Anne Belinda: A Golden Age Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  Mr. Levinski paused.

  “I go to take back the pearls, and I say to my assistant, ‘She did not buy, then?’ and he shakes his head. And I say: ‘Will she perhaps come again?’ And he says: ‘I do not know.’ And then I take the pearls, folded over in their cotton wool and I see the middle of one string hanging out—no more than two pearls, but it is enough for me. I open the parcel, and I say, ‘What is this—what is this—what is this?’ And there is my assistant as white as paper. And there are four strings of pearls, and a string of pearl beads such as may be bought for thirty shillings. I run out into the street. I say: ‘Which way did she go?’ I look everywhere. I run into Bond Street. I look up and down. There is no grey costume; there is no chic young lady thief. I come back, and I telephone to the police, and I tell my assistant just what sort of a head he has to let beads be changed for pearls just there under his nose. I lose my temper, and he weeps. And the police say what I know already, that there is very little hope. There has been much snatching of pearls for two, three months past—the papers are full of it—and no one has yet the luck to get anything back.”

  “But you got yours back, didn’t you?” said John. He was fingering the base of the nearest candelabrum.

  “Yes—I have the luck. It is beyond belief what luck I have. Next day I go out to the front of the shop to take a look at the window, and there goes past a taxi; and there looks out of the taxi that young lady thief, in her grey costume and her black hat. The taxi goes quick round the corner into Bond Street. I run. I see it before me. I fling myself into a taxi that sets down a lady at a lace shop. I say: ‘Do not lose them! I am Levinski—I have been robbed! You shall have five pounds if I catch her!’ We follow. I see them in a block a hundred yards ahead. I jump out—I run. In a minute I see the grey costume—she has also jumped out—she runs. I call out. She turns the corner—I turn the corner. I cry, ‘Stop thief!’ and a policeman catches her by the arm. We go to the police-station. My pearls are in her bag. She does not say anything—she does not even weep. At her trial she says her name is Annie Jones, and she pleads guilty, and she gets a year’s imprisonment because there have been so many of these robberies.”

  “Well,” said John, “you were very fortunate. She had a nerve—hadn’t she? What was she like?”

  “Very chic—that was what I noticed in the shop.”

  “On the films,” said John, “ladies who steal pearls always have dark hair and flashing eyes. Was she like that?”

  Mr. Levinski smiled.

  “Her hair was dark, but I do not think that her eyes should flash much when she is standing in the dock—isn’t it?”

  “Well, I suppose not. But in the shop, when you first saw her—you might have noticed her hair and her eyes then.”

  Mr. Levinski’s shoulders rose to the level of his ears.

  “As for that, in the shop I see only a pretty, chic young lady. I do not think about her hair or her eyes. I see her chic grey costume, and I see that she has a ring with a stone in it that I would gladly buy.”

  “What sort of stone?”

  “It was an emerald,” said Mr. Levinski—“and of the finest. If it had a flaw, I could not see one. I should have liked to see it close. Emeralds like that are rare. Afterwards I wonder from whom she has it stolen, and where she has it hidden—for it was not any more upon her hand when I catch her next day. The pearls are in her bag, but the emerald ring is not anywhere at all.”

  “Then in the shop you didn’t see whether she was dark?”

  Mr. Levinski suddenly fixed his wistful gaze on John.

  “Have you then an interest in this young lady, sir?” he said.

  “The story interested me—yes.”

  “And the hair of the young lady—that interests also?”

  “I think you didn’t notice it at all in the shop—only afterwards. Isn’t that so?”

  Mr. Levinski nodded.

  “Yes, that is so.”

  “I’ll take the candelabra,” said John. “How many ounces did you say they were?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Anne took out her prettiest dress next day. She felt as if she would like to burn the grey coat and skirt—but a penniless parlour-maid has to restrain this sort of feeling.

