Love Him or Leave Him

by Mary Burchell

  ‘After which you allowed yourself to be called away by Deborah, leaving her alone with the thing for some minutes. You’ve been a very silly girl,’ pronounced Miss Haskin. ‘Have another cup of tea.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dazedly, Anne pushed her cup and saucer towards Mrs. Thurber, who eagerly filled her cup again, while twittering with excitement.

  ‘I’m not exactly following,’ she explained earnestly. ‘But I see that you and Miss Haskin are sure now that no mistake took place. I’m so glad, dear. You’ll be able to tell Mr. Jerome tomorrow.’

  ‘No.’ Anne frowned. ‘No, I can’t do that, because—what did really happen?’

  ‘Why, Deborah managed to send you out of the room for several minutes, of course, while she peeled back the envelope flap—still damp, no doubt, still damp,’ declared Miss Haskin, joying in details. ‘Or if not, easy enough to open if one rolls a pencil carefully underneath. And she substituted the blank sheets of paper and refastened the envelope.’

  ‘Miss Haskin! I can’t possibly go and say that to Mr. Jerome,’ Anne protested.

  ‘Perhaps not. But I can say it to you. And mark my words, that’s the true explanation,’ Miss Haskin retorted triumphantly.

  ‘You really think she deliberately worked out an elaborate plan to—to discredit me like that?’ Anne, who was an open and warm-hearted girl herself, simply could not imagine anyone conceiving such a plan—much less putting it into practice.

  ‘It isn’t so elaborate,’ Miss Haskin returned. ‘She probably acted largely on spiteful impulse at first. The elaboration came at later stages, when she had to cover up what she’d done, or abandon any hope of achieving her objective.’

  ‘I can’t believe that any girl would do such a thing!’ Anne exclaimed. ‘What motive could possibly be strong enough to make her anxious to injure someone with whom she was on perfectly amicable terms?’

  ‘Jealousy,’ said Miss Haskin succinctly, and reached for Mrs. Thurber’s teapot.

  ‘She had no reason to be jealous of me,’ Anne said sadly. ‘Though I know that isn’t much of an argument where jealous people are concerned. It’s perfectly true that she—she had some feeling of the sort. She even—threatened me once, in a silly, melodramatic way. I forgot all about it until now, and I should imagine that she would have, too.’

  ‘You don’t really suppose that people who can voice jealous threats forget about them afterwards, do you?’ Miss Haskin said indulgently.

  ‘But it was so—silly, and unreal.’ Anne pushed back her hair with her hand, and looked half-unbelieving, even then. ‘I thought she must just have regretted making rather a fool of herself. Anyway, David was never anything but mildly friendly to me, in a way any employer might be, when the strict routine of office life was a little relaxed by circumstances. One would think she could have seen that for herself.’

  ‘Not through green spectacles,’ observed Mrs. Thurber, with unexpected picturesqueness of speech.

  Anne smiled faintly at her.

  ‘Do you think Deborah did it, Mrs. Thurber?’

  ‘It sounds as though she might have,’ Mrs. Thurber replied cautiously. ‘Though, of course, one hesitates to put blame—’

  ‘One does nothing of the sort,’ interrupted Miss Haskin with energy. ‘I certainly don’t hesitate about where to put the blame. Deborah knew that most of Miss Hemming’s hopes and official reputation were bound up with that letter, and she was prepared to do almost anything to see something went wrong with it. I don’t know whether she dropped those papers on purpose—probably she did—but, intentionally or otherwise, she got rid of Miss Hemming, found herself alone with the letter, and made the substitution I’ve described.’

  Anne could not forbear another smile. Miss Haskin was becoming more like a lady detective—or her idea of a lady detective—with every sentence.

  ‘She couldn’t know that Mr. Pennerley would meet one of the partners of Firth & Farraday and be asked why we hadn’t applied for the contract, though,’ Anne felt bound to point out.

  ‘No. That was a piece of luck. But, failing it, she would have found it perfectly easy to prompt her fiancé to make inquiries,’ retorted Miss Haskin firmly.

  ‘Not perfectly easy,’ murmured Anne, remembering how difficult Deborah found it to make David do what she wanted over official matters. ‘But possible, I suppose.’

