“If either of those two left the door open, it was intentional,” Colin said. “They wanted you—or someone—to do just what you did.”
“They couldn’t have wanted that.”
“I admit I can’t see why they should.”
“So what you mean is, you don’t believe me. You don’t believe the door was open at all. You probably think I’m in cahoots with those two in some mysterious scheme to do you down. Perhaps you even think I’d a key to the door and could come and go as I liked.”
They had just reached the turning into the main road. Colin was concentrating on the traffic streaming past, waiting for the moment when he could cut across it. The rain was falling heavily now and he had had to set the windscreen wipers going. As they rocked backwards and forwards against the dazzle of the lights flashing by, his eyes had narrowed and his forehead set into a hard frown.
“You don’t believe me,” Ginny repeated softly.
He sent the car forward and turned it towards London. “Ginny, your mother told me you took her keys,” he said. “I asked her what keys and she said her car keys. But was that really all? She was very angry with you, very upset. It wasn’t because you’d found the key to Greer’s house in her handbag, was it?”
“No,” she answered with a sigh, “that was for a quite simple reason. She wanted me to stay with her. She always wants me to stay with her. And the trouble is, I—I can’t bear very much of it. If you think that’s heartless, I can’t help it. Something in me goes completely to pieces if I see too much of her. And yet I love her… No, I only took the car keys.”
“Did you know she’d been hurt?”
“Hurt?” There was startled alarm in her voice.
“Yes,” Colin said, “she said she’d had a fall. It looked to me more as if someone had raked their nails down the side of her face. Could that have been her dear friend Beryl?”
“Oh God!” She was staring at him. “No, I didn’t see… But I remember she had her handkerchief to her face when she came in. And she was crying.”
“Did she tell you about a friend who’d died?”
“No. What friend?”
“She didn’t say who it was. But she said you were fond of him too.”
“I—I don’t know who it could be,” she said. “It just might not be anybody. I mean, sometimes it’s really all in the past. My father. Harry Winter. Colin, do you think we ought to turn back?”
“I don’t think she was badly hurt, if that’s what you mean.”
“Are you sure?”
“About that, yes. But listen, Ginny, I’m also sure she’s deep in with Greer over this picture affair and that she must have been from the start. So I’m not too happy about saying she’s all right. It’s something I think we ought to talk over before we go much farther with what we’re doing now.”
She let her head droop, resting it on her hand.
“I’ve been getting more and more afraid of it,” she said listlessly, “although in a way I can’t really believe it. Because she isn’t like that. I mean, she isn’t calculating or greedy. Quite the reverse. I’m a monster of avarice compared with her.”
“Suppose she’d fallen in love with a calculating, greedy man, or suppose Greer used her without her quite understanding how,” Colin suggested.
“I suppose that could happen.”
“I’ll tell you something I found out this afternoon, Ginny. Greer and that man of his are the people who held me up on the road from Ardachoil.”
She lifted her head quickly. “How do you know?”
“I suddenly recognized the man, that’s all. I couldn’t possibly prove it. All the same, it’s something I’m quite sure of.”
“And you think Mother’s the person who told them about the picture?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “She isn’t a person who knows about pictures, is she?”
Ginny gave a short laugh. “No.”
“And she hasn’t been to Ardachoil or seen any of the aunts for years.”
“No.”
“So I can’t really understand where she fits in. Yet she has to be the link somehow, or the coincidence of the two of you being on the spot where the sale was to happen is a bit too much to swallow.”
“That sale,” Ginny said, “in market overt—it was all arranged, wasn’t it?”
“As I see it,” Colin replied, “what happened was this. Greer somehow or other discovered the value of the picture. Let’s skip just how he did it and what it is. The aunts may know something that’ll help to clear that up. Anyway, he somehow organized things so that they were persuaded to send it to Edinburgh to be cleaned. And he knew just when I was going to take it and he lay in wait for me and stole it. Then he had the strength of mind to do nothing for over two years. I suppose he was waiting all the time for the right opportunity to crop up. And the right opportunity was Mrs. Sibbald, an old woman living alone in a houseful of junk that was going to be sold off cheap at the local saleroom by your friend Joe Lake.”
Ginny opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, pressing her lips tightly together.
Colin went on, “Think how simple it must have been for the Lakes to add the picture to one of the lots in the saleroom and say it came from Mrs. Sibbald’s attic. It need never have been in the house at all. Her nephew wouldn’t have known if it had been or not. Then all they had to do was have it on show for a few days where the public could get in to see it and then sell it to Greer at their regular Thursday auction. And that would be a perfect sale in market overt. The picture would become legally Greer’s and he could go ahead very innocently having it examined by experts and recognized for whatever it really is. Then he could put it up for sale at Sotheby’s and get some enormous price for it, much higher than if he’d sold it under the counter to some shady collector. I think that was the whole object of the plan—to be able to sell it again quite openly and get the sort of price valuable pictures do fetch nowadays.”
Ginny frowned at the rain-washed windscreen and the dully gleaming wet road.
