Tenant for Death

by Cyril Hare

  “No, I do not. And I am quite aware that in the circumstances Mr. Ballantine’s absence may seem rather—that it is a matter which calls for enquiry. But—gentlemen—before you put any construction on it—before you take any steps which—any irrevocable steps—there is one matter that—in fairness to Mr. Ballantine—in fairness to myself—it may be of importance in the future——”

  “Well?”

  “Mr. Ballantine had a visitor here yesterday morning, who disturbed him very much. It may in some way account for anything erratic in his behaviour——”

  Prufrock turned to Robinson. His mouth was set in a hard line.

  “Really, Robinson, I think we are wasting our time here,” he said.

  “But, gentlemen, this is important,” Du Pine insisted.

  “I can hardly think of any visitor yesterday who was more important to Mr. Ballantine than the appointment he had made for today,” said Prufrock drily.

  “But I can assure you, sir, I can assure you that Mr. Ballantine had every intention of meeting you today. He had a perfect explanation of any little discrepancies there might be in the bond issue. There is only one possible explanation for his not coming, and that is that he was not physically able to come.”

  “What is all this nonsense?” Robinson spoke wearily. “And what has this mysterious visitor to do with it?”

  “Perhaps you will understand when I tell you that the visitor was Mr. Fanshawe——”

  The two men stiffened with interest.

  “Fanshawe?” echoed Prufrock. “He’s still in gaol, isn’t he?”

  “His sentence is about due to expire,” put in Robinson. “Poor fellow, I knew him well before. . . .”

  “——And that he threatened him, in my hearing,” went on Du Pine wildly. “Perhaps now you gentlemen will understand—and—and give Mr. Ballantine a little time to—to make arrangements,” he ended weakly, his voice trailing away as though he were at the end of his physical resources.

  “I only understand one thing,” said Prufrock drily. “Failing satisfactory assurances as to the Redbury bond issue, which Mr. Ballantine promised to give us here—personally—today, I have my client’s instructions to issue a writ against the company. He has failed to keep his appointment—whether, as you seem to suggest, because he has been kidnapped by the person you speak of, or not, does not concern me. Affairs must now take their course. The writ will be served on you on Monday morning. The bank loan, I take it, is being called in at the same time?” He glanced at Robinson, who nodded agreement. “Well, Mr. Du Pine,” he continued, “you see the position. We need not occupy your time any further. Good day.”

  There was no reply. Du Pine, supporting himself by one hand on the table, a lock of his dark hair falling across a forehead glistening with sweat, appeared utterly exhausted. The solicitor shrugged his shoulders, and taking Robinson by the arm walked out of the room without another word.

  Du Pine watched them go, and a full minute passed before he roused himself. Then he took from his pocket a small phial of white tablets. This he carried to the lavatory opening out of Ballantine’s room. There he filled a glass with water, dropped a tablet in, and watched with eager eyes while it dissolved. He drained the mixture in one gulp and little by little the colour began to come back into his cheeks and the animation to his eyes. When the drug had done its work, he walked back with his usual quick, springy steps, into the room. He took from his pocket a bunch of keys, selected one and fitted it to his employer’s private desk. It was all but empty, and of its few contents there were none that interested him. Next he turned his attention to the safe which was let into the wall. Here too his search was fruitless. With a shrug of his shoulders, he cast one