  It was a day of soft wind, racing cloud, and brilliant fitful sunshine. She put on the thin crepe frock, with its blue ground that matched the blue of her eyes, and its pattern of green and blue, which she had always loved because it reminded her of bluebells in a green spring wood. The dress was rather thin, and she slipped a blue coat over it. She did wish she had a new hat. Mrs. Jones had put in one of those little hats which roll up. It was rather faded, its blues and greens a little dim; but it was still becoming.

  “Well, dear, you do look gay!” said Mrs. Brownling. “He’s going to meet you, I suppose. I had an aunt who always said you could tell whether a young lady was going to meet a gentleman friend by the time she took to dress—and anything over half an hour means business, is what she said. She’d been fairly larky in her day, though very well married at the time I’m speaking of—something high up in the Navy her husband was, and they’d a lovely house in Plymouth. My father’s sister she was, and of course that inclined her, to the Navy, as you may say. I told you, didn’t I, dear, what a handsome watch my father had given to him by the other officers on his last voyage. Chimed the quarters something lovely, and had his initials on the back in diamonds. Well, so long, dear—and have a good time.”

  Anne walked down Ossington Road making good resolutions. After to-day she wouldn’t let John come and call for her any more. This resolution so satisfied her conscience that she was prepared to enjoy the dangerous indulgence of “just once more” to the full.

  John seemed very pleased to see her.

  “We’re going to Wisley,” he said. “I say, that’s a topping dress! Did it come out of the box?”

  Anne nodded.

  “Where’s Wisley?”

  “It’s the Horticultural Society’s gardens. Mrs. Courtney was talking about them; she said the azaleas were a dream, and anyone who hadn’t seen them ought to go and boil their heads, or words to that effect. And she said I could have her ticket any day I liked; so I went and fetched it this morning. Do you like azaleas?”

  “They sound lovely. I haven’t seen any flowers since I don’t know when.”

  “Not in Spain?” He rapped out the question, and looked at her sideways with a malicious gleam in his eye.

  Next moment he was penetrated with remorse, for Anne drew a quick, pained breath and said, with a forced steadiness of voice:

  “I think you know very well that I never was in Spain.”

  “Why should I know, when you’ve never told me?”

  Anne did not speak. Jenny had told him she had been in Spain. And it was quite evident that he had not believed what Jenny said. How much did he know? What did he think? What did it matter what he thought? To-day would pass; to-morrow would come. And when to-morrow came she would have shut the door on John Waveney for good and all. Meanwhile, why not enjoy to-day? What a fool she was to let any skeleton come out of its cupboard, clanking and posturing between her and this one last day of pleasure!

  She turned to John, suddenly gay and brilliant.

  “Let’s pretend!” she cried, with a laughing catch in her voice.

  “What shall we pretend?”

  “Oh, anything! That we haven’t a care in the world; that I’m not Annie Jones; that I’m just all the things that I can’t ever be again. Are you good at pretending, John?”

  They left the car under the pine-trees and came into the gardens. The rock plants in the little sunk garden before the house were still gay with rose- and rust- and primrose-coloured rock roses; there were blue water-lilies coming into flower on a little square pond. They went down some steps, past a row of glass-houses, then down again by a damp and winding path that brought them out into the wild garden in the valley bottom.

  A sheet of blue ir
ises moved in the breeze like deep blue water just flecked with foam. A little farther on the large plum and white and purple Japanese irises were coming out one by one with their feet in the stream where pale moon-yellow water-lilies floated amongst smooth, flat leaves. A towering bush of double mauve rhododendron looked down on the water, the lilies, and the irises. It stood on the far bank, a sheeted mass of lilac bloom; behind it the steep rock slope rose up a hundred feet, hung with a brilliant arras of orange and scarlet, carmine, violet, blush, and burning blue. Everywhere between the brightness of the colours there were infinite shades of living green, from bronzy black to the colour, which has no name, that is like a flame burning in still air.

  “Topping, isn’t it?” said John.

