A Tangled Web

by Nicholas Blake

  For my darling Daisy’s 18th birthday, she read, unable to speak for a moment.

  “I meant to smuggle them in and keep them for tomorrow. But—”

  “Oh! How did you know? Fancy you remembering—”

  “Of course I remembered. Don’t cry, sweet. Nothing the matter, is there?”

  “No. It’s just—” She buried her face in his shoulder, on her knees beside him. “You make me so happy. You’ve no idea. I feel like—like an old married woman.” She glanced up at him, and was surprised by a shadow on his face. “No,” she went on quickly, “it’s not—I don’t want anything more, you give me everything I want.”

  The shadow had passed. As they began to eat supper, he told Daisy he was on the point of putting through a big deal. This was why he had been put so much lately. He must go out again, later to-night, to clinch it. If it came off, she would get a real birthday present.

  “And we can clear out of this dump for a bit. How would you like to stay at the Ritz, pet?”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t. I haven’t any clothes.”

  “That will be arranged. Not that you wouldn’t knock them sideways, just as you are.”

  “Are you tired of—don’t you like living here?” she asked, gazing round the shabby, cluttered room with a feeling of loss.

  “Who would?” he said carelessly.

  “I do.” She could not keep a hurt tone out of her voice, and he responded to it at once:

  “But it must be so dull for you, living here, never seeing anyone, while I’m chasing around.”

  “I don’t want to see anyone but you. And I’ve plenty to do.”

  “That’s not healthy, love.” His brown eyes sparkled. “A young woman needs suitable companionship of her own sex. Or she starts going broody.”

  “Well, I never meet your friends,” said Daisy, who was not always at ease with his gentle mockery.

  “My friends? Oh, I wouldn’t—”

  “You mean they’re too good for me?” It came out before she could stop it, but Hugo did not appear ruffled.

  “Quite the reverse,” he said equably. “They’re a low lot of characters. I wouldn’t trust them an inch with you. Except old Jacko, of course.”

  “Who’s Jacko?”

  “Very good bloke. Ran into him after the war. Medico of sorts. Looks like a tortoise. Tell you what—suppose we have him to supper to-morrow: celebrate your birthday.”

  “But I—”

  “Don’t give it a thought. I’ll victual up at Fortnum’s in the afternoon.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about the food. It’s just—it’d be nice to have dinner alone together, as it’s my birthday.”

  Hugo prodded his fork in her direction. “Now look, my pet: you complain of never meeting my friends. I offer to produce one, and you turn round and—women baffle me.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. Of course let’s have him. What’s his name?”

  “Jacko. Oh, Jaques—John Jaques.”

  “And he’s a doctor?”

  “I’ll brief you on him to-morrow. Let’s have a game of draughts after supper. Must steady my nerves for the big moment.”

  Daisy was aware of a tension in him—a subdued excitement different from the kinds she had known before. The next hour passed agreeably enough, though. Shortly after eleven, having beaten her several times at draughts, Hugo got up, saying he must collect his documents. Their rooms, which were on the top floor, had a small length of attic above them, where Hugo kept some trunks. She heard his feet moving about overhead. Presently he locked the door behind him—he always kept the attic room locked—and descended the ladder. He was wearing a dark, belted macintosh she had not seen before, and black gloves.

  “Don’t wait up for me, Daisy. I may be quite late.”

  “It’s a funny hour to—”

  “Oh, these big chaps are difficult to get at, you know. Got to suit one’s time-table to theirs.”

  As Hugo moved to embrace her, the macintosh fell open a little.

  “Oh, darling,” she cried. “You’ve still got your old suit on.”

  “Old suit?”

  “Oughtn’t you to change? I mean, as you’re meeting an important—”

  “Suppose I ought. But there simply isn’t time. I’m late already. Now, keep your fingers crossed for us, and mind you go to sleep. ’Bye, love. Over the top.”

