Grey Mask

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Oh, it was another letter? And what did he say?”

  “I really can’t remember,” said Egbert in an exhausted voice.

  “Have you got that letter-did you keep it?”

  Egbert brightened a little.

  “I might have it, but I don’t know-I’m so awfully careless about letters. I just leave them about, you know, and sometimes my man throws them away, and sometimes he doesn’t. I could ask him.”

  “He’d be hardly likely to remember, but perhaps you will have a search made.”

  “He reads all the letters,” said Egbert thoughtfully. “He might remember.”

  Years of self-control do not go for nothing. Mr. Hale merely pressed his lips together for a moment before saying:

  “Will you kindly ask him to make a thorough search? This letter may be a very important piece of evidence. Indeed, if it contains Mr. Standing’s own admission that his daughter’s birth was irregular, the whole question would be settled.” He paused, and added, “In your favour.”

  “I suppose it would,” said Egbert vaguely.

  Mr. Hale shuffled some papers.

  “It is, perhaps, a little premature to raise the point, but if you succeed as heir-at-law, you will, I presume, be prepared to consider the question of some allowance to your cousin. I mention this now, because if we had your assurance on this point, we should be prepared to make her a small advance. She appears to be entirely without money.”

  “Does she?”

  “Entirely. She in fact asked me for some money to go on with only this afternoon.”

  “Did she?”

  “I am telling you that she did, and I should be glad to have your views on the subject of an allowance.”

  Egbert yawned.

  “I don’t go in for having views. Art is what interests me-my little collections-a bit of china-a miniature-a print-Art.”

  “Mr. Standing, I must really ask you whether you are prepared to guarantee a small allowance to your cousin.”

  “Why should I?”

  Mr. Hale explained.

  “If you succeed to the late Mr. Standing’s fortune, you will be a very wealthy man.”

  Egbert shook his head again.

  “Not after everybody’s had their pickings,” he said.

  Mr. Hale understood him to refer to the death duties.

  “There will be a good deal left,” he said drily. “An allowance to your cousin-”

  For the third time Egbert shook his head.

  “Nothing doing. If there’s a will, or if it turns out that my uncle really married her mother, would she make me an allowance? Not much.”

  “The positions are hardly analogous.”

  “There’s nothing doing,” said Egbert-“not in the way of an allowance. Someone”-he ran his hand through his hair-“someone suggested we might get married. What do you think of that?”

  “It is rather a question of what Miss Standing would think of it.”

  “Why? It would put her all right, wouldn’t it? I thought it was rather a bright suggestion myself-puts us both right, don’t you see? If there’s a will or a certificate, it makes it all right for me. And if there isn’t a will or a certificate, it makes it all right for her. I thought it was quite a bright suggestion.”

  “It would certainly be a provision for Miss Standing.”

  “Or for me,” said Egbert.

  CHAPTER VII

  That evening Mr. Archie Millar fulfilled his deferred dinner engagement. He and Charles had a small table in a corner of the huge dining-room of The Luxe. Archie was in very good form-full of virtue, full of bonhomie, full of real affection for Charles.

  “I am The Virtuous Nephew out of Tracts for Tiny Tots. This is the seventeenth time this year that I have been summoned to my Aunt Elizabeth’s death-bed. She’s no end bucked because I always come. She isn’t goin’ to die for the next hundred years or so, but it keeps the old dear no end amused to go on sendin’ for me, and alterin’ her will, and givin’ good advice all round. She always tells me about all my little faults and failin’s, and I say ‘Righto’ and she’s no end bucked. Her doctor says it’s a splendid tonic. But I wish she didn’t always send for me when I’m dinin’ with a pal.”

  Charles was debating the question of just how much he was going to tell Archie. Margaret-hang Margaret! She did nothing but get in the way. He frowned and broke in on Archie’s flow of conversation with an abrupt question:

  “Tell me about the Pelhams. Are they still in 16 George Street?”

  Archie laid down his fish-fork.

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  “Not a word since I left.”

