“Who’s that man over yonder, talking to Mrs. Telford, Malwood?” he asked incuriously. “She seems to be getting on better with him than she did with us.”
“That fellow Hyson,” the doctor explained, curtly.
“Wendover told me something about him,” Sir Clinton said. “You don’t seem to like him either, by your tone.”
“I don’t.”
When Sir Clinton spoke again, some seconds later, it was to hark back to an earlier topic.
“All your talk about glands, hormones, and so forth, makes me think of the dictum of a Frenchman — Claude Bernard, I think it was. ‘Virtue and vice are products, like sugar or vitriol.’ You people seem in a fair way to prove that, if all you tell us is true, Malwood. Take a perfectly decent human being, knock one of his or her glands out of order, and you may get what the law considers a criminal. Or, at any rate, you may loose forces that the poor creature can’t control. Is that right?”
“Something of the sort,” Malwood agreed.
“Sugar and vitriol,” Sir Clinton repeated in a musing tone. “And suppose that you medicals manage to counteract the disease; and the patient gets back to a normal state again — to find that in the meanwhile the vitriol has burned into something vital? Not a pretty retrospect for your patient, to look back on all the damage he’s done while the machinery was in disorder. Can you cure that, Malwood, with all your nice little synthetic products?”
“Out of my field,” Malwood declared. “That’s a job for the psychoanalyst.”
“I suppose it would be,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Well, I see some people moving towards the front door. It looks as if the bride and bridegroom might be going away any minute now. We’d better walk over and help to give them a hearty send-off. Come along.”
Chapter Five
Affection’s Sentinel
OLIVE LYNDOCH sat at her desk, making a pretence of tidying it up for the night. Her fellow-clerks had already covered their machines and were preparing to leave. Olive scarcely noticed them, engrossed as she was in her own troubles.
In the earlier days of her liaison with Hyson, it had been he who pressed for meetings, begged for opportunities, all aflame to have her to himself; and at times she had taken a perverse pleasure in tantalising him by refusals, merely to assure herself of her power over him. These days had long gone by. Romance refused to be turned on at 7.30 P.M. on a fixed night per week, like water from a tap.
She strove hard to keep the old feelings alight and to spread the flame by arousing Hyson’s interests in her feelings as well as in her looks; but the more she tried, the less she achieved. He had no desire to know what sort of woman she was or how she looked at life. It merely puzzled him that she should talk so much about things which left him completely cold. And now, as she had been driven to recognise, he was tiring of the sensations which she could give him. Even to a girl far less acute than Olive Lyndoch, it would have been clear that the sands were running out. It was impossible any longer to shut her eyes to plain facts. He was bored by their whole association. He wanted variety, something fresh to titillate his fancy.
Variety! Olive knew what that meant — another girl. She was not merely to lose him; she was to have the mortification of seeing some other toy adopted in her stead. And her jealousy assured her that she need not look far to find her supplanter. That little beast, Kitty Nevern, was the one he was after. Olive had no definite basis for this suspicion, but it needed little ground to take root on. Once before, he had shown signs of breaking away; and then he had pitched on the other typist, Effie Hinkley. But Effie “had no use for that kind of thing,” as she herself phrased it; and she had snubbed Hyson when he made his first tentative approaches. Nor had she made any secret of the episode, so that it had come at once to Olive’s ears.
The voices of the two girls reached her, breaking in on her thoughts.
“That Jessop freak hasn’t turned up again, has she?” Kitty Nevern demanded. “Then what’s to be done about this bag of hers that she forgot and left in the private office this afternoon?”
She held up a lady’s bag as she spoke.
“Give it to Caddie to keep for her,” Effie Hinkley suggested. “Caddie! Here’s Miss Jessop’s bag. Hand it over to her when she comes clamouring for it to-morrow. P’r’aps she’ll give you a kiss in exchange. But don’t let the thought of that treat keep you awake all night, my boy.”
Cadbury came up and took possession of the bag.