  Hugo’s tension must have communicated itself to Daisy, for she was not able to go to sleep: she lay awake, random thoughts passing across her mind, full of an uneasiness she could not explain. Saying good-bye to Hugo just now, she had felt some knobbly, flat object, a case or a satchel, in the poacher’s pocket of his suit. It had been a joke between them—that poacher’s pocket. She remembered how, during their holiday, he had taken a fancy to some beer-mug mats at a pub, and suddenly whisked three of them into this capacious pocket: half amused, half shocked, she had told him to put them back. “But they get them free from the brewers,” he had said, in an almost puzzled voice, as he obeyed her. “I thought you looked like a poacher, the first time I saw you,” she said. The fancy tickled him: next day she found him making a catapult, and from time to time he took pot-shots at pheasants or rabbits they came across while wandering in the woods. But no game found its way into the pocket. “I always was a rotten shot,” he grumbled, absurdly dashed by his failure like a small boy who has been trying so hard to impress a grown-up.

  For some reason, Daisy could not take her mind off that pocket now. Businessmen, men who brought off big deals, carried brief-cases: the world of “business” was a complete mystery to Daisy, but she did know that. And the case in Hugo’s pocket, though flat, had not felt as if it contained documents; it was more like—she groped for a resemblance—more like the kit of tools they had had under the dashboard of their hired car. But the idea of Hugo’s going to a business conference with a kit of car tools was silly. Ah, now she had it!—they must be samples: like a commercial traveller’s: he was going to sell an idea—some industrial process, perhaps—and those objects would enable him to demonstrate it. Then why had he talked of “collecting his documents”? It must be very secret—something he could not mention even to her. A secret process.

  The phrase touched off in her mind an old disquietude, which had been forgotten for weeks: the notion which had occurred to her in the Dorset wood, that Hugo was some sort of spy—a traitor, a Communist. Was he selling a secret to the agents of some foreign Power? Judging by the films she saw, this sort of thing was going on all the time nowadays. But it was always documents, papers, top-secret formulæ which passed from hand to hand in those films, not cases of tools. Daisy knew herself quite out of her depth in such matters, yet the dreadful thought kept nagging at her. One wouldn’t carry such vital papers in a brief-case: one would “secrete them about one’s person”: one could conceal them, for example, inside some harmless-looking spanners or screwdrivers, hollowed out for the purpose.

  The idea slid into her mind, irresistible and unexpected as an assassin’s knife. And then she had to turn the knife in the wound, torturing herself for such disloyalty to the man she loved, such mad, poisonous suspicions. Hugo a traitor? She deserved to be shot like a traitor for imagining it.

  Yet she knew she had to find out. And she knew she dared not ask Hugo point-blank: how could he ever go on loving her if she gave him the slightest hint of these horrible suspicions? The image of him as a wild creature recurred: she had got the creature eating out of her hand; but one false move, betraying her own uneasiness, her own fears, would send him streaking back into the darkness from which he had come. She was only his mistress. She had no hold upon him except by the leash of her love: to speak out would be to snap it; yet, if she kept her suspicions to herself, the cord would be gradually frayed and frayed.

  There was only one thing to do. She must kill these venomous doubts. And only one way to do it—find out the truth for herself. If Hugo had a guilty secret, it was hidden up there in the attic he kept locked
even from her. Her eyes, which felt gravelled with sleeplessness, turned up to the ceiling. He had never forbidden her to enter the attic: it wasn’t a Bluebeard’s room: he just kept it locked, and kept the key in his pocket. On the one occasion she had asked about it, he did not start like a guilty thing, did not blush or bluster—merely turned off her inquiry with, “Oh, I just have some old lumber up there. It’s a filthy little hole. I wouldn’t bother with it.”

  I’ll take his keys one day soon, and if he finds out, I’ll say I wanted to clean the place, she thought, and was instantly appalled by the duplicity of it, the bitchy scheming stranger who had spoken in her own mind. “How could you?” she muttered to the darkness. This was what happened when you stopped trusting—this stain spreading over your mind like some galloping disease, disfiguring it so that you could no longer recognise yourself. “You’ll do nothing of the sort, you bad girl,” she murmured, and with a feeling of relief, as though her conscience had been somehow cleared, turned over to sleep.