  ‘Of course. And she counted on that being sufficient to prevent your being re-engaged in David Jerome’s office.’

  Anne gazed wonderingly at Miss Haskin.

  ‘Did you know about that?’ she said mildly.

  ‘Certainly,’ Miss Haskin replied. ‘Certainly. I have my sources of information.’ And she sounded so exactly as though she had constables at her beck and call that Anne didn’t like to inquire about her source of information in this case.

  Besides, she was remembering, uncomfortably, certain past conversations with Deborah. It was perfectly true that she had made as much as possible of the lost letter, and firmly implanted in Anne’s mind the idea that she should not consider herself worthy to go back to David’s employ.

  ‘But when do you suppose she—planted the letter in the drawer, if indeed she did that?’ Anne asked doubtfully. ‘Do you think it could have been there all the time? And in any case, why leave it there? Why not destroy it?’

  ‘She put it there this evening, of course,’ Miss Haskin said indulgently. ‘Between Mr. Jerome’s arrival and your going over to Greenslade.’

  ‘This evening!’ Anne repeated in consternation. It seemed to bring Deborah’s perfidy so much nearer and define it more clearly. ‘Oh, but why should—’

  ‘She thought, of course, when her David went back to London, and you stayed here, that she’d settled everything nicely,’ Miss Haskin explained. ‘She thought he had done all the inquiring he was going to do—’

  ‘Yes, she said as much,’ Anne recalled with a sort of distaste. ‘She said so this evening, before David told us anything. She seemed annoyed with him for not having let well alone.’

  ‘You see!’ Miss Haskin was enchanted with this confirmation of her deduction. ‘It must have been a nasty shock for her when he turned up and said he had found out something interesting about the Firth & Farraday letter. She knew there was only one thing he could have found out. That the letter—or rather, the envelope—had in fact been received. Only, as it had blank sheets in it, Firth & Farraday could not, of course, identify it themselves. She realised that the next thing would be an inquiry after the letter and enclosures which had, apparently, never left the house.’

  ‘And you think she’d kept them all the time?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘But why should she?’

  Miss Haskin shrugged.

  ‘She probably realised that she might need them for just such an occasion as this. But she hoped not. And they were a very strong weapon, if she did need them.’

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ exclaimed Anne again. ‘It’s so—so elaborate and—shocking.’

  ‘Human nature can be very shocking,’ observed Miss Haskin sententiously.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ sighed Mrs. Thurber, possibly recalling Mr. Thurber. ‘And, as Miss Haskin says, it wasn’t so elaborate, dear, in the beginning. Just a matter of substituting blank paper for the important papers. And then nothing else to do but sit tight and wait for the rest to happen. It was very, very wrong. But it was really quite simple. I do see that.’

  ‘And then—when she knew David was determined on a sort of investigation—you think she was frightened?’ Anne said doubtfully, recalling, even as she spoke, Deborah’s irritable and nervous air when she arrived that evening.

  ‘At least she thought the missing papers were better in the office drawer than in her own room,’ Miss Haskin said dryly. ‘She put them there for her own safety. And she directed attention there for your discredit.’

  Anne stared at Miss Haskin with a sort of reluctant belief.

  ‘You’re quite
right. She was almost indecently anxious for me to go and look in the drawer,’ she said slowly. ‘I suppose she may well have been responsible for sending David after me.’

  ‘Oh, he came in, too, did he?’

  Miss Haskin looked interested, for Anne had withheld that item of information, and his insistence that nothing should be said about the finding of the papers.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you said he was quite nice about it,’ Mrs. Thurber recalled anxiously.

  ‘He absolutely insisted on nothing being said to the others.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Miss Haskin and Mrs. Thurber together—Mrs. Thurber in accents of timid approval which were immediately drowned by Miss Haskin’s baritone exclamation of interest.

  ‘Now why did he do that, I wonder?’ Miss Haskin added.

  ‘He wanted to protect poor Anne from Deborah’s spiteful triumph,’ Mrs. Thurber said. ‘Very nice and proper of him, too.’

  ‘But not very characteristic of a business man who has been made to feel a fool,’ rejoined Miss Haskin thoughtfully. ‘I wonder—Well, well, one can’t say, of course.’

