time staring at the crowds. He told himself more than once that he was wasting his time—that he had not come down there to watch a crowd of fools enjoying themselves. None the less, a full quarter of an hour had gone by before he could bring himself to leave the front, and when he did so he walked away with lagging footsteps. He felt a very decided reluctance towards his task, not that he had any particular qualms at invading the privacy of strangers, but simply because he felt morally certain that this particular line of inquiry would prove fruitless. But it obviously had to be investigated, and his one hope now was that Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs would prove to be at home and amenable to his blandishments. Otherwise he might find himself faced with the necessity of spending a night away from home, and he grudged the expense.