The Decayed Gentlewoman

by E. X. Ferrars

  “You do want to do something, do you—even if she isn’t a Van Dyke?”

  “You bet I do!”

  “Well, the only thing then is to consult a lawyer.”

  He agreed. “In London, I suppose. That means I’ll have to stay on over the week-end.”

  “Can you do that?” Ginny asked. “Haven’t you got to give lectures or something?”

  “No, the term’s finished.”

  He would, however, have to telephone Bob Forsythe later in the day and ask him to take the culture labelled two out of the refrigerator and put it in fixative.

  Unluckily, thinking of Bob Forsythe was a reminder of John Clitheroe, whose name Colin had not been able to find in his University Diary. Oughtn’t he to question Ginny about him?

  But Ginny had her dreaming look again, and even if all it meant was that she was on the trail of an entirely imaginary Van Dyke of fabulous value, it lit her face from within with a veiled sort of glow, which made Colin’s heart suddenly lurch. He would have hated to say anything that would take that look from her face.

  They drove back to Oldersfield presently, discussing when to go to see the Sibbalds. Immediately, Ginny said. But when they reached the café, a woman who was talking to a Miss Heavens as they came in, turned, saw Colin, gave a shriek, ran to meet him and wound her arms round his neck in a strangling, highly scented embrace. When he recovered from it, he learnt that it was Ginny’s mother.

  She was very much as Colin remembered her, a vigorous hearty-looking woman, with big breasts straining at a black woollen jumper, well-corseted hips under a tight black-and-white tweed skirt, several glittering strings of crystal beads round a short, plump neck, a pair of very solid calves, and good ankles.

  She looked to him no older than she had when he was a boy. She had seemed quite middle-aged then, yet middle-aged was all that she was now. If a few more grey hairs had appeared among the brown ones, or lines on her round, vague, amiable face, he was not aware of them.

  The only thing that struck him as different from his memory of her, and it struck him at once, even before she swept him and Ginny downstairs to her basement sitting-room, was that this was a very nervous woman, whose excited, chattering welcome covered extreme tension. He did not know if it was a chronic nervousness, which he had been too young to notice before, or the result of something that was weighing badly on her mind at the moment. Whichever it was, while he was doing his best to answer her questions about his family and himself, he could tell from the fixity of her gaze and the animation with which she kept nodding her head, that she was taking in hardly a word of what he was saying.

  Ginny had become almost completely silent since meeting her mother. Wandering about the room, she made a rather absent-minded effort at tidying up the shoes, stockings, blouses, scarves, and jewellery that had erupted out of Harriet Winter’s suitcases.

  At last she interrupted, “Mother, how did you manage to recognize Colin so quickly? Who told you he was here?” Harriet stopped in mid-sentence. She stubbed out the cigarette that she had been smoking in gasping little puffs, reached for another and said, “Beryl popped in for a moment. She saw my taxi and came round… Darling, do please leave my things alone!” Her voice went shrill. “I’ll unpack properly presently. I just opened up my cases to find the Heavens’ presents for them. I got them some enchanting embroidered doo-dahs that they can use as antimacassars or table-runners or just put away in a drawer and treasure, if they want to—actually, I couldn’t think what on earth to bring them, but of course one has to bring something. And I’ve brought you something too. If you’ll just leave things for the present, I’ll dig it out by and by.”

  Ginny dropped a clanking charm bracelet back into one of the suitcases and closed the lid on it. “Did Beryl tell you what Colin’s doing here?”

  “She may have, darling. Yes, of course she did. Something about that picture that was stolen turning up here. Perfectly amazing, isn’t it? I mean, that it should have turned up here, of all places? And fancy your remembering it. But I’m afraid I didn’t listen to Beryl very carefully. She seemed very angry about something, while I was thinking how wonderful to see Colin again and hear all about darling Dolly. She was always such a pet. I loved her. To tell you the truth, Colin, Clara and Phyllis always scared the lights out of me, and I’m sure they did Dolly too. I always wished I could get her away from them. Not that Clara and Phyllis weren’t sweet too, but such prim, puritanical, Scotch old maids—pardon me, Scottish!—and Dolly was meant to be something quite different. She’d a love of life, she was a real sport. We’d never have made friends, otherwise, of course. Poor, dear, old Dolly, how I’d love to see her again.”

