Anne Belinda: A Golden Age Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  “I told her”—Jenny dropped her voice till she could keep it fairly steady—“I told her about the money. I said—she could have half—if she didn’t come.”

  “Well? What did she say to that? Jen, you little idiot, don’t shake so!”

  “She didn’t say anything.”

  “Did she understand?”

  “I don’t know—I really don’t know. I was so dreadfully afraid she’d miss her train. I kept begging her to go. She told me she was at Haydon’s Hotel, and I kept begging her to go back there, and I’d write, or come and see her. And at last she went. But—oh, Nicko!”

  “What?”

  “John saw her.”

  “John?”

  “John Waveney.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “He told me. He said he must have her address.”

  “You didn’t give it!”

  “I had to.” Then, at his exclamation, “No, wait! It was really better than having a fuss. That’s why I’m ringing up Anne now. She won’t want to see him; and if I tell her he’s coming, she can just go off quietly to those rooms Nanna told me about. You know—we thought how suitable they were.”

  The telephone bell rang. Jenny gave a great start, and then ran round the table and took up the receiver.

  “Yes!” she said breathlessly. “Yes. Is that Haydon’s Hotel? Is Miss Anne Waveney there? Can I speak to her?”

  There was a pause. Jenny put her hand behind her, pulled up the writing chair, and sank down upon it. She felt quite suddenly as if she could not stand any longer. She wanted to hear Anne’s voice—wanted it so much that the longing made her feel giddy. But what was she going to say to Anne, with Nicko listening?

  Nicholas Marr sat on the edge of the table, his eyebrows drawn together in a black frown, his lips set hard and thin.

  “What?” said Jenny suddenly. “Oh, she must be! Are you sure?” There was a pause. “And she didn’t say where she was going? Are you quite sure she didn’t say?… Oh! Thank you!”

  She hung up the receiver and looked with bewildered eyes at Nicholas.

  “Nicko, she’s not there!”

  “Dining out?” There was more than the suspicion of a sneer in the words.

  “They say she didn’t mean to stay—she hadn’t engaged a room. They say she left directly after lunch. That would be to come down here.” Her voice trailed away into a frightened whisper. “Nicko, she brought a suitcase—I saw it in the taxi.”

  Jenny had a sudden picture of Anne expecting a welcome. The picture made her shiver with pain.

  “What infernal cheek!” said Nicholas. Then he came round to Jenny and patted her shoulder. “Look here, Jen, I won’t have you upsetting yourself like this. Anne’s made her bed, and she’s got to lie on it. Haven’t you got me and Tony?”

  She looked at him without speaking for a moment. When Nicko’s eyes softened to her like that, Jenny cared for nothing else in all the world. The picture of Anne grew dim. After a moment she looked down.

  “Nicko”—she spoke in a low, hurried voice—“Nicko, if no one knows—after a time—don’t you think—I mean couldn’t we—couldn’t we all be friends again? No, don’t say anything, Nicko—please don’t say anything yet. Don’t you think if we waited—Oh, Nicko, she is my sister!”

  “No!” said Nicholas Marr very harshly. “I won’t have her in my house—I won’t introduce her to my friends—I won’t have her with you and Tony.”

  Jenny gave a little shiver. She had known it would be no good. Nicko never altered his mind about anything. She made one last effort; but she made it without any hope:

  “Nicko, sometimes I’ve thought—John—John Waveney—he takes such an—extraordinary interest in her—if they met—if he—”

  Nicholas stared in incredulous disgust.

  “What are you thinking of?”

  Jenny got up. It wasn’t any good. There was nothing she could do for Anne.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Anne Waveney had only just caught her train. She stumbled into a crowded third-class carriage and sat down on the edge of the seat next to a billowy woman in a black coat and skirt and a bright pink jumper, very low in the neck. On her other side there was a thin little girl who tried to make room for her. The billowy woman did not try at all.

