“What proof can you possibly give me?” said the woman.
“A photograph of our wedding,” said Carlyon. “But you’ll have to wait a few minutes. I’ll go and get it.” There was the sound of a closing door. Chucky said urgently, “Come on, now—she’s alone. We’ll talk to her.”
“For Pete’s sake, are you crazy? What about?”
“About Amista of course,” said Chucky. He strolled up nonchalantly to the window-sill. “Excuse me, Madam…”
No answer from within. “She’s deaf you fool,” said Tinka, triumphantly.
But he fished a shorthand notebook from his pocket and a stumpy pencil. “Good. We’ll do a bit of writing.” He lowered the window and flung a leg over the sill. The woman in the room made no movement. She evidently had not heard or seen him.
There were steps on the gravel and he hastily withdrew his leg. Dai Trouble appeared round the corner. He seemed relieved to see Mr. Chucky. “Oh, there you are, then, Inspector.”
“Inspector!” scoffed Katinka.
“Everything under control, Dai bach,” said Chucky. He lowered the window carefully with a significant glance at Katinka.
Dai Trouble acknowledged the wisdom of this manoeuvre with an admiring wink. “Mr. Carlyon had to run up to the attic for a moment. He didn’t want the lady to be—disturbed.” More significant glances at Katinka. Her blood boiled.
And curse and damn and blast that Chucky! she thought. Carlyon must have heard the scrapings and shufflings outside the window, must have realized that someone had been listening there. Now he could not trust his guest alone for five minutes without sending a watchdog to keep guard over her. “It’s a damn shame,” she said, hotly, to Dai. “I was sitting here on this bench not—not trying to listen at all, but this prying fool…”
Carlyon came back into the room with what was apparently a photograph, in his hand. Dai Trouble retired, his temporary guardianship over. The woman said tremulously: “Yes, it’s my darling.” She began to weep a little. “How pretty she looks! And now, my poor, lovely one…”
“So you’re convinced,” said Carlyon. Tinka could picture the cold scorn with which he would put out his hand to take the precious picture back from her.
“I’m sorry,” said the woman. “Not being here, not even being in England at the time… And what did we know about you? But she wouldn’t wait, she wouldn’t listen to a word of advice and I was so ill at the time. …” Katinka heard the snap of her handbag as though she had dried her tears and put the handkerchief away. “Well—I’ll go now. I’m sorry to have misjudged you.”
“You’re sure you won’t wait and see her,” said Carlyon. There was a sound of an opening door and Chucky dodged back and sat with an air of great off-handedness on the wooden bench beside Tinka. “They’re coming out.”
Tinka found herself, to her own horror, also adopting an air of studied unconcern. Carlyon passed the corner of the house, his hand on the woman’s elbow to help her dragging steps over the rough ground. “Perhaps you’re right. It would be very painful for you both. And I don’t want anything to happen that would upset her even—even pleasurably, if you understand. …” But he talked to the empty air. The woman stumbled on unhearingly beside him, fretful grey eyes vacant and unaware.
They passed out of sight. Miss Evans might as well set up in the ferry business altogether, reflected Katinka, if there was much more activity at Penderyn.
“Isn’t she going to stay and see her daughter?” said Mr. Chucky, astonished.
“Her niece. She’s the aunt who brought Mrs. Carlyon up.”
“So you were listening?” said Chucky, grinning all over. He spread his slim legs out joyfully in the pleasant sunshine. “What else did you hear? I couldn’t get a thing, hardly, through the sitting-room door, and then Dai Jones kept bobbing out and I had to pretend to be just doing sentry go.”
“I wasn’t listening. I happened to be sitting here half asleep and I couldn’t help hearing a little. She was only interested in Mrs. Carlyon’s money and some possessions of her own. I suppose Mrs. Carlyon can’t manage her affairs for herself now, and the aunt says that she’s a very wealthy girl.”
“Why doesn’t she ask Mrs. Carlyon herself about them, if she doesn’t trust him?”
“Perhaps she doesn’t realize Mrs. Carlyon’s here,” said Katinka. She corrected herself: “Oh, yes, she did; he asked if she would like to see her.”