  “Mrs. Pelham died six months ago.”

  Charles was shocked. Margaret adored her mother. If he had sometimes thought she adored her too much, he admitted the temptation. Esther Pelham, beautiful, emotional, with a charm as potent as it was difficult to define, and never lacked adorers. Charles himself had bent the knee. Unfair, therefore, to complain if Margaret did so too. He was shocked, and showed it.

  “Poor old Freddy was awfully cut up. Bit of a bore Freddy Pelham, but everyone’s awfully sorry for him now- no end of a facer for him after takin’ her abroad and all-rotten for him comin’ home alone, poor chap.”

  “Did she die abroad?”

  Archie nodded.

  “Freddy took her off for a long voyage. No one thought she was really ill. Beastly for poor little Freddy comin’ home alone.”

  Charles told himself just what he thought of an idiotic reluctance to speak Margaret’s name. He spoke it now:

  “Wasn’t Margaret with them?”

  “No-it was an awful shock to her.”

  Charles prodded himself again.

  “She’s married, I suppose?”

  “Margaret! Who told you that yarn?”

  “No one. I just thought she’d be married.”

  “Well, she isn’t-or she wasn’t the last time I saw her, and that was about ten days ago. She isn’t livin’ with Freddy, you know.”

  “Why isn’t she?”

  “Nobody knows. Girls are so dashed independent nowadays. She went off on her own when Freddy took her mother abroad-and she’s stayed on her own ever since-works for her livin’, and doesn’t look as if it agreed with her. I think it’s a pity myself.” He looked at Charles apologetically. “I always liked Margaret, you know.”

  Charles laughed.

  “So did I. What’s she doing?”

  “Job in a shop-low screw, long hours. Rotten show I should call it. Fancy workin’ when you don’t have to. Girls don’t know when they’re well off.”

  “Where’s she living?”

  “She told me,” said Archie, “but I’m hanged if I remember. Sort of minute flat affair. She had a little money from her own father, didn’t she?”

  “Yes-nothing to speak of.”

  “You’re such a beastly plutocrat!”

  “She couldn’t live on it.”

  “She’s livin’ on it, plus a pound a week.”

  Charles exclaimed:

  “A pound a week!”

  “That’s her screw.”

  “Impossible!”

  “I told you you were a beastly plutocrat. Pound a week’s her market value. She told me so herself.”

  “It’s sweating! What’s her job?”

  “Tryin’ on hats for ugly old women who can’t face ’emselves in the glass. Margaret puts on the hat, the old woman thinks she looks a bit of a daisy in it, pays five or ten guineas, and goes away pleased as Punch. Give you my word that’s how it’s done. Amazin’-isn’t it?”

  Charles frowned.

  “What’s the shop?”

  “Place called Sauterelle in Sloane Street -frightfully smart and exclusive.”

  Charles detached himself with a jerk from a vision of Margaret trying on hats for other people.

  “The Hula-Bula Indians say that a vain woman is like an empty egg-shell,” he observed.

  “Women are all vai
n,” said Archie. “I only once met one that wasn’t, and I give you my word she was a grim proposition. You should see my Aunt Elizabeth’s nightcaps. By the way she’s just made a will leavin’ every farthin’ to a home for decayed parrots. She says the lot of parrots who outlive their devoted mistresses is enough to make a walrus weep. She says she feels a call to provide for their indigent old age. I shall have to marry an heiress-I see it loomin’. I think I’d better make the runnin’ with the Standing girl before there are too many starters.”

  “Who’s the Standing girl?”

  Archie very nearly dropped his knife and fork.

  “My dear old bean, don’t you read the evenin’ papers? Old man Standing was a multi-millionaire who got washed overboard in one of the late weather spasms in the Mediterranean. Beastly place the Mediterranean -nasty cold wind, nasty choppy sea-draughty sort of place. Well, he got washed overboard; and they can’t find any will, and he’s got an only daughter, who scoops the lot. I’m just hesitatin’ on the brink as it were, because they haven’t published her photograph, and that probably means she’s a bit of a nightmare-I mean, think of the photographs they do publish. And my Aunt Elizabeth might alter her will again any day if her parrot bit her, or came out with some of the swear words she thinks she’s broken him of. She told me with tears in her eyes what a reformed bird he was. But you can’t ever tell with parrots.”