  Anne sat up very straight and did not really notice them. To a sense of shock and agony there had succeeded the sort of blank which is like a fog. In this fog impressions came and went, half realized, featureless, and dull. The train stopped at every station. Sometimes people got out, and sometimes people got in. The carriage was rather hot. The baby in the corner cried fretfully. A strong smell of bananas and peppermints hung on the air.

  Anne sat quite still on the very edge of the seat with her suitcase pressing against her knees. She was actually on the verge of sleep when the train ran into the terminus. As she stepped out on to the platform, it seemed to tilt beneath her feet, and a porter put his hand under her elbow and said, “Steady, miss.” Anne thanked him, and her giddiness passed.

  She walked towards the barrier, and set the suitcase down whilst she looked in her purse for her ticket. It was when she was standing there with the open purse in her hand that the fog suddenly lifted. She was very tired, very bruised, very cold at the heart; but the fog was gone. She looked into her purse for a moment, and then she presented her ticket, passed through the barrier, and made her way to the waiting-room.

  She walked easily and without hurry, and when she reached the waiting-room she put down her suitcase and leaned back in the corner of a brown leather-covered settee. Then she took out her purse again.

  There was exactly one shilling left in it.

  Anne looked at the shilling. It was all she had. It was tea, and supper, and bed, and bath, and breakfast. Twelve pence—one shilling.

  “What a perfect, absolute fool I’ve been!” said Anne to Anne. The hotel, the hairdresser, the taxi, underwent a startling metamorphosis. From being ordinary everyday items of expenditure, they became with dreadful suddenness Extravagance—sheer flaunting Extravagance and Vice.

  Strangely enough, it was as she looked at the shilling that Anne’s courage rose. Here was something to meet, something that challenged every scrap of pluck she possessed, something that drew a blank cheque on resource and ingenuity, something to think about that wasn’t Jenny.

  Leaning back there with her eyes shut, she began to think clearly and vigorously. She had been offered help to get a job. Anne winced away from the recollection of her own answer: “Thank you very much, but I have friends to go to.” That hurt too much. The measure of her confidence then was the measure of how much it hurt to remember that confidence now.

  “Don’t be such a fool!” she told herself. “No, you are a fool, and you’ve got to stop it—you’ve got to stop it at once. It’s your own fault you got hurt. Get hold of that—it’s your own fault. You’re always like that, and it always gets you into trouble. The idea of rushing off like that—taking Jenny by surprise! It was absolutely idiotic—idiotic!”

  The conviction that it was she who was to blame had an astonishingly healing effect. She had frightened Jenny—descended on her without warning, when she had a house-party too. It was really unforgivable. Resolutely, Anne began to blot out of her memory what Jenny had said and how Jenny had looked. Resolutely, she blamed herself, and no one but herself, for the pain at her heart: “You asked for it—you just asked for it. Don’t sit there pitying yourself. You’ve got to go somewhere—you’ve got to get a job.” For so irrational a thing is human nature that not all Anne’s resolution would bring her to the point of taking the one thing Jenny had offered her—money. She would have taken love, and shelter, and a home, and with them the half of Jenny’s inheritance; and she would never have had a thought of obligation. But neither now, nor at any other time, could she bring herself to take the money without the love. She must forget, deeply and utterly. For Jenny’s sake she must forget that Jenny had ever offered her her
lost share of their inheritance—upon terms. She pushed the thought away with all her might.

  “Learn and labour truly to get my own living.” She and Jenny had said their catechism together. Jenny always would say, “Earn and labour.”

  “Oh, do stop thinking of Jenny! You’ve got to get a job. You’ve got—to—get—a—job.” She opened her purse again and looked at the shilling. “That’s all you’ve got till you get a job. Now will you stop thinking about Jenny? Where are you going to sleep? That’s what you ought to be thinking about—supper, bed, breakfast—and a job.”

  She could get a glass of hot milk for twopence, and a penny bun. No, she couldn’t afford the bun. She couldn’t afford the milk either for the matter of that. On the other hand, if they would let her stay here all night, she could afford bread and milk for supper and bread and milk for breakfast.