“I’ll scream for help if she does; and mind you rally round and rescue me. You know my methods, Watson,” he ended, using one of a series of meaningless catchphrases to which he was addicted.
Olive, still making a pretence of clearing up her desk, kept a watch on the rest of the staff out of the tail of her eye. At any rate, she would see that little Nevern beast off the premises before she went herself. Hyson was still in the private office, and she had a suspicion that his overtime work was merely a pretence to cover an ulterior purpose.
Though his motives were far apart from hers, Olive had an unconscious seconder on the staff. At Kitty Nevern’s first appearance in the office, young Cadbury had fallen completely into calf-love. He was young enough to be ashamed of his feelings and to hide them with care, especially from Kitty herself. He assumed a perky tone to cover his nervousness when he spoke to her; and if at times he blushed till his ear-tips were crimson, no one noticed it, since he was at the age when youths suffer from uncontrollable reddenings of the face. In the privacy of his little bedroom, he talked to himself about her and held imaginary dialogues with her. In these, he addressed her as “Kitty,” and even succeeded in throwing a yearning note into the dissyllable, which, after all, was no mean feat. But in the office she was “miss,” like her fellow-typists.
Though no one would have suspected it from his exterior, Cadbury lived a vivid and intense inner life, and nowadays much of it centred round Kitty Nevern. Before her coming, his thoughts about girls had been tempered by awakening desires; but so far as his visions of her went, he might have been a junior Galahad. He saw himself, automatic in hand, rescuing her from gunmen, bandits, or kidnappers; and disposing of any opposition with one shot per skull, for in these dreams he was a supermarksman with all firearms. Or else, in his mental theatre, he performed for her delight marvellous feats in the air, afloat, or on the ice. (This was when skating films had become popular.)
Olive Lyndoch, glancing sidelong at him, found him fumbling in the recesses of his desk. She little guessed that he was waiting for the supreme moment of his day, the moment when he could go forward in an offhand fashion and help Kitty to put on her coat. That gesture was, in his stunted imagination, glorified into something akin to Raleigh’s spreading of his cloak before Queen Elizabeth. Just to hold the thing up, to feel her arms slipped into the sleeves, maybe to guide one hand to its place, and then, if he could summon up courage, to smooth down the cloth to make it sit properly: that very ordinary courtesy made him thrill all over. Curiously enough, it never crossed his mind to kiss her, even when they were the last to leave the office. To him she was something far too rare for things like that. He might want to kiss some girls, but this was quite different. He felt that in his very bones.
“Well, thank goodness, that’s another day over,” said Effie Hinkley with a half-smothered yawn as she covered her typewriter. “It brings in bread-and-butter, and that’s about all one can say in its favour.”
“You sound a bit down in the mouth,” Kitty commented. “Anything wrong?”
“Headache,” Effie explained. “Might be eye-strain and then I’ll have to sport specs and look like a tortoise. I wish that new broom in there would clean the cobwebs off the windows. The light might be better in here then.”
She had a cool contempt for Hyson which his promotion had done nothing to lessen, and it came out occasionally in occult references to various menial tasks which a “new broom” might be put to with advantage. She walked over to the rack, struggled into her coat, and the
n, with a cavalier nod, left the office.
Kitty Nevern finished tidying up her desk and rose to her feet. She threw a glance in Olive’s direction.
“Working late, to-night?” she asked.
Olive shook her head.
“No, I’m just about finished,” she said, making a pretence of jotting down some notes on a pad.
Kitty crossed over to the coat-rack and instantly Cadbury was out of his chair dashing clumsily to join her. He almost pushed her aside in his eagerness, unhooked her coat from its peg and held it out for her.
“Thanks,” she said, in recognition of the service.
She smoothed down her coat with an unconscious gesture which Cadbury thought the most graceful movement a woman could make. Then she took her hat from its peg and put it on. A grey fur hung beside it, and Cadbury lifted it down and stood holding it ready. When he spoke to Kitty, it was always in a slightly impertinent tone with an aim at smartness.
