Fortune Is a Woman

by Winston Graham

  ‘‘I’ll inquire,’’ he said, and went off. I thought he walked like an old soldier. He came back to say she wasn’t.

  ‘‘When do you expect her?’’

  ‘‘Couldn’t say, sir.”

  ‘‘Well, will you ask?’’

  ‘‘I expect it’ll be late to-night. Usually is, sir.”

  Because I wasn’t dead sure, I hesitated and he got the edge of me. In a minute I was looking at a closed door. I went down the steps and sat in the car. I looked up at the house? but there was no sign of life about it. Nor was there any sign of the little car. I drove off along the main road till I found a shop that was open and sold cigarettes; then I reversed into another side street and came back. I stopped near the end of Ponting Street. It was just seven o’clock.

  At seven-thirty the cockney manservant came out and stood on the steps and hailed a passing taxi. I got out and walked down.

  After a minute or two the cockney came out again, but with him, leaning on his arm, was Dr. Darnley. He seemed to have difficulty in getting into the taxi, and I thought, he’s changed too since that night. I glanced up at the house and saw a hand let a curtain fall.

  At a quarter to eight I rang the door-bell again. I had to ring three times before it opened.

  The cockney said: ‘‘Sorry, Mrs. Moreton’s phoned to say she won’t be home to-night.”

  I said: ‘‘Forget it,’’ and put my foot in the door.

  ‘‘ ’Ere,’’ he said. ‘‘ What the blazes d’you think——?’’

  I was stronger than he was, or perhaps it was just the feelings behind it. I went in and he went back and sat down on a tiger rug in the middle of the narrow hall. He tried to grab me as I went past but I got to the stairs and went up them three at a time. I’d tried to work out where that hand was and I worked it out right. There were three doors and the extreme right one led into a bedroom. Sarah was sitting at a dressing-table brushing her hair.

  She dropped the brush and stood up, pulling her yellow house coat round her. Trixie began to bark from a corner.

  ‘‘Matthews——’’

  I put my foot against the door. ‘‘If that’s Matthews downstairs, tell him to lay off till I’ve finished. I must talk to you, Sarah.”

  She said furiously: ‘‘Get out of my room! How dare you force your way in here!’’

  I said: ‘‘ I’ve been to see Croft. I took along a photo of you out of one of the papers. The girl who sold him the Bonington wasn’t you—although she was like you; closely enough for the mistake. But it was a mistake—so humiliatingly bad—so unspeakable.… There’s nothing you can say bad enough, nothing I won’t want to add to——’’

  Somebody knocked on the door and tried the handle.

  ‘‘He’s in here, Matthews!’’

  Matthews threw his weight against the door. It creaked and gave at the top, but my foot held firm.

  ‘‘Listen, Sarah,’’ I said desperately. ‘‘I mean to talk to you if I have to take this bloody house to pieces brick by brick. So call him off and give me a chance to work this out. Please.”

  ‘‘It’s worked out,’’ she said. ‘‘Finished. Done. I’ve nothing more to say to you—ever.”

  I put my weight against the door. Trixie had come out of her box and was sniffing at me in a friendly fashion. ‘‘ I’ve made one terrible mistake. But they can’t all be mistakes, all the things that prove the fraud. Croft’s picture is the genuine Bonington. He’s had it verified twice. Bonington’s ‘Mill and Spinney’, painted from just below that copse where we sat. The thing that was burned was a fake. So was the Lippi. The panel it was painted on was soft wood; if it had been old it would have been hard. The Constable and the Watteau the same, I expect; but I never had the chance to find out. I don’t know if the first fire was a put-up job but the second was. I was there, Sarah. I was there within a few minutes of it starting. The whole thing was planned. The paraffin—the candles—the shavings.… Tracey never jumped to save himself from the fire. He was dead before it got going. I found him in the hall. God knows what had happened. I suppose he started it and then stayed on, making doubly sure. If he fell, then it was carrying the bed linen to pile in the hall, using the decorators’ ladders as a frame. He didn’t phone the police. I phoned the police after I’d tried to put out the fire. I’ve still got the scar of a burn on my arm. When the fire brigade came I slipped away, because I thought you were playing along with him. I was too knocked over to do what I should have done. Everything pointed to you being in it. The Bonington, which I thought you’d sold—the fire started the way I’d told you of only the week before—things you said, things you had done and did do.…” I stopped for breath. I’d moved a bit away from the door, but Matthews apparently had given up. She was listening to me at last, head up and listening.