  She left her suitcase where it was, and went and asked the attendant how long the waiting-room remained open. She came back to her place feeling rather shaky; the idea of being turned out into dark streets at one a.m. really frightened her. The woman had looked at her too with a nasty sideways look—a prying, accusing look, which became more pronounced when Anne had forced herself to ask whether she knew of any respectable place where she could get a bed for the night.

  She sat down again. It was now half-past seven—fifteen hours at least before she could take the first step towards getting a job. It was still light, even in the gloomy waiting-room; but in the open it would not be dark, not really dark, much before half-past ten.

  Anne made up her mind. She couldn’t face being turned out in the middle of the night. Outer darkness—horrid! She would stay here till half-past ten, and then she would have some milk—and a bun if she was frightfully hungry. And then she would walk across the bridge and get down to the Embankment. There were places there where you could sit. She had read in books of people spending the night on the Embankment, and it wouldn’t be so dreadful if she got there before it was quite dark. Meanwhile she was going to sleep.

  Having made her decision, she felt all at once incapable of anything more. She had stopped feeling sad, or shocked, or frightened, or cold, or hungry; her mind was just an empty place like a stage when the theatre is shut and the players gone. She put her head against the padded leather back of the waiting-room bench and passed into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Jenny Marr lay awake that night, and pitied herself a good deal for doing so. She tried counting sheep, and she tried saying the multiplication table; but neither of these exercises produced even a slight drowsiness. There was a little electric lamp on the table by the broad, low bed, but she did not dare to turn it on, lest she should wake Nicholas. Nicholas would know why she couldn’t sleep; he would know that it was because of Anne; and Jenny simply didn’t feel as if she could talk to Nicko any more about Anne.

  She edged herself up on her pillows and looked across the room to the windows, which were open and uncurtained. There was moonlight outside, a level wash of moonlight, flooding the still air. It was so still that Jenny could hear the faint flowing sound of the river. Inside the room there was a sort of clear dusk, which showed shape and outline, light and shade, but no colour. The delphinium-blue carpet, the silver rail at the bed-foot, the blue and rose and lilac pattern in the chintz curtains, were all one deep, even grey.

  Jenny looked into the dusk, and pleased herself by calling up the vanished colours. It was such a pretty room, with its wide windows looking out over the green spaces where the river ran. Jenny had chosen all the furniture herself. She had chosen some of it with Anne. She remembered the day they found just the one chintz in all the world—a chintz to dream of, with lovelier flowers than real ones, in colours too beautiful to be true.

  Something stabbed Jenny sharply. She had said that to Anne, “Oh, Anne, it’s too good to be true!” And Anne had said, “How silly! Why on earth should anything be too good to be true?”

  Jenny pulled the fine linen sheet higher; her crêpe-de-chine nightdress was thin; there was a faint chill upon the moonlight. She snuggled down a little. Her thoughts slipped back again to Anne. Why on earth hadn’t she gone back to Haydon’s Hotel? Perhaps she had gone back. It would be so awkward not to know where she was—awkward and tiresome; because, of course, someone must see her and arrange about the money. They must know where she was. Nicko said she would write—“You’ll hear from her fast enough.” Of course, she’d be bound to write. But suppose she didn’t—“Suppose she never writes—suppose we never know!”

  A frightful sense of isolation came upon Jenny. Everyone asleep; everything so still; the faint, faint sound of distant running water. Jenny was alone, as one is sometimes alone in a dream. She was alone, and she was afraid—dreadfully, shiveringly afraid. She said, “Anne, where are you? Anne! Oh, Anne!”

  And Anne was leaning on the dark parapet of the Embankment. She was cold, she was hungry, and she was very tired; but she watched the moonlight on the water with eyes that were quiet and serene.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On the following morning John dug his car out of the garage where he had left it over the week-end to have a radiator leak repaired, and proceeded to Waterdene at a fancy speed. He was, as a matter of fact, in the state of temper which demands an outlet. He wanted to break the law, to defy policemen, and to quarrel with Nicholas Marr—more especially he wanted to quarrel with Nicholas Marr. Since Anne had now completely disappeared, it was quite obvious that he had to quarrel with someone.