But too late. Mr. Chucky was ablaze with a new idea. “Ye Gods! I wonder!” He ignored all protestations, brushed aside all reminders and assurances, turning upon her a face alight with mischief. “That would be something like a story, girl, eh? He asked her—but did she hear him ask? Did he mean her to hear? What a headline, eh? BROKEN-HEARTED MOTHER LITTLE KNOWS… No, no, she was the aunt, wasn’t she? All right. RAVAGED GIRL KEPT OUT OF SIGHT OF AUNT.” He had gone all Welsh again. “I think you’d better leave your headlines to the sub-editors,” said Tinka, coldly. “They’re shocking.”
But Mr. Chucky was impervious to disapproval. He darted off into the house and a moment later came back with scratched hands and a crumpled sheet of paper. “He must have tossed it into the fire and the cat rescued it, and I rescued it from the cat.” He smoothed it out as he walked. “Question and answer,” he said exultantly. “Here are the answers—we make up the questions to fit. There you can help me.”
“I’m damned if I will,” said Katinka.
“Then I’ll have to make them up for myself,” said Chucky, equably. He sat down and spread out the paper on his knee. “‘Your own lawyers handled her affairs at the time of the accident.’ Well, that explains itself.”
“I suppose he’d have to have power of attorney and things like that: but after all, he’s her husband. Just because she was rich…”
“O.K., O.K.,” said Chucky, glancing at her with a mild surprise. “You’re not Counsel for the Defence, you know! Now: ‘I did not need it.’ ‘Her lawyers knew all about me when I married her.’ ‘I was at least as well off as she was.’ Oh, ho! Auntie thinks he was after the young lady’s money.”
“Some people will think anything,” said Katinka.
“‘If you can prove it, I will return them at once.’ And, ‘You have only to show me proof.’ What was that about?”
Katinka strained her mind, trying to think back over the conversation. “She laid claim to some of the things in the room. The Sisley picture was one.”
“Oh ho!” said Mr. Chucky.
“I wish you wouldn’t keep on making those odious exclamations. You sound like something out of the Seven Dwarfs.”
Mr. Chucky ignored her. “This must be the part where you kept talking to me and neither of us could hear. ‘In Ireland.’ ‘In the church at Castletownbere.’ ‘County Cork.’ ‘You can go and see for yourself.’ What’s all this?”
“Castletownbere is a little place on the sea coast in County Cork. And County Cork, for your information, is in Ireland. But what can have happened there…?”
“They were married there, of course: and the aunt can go and see the register.”
“But they were married at… Oh, hell!” said Tinka, “I never can disentangle Angela from Amista. Yes, that’s right, they were married at Castletownbere. It was at about this point that the aunt seemed to be questioning whether they were married at all and so he went to get the picture.”
“Why wasn’t she at the wedding, if she brought the girl up and all that?”
“It sounded as if she had been very ill, and she was in America anyway, at the time. She said she wrote about the things that the girl could have on loan, ‘while we were in the States.’”
“Wouldn’t Mrs. Carlyon send her aunt the wedding photographs?”
“Perhaps they actually quarrelled over the marriage,” said Katinka. “But anyway, the aunt was so ill and she may have never seen them, or got muddled up or something. She seemed very vague and weepy and nervous, I mean it may have been that sort of illness, that makes you fo
rget things. And she was already ill when the accident happened, because she said that that caused a relapse.” Why she should be discussing it all with this wretched Chucky she could not imagine. “If any of this appears in the press,” she said, “I’ll go straight to Mr. Carlyon with the truth about you, and damnation to honour among journalists.” Journalist, indeed! The man was a blot on an already sufficiently ignoble profession.
At dawn she wakened once again to the light tapping of fingers at her window. Blast his impudence, she thought, I’ll take no notice. Let him whistle for it! This he immediately proceeded to do, hissing interminably through his teeth, the refrain of “All through the night” until she could bear it no longer, but wrapped herself in her dressing-gown and marched in righteous indignation to the window. Mr. Chucky was propped up comfortably outside, whistling happily. “There you are, Miss Jones, bach, and high time too. I nearly gone dry, whistling for you. Come you and see what I found in the attic!”
“What, etchings?” said Tinka.