  I said: ‘‘I thought this was an idea of Tracey’s. He’d gone out of his way to make a friend of me knowing that when the fire came I’d do what I could to ease through the claim. It had always puzzled me before. I’ve never been the sort of person people make a friend of. Perhaps he realized that, knew I should be flattered. Well, I was. Afterwards, when I found out, I thought, Sarah may be working with him out of a sense of loyalty. Now he’s dead she’ll be free to put the thing straight—if she wants to. Whatever she feels about me, she can at least refuse the insurance on the contents of a house that’s been gradually stripped of its antiques and its old masters on the pretext that they were being taken away to be cleaned, restored.…”

  Sarah said: ‘‘Stop. Wait a minute. Stop.…”

  I waited. She went back slowly to the dressing-table and sat down. Her hair was loose and she pushed it up with her hand. The sleeve of her coat slipped up to the elbow. I remember she was wearing black patent leather mules and no stockings.

  I said: ‘‘But now.… I’ll never get straight with myself for thinking what I did about you.”

  ‘‘How d’you know you’re completely wrong?’’

  ‘‘By your look. And because … well, I do.”

  ‘‘Tell me again,’’ she said. ‘‘Everything that happened.”

  Standing there I began trying to tell her. Part way through there was the sound of double footsteps on the stairs. With a knock the door opened and Matthews came in with a policeman behind him.

  ‘‘ ’Ere he is.”

  I still wasn’t sure how I stood, didn’t know what she would do. The policeman glanced from one to the other, as if he wasn’t sure himself; as if this wasn’t quite what he expected.

  ‘‘Did this man break in here, miss?’’

  Sarah got up. ‘‘I’m very sorry, officer. I’m afraid I don’t need you after all. I’m sorry, Matthews; you were quite right to go. It was—a misunderstanding.”

  Matthews’ face was expressive. ‘‘ Well, ma’am, you did call. You did say——’’

  ‘‘I know. I’m very sorry. Mr. Branwell will be leaving in a few minutes.”

  ‘‘In that case,’’ said the policeman, looking sourly at Matthews, ‘‘there’s not much for me to do, is there, eh? I’ll be getting back.”

  He turned and went out and Matthews with an angry shrug did the same. I found a crumpled ten-shilling note in my pocket—change from the cigarettes—and followed the policeman out and tried to make him take it. He didn’t want to, but before we got to the front door he gave way, and went out amiably enough. When the door was shut on him I gave Matthews a pound to try to ease the look on his face.

  Her door was still open, and when I went in she was standing by the dressing-table, with her hair-brush in her hands, turning it over and over.

  I said: ‘‘ Is there somewhere else we can talk?’’

  She put the brush down, turned away from me, fumbled in her pocket. ‘‘No.… Go on with what you were saying. I—before I do anything—I’ve got to hear.…”

  I’ve tried to go on.

  I’d seen before the interruption that I’d made the first hurdle. She was no longer chucking th
e story out emotionally—on sight. What I had to do now was put it over to her intellect—show her that there were no more bad guesses like the one that had tied it up with her. And I had to show myself too.

  When I finished she didn’t speak for a bit. Then she said: ‘‘Oh, God, this is awful.… I’ve got to have time, Oliver. Time to work round it, see if there isn’t some other.… I’m supposed to be going out to-night. I was due at eight. I— don’t feel.…”

  ‘‘Put it off. Come out with me. We can eat somewhere quietly—talk about it quietly. I won’t press you in any way. But if a thing like this is on your mind.… There’s so much that I want to know too.” You couldn’t help but think of the sudden change—all the violence

  that had gone from between us these last minutes.

  She looked at me doubtfully. ‘‘Give me a few minutes, will you?