  “Mother,” said Ginny, seizing a moment when Harriet paused to puff at her cigarette, “have you ever heard anything hereabouts about a man called Greer?”

  “Greer? I don’t think so, darling. Colin, now tell me—”

  “Not even from Beryl just now?”

  “Oh, from Beryl? I may have. Yes, I believe I did. I think she did just mention him. Or it may have been someone else. I really wasn’t paying attention. I was trying to tell her a little about my marvellous trip, but as usual she was only thinking about her own affairs. And that’s all you seem to be thinking about too.” Harriet’s face went mournfully reproachful. “You haven’t asked a single question yet about how I enjoyed myself, or even what the weather was like, or whether I met any nice people. And as a matter of fact, I did. The man in charge of us was one of the most charming people I’ve met for a very long time. He was truly cultured, he knew a tremendous amount about all the buildings and pictures, yet he wasn’t at all solemn about them, he was a really cheery soul, and he liked me and he said he’d like to come to Oldersfield sometime. But you just aren’t interested.” With a smile, Ginny sat down beside her mother and took her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am. Go on and tell me about all the other nice people.”

  Harriet leaned towards Ginny. For a moment she rested her cheek against her shoulder.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m glad to be home, that’s the main thing. I’d a wonderful time, but still it’s nice to be home. All the same, I’m sure he really liked me, it wasn’t just a case of doing his job.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t.”

  Harriet gave an unexpectedly hard laugh. Sitting up again, yawning, she reached for another cigarette.

  “Don’t overdo it,” she said. “I know what you’re really thinking—and Colin too. Well, never mind. Nobody wants to listen to travellers’ tales. But I did enjoy myself.”

  “I want to hear it all,” Ginny said, “only tell me something first, because Colin has to go back to London. Have you ever heard of something called market overt?”

  “Oh, darlings, Colin isn’t going back to London—what nonsense!” cried Harriet. “He’s staying the week-end—of course he is. By the way, where are you staying, Colin?”

  “At the Black Swan,” he told her. “But I really have got to go back—”

  “Impossible, utterly impossible—I won’t let you go! I haven’t asked you a tenth of the things I want to know. And I haven’t even started to give you all the messages I want you to take back to Dolly. How I’d love to see the old girl again. And she—she might be glad to see me. After all this time, I mean.” Her voice wobbled uncertainly. “I suppose you couldn’t fix it? Couldn’t you persuade her to come and stay with you in London?”

  “Colin doesn’t live in London,” Ginny said. “He lives in Edinburgh.”

  “Oh,” said Harriet. “Yes, I believe I heard that somewhere. My poor old memory.”

  “But we have to go to London to see the people Joe bought the picture from,” Ginny went on. “Then we want to see a lawyer about market overt.”

  “Market overt? What the hell is this market overt you keep talking about?”

  “That’s just what we want to know,” said Ginny.

  “Anyway, you won’t be able to see
a lawyer till Monday morning.”

  Ginny nodded. “That’s true, of course.”

  “Oh yes, it’s true, but the trouble is, now I’m home, you simply can’t get away fast enough,” said Harriet bitterly. “All the way home I’ve been thinking for once we’ll have a few days together. But first it’s Colin who has to go away at once, then you let on you’re going away too… Oh well.”

  The result was that Colin stayed another night at the Black Swan.

  In the evening he asked Ginny and her mother to dinner there. Harriet arrived in a sleeveless dress of black and gold jersey, Ginny was in the tweed skirt and red jumper that she had worn all day. The presence of her mother seemed completely to have changed her. She had become tired-eyed and silent and was holding herself in all the time.

  It roused an odd protectiveness in Colin. He wanted her to stand up openly to her chattering fool of a mother and yet he was moved by the fact that she would not. After two martinis Harriet had lost all desire to hear about her old friend Dolly, or about Colin, or about what Ginny had been doing while she was away. She only wanted to take them step by step through her holiday in Spain, with special attention paid to every attractive man she had met during the fortnight.