He burst into laughter, stifling his giggles like a schoolboy with his hand over his mouth. “Don’t flatter yourself, Miss Jones, now, your honour’s safe with me, a man with three children at home, like I told you, and one on the way.”
“I’m not going to snoop on Mr. Carlyon. I’m not going to aid and abet you in getting copy for your dirty rag.”
“Nothing to do with any dirty rag. Just curiosity, I gave you my word!” He had on a coat and trousers with a scarf tucked in round his neck. He made a cross on the breast pocket of his jacket, where the well-folded much-too-fancy handkerchief peeped forth. “On my honour—not a word to be printed.”
“A very good expression for my opinion of you,” said Katinka. “Not a word to be printed.” But curiosity was rising up within her like a bubble. “What is it you’ve found?”
“Up in the attic. Come on, now, and see.”
She temporized. “It’s too dangerous. Someone’s sure to hear us.”
“Mrs. Love’s in the other wing with Mrs. Carlyon, and Mrs. Carlyon’s under morphia. Dai’s snoring away like a grampus; you can hear him half over the house. And Mr. Carlyon…” He took her by the arm, leaning half in at the window to get hold of her. “Look by there, as we say in Wales.”
She could see nothing at first, straining her eyes along the line of his pointing forefinger. But as they grew more accustomed to the grey morning light, she discerned, though faintly, a tiny figure, forcing its way across the pathless mountainside. “It’s Carlyon,” said Chucky; but she had known that already. In her mind’s eye she could see the weary stoop, the drawn face and sad grey eyes, the abject weariness that drove him on this lonely walk in the chill dawn, to those desolate places. She thought, with love and pity: if this wretch is going to find out anything against him, I’d better know what it is.
They crept up the tiny stair to the attic room. Below them, Dai Trouble’s snores echoed faintly through the house. Mrs. Love would no doubt be safely tucked away in the room next to that of her charge, since Carlyon had again placed himself on duty that night. Into what drugged sleep had the poor monster fallen at last, that released him for his solitary wanderings?
Mr. Chucky pushed open a little door. “He must have forgotten to lock it when he came up for the wedding photograph. Come on in.”
It was dim in the attic, lit only by a square where the dying moonlight gleamed on a window-pane. She stood uneasily in the doorway. “No thanks: I don’t like this. I’m going back.”
He put his hand on her elbow and urged her forward. “Don’t be a coward. Come on!”
“Listen to hear if Dai’s still snoring.”
The faint sound of the snoring crept up the stair to them. Chucky went over to the window and rubbed on the dusty pane; far, far away on the mountainside, Carlyon moved steadily upward. “We’re safe as houses. Come on!”
The little room was crowded with boxes and baskets and trunks and cases of every shape and size. Chucky went up to one, fiddled with the lock for a moment, and lifted the lid to reveal dresses, blouses, coats, skirts, evening frocks—out of date now, but still exquisite. He let the lid fall, and forced open another box of underclothes, silk and satin and lace. Another box: evening dresses. In the light of his torch, there was the sudden glitter of sequins on the soft glow of velvet. And another box and another… Shoes, hats, gloves, stockings, belts; filmy nightdresses, embroidered negligées, feathered satin mules. … “Try a pair on,” said Chucky, tossing them familiarly over to Katinka. “You’re awful!” she said; but she could not resist slipping her bare feet into them and shuffling about the dusty attic floor. “Keep them,” said Chucky. “No one will ever know.”
She took them off quickly and put them back in their box. “You’re the most utterly unmoral person I ever met. I wouldn’t dream of keeping them.”
“You would if they weren’t miles too big,” said Chucky, laughing.
“This isn’t what you dragged me up to see?”
But he went on opening case after case. “Aren’t they locked?” said Katinka, mystified.
He gave a quick turn of the hand, so that she caught a glimpse of a bunch of odd-looking keys, and then, laughing, covered them up again. “An invaluable investment for the professional snooper, Miss Jones. Never be without them!” A box of furs, laid away in moth balls, a box of boxes, gloves, handkerchiefs, stockings, ostrich feather fans, all neatly packed away. … “Why on earth doesn’t he get rid of it all?” said Chucky.