  Anne stood looking at the flowers. She did not speak, and she was pale. When John slipped his hand inside her arm she let it stay there. She felt as if she had escaped into a very beautiful, very fragile dream, an enchantment which would fade if she so much as breathed.

  She was still standing like that when someone spoke her name.

  “Anne! Good gracious! Anne!”

  Anne came out of her dream with a startled leap of every pulse. As John’s hand fell from her arm, she turned from her vision of enchanting loveliness and found herself face to face with Aurora Fairlie, very large, very red in the face, very hot in her thick rough tweeds. She wore a deer-stalker hat pushed well back on her head. And she was not alone. A middle-aged man with a lined, clever face; a thin, elderly woman, very limp, in grey georgette and ostrich feathers; and a golden-haired flapper, bare-headed, in the smallest possible quantity of blue organdie. These, grouped around Aurora and obviously of her party, all looked at Anne—and looked with recognition.

  John saw Anne’s hand close tightly upon itself. Then she smiled at Miss Fairlie and said:

  “Hullo, Aurora!”

  Miss Fairlie regarded her with a large smile.

  “I ought to cut you dead,” she began—John saw Anne’s knuckles whiten—“never coming near me once since we got back! Is that all the thanks I get for taking you to Spain a wreck and bringing you back in the pink? You’re a monster of ingratitude! By the way, you know Clement Moore and Janet, don’t you? I’m sure you’ve met. But Casilda’s only just left school. Grossly unfair I call it. How old are you, you little wretch?” She turned to the flapper, who made a face. “Seventeen? Can’t think what Clem and Jan are thinking about! I had to stare at a blackboard till I was nineteen, and then only escaped going to college because I failed six times running in matric.”

  Anne shook hands with the Moores.

  Mrs. Moore asked her if she felt quite strong again in the most uninterested voice in the world, whilst Aurora, in hearty tones, introduced “my cousin—no, not really my cousin—Anne’s cousin, Sir John Waveney.” After which she dropped a heavy ungloved hand on Anne’s shoulder and patted it.

  “We’re going up through the rock garden. Yes, Jan, you’ve got to! Clem and I can walk behind you and prod. Anne, have you and John seen the azaleas? Turn down that path and you’ll walk slap into enough colour to make you drunk for a week. They smell like pre-war beer—but it’s more high-toned not to mention that. Come along, Jan, there’s quite a good seat at the top for you to feel faint on.”

  She swept the Moores before her over a little rocky bridge that spanned the stream and led straight into a bewildering tangle of Osmunda fern and yellow iris.

  Casilda Moore followed them for a dozen steps, then whisked round and ran back. She had round, blue eyes, as bright and hard as china beads. Her impudently cocked eyebrows were artificially darkened; they looked quite black against her fair skin. Her bright, uncovered hair shone in the sun. She came quite close up to Anne and said:

  “Did you like Spain? Were you really there? We met Lady Marr at lunch last week. She said you were.” Her voice was as impudent as her eyebrows. She lifted her chin at John and went on with a giggle: “Did you live in a castle? A castle in Spain sounds so romantic! ‘Chateaux en Espagne’—we had it in our French idioms; only I’m so stupid I never can remember what it means. Something imaginary, isn’t it? I hope your castle was a real one. Was it?”

  Anne laughed.

  “I never aspired to a castle.”

  Casilda giggled again.

  “I’ll tell Lady Marr we met you,” she said, and ran across the bridge.

  John took Anne roughly by the arm and turned with her down the path which Aurora Fairlie had pointed out.

  “Little beast!” he said.

  Anne said nothing. The path turned at right angles, and they were out of sight of anyone. A very high bank of azaleas rose before them, orange, apricot, flame, and white—orange that shaded to vermilion, flame that melted into rose, and white that passed through half a dozen shades of ivory, cream, and primrose into deepest chrome. A single rhododendron stood amongst the azaleas like a high rock in a sunset-coloured sea; its mass of pale purple bloom was the last enchanting note in the rainbow chord.