  This afternoon has been … I’ll change and come down—let you

  know then.”

  ‘‘All right, I said, and left her. She watched me go.

  Chapter Sixteen

  She said: ‘‘I knew, of course, about some of the furniture. There was a Sheraton desk, I remember. And a table. Those are closer, personal things, things you can’t disguise. You know them by the grain of the wood, the way a drawer closes. It was never discussed between us; but—we were short of money; they were our own possessions; what we did with them was our own business; if there had ever been any occasion to lie about them we’d have done so out of pride. The thought of insurance never entered my head because I never thought we should claim. But some of the things were genuinely restored—I’m sure of that—and I thought the pictures were. I didn’t think he’d ever bear to part with them. He was very secretive about money. I never really knew what money we had. Sometimes he’d say we could afford nothing; another time he’d be extravagant and generous.”

  We were sitting in one of those little restaurants that abound in London. An Italian or a Cypriot takes a shop, engages a black-chinned staff, and calls it The Something Grill.

  ‘‘I’ve hardly seen the money yet,’’ she said. ‘‘ Victor has handled everything. I was surprised at the size of the insurance settlement—but it was a pleasant surprise, nothing more. Tracey had only a small insurance on his life—the company wouldn’t increase it after the war. It didn’t occur to me to consider the rights and wrongs of a few pieces of furniture. Would it have occurred to you?’’

  ‘‘Eat your dinner,’’ I said gently.

  ‘‘Even now it isn’t really the proofs you have.… Perhaps you haven’t told me them all. What were the other things you had against me?’’

  ‘‘Forget it. If you ever can.”

  ‘‘No. I want to know. First there was the picture.”

  ‘‘That damned picture set me off on the wrong foot. I don’t know if you see—but once I’d accepted that …”

  ‘‘Yes, I see.”

  ‘‘If I can possibly explain—the things that tied you in with it. Each by itself is nothing, but they came to mean what they did because they added up together. Perhaps it’s partly something in me that was set off on the wrong foot—long ago. But I liked Tracey. Even with him, only considering him, there was such a ghastly sense of let-down. If——’’

  ‘‘Tell me what you thought,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Well, there was the way the fire was prepared. I’d explained that to you only the week before.”

  ‘‘Oh, but I knew about that before you told me. It was in a magazine last year sometime—about those fire-raisers before the war. Tracey probably read it too.”

  ‘‘But when I told you about it, why didn’t you say you knew?’’

  ‘‘Well, I’m sorry. But don’t you remember I’d been trying to get you to talk about yourself. It was always hard. You started telling me of your work. If I’d interrupted and said: ‘ Oh, yes, I read all about that last year’ …”

  The waiter came and served us with slivers of filet mignon, making a show-off of a simple job. That was what you paid for.

  I said: ‘‘At the inquest you said you left that morning for Yorkshire by yourself because Tracey wanted another injection. Knowing about the injections, I didn’t believe it.”

  ‘‘Well, I had to say something. I couldn’t very well tell them what had really happened.… It was very unusual for us to quarrel. But we did that morning. I left Lowis not quite knowing—or caring—what Tracey intended to do. I went to London by bus and caught the one-forty from St. Pancras. I—was boiling; but when I got up to Yorkshire it all cooled off and I tried to telephone him.

  I felt a bit guilty. You know how it is. When he didn’t reply I thought he’d left. I didn’t want to explain that at the inquest.”

  I nodded but didn’t speak.

  ‘‘But didn’t you say there were things I’d said and done; other things?’’

  ‘‘There was the gatehouse—if that had been occupied … You put the new tenants off for a week or two.”

  ‘‘That was Tracey’s idea. I didn’t see the point of it at the time. He was insistent. But he paid me the compliment of keeping his intentions to himself.”

  ‘‘I should have known.”

  She took up a pat of butter, spread it slowly on her bread. ‘‘And the things I said?’’

  ‘‘Must I follow this out to the bitter end?’’

  ‘‘Of course.”

  ‘‘You said—when I asked you why you came out with me, knowing how I felt, you said there were reasons.”