  ‘I think it was sheer—kindness on his part, just as Mrs. Thurber says,’ Anne explained reluctantly. ‘And, though I know it sounds ungrateful of me, I’d really rather he hadn’t taken that stand. Somehow, dodging the consequences of one’s carelessness is almost worse than facing them.’

  ‘But you were not guilty of carelessness, after all,’ Miss Haskin reminded her.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Anne’s face cleared again and she smiled. ‘I can’t get used to the feeling. But how wonderful to know that, whatever the explanation, I did not make any mistake. I began to wonder if I were going crazy or something.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be so ready to accept blame,’ declared Miss Haskin, who would no more have thought of accepting blame than of accepting charity.

  ‘I was so stunned and dismayed, I just didn’t know what to think,’ Anne explained.

  Miss Haskin nodded solemnly.

  ‘It needed a clear and objective approach to the problem, to make one see the solution,’ she said.

  Which prompted Anne to exclaim:

  ‘You can’t imagine how grateful I am, Miss Haskin. Even if we haven’t every detail right, I do really think you’ve arrived at the general explanation.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Miss Haskin. ‘Of course. What I should really like to know at the moment,’ she added reflectively, ‘is what Deborah Eskin is thinking.’

  ‘Deborah—’ began Anne. And then: ‘Oh, yes! If she put the letter there, she knows it should have been found.’

  ‘She probably thinks you either concealed or destroyed it,’ Miss Haskin said.

  ‘Or that I failed to find it,’ Anne added, feeling a considerable distaste for either of the other suggestions.

  ‘She’ll settle that point for herself, as soon as she can make an excuse to go into the study.’

  ‘Oh, I hate the idea that she should be able to think that of me, even incorrectly.’ Anne made a slight face.

  ‘Who has the letter at the moment?’ inquired Mrs. Thurber, who, now that she was more or less keeping up with the development of the mystery, was greatly enjoying herself.

  ‘David—Mr. Jerome.’

  ‘Do you think he meant to destroy it?’

  ‘I—suppose so. I see no point in his swearing me to secrecy otherwise.’

  ‘Surely she’ll say something to him, when she finds the letter gone from the drawer,’ Mrs. Thurber said.

  ‘She can’t,’ Miss Haskin pointed out triumphantly. ‘Not unless she admits that she knew it was there.’

  ‘Oh, no, of course not!’ Mrs. Thurber was rather shocked by this further complication. ‘Oh, dear, dear. It’s perfectly true—“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive.” ’

  ‘I doubt if this is Deborah’s first attempt at deception,’ was Miss Haskin’s dry rejoinder to that.

  ‘We haven’t any grounds for saying that,’ Anne pointed out quickly.

  ‘Not grounds, perhaps. But what is called a strong case for presumption,’ said Miss Haskin, who had read that phrase somewhere and liked it. ‘However, the present instance is quite sufficient. What do you propose to do about it?’

  ‘Me?’ exclaimed Anne. ‘I can’t imagine. I haven’t a grain of actual proof. I can’t possibly go to Mr. Jerome and make wild accusations against his fiancée. It would simply look as though I were anxious to fix the blame on anyone but myself.’

  ‘Hm.’ Miss Haskin pressed her lips together and looked thoughtful. ‘You mean that you propose to say nothing at all?’

  ‘There’s absolutely nothing that I can say at the moment,’ Anne insisted. And, at the glint in Miss Haskin’s eye, she added emphatically: ‘And I implore you both not to say a word about it either.’

  ‘Oh, we shouldn’t dream of it, dear,’ Mrs. Thurber assured her.

  ‘Not without your agreement, anyway,’ amplified Miss Haskin reluctantly. ‘Time is a great factor, of course. Circumstances may change.’

  And when Miss Haskin said that, one almost heard time and fate combining to sweep away unjust suspicions and expose the guilty.

  But, while they were waiting for this desirable state of affairs to come to pass, Anne realised it was bedtime, and that Mrs. Thurber, absorbed though she was, had begun to show signs of weariness.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do tonight.’ She stood up, and gathered the tea things together on a tray. ‘I’ll see to these, Mrs. Thurber.’