  She must have been sleeping lightly, for she was awoken by the sound of the front door closing. She heard Hugo call her name, quietly and tentatively, as if not to awake her should she be asleep. Something—a hangover perhaps from her own guilty thoughts—made his call sound stealthy to her, conspiratorial, and she did not immediately answer it. Then she was unable to, for she was listening with strained attention to a sound from the next room—a sound she soon identified as that of a clothes-brush vigorously applied. Hugo was brushing his suit. A few minutes later she heard his steps in the attic overhead. Her mind, still dazed with sleep, registered some objection which she could not precisely pin down.

  When he came into the bedroom, Daisy pretended to wake up. Hugo switched on the light. With a little sob she held out her arms to him, inexpressibly relieved to see the familiar face of the man she loved, not the face of the monster her imagination had been conjuring up. Hugo regarded her affectionately. Yes, he looked just the same: a little tired, perhaps—the gentle but pale and withdrawn look she had seen so often on his face after they had made love.

  “Did it go well?” she said.

  “Yes. All according to plan, love. Happy birthday.”

  He went to sleep in her arms at once, like an exhausted, trusting child. Just before she went off herself, she drowsily grasped the thing which had eluded her—the oddness of Hugo’s brushing his suit before going up into the dirty attic, not after. You darling gormless lad, you do need looking after, don’t you? she thought, and fell asleep.

  5. Enter Jacko

  Leaning out of the window, Daisy waved to Hugo in the road below. He blew her a kiss, flourished his hat, and walked quickly away, a dapper, decisive figure with that effervescent vitality in his gait, looking strangely out of place against the background of slatternly houses and grimed shrubberies. Daisy turned back into the room, fingering the paste brooch he had given her after breakfast. It was a pretty brooch, old-fashioned—Georgian, he had said; but its value to her was not in its age or delicate workmanship. Deliberately she put off thinking about it till she had finished her morning chores. As she washed up and made the bed, her mind played luxuriously with the feeling of being married to Hugo: she imagined him going off to work every morning, waving up from the pavement below, returning at 6.30 p.m. to slippers, a fire, supper, gossip. Daisy knew it was make-believe; but why should not make-believe come true? With her, might he not settle down, make a real home? Perhaps to-day was the start of a new life: she was to meet, for the first time, one of his friends; and she had the brooch.

  Daisy made herself a cup of tea and settled down in the basket-chair. Now she could take out her delightful memory, examine it at leisure. As they finished their breakfast, Hugo had said, “I want to give you something for your birthday: something special. Come along.” Taking her by the hand, he led her out into the tiny hall-way, then hooked in position the ladder which gave access through a trap-door to the attic. Her heart beat faster, between anticipation and guilt.

  “Are we—am I to come up there?”

  “Yes, if you’re not too fat to get through the trap.”

  “But I must—isn’t it terribly dirty?”

  “Oh, never mind that,” he said impatiently. “I’ll buy you a new dress.” He had scrambled through, and was reaching down a hand for her. She found herself in a cramped, gloomy space, with a cistern in front and a low door on her left which Hugo was unlocking: then she followed him into the attic room. There was just enough light coming through its grimed skylight to show her a sloping ceiling, a floor with several planks missing, and a clutter of trunks and suitcases at the far end.

  I must be going mental, she thought, ruefully recalling her disordered fancies of the previous night. Sheer relief at finding this Bluebeard’s room so innocent—but what, she wondered, had she expected to discover here—made her say:

  “What do you keep in those huge trunks? The bodies of your wives, darling?”

  “Actually, no. Relics of my chequered past.”

  Kneeling beside a trunk, he unlocked it and threw back the lid. Daisy moved across to peer over his shoulder.

  “What are all those notebooks?”

  “Oh, nothing. I used to keep a diary when I was a kid.”

  “Can I read them?” she asked eagerly. “And there are some photograph albums.” Her eyes shone at the sight of this treasure-trove, the idea of reading up the back numbers of a life so dear and mysterious to her.

  “They’re just adolescent maunderings. You’d be bored stiff.”