“What is it?” he demanded, fingering the fur. “Imitation rabbit, I suppose?”
“Where were you educated?” Kitty demanded, rather indignant at the slight on her newest possession. “Oh, Borstal, of course. I ought to have recognised the old school tie. No, smarty, it isn’t imitation rabbit, whatever that is. Nor rabbit plain, either. It’s Arctic fox, and that’s something, I can tell you. Look at it.”
She stood for a moment letting her fingers run over the fur as though the touch of it gave her a pleasant titillation. Then with a graceful gesture she put up her arms and adjusted it about her neck.
“Now have a look at it, and then you’ll know a good fur when you see one again.”
Olive Lyndoch looked up from her desk. Her glance took in the smart hat, the grey coat and skirt on the trim little figure, the chin buried in the fur at the throat. Arctic fox? And a fairly good one, too, if she knew her way about. Fifteen pounds, it must have cost. Who had paid for that?
“Come into a fortune,” said Cadbury, in a stage aside. “We shall be losing her soon. Ahem! Shall I ask the chauffeur to bring up the Rolls, miss, or will you walk downstairs to the pavement? I hope you’ve got that fur properly insured. There’s such a lot of bad characters about. Where did you get it, really?”
“A birthday present, since it might keep you awake to-night if you didn’t know. I chose it myself, though. Goes well with fair hair, doesn’t it? Well, your conversation’s too thrilling for anything, but I must tear myself away. Good-night, everybody.”
She walked to the door. Cadbury unhooked his hat, crammed it on his head, and darted after her, throwing a hasty: “Good-night, Miss Lyndoch,” over his shoulder as he went. It was not often that he could summon up enough courage to join Kitty on the stairs and force his company on her as far as her bus-stop, but to-night he felt keyed up to the necessary point.
With their departure, Olive Lyndoch ceased to make any pretence of work. Her mind was full of that fair-haired little figure in grey with the fox fur at its throat. And that . . . that pert little beast . . . that was what Ossie was throwing her aside for? Well, men were funny, there was no denying it.
Then a question of Kitty’s crossed her memory and became fraught with meaning: “Working late, to-night?” Why had she asked that? She had only to go to her memory to find an answer. In the early days of her association with Ossie, the office, after hours, had been their meeting-place and the excuse had been overtime work. She had gone out, got some sort of scratch meal, and come back to join him. And now, to-night, he was still in his room and Kitty Nevern had been anxious to know if the coast would be clear. That was what she meant by asking if Olive meant to stay much longer. Well, so much the better. She might as well make certain about the thing to-night. She rose and went into the private office where she found Hyson at the desk with papers outspread before him.
“Going to work late, Ossie?” she asked, making her tone as indifferent as possible.
He looked up with a frown on his face.
“Yes. Lot to do. These clients calling this afternoon kept me back. Why haven’t you gone?”
“I’m just going,” she explained. “All the rest are away.”
For a moment she felt inclined to reopen the question of their affairs, but bethought herself that it would do no good, especially in his present mood. Besides, she wanted to be sure about Kitty.
“Good-night, Ossie,” she said. “I’ll see you again on our day?”
“Oh, all right,” Hyson snapped. “Don’t bother me now. I’m full up with this stuff.”
Olive came a step forward into the room.
“Don’t talk to me like that!” she exclaimed. “I won’t have it, Ossie.”
Then, at the look on his face, she saw that she had crossed her Rubicon without knowing it. Hyson lifted his head and stared at her as though she were a stranger.
“What’s all this about?” he demanded.
“You’ve no right to speak in that tone to me,” Olive retorted, “I won’t be spoken to as if I were a dog you were ordering out of the room. You might give me common courtesy, anyhow.”
Hyson leaned forward over the desk.
“It’s been coming to this for a while,” he said evenly, “and you may as well have it now as later, Olive. I’m tired of the whole business. Sick to death of it. These things never last, you know. You understood that from the start. Or you ought to have done, if you’d any sense.”