  Her eyes flickered up to mine for a second and then went coolly past me, to fix on something out of range. ‘‘There were reasons. They were not those reasons.”

  Silence fell for a good time.

  I said: ‘‘ Do you see much of Clive Fisher these days?’’

  ‘‘Not a lot.”

  ‘‘I heard—you know how these rumours get about …”

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘I heard you were engaged.”

  Her lips moved. ‘‘ No.”

  I said: ‘‘ Is it likely to be true?’’

  ‘‘No.”

  I don’t remember what came after the steak. We took an age finishing the meal. Since I knew she was not in the fraud a great weight had gone from me, something that had been there ever since May; but there’d been too much anxiety and self-blame in these last hours to let me be properly aware of it. The news about Clive made me aware of it.

  On the way home, we stopped for a few minutes on the Embankment watching the dark river.

  She said: ‘‘Yes, it’s been a shock, but it’s some particular aspects that chiefly hurt. I didn’t want ever to remember Tracey as … It isn’t really the fact of the fraud. I’m not sure that he hadn’t some excuses for that; they weren’t good enough but they were better than most people’s. You see, he felt that both he and his father had been crippled fighting for their country, and all his country had done was rob him of the means to live. It wasn’t just a grudge—it was part of his illness. It’s really the personal fraud that … I said just now he paid me the compliment of not telling me. But was it a compliment? D’you remember once I said to you that Tracey and I had a perfect understanding and trust? Well, it looks silly now, doesn’t it? On the whole I should be less upset if I’d been in the fraud all through.”

  ‘‘Except that you never would have been.”

  ‘‘I never would have been in any fraud on you. But for the rest … If you cared for someone, wouldn’t you rather help to cheat than yourself be cheated?’’

  I didn’t answer, and after a while she shivered.

  ‘‘If you’re cold I’ll——’’

  ‘‘No.… It isn’t that. I’ve been thinking.… There’s no proof, Oliver, is there; no absolute proof at all.”

  ‘‘Of what?’’

  ‘‘Of what you believe. We can’t be positive that Tracey set fire to the house.”

  ‘‘For that matter,’’ I said, ‘‘we can’t be positive that he fell from the gallery.�
��

  ‘‘What time did you get to the house?’’

  ‘‘It would be about half-past nine.”

  ‘‘And Elliott left at half-past three. Tracey wouldn’t be able to begin anything till then. It would need a lot of preparation, because there was nothing in the cellars. I expect he got most of his stuff from the stables and from the old hall. And with him not being well … But six hours.”

  ‘‘He may not have had six hours. He may have been dead two hours when I found him.”

  A tug boat with a couple of barges behind went chugging down the river. Its lights made silver snakes on the water.

  She said: ‘‘How long should a candle burn if it were set to start a fire?’’

  ‘‘Oh, about four hours. But it was very windy that night and the cellars were draughty. The candle that hadn’t burnt down was guttering all over the place. The other had gone quickly—perhaps an hour and a half—I don’t know.”

  She didn’t speak and I went on: ‘‘I’ve thought about it a lot; but there doesn’t seem any other explanation. I can only think he set the fuses and then went upstairs for some last-minute job. And then he forgot about the balustrade being down.…”

  She shivered again. ‘‘It never has made sense to me.”

  I started up the engine and drove her slowly home. I said: ‘‘I wonder how it got about that you might be going to many Clive.”

  ‘‘He asked me.”

  I digested that. ‘‘When?’’

  ‘‘About a month ago. I haven’t seen him since. I was as nice as I knew how—but I don’t think he liked it much.”

  ‘‘Must you lose any sleep over that?’’

  ‘‘No; but he was an old friend of Tracey’s. I’ve known him and Ambrosine since before I was married, and I don’t want to cut all the connections.…”

  We stopped outside her house, and there was a light in the front.

  She said suddenly, ‘‘What can I do with this money? I can’t touch it now.”

  ‘‘Have you spent much of it?’’

  ‘‘No. It’s only just come to me. In any case Tracey left about fourteen thousand in cash in the bank. I suppose it was money from selling the pictures.… We’ve probably been living off that for the last couple of years … Can the insurance be paid back?’’