  When they were sitting over coffee in the lounge, Joe and Beryl Lake came in. They showed great surprise at finding the Winters there. They themselves had just dropped in, they said, for a quiet drink. Colin was not in the least convinced. He was sure that they had come looking for him and Ginny.

  “Tell us how things went with Greer,” Joe said, after insisting on buying drinks for everyone. Nursing a glass of brandy in both hands, he gave Colin one of his bright, evasive glances. It was like the sudden sally of a scouting force, making a swift reconnoitre of the ground before them, then darting back to cover. The cover, in this case, was Harriet. Joe seemed to feel safe continuing to look at her.

  “You did see him, didn’t you?” Beryl said.

  She was wearing a plain grey dress with an ornate collar and ear-rings of jet. The light from a lamp behind her gave the shine of copper to her dark-red hair. She was a far better-looking woman, Colin thought, than he had realized in the morning.

  “We expected you and Ginny round this morning, Mr. Lockie,” she said. “I left a message with Harriet, asking you to look in. It may not have occurred to you, but it’s of some importance to us to know what’s going to happen.”

  “Oh God, that message!” Harriet’s fingers went to the crystal beads at her neck and entangled themselves helplessly amongst them. “Darling, I’m so sorry, I don’t think I ever gave it. Meeting Colin like that after all these years, there was so much else to think about. And of course so much else besides about my trip. It was really a perfectly wonderful fortnight, everything so well organized and the most marvellous man in charge of us. I don’t think I told you—”

  “Never mind,” Beryl interrupted in her cool, sharp voice. “Mr. Lockie, please tell us what happened. The sum of a hundred and ten pounds, after all, is of some consequence to us.”

  “I’m sorry, I should have thought of it,” Colin said. “But there’s nothing much to report, beyond the fact that Greer doesn’t mean to give up the picture.”

  “Except,” Ginny said, coming suddenly to life, “that Colin agrees with me it’s the one from Ardachoil. He’s as sure of it as I am.”

  Beryl gave a dry laugh. “I find that very strange. And rather incredible. Quite incredible, to be frank. And if I may say so, it’s rather a comfort to know Mr. Greer feels the same.”

  “He doesn’t,” Ginny said. “He’s as sure as we are that he’s got hold of stolen property. But he’s found what he calls a quirk in the law which he says makes it legal for him to keep it.”

  “Forgive me if I say I’m delighted to hear it,” Beryl said.

  “Only naturally we aren’t taking his word for it,” said Ginny.

  “Oh no.” Harriet’s glass of Cointreau had been emptied very quickly. As she spoke, her face acquired a haggard solemnity. “You should never do that. Never, I mean, take people’s word for things. It’s one of the saddest things in life, I think, the way you can’t take people’s word for things. I’m a very trusting person, I expect people to believe me and I want to be able to believe them. But I know that’s wrong. It’s weak and stupid. The proper thing to do is always to get everything put down on paper. Even among friends. The thing is to go to a lawyer and get him to draw it all up properly and get it signed and everything, then you’ll know just where you are.” She gave a sad shake of her head, as if she were remembering all the occasions when she had not been guided by this wisdom. “You must go to Vickerman and Ogg on Monday, Colin. I’ll ring up and make an appointment for you myself.”

  “Who are Vickerman and Ogg?” he asked.

  “They’re my solicitors,” she answered with dignity. “And they were my father’s solicitors, and they were his father’s before him. They made an awful mess of things for me, of course, telling poor George he couldn’t divorce his wife, whatever she’d done, simply because he was living with me at the time, when all he had to do was ask for the discretion of the court. You’d think they’d have heard about that, wouldn’t you? They’re very sound people, all the same. None of my family would ever go to anyone else.”

  “All right,” Colin said, “we’ll go to Vickerman and Ogg.”

  “Yes,” she said, “you couldn’t do better. Although just sometimes, you know—” It sounded as if she had to screw up her courage to confess to a heresy. “Sometimes I think about how perhaps George and I might have married if we’d gone to a different sort of solicitor. Not that it mattered to me. I just wanted George, any way I could have him. But it would have been so much nicer for Ginny. And then, poor darling, he was killed in the bombing…” Tears filled her eyes.