“How can he? It would be—so final. And besides, they’re not his to give away; they’re hers. He can’t march up and say to her: Darling, you’ll never be able to appear in public again, so we may as well get rid of all your lovely clothes. …” As Chucky’s torch went out abruptly and plunged them into pitch darkness, she stopped on a broken word. “What is it?”
“Do you hear anything?”
She listened, holding her breath. “No, nothing.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” whispered Chucky.
“But what is it—what’s happening?”
It was deathly still and deeply dark. She stood by him, trembling, sick with fear. After a long minute he whispered: “Can you hear Dai Trouble snoring?”
She listened intently and caught at last a faint, regular rhythm. “Yes—there you are. Snore—snore: snore—snore…”
“He’s begun again,” he said with relief. “He stopped before, I swear it. Whew!”
“Well, come on, now, let’s get going.”
“But you haven’t seen…”
“I don’t want to,” she said. “I loathe this terrifying place and everything in it. I’m going.”
But he caught at her wrist and dragged her over with him to the far corner, and with his free hand began to ruffle through papers and pictures in a wooden box. “Marriage certificate—Angela Erleigh to Charles Lion, Marylebone Town Hall, dated a year ago, roughly. Passport—Charles Lion, wife Angela Lion. …”
“That must be his real name: Charles Lion—what heaven!”
“Oh, yes, didn’t you know? Of course he would tell his dear Inspector Chucky! He telescoped it up when he came down here; protective colouring—keep off the newspaper reporters. Ha ha!”
“How old does it say he is?”
“Your beloved is some thirty-three summers,” said Chucky, dryly.
“No beloved of mine!”
“Ha ha!” said Mr. Chucky, derisively.
“Of course he isn’t, don’t be silly. And don’t say ha ha! It’s worse than oh ho.”
But Mr. Chucky was back with Carlyon’s passport. “He describes himself as of independent means. She was an artist. Oh, was she?”
“That would account for their being so keen on the little Sisley.”
“The little what?”
“The picture, you fool. The snow scene. Now, look here,” said Tinka, “you’ve surely seen everything you want to. Do for heaven’s sake let’s get out of this ghastly place.”
But he cau
ght her arm once more. “We haven’t got what I really came up to find. Another box, a deed box, perhaps. … Ah, here! Yes—look, still unlocked. He simply forgot he’d been up for the photographs.”
Bundles of papers, of letters, of photographs. “There you are, my dear, that’s it. Your dear Carlyon, on his wedding day!”
It was strange how one had built up a picture, so familiar now as to have long seemed simple fact, of what the ruined face had looked like before tragedy came to it. She realized that the picture had been indissoluble in her mind from the original old mind-picture of Amista. But here was the real Angela, the Angela whom Carlyon had married—and in a moment the old image died away in Katinka’s brain and the new took possession there. A little older than she had supposed; taller and altogether bigger than the poor, shuffling, bowed creature that had crouched, dreadfully weeping in the hall. But very pretty, very pretty and sweet, however faintly ridiculous the out-dated clothes; and radiantly happy, radiantly smiling. …
Someone was coming up the stairs.
Chucky switched off the torch and once again they stood trembling in the dark. A heavy foot trod on a creaking board. They cowered back into the shadows of the little room, but the dawn light that had seemed so faint, now flooded the whole place, seeking them out, holding them fast in its beam. The only sound in the world to them both was the hammering of their hearts and the heavy footfall, coming slowly up the stairs.
The door edged open. Slowly and silently, it was pushed steadily open. A flashlight shone suddenly and violently, sweeping them both into its bright beam; and Mr. Chucky caught Katinka into his arms and fastened his mouth on hers.
Dai Trouble stood in the doorway, a revolver in his hand, and said: “All right. Come on out!”
Mr. Chucky dropped his arms abruptly and stood beside Tinka, the picture of sheepishness. Dai said: “Well!” and dropped the gun to his side. Tinka started forward in a flurry of horrified repudiation, but Chucky’s hand, unexpectedly steely, forced her back against him. He said: “Dai bach! You didn’t half make us jump!”
“Jump!” said Dai. He gestured with the revolver, downward pointing, round the little room. “God’s sake, mun—what are you doing up here?”
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