“If you’re right, d’you realize something, Colin? —the picture must be simply terrifically valuable. I mean, for all this scheming to have been worth while.”
“I know,” he said.
“And there it hung all those years at Ardachoil, nobody knowing a thing about it!”
“And there it hung this evening in Greer’s house, quite a lot of people knowing all about it,” he said, “and yet the door was open.”
“Yes, I see that’s odd,” said Ginny.
A little while later she took over the driving again. She knew the labyrinth of London as well as she knew the lanes around Oldersfield. From time to time Colin looked out through the rear window, thinking that the lights of some particular car were remaining close to them suspiciously long, but each time the car sooner or later turned off the road behind them, or overtook them and vanished ahead.
Ginny told him again not to worry about pursuit.
“But the sooner we get to Ardachoil the better,” she said. “Once your aunts have the picture back I don’t see what Greer can really do about it, quite apart from the law about market overt being different there. Don’t you agree?”
As Colin did not answer at once, she repeated, “Don’t you agree? Possession, I mean, being nine tenths of the law.”
“I was just wondering,” he said, “why you’re so keen the aunts should have the picture back.”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” she said. “It’s theirs.”
“But I’ve gathered you aren’t exactly fond of them.”
“What’s that got to do with it? Anyway, I may be fonder than I sound. I’ll tell you more about that sometime.”
“I wish you could tell me more about Greer’s house,” he said. “That open door…”
It worried him more than anything else that had happened that evening, unless it was the problem of what had become of the man who had followed them about London in the afternoon. Where
had he gone from the station if he hadn’t gone to Hopewood? Had he gone to see the Lakes? Had Greer been waiting for him there? Had there been a meeting of the conspirators in the office behind the saleroom, from which Harriet for some reason, such as a sudden row blowing up between her and Beryl, had been sent away?
That might be the real explanation of Harriet’s tears and the scratches on her face. But it didn’t explain the open door.
Ginny went on driving until they had left Stevenage behind and they decided to stop somewhere for a meal. They stopped at a lorry drivers’ café and had fish and chips, thick bread and butter, and tea. Afraid of leaving the picture in the car, they took it into the café with them and propped it against the leg of their table. From time to time they took puzzled looks at the faded face, shadowed by the plumed hat, the pearl ear-rings, the folded hands.
“Don’t you really know anything about her?” Ginny asked. “Haven’t you any family legends about some ancestor around that time, a Royalist or a Roundhead, whichever your lot were?”
He shook his head. “I can trace my family back reliably to my four grandparents and I know a certain amount about two or three of my great-grandparents and there I stick.”
“I like legends,” Ginny said dreamily. “There’s the one I grew up on about Mother’s childhood. Everyone was beautiful, everyone was kind, everyone was rich. And generous too, which must have been so pleasant. Actually her father was rector in a Somerset village and he can’t have been as kind and generous as all that, or we’d have seen a bit more of him. I can just remember him coming to visit us once in London, a fat, solemn little man who sat there shaking his head and muttering to himself, then suddenly he pushed a bag of sweets into my hand and got up and bolted. I think it stuck in my mind chiefly because Mother had one of her crying spells after it, which went on for the rest of the day.”
“Didn’t he ever come again?” Colin asked.
“Not that I remember. But there must have been just a little truth in her view of what things were like once upon a time because she’s gone on expecting the same pattern to be repeated wherever else she’s been. And the odd thing is, she keeps finding it. Take your aunts. Whatever had she in common with any of them? And yet they practically gave her and me a second home for all those years. No, not a second home —our only one, really, because when we weren’t there we were nearly always on the move. Mother would go for a year or so as a housekeeper to someone who didn’t mind her having a child along with her. Then she’d have a spell in an office, either having a love-affair with her boss or getting bored because there wasn’t a chance of one. Then she had a spell of trying to get on to the stage, but that didn’t last very long. Really the only thing that lasted was Ardachoil…”
She picked up her tea-cup. Folding her hands round it and putting her elbows on the table, she went on in a subdued voice, “The queer thing is, you know, I could have sworn Mother was really grateful for that. I could have sworn she really loved those women, even if she was hurt and offended when they didn’t want us any more. I thought she understood they’d done something for me that’s made an enormous difference to the whole of my life and I thought that was the sort of thing she’d remember. And yet she went and did—this to them!” She gestured at the picture propped against the table leg.
“So that’s why you’re working so hard to see the Decayed Gentlewoman home again,” Colin said.
“Yes, of course. I can’t stand what I’ve found out in the last few days, so first the picture’s going back and then I—I’ll try to sort things out at home, find out what really happened, what Mother’s mixed up in and if I can get her out of it, and then I…” She frowned and did not finish the sentence. Looking at her empty tea-cup, she said, “I think I want some more tea.”
Colin looked round, failed to catch the eye of the waitress, turned back to Ginny and said, “If I were you, I shouldn’t go back.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“No.”
“You would,” she said.
“Don’t go, Ginny,” he said. “Keep out of it. Please.”
“Why?”
“You’ve upset their plans and they’re dangerous people.”
“But while Mother’s there—”
“Stop worrying about your mother. Lead your own life.”