“You mean . . . you mean . . .” she stammered, shrinking from putting the thing into words.
“Drop it? Yes. It was bound to come, sooner or later. It’s come now, that’s all.”
“You mean you’re tired of me? Is that it?”
“That’s it, in a nutshell. No use going on. You’d get nothing out of it. Neither would I.”
“But, Ossie . . .”
“Oh, damn!” he said wearily, and his tone gave her a sharper pang than she had yet felt. “Why can’t you women face facts?”
So he was lumping her now with the other women who had been in his life before her, she reflected bitterly. She wasn’t Olive Lyndoch to him, she was just “one of the lot.” These six words were more revealing than anything else that he had said. This situation might be new to her; to him, it was merely a repetition of a scene he had gone through many times already.
So that was that!
He had struck so suddenly that she felt dazed, unable to cope with him. And he left her no illusions. The tone and the look on his face spoke far clearer than any words could have done. This was really the final scene in their association.
She did not trouble to answer, but as she closed the door of the private office she found herself trembling in every muscle. She walked unsteadily to her desk, dropped into her chair, and sat gazing unseeingly at the wall before her while she strove to bring some coherence into her ideas. If she had wept, it might have relieved her, but Olive Lyndoch was not of the type that cries easily in moments of stress.
She had lost him now, for good. She had seen it coming, had even pretended to herself that she understood what losing him would mean. Now she knew that she had merely been playing with the idea, deliberately avoiding the sharpness of its edge. “Oh, well, if I lose him, I lose him,” she had said to herself with mock bravery. But all that had been mere make-believe, evading the steel. Now she knew what pain really meant.
“Oh, why couldn’t I keep him?” she asked herself in agony.
But as she searched back in her memory she could find nothing salient which would mark the turning-point in their relations. She couldn’t even say to herself: “If I’d done this, then, instead of that, it wouldn’t have happened.” No, the whole thing had been so gradual that she could not lay her finger on any episode as the first cause of the rift. He had just drifted away by imperceptible stages, week by week.
To escape from her emotions, Olive Lyndoch forced herself to think of everyday affairs. Anything to escape from this pain, even for a few moments. Her flat? She couldn’t pay the rent of it without Ossie’s subsi
dy; and that, she guessed, would now be cut off. He was not the man to waste money on an affair which had ceased to interest him, or on a girl who had lost her attraction for him. She’d have to give her landlord notice at once. And if she couldn’t get a cheaper suitable flat, what about her furniture? Sell it, or pay storage?
“Oh, damn the whole thing! What does it matter?” she said, half-aloud.
But still she strove to concentrate on something definite which would drive into the background the real thing that mattered. What about her position in the office here? All these schemes about getting in the Moon-Hopkins machine would go by the board, now. Ossie would have no interest in helping her to a better position. Most likely, instead, he’d be glad to see her dismissed and so removed from his path. She felt a little creepy sensation as this aspect of things dawned upon her. She had no pity for Forbury when she had schemed for his dismissal; her sympathetic imagination went no further than her own affairs. But now that she felt herself threatened with discharge, all the terrors of unemployment rose up before her.
She had no allies on the staff, now that Ossie had thrown her over. Effie Hinkley, cold, self-sufficient, and cynical, would never lift a finger to help. All she would think about would be the succession to Olive’s post and the consequent rise in screw. No help there. And no help from Forbury, either. He had no cause to like her, as she well knew. Far from it. So that left Kitty Nevern. . . .
At the thought of Kitty, Olive choked suddenly and then, with an effort and a bitten lip, she pulled herself together again. Kitty was the last person she could approach, even though Kitty would be the most influential of them all for the time being. And at that she saw a picture of Kitty in Ossie’s arms. What was that catch-phrase young Cadbury was always using? “You know my methods, Watson.” Well, she knew Ossie’s methods. She could guess how he’d get round that little fair-haired chit with her fox fur. There he was, in the private office, waiting for her to come back when the coast was clear.
Murder Will Speak Page 9