  Charles had not been attending. He had decided that he would tell Archie just what had happened the other night; only he would leave Margaret out of it. He interrupted an ingenious plan for priming the parrot with something really hair-raising in the way of an expletive.

  “The other night, Archie, when you didn’t come, I walked down to have a look at the old house.”

  “Did you? Did you go in?”

  “Anyone might have walked in,” said Charles drily. “The door into the alley-way was open, and the garden door was open too. I walked in, and I walked upstairs, and I found a cheery sort of criminal conspiracy carrying on like a house of fire in my mother’s sitting-room.”

  “I say, is this a joke?”

  “No, it isn’t. I saw a light under the door, and I heard voices. You remember the cupboard where we used to play, across the room of the passage between the bedroom and sitting-room?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I got in there and looked through the hole we used to keep corked up, and there was a gentleman in a grey rubber mask and gloves giving orders to a very pretty lot of scoundrels.”

  “Charles, you are jokin’.”

  “I’m not-it happened.”

  “What were they doin’-”

  “Well, I rather gathered they’d destroyed a will, and it wouldn’t very much surprise me to hear that they’d made away with the man who’d made it. They seemed to be thinking about murdering his daughter if another will turned up, or some certificate-I didn’t quite understand about that.”

  “Charles, you don’t mean to say you’re serious?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You weren’t drunk, and you weren’t dreamin’?”

  “I was not.”

  Archie heaved a sigh.

  “Why on earth wasn’t I there? What did you do?-bound from your place of concealment, hissin’ ‘All is discovered,’ or what?”

  “I went on listening,” said Charles. He proceeded to give Archie a very accurate account of the things he had listened to and the things he had seen. He left Margaret Langton out of the story, and in consequence found himself making rather a poor figure at the finish.

  “You didn’t bound from your place of concealment!” Archie’s tone was incredulous.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You let them get away and just trickled round to the police station?”

  “Well-no,” said Charles, “I didn’t go to the police station.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I didn’t want to.” He paused. “As a matter of fact I used to know one of the crowd pretty well, and I thought I’d keep the police out of it if I could.”

  Archie considered this.

  “I say, that’s bad! I mean destroyin’ wills and plannin’ to murder people isn’t the sort of game you expect to find your pals mixed up in-is it? Did you know the fellow well?”

  “Fairly well,” said Charles.

  “Well, d’you know him well enough to put it to him that it isn’t exactly the sort of show to be mixed up in?”

  “That’s what I was thinking of doing.”

  “I see. Then there’s the girl. They won’t be getting up to any murderin’ games for the moment, I take it.”

  “No,” said Charles, “that was only if this certificate turned up.”

  “And you don’t know what it is? And for all you now it may be turnin’ up any day of the week. Pity you don’t know her name-isn’t it?”

  “Her Christian name is Margot. I heard that.”

  Archie upset his coffee.

  “Charles, you’ve been pullin’ my leg.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Honest Injun?”

  “Honest Injun.”

  “Not about the name? You swear you’re not pullin’ my leg about that?”

  “No, I’m not. Why should you think I am?”

  Archie leaned across the table and dropped his voice.

  “You swear the girl was called Margot? You’re sure?”

  “Positive. Why?”

  “Because that’s the name of the girl I was talkin’ about- the Standing girl-old Standing’s daughter.”

  “Margot?”

  “Margot Standing,” said Archie in a solemn whisper.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Mr. Hale was considerably annoyed next morning by the arrival of Mr. Egbert Standing and a large leather suit-case full of unsorted papers. One of Mr. Hale’s clerks brought in the suit-case and placed it on the floor, whereupon Egbert with a wave of the hand commanded him to open it.

  “It isn’t locked-I never lock things-you just slide back those what-d’you-call-its.”