“Oh, Colin, darling—”
“And don’t call me darling!”
“No, I know I shouldn’t,” she agreed. “Yet I suppose it’s a word that meant something once—something worth saying. It’s a pity, the way such a lot of things get spoilt. I was going to say…” Her hand touched his, then she drew it away. “I forget what I was going to say. And I don’t think I want any more tea after all. Shall we get on?”
She led the way to the door.
Driving on northwards, they found less traffic on the road and presently the rain stopped and a watery moon appeared between clouds. The tree-tops were dark and still. With Colin driving again, Ginny soon fell asleep, or if not quite asleep, at least into a silent stupor of fatigue, lolling in her seat, propping her head with her arm.
They made good time through Huntingdon, Grantham, Doncaster. At Scotch Corner Colin took the road to the west, making for Glasgow. It was early morning when they crossed the Border.
* * *
CHAPTER TEN
« ^ »
They saw the remains of snow on the hills. It lay here and there in gleaming patches on the blackish brown of the dry heather, touched with a rosy sparkle by the early sunshine. The sky was blue and clear. But when Ginny and Colin got out of the car to have a quick cup of tea, cold stung their faces. It made Ginny jerk the collar of her sheepskin jacket up round her ears. She was still very pale and there were violet smudges under her eyes, but she had lost the look of extreme tension that she had had all the evening before. She seemed to feel that the worst of the job was over.
Colin was not at all sure of this.
They waited until they reached Glasgow to have a real breakfast, then made it a slow and splendid affair in a hotel, with fruit juice, porridge, bacon and eggs, large quantities of toast and marmalade, and an extra pot of coffee. Even so, when they had finished, Colin felt that he could easily go through the meal all over again. After breakfast Ginny said that she must do some shopping and disappeared into a Marks and Spencer’s. While she was gone, Colin walked up and down to stretch his legs after the night’s driving, but always staying near enough to the car to keep an eye on the picture.
He tried to think of a suitable story to tell when they got to Ardachoil. He knew that it would have to be a long and detailed story. The aunts liked details. They liked exactness. They liked as little as possible left to the imagination. Imagination, after all, was not their strong point. Colin smiled, thinking of them with amused but deep affection. He was really far more attached to them than he was to his parents, who were pleasant, much-travelled people, with whom he was on very good terms, but who had nearly always been too far away to be quite real to him. Even now they were far away. After most of a lifetime in the tropics, the climate of the British Isles had not recommended itself to them and they had settled, on his father’s retirement, in Jamaica.
Walking up and down, he tried to decide how much to tell the aunts about Ginny’s mother. For Ginny’s sake, he wanted to say as little as possible. Yet he had to find out from them what their quarrel with Harriet had been about and how, in spite of her not having been to see them for years, she had known that the picture was to be taken to Edinburgh. He had to know through whom she had been receiving her news of what was happening at Ardachoil.
For a moment he wondered if it was conceivable that it was one of the aunts themselves. But that was so totally unlikely that he grinned. It would have had to be all three of them or none. They always acted together in almost uncanny harmony.
Ginny appeared just then at his elbow. She had stowed her parcels into a new plastic zip-bag.
“Do you know you’ve a rather sinister smi
le, Colin?” she said. “Most of the time you look so easy-going and good-tempered and then one catches sight of you when you’ve forgotten one’s around and one thinks, ‘My God, what’s really going on inside him?’ ”
He laughed as they got into the car.
“I hadn’t a sinister thought in my head.”
“That’s all the worse. It means you don’t even know what’s going on there and it’ll come bursting out one day when you least expect it.”
They had about another hundred miles to go. Ginny drove again for a time through Dumbarton and Helensburgh and northwards up the side of Loch Long. But beyond Arrochar, where the higher mountains came closer, she told Colin that she could not keep her eyes off them and that he had better take over again.
As he drove on, she treated him to an exclamatory travelogue of wonder at the rich sunny blue of Loch Fyne with the silver slopes of snow beyond it, the glitter of some thread of water weaving down over black rock, the massed daffodils in cottage gardens.
“I needn’t remind you,” Colin said when she asked with a sigh why one ever went abroad, “that the weather isn’t always like this.”
“But when it is, is there anywhere in the world like it?”
“Probably not.”
They passed Inverary and Lochgilphead and continued north along the main road to Oban, with a sea of glittering blue on their left. It was midafternoon when the car reached the turning that led to Ardachoil. Five minutes before that they had come to the spot where Colin had been held up. He had pointed it out to Ginny.
“Well, if you see a body lying in the middle of the road this time,” she said, “mind you drive slap over it and keep on going.”
Colin gave the little grin that Ginny had called sinister. He did not admit to her that for a few miles before they reached the place he had been uneasily on the alert, unnaturally watchful of any car that passed or anyone standing by the roadside. Even the sudden rising of a lapwing out of the heather made his muscles tense. He was not, of course, expecting a repetition of what had happened before. In fact, he did not know what he was expecting. Just trouble of some kind. Some time. Somewhere.
The Decayed Gentlewoman Page 11