  ‘No, no, dear, just put them beside the sink. You might splash your pretty dress,’ Mrs. Thurber replied anxiously. ‘They’ll do in the morning. Dear me, what an exciting evening this has been. But I wish one could do something about it all. It doesn’t seem right that Deborah should marry this nice man, and that he should have no idea how deceitful she is.’

  ‘Stupidity must be paid for, like anything else,’ observed Miss Haskin, in such a deep and sombre voice that Mrs. Thurber started and looked nervously at the faded portrait of Mr. Thurber. ‘He should have had more sense than to become engaged to Deborah Eskin.’

  That was the last Anne heard of the discussion, as she went into the kitchen, and, in spite of Mrs. Thurber’s prohibition, started to wash up the cups and saucers. But the disapproving assertion stayed with her, underlined, as it were, by the events of the evening.

  Well, the fact still remained that he had chosen to become engaged to Deborah Eskin, whatever Miss Haskin’s doubts might be about the wisdom of his choice. Presumably, then, he was not unaware of her disposition, and was satisfied to love her, faults and all.

  He would not, Anne felt sure, have realised that Deborah was capable of a piece of calculated deceit. But then nor had she realised that herself. One did not imagine one’s friends and acquaintances doing such things, until the proof of their behaviour became overwhelming.

  Probably he knew that she was inclined to be jealous without reason. He might even know that she was not entirely scrupulous when such jealousy attacked her. But then some men, Anne knew, were not particularly disgusted or revolted by the idea of a jealous fiancée. They even found a sort of obscure flattery in the thought.

  Was David like that?

  On the whole, she thought not. But after all, how well did she really know him? How much of the David she loved had been built out of her own romantic imagination?

  Standing there in Mrs. Thurber’s neat, bright kitchen, Anne suffered a moment of self-revealing realism.

  David was largely an unknown quantity to her. How, therefore, could she judge of his motives and reactions?

  She thought of him constantly. She had even had a considerable amount to do with him in day-to-day, surface matters. But what did she really know of him, as a person?

  Anne sighed impatiently as she put away Mrs. Thurber’s best china. She was grateful to Miss Haskin for more or less solving the sordid mystery. She was indescribably relieved to know that she had not be
en stupid and careless, as she had feared. But, so far as she could see, finding herself the injured party, rather than the offender, had not helped her relationship with David one little bit. Rather the reverse, if anything.

  She returned to the sitting-room, to wish Mrs. Thurber and a reluctantly departing Miss Haskin goodnight.

  ‘Ah, you’ll sleep better tonight for that talk we had over the tea,’ Mrs. Thurber observed kindly.

  And Miss Haskin stood there, looking so exactly like a nice big dog who had unearthed a bone that Anne hadn’t the heart to say anything which would diminish their self-congratulation.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ she agreed. ‘I’d be crying my eyes out at this moment, but for that. I couldn’t bear the thought that I could actually make bad mistakes without even knowing the fact!’

  ‘I’m looking forward to the time when he can know that too,’ observed Miss Haskin, a little menacingly. And then she took her departure.

  As Anne climbed the stairs to her room, she thought rather anxiously of Miss Haskin’s last remark.

  To expect her to refrain from either taking a hand, or even commenting on what others had done, was like expecting water to run uphill, or similar reversal of the natural order of things. Even if she managed not to blurt out any disastrous revelation herself, she would certainly be constantly pressing Anne to make some revealing step or other.

  After all, it was not every day that even Miss Haskin solved a mystery. It was little less than cruelty to expect her to preserve silence on the subject.

  Sitting up in bed in the moonlight, Anne hugged her knees and thought of the past and the future. Downstairs, she had insisted that it was impossible for her to say anything to David. Now she began to wonder if, in order to forestall any action on Miss Haskin’s part, she might not be well advised to say something to him of what she had discovered.

  The great problem, of course, was—what, and how much?

  So far as strict justice was concerned, Deborah deserved to be found out completely. On the other hand, Anne was not anxious to play the part of informer. Nor did she want to run the risk, which she had mentioned to Miss Haskin and Mrs. Thurber, of simply giving David the impression that she was trying to unload her own fault on to someone else at any cost.