  Anne saw none of this beauty, or saw it only as a blur through a film of stinging tears. John saw her pale, and felt her trembling. High walls of leaf and bloom were above them. To be alone with Anne and feel her tremble; to be so near that when she trembled he was shaken, too; to see how white she was—these things moved him into rash and unpremeditated action.

  He said “Anne!” in a choked voice, put both arms round her very tight, and kissed the wet eyes. And when he had kissed her eyes, he kissed her soft, trembling mouth. And, just for an instant, Anne let him kiss her.

  As the instant passed, she said “Oh!” in a little shocked whisper, and pushed him away. Even then he had one arm about her shoulders.

  “Oh!” said Anne again; this time there was a little real anger in her voice.

  John’s arm dropped to his side.

  “Anne darling! Don’t cry!”

  Anne snatched a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it hard against her eyes.

  “I’m not crying!”

  “Anne—don’t! Someone might come!”

  “I’m not!”

  She withdrew the handkerchief for just long enough to inflict a glance into which she put all the angry reproach that she could summon. The fact that she was still crying rather spoilt the effect, and John was only conscious of an insane desire to kiss her again. He wanted to bang Casilda Moore on the head with a stone, and spank her as she ought to have been spanked for years. And he wanted to kiss Anne until she stopped crying and kissed him back.

  He said, “Anne darling!” and Anne stamped her foot.

  “I’m not! You’re not to! I never said you could!”

  “I can’t help it—you are—how can I help saying it?”

  “You’re not to say it!”

  She pushed the wet handkerchief back into her sleeve and began to walk away, keeping well in the middle of a very narrow path. With every step she took she became angrier with John. How dared he kiss her? How dared he touch her? How dared he think that she would let him kiss her like that?

  A bright scarlet spot began to flame in either cheek. Her eyes were quite dry now, and very nearly as hard as Casilda’s. The sweet heavy air, warm and moisture-laden, the scent of the flowers, the shade and sunshine, the colour and the bloom, all passed her by. It was she and John and burning anger who walked together on a straight path that led to nowhere.

  They passed the azalea bank in silence, and found themselves on a broad, damp path under deeply shadowing trees.

  “I want to go home,” said Anne.

  Chapter Thirty

  They drove in silence out on to the London road and presently turned off to the right.

  Anne went on telling herself how angry she was. She found it necessary to do this, because she kept thinking of things to say—the sort of silly, trivial things which were not at all in keeping with being aloof and dignified and very, very angry.

  Through the tall, straight trunks of the pine-trees on either side of the road a pale glimmer of wate
r showed. The shadows between the trees were very dark, but there were sun-spilled pools and streams of light, and hot, slanting golden beams that pierced the shade. The trees met overhead.

  Anne found it fascinating to be carried so swiftly and smoothly from cold shadowed air into summer heat, and then back again to cold. It was like flying. If you shut your eyes, you could forget everything except that enchanted flight through the air.

  “I am very angry with John,” she said firmly to herself.

  There was a faint, delicious scent of wood-smoke.

  “Aurora’s a brick—isn’t she?” said John. “I should think she was absolutely unique. I love her passionately; but the Casilda flapper wants shipping off to one of the countries where young women are made to work, and get beaten every day by a sinewy mother-in-law if they don’t come up to sample.”

  Anne looked haughtily at her own reflection in the wind-screen; she could see herself almost as well as if it had been a mirror. The little faded hat was undoubtedly becoming, but she was annoyed at detecting a faint quiver of the lips, which were meant to be severely set. By looking to the right she could see John’s reflection. If he had looked in the least crushed, she might have relented a little; but the wind-screen offered her the picture of an entirely cheerful young man with a twinkle in his eyes. Anne therefore said nothing to John, but assured herself once more that she was very, very angry.