  He found Nicholas in the library and opened fire at once:

  “Look here, Marr, I’ve had about enough of this! Do you know where Anne Waveney is, or do you not?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Not your business why I want to know. I do want to know; and what’s more, I mean to know.”

  Nicholas appeared to withdraw a little. His manner remained pleasant, but it was a sort of hundred-yards-away pleasantness; it gave John the feeling that he was regarded as a rough and mannerless backwoodsman.

  “All right,” said Nicholas. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t?”

  “You asked me if I knew where she was. Well, I don’t know. Anything else?”

  John’s anger deepened. It ceased to be the sort of anger which would find satisfaction in violence, and became colder, deeper, and more controlled.

  “Does anyone know where she is?”

  “Not that I know of. She—as a matter of fact, she came down here yesterday.”

  “I know she did.”

  “She came down here, and she forced an interview with Jenny. She upset Jenny very much. To be quite candid, I’ve forbidden her the house. I won’t have her here. And I won’t have Jenny upset.

  “Now we’re getting down to it,” said John. “You can’t say a thing like that and leave it there. You’ll have to explain.”

  “Better not.” Nicholas paused. “I said more than I meant to. Every family has its quarrels and its black sheep. They’re really best left alone.”

  “By outsiders—that’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it? I’m to mind my own business. Now, this is what I’ve got to say—I consider that this is my business, and I don’t admit that I’m an outsider. If Anne had a father or a brother, it would be his business all right. Well, she hasn’t—but she’s got me. I’m a damned poor substitute, but I regard myself as a substitute. That’s what I want you to tumble to—I’m the nearest male relation she’s got—I’m in Tom Waveney’s place. I didn’t know Courtney, the elder one, but I knew Tom—served in his company when I joined up. He was a thundering good chap. If he were here, I shouldn’t have to butt in. But he isn’t here, and the way I look at it, I’ve got to do what he’d do.”

  “You’re the head of the family, in fact,” said Nicholas with the faintest possible inflection of sarcasm.

  “Yes, I am. I didn’t want to be; but as it happens, I am. Now will you explain?”

  “You’d better let it alone, John.
You can take it from me that you won’t do any good—”

  “I won’t take it from anyone. You’ve got to explain.”

  Nicholas looked at him with curiosity. Was it just obstinacy that made him so insistent?

  “Well,” he said, “I’ll explain. But you won’t much like the explanation. As I said, every family’s got its black sheep. One doesn’t exactly enjoy talking about them. Anne’s a bad lot—a rotten bad lot. I dare say you’ve guessed as much.”

  John did not know whether he spoke or not. He was one raging protest. He did not know whether he spoke, or whether the sound that broke from his lips was wholly inarticulate.”

  “You must have guessed there was something.”

  “Go on,” said John. His lips felt stiff.

  “It’s a damned unpleasant thing to have to say,” said Nicholas, frowning; there was a note of sharp distaste in his voice. “It’s damned unpleasant. But there’s no getting away from it. Anne’s a wrong ’un right through—a thief, if you want to know.”

  The word was like a blow. It wasn’t what he had expected. He did not know quite what he had expected—but not this, certainly not this. A thief! The word left a cold, sick feeling. He had not been looking at Nicholas; but he looked at him now, and found something of his own repugnance in the dark, withdrawn look which met his own, only to elude it.

  “Inconceivable, isn’t it?” said Nicholas. “You can’t believe it any more than any of us could believe it—at first. You’d better hear the whole thing whilst we’re at it. It’s not the sort of thing one wants to talk about very often.”

  “No.”

  “It happened just before Jenny and I were married. It nearly killed Jenny. It did kill Sir Anthony.”

  “What happened?”

  “Jenny was in town staying with her godmother, Mrs. Courtney. At the end of her visit Anne came up for a couple of days. Mrs. Courtney couldn’t put her up—as a matter of fact, she never cottoned much to Anne. She’s a dashed clever woman—she never liked Anne.”