  Joe laid a hand on her knee, patting it gently. “You’re tired, angel. It’s the journey. What you want is to go home and have a hot bath and a nice long sleep.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “I’m terribly tired. But I had a wonderful time in Spain. I must tell you—”

  “Mr. Lockie,” Beryl interrupted, “going to these lawyers sounds an excellent idea, if you don’t mind spending your money. But whatever you do, Joe and I would be grateful if you’d keep us informed. May I count on that?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Lake,” Colin answered, “I’ll remember.”

  “Because, like it or not, we’re involved. And as I said, a hundred and ten pounds is quite a lot of money to us.” She stood up. “But our offer to refund it stands, if it’s going to keep us out of trouble—doesn’t it, Joe?”

  “What? Oh—yes. Yes, of course.” He kissed Harriet’s cheek and stood up beside Beryl. “Good night, everyone.”

  He followed Beryl to the door. But halfway there, he turned and came back.

  “I’ve just got to say, I don’t like any of this business,” he exclaimed. “I don’t know what’s been going on, but I know I don’t like it. Stolen property! As if we’d ever have touched the damned thing if we’d thought it had that sort of smell to it. We run our show straight. There’s never been anything said against us and that means a lot to us.”

  He strode off to where Beryl was waiting for him.

  When the Lakes had gone, Harriet observed with a gloomy sort of wonder in her voice, “You know, I sometimes try to guess what Beryl thinks about when she isn’t thinking about money. She doesn’t deserve Joe. He’s got a heart of gold, whatever he looks like. I’m terribly fond of him.”

  “Well, he was right, Mother,” Ginny said. “You’re tired and you ought to be home in bed. We must go.”

  “Yes, darling. But it’s been a lovely evening, hasn’t it?” She brushed away her slowly oozing tears and smiled sweetly. “Colin, it was so good of you to ask me out as well as Ginny. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. And thank you for staying on. But on Monday you must go to see Vickerman and Ogg about this crooked business, whatever it is. I can’t say I exactly understand
it, but I’m really very worried about it. I don’t like the sound of it any better than Joe. Vickerman and Ogg will understand it, though. They’re a really good old firm. You can trust them absolutely.”

  “Yes, but tomorrow we’re going to see the Sibbalds,” Ginny said.

  “Oh, not tomorrow, darling! Wait till Monday.”

  But this time Ginny was firm. As Colin saw her and her mother home to the café, they made arrangements for meeting next day at the station.

  Halfway back to the hotel, Colin remembered that he hadn’t telephoned Bob Forsythe about taking that culture out of the refrigerator.

  The chance of being able to track Bob down at this hour of a Saturday evening was small. The only thing was to forget about it. Colin muttered an automatic curse because of the work wasted, yet for once felt almost untroubled by the thought of it. He was thinking, as he walked along the empty main street of the old town, that he understood Ginny a good deal better now that he had met her mother again. What a life she must have had, poor girl—was still having, if it came to that. And that was a disturbing thought, because it was clear that something ought to be done about it, done soon, done decisively. Before it was too late…

  * * *

  CHAPTER SIX

  « ^ »

  The Sibbalds’ house was one of a row of semi-detached houses, all exactly alike except for the colours of their doors and window frames. Even the pattern of the stained-glass panel in each front door represented the same orange sun sinking through flaming clouds into the same blue sea. When the houses had been built, the woodwork also would have been almost as uniform, a chocolate brown prevailing. But fashion had changed. The Sibbalds’ house had pink window frames, pale-blue gutters and a front door of tangerine.

  It was Mrs. Sibbald who opened the door to Colin and Ginny when they arrived, after having telephoned to ask if they might come. She was a short, muscular, cheerful-looking woman of about thirty-five, with curly black hair, red cheeks, and a strong chin. Obviously she had a liking for the same sort of colour scheme in her dress, her wallpaper, curtains, and carpets as in the paintwork outside the house. Wherever Mrs. Sibbald was, apparently, colours pale but violent mopped and mowed and screeched at one another, to her happy pride and satisfaction.