  The clerk slid back the what-d’you-call-its and lifted the top. A mask of crumpled paper met the eye.

  “There!” said Egbert. “My man tells me that’s the lot.”

  Mr. Hale looked at the suit-case, and Mr. Hale’s clerk looked at Mr. Hale. A large envelope marked Income Tax lay across a pale blue note. Mr. Hale sniffed. A surprisingly vigorous scent of patchouli arose from the suit-case. He suspected the pale blue note-income tax officials do not use patchouli.

  “Go on-sort them,” said Egbert in a tone of languid encouragement.

  “I should have thought you would prefer to sort them yourself.”

  Egbert shook his head.

  “I couldn’t be bothered.”

  “Your private correspondence-” began Mr. Hale. He eyed the pale blue note.

  Egbert yawned.

  “I can’t be bothered. Let him get on with it.”

  After receiving a nod from Mr. Hale, the clerk proceeded to get on with it. The contents of the suit-case appeared to consist chiefly of unpaid bills. There was a sprinkling of other scented notes-pink, mauve, and brown. There were two sock-suspenders, an artificial flower in a condition of extreme old age, a green satin slipper with a gold heel, and several photographs of damsels in brief skirts and a great many pearls.

  “Put the letters on one side, Cassels,” said Mr. Hale. “We’re looking for a letter in the late Mr. Standing’s hand. I don’t know if you remember it.”

  “I think I do, sir. Isn’t this his writing?”

  Mr. Hale took it, looked at Egbert, and inquired,

  “Do you wish me to read this? It seems to be part of a letter from your uncle.”

  “Read away-out loud if you like-I’m sure I don’t mind.”

  Mr. Hale turned the sheet in his hand, frowning.

  “There is nothing about Miss Standing here. I think I will not-er-read it aloud.”

  “Is it the one about blackballing me f
or that club I told you about?”

  “No,” said Mr. Hale

  Egbert looked slightly puzzled.

  “What is it then?”

  “Mr. Standing appears to have been refusing a request for a loan.”

  “Oh, that one. He’s got a nasty way of putting it-hasn’t he?”

  Mr. Cassels unfolded a piece of paper which had been crumpled into a ball. Still on his knees, he turned and laid it on the edge of the writing-table.

  “Am I to read this, Mr. Standing?”

  “You can read them all-it doesn’t worry me. I can’t be bothered myself.”

  The letter was very badly creased indeed. Mr. Hale uttered an exclamation as his eye lighted upon the address and the date. The paper was stamped with the name of a hotel in Majorca, and the date was only a fortnight old. He read the address aloud and repeated the date; then glancing down the sheet, he spoke to the young clerk still rummaging among bills.

  “That will do, Cassels. This is the letter we were looking for.”

  Mr. Hale turned sharply upon Egbert.

  “This letter was written the day before your uncle was drowned. It is, as far as we know, the last letter he ever wrote. It is impossible to over-rate its importance. How could you fail to realize this?”

  “I don’t take any interest in business,” said Egbert. “I told you I didn’t. I told you my line was Art.”

  Mr. Hale rapped the table.

  “You cannot possibly fail to realize the importance of this letter.”

  Egbert yawned.

  “I don’t know that I read it very carefully. My uncle’s letters don’t interest me, you know.”

  “Mr. Standing, I will ask you to listen attentively whilst I read you this letter.”

  Egbert sprawled in the big armchair with half-shut eyes. It is possible that he listened attentively; but he had all the appearance of being asleep.

  Mr. Hale’s voice was sharp as he read from the crumpled page:-

  My dear Egbert,

  I will neither lend you any money, nor will I give you any money. Your letter serves to remind me, not for the first time, that I had better make my will and have done with the chances to which Margot’s irregular birth exposes the fortune which I have laboured to build up. Even if she were legitimate, I would not expose her to the risks involved in the possession of so much money. I shall make a will as soon as I return to England, and I advise you not to expect too much from me. What you want is a good hard bout of honest work.