  “I wouldn’t then. Who is C. H. A.?” Daisy pointed to the gold initials on one of the albums. Hugo had taken out of the trunk an old cricket-cap, a club scarf, a glass-topped box containing butterflies, a notice adjuring gentlemen to Adjust their Dress before Leaving, a ship in a bottle, a fretsaw, a revolver, a pair of running shoes, a tattered brochure on How to Develop Self-Confidence, a boomerang, and an opera cloak, its red silk lining eaten away by moths. Now, rummaging deeper, he brought out a small jewel-case.

  “Who’s C. H. A.?” Daisy repeated.

  “Friend of mine. He disappeared.” Hugo glanced at the box in his hand, then up at the lovely, intent face of the girl watching him. Straightening himself up, standing curiously rigid now and with his eyes averted from her, he went on, “To be quite precise, it stands for Chester Hugh Amberley… That used to be my name… I changed it a few years ago.” He looked at Daisy again, painfully but intently. “Chester Hugh Amberley has disappeared for good. Sunk without trace. Lost and totally forgotten.” His expression changed, as almost roughly he thrust the box into Daisy’s hands. “These were my mother’s jewels. I want you to choose one, sweetheart, for your birthday.”

  Holding in her palm now the little paste brooch she had chosen, Daisy drifted into a daydream. Hugo’s gift gave her a pleasure all the more exquisite because it seemed to admit her into the inner circle, the hitherto closed circle of his family life, his past. Though he had sometimes talked to her about them, what he said never made her feel that she knew them. His father—a country clergyman still alive, somewhere in Somerset now; the mother who had died when Hugo was eight; the one brother, with whom he had quarrelled ferociously as a boy: these figures at last took on some reality in Daisy’s mind. Hugo had always talked about his early life as an exile might talk about his native country—painfully, allusively, with bitterness at times, giving the impression that it had somehow rejected him and that, for revenge, he was seeking to obliterate its values in his own heart. Yet he talked about it jealously, too, grudgingly, as if the sharing of it with her would create between them a bond he might resent.

  All this was over now, the simple girl reflected. To-day was the beginning of a new life, a fully-shared one, without reserves or secrets. She pinned on the brooch again, a badge of respectability far more reassuring than the gold ring on her finger: a symbol of his trust. Surely he was committed to her now, absolutely, as she was to him? “Chester Hugh Amberley,” she murmured several tim
es, as if the knowledge of his true name gave her a strong magic over him.

  At four o’clock Hugo returned in a taxi, with a hamper of food from Fortnum’s and a case of bottles. He looked so boyish in his excitement, as she opened the hamper, that she could not reproach him for such extravagance.

  “No cooking for my Daisy on her birthday. All you’ll have to do is sit still and turn the glamour on old Jacko.”

  Daisy had almost forgotten that Hugo’s friend was invited to supper. But her nervousness at the prospect was soon dissipated by Hugo’s announcing, in his whirling way, that he had just booked a room for them at the Ritz, and to-morrow they would buy her a lot of new clothes—everything she wanted—he was in the money again.

  And when Jacko arrived, there was nothing about him to revive her nervousness. He created at once the impression of being an old family friend who was always dropping in for meals, yet he treated Daisy with a deference, a respect which put her all the more at ease with him and with herself. She had expected to be patronised, made allowances for, or politely ignored. But John Jaques went out of his way to show interest in her, plied her with questions about her domestic arrangements, her neighbours, her own family: it was more like talking to another woman. He was certainly no oil painting. His clothes, which were good, hung loosely about him as though he had shrunk inside them; his face was all folds and wrinkles, the head poking forward over a scrawny neck—Daisy could see why Hugo had said he looked like a tortoise. With that baggy face and white hair he might have been any age: but the eyes, large, limpid, almost girlish, were not those of an old man. Spaniel’s eyes, she thought, catching them fastened upon her with an attentive, imploring sort of look, as if willing her to take him for a walk or give him a lump of sugar.

  “You mustn’t mind my staring at you,” he instantly said. “I don’t see the likes of you every day. Why, Hugo my lad, she’s a great beauty, a Renoir. You’ve been keeping her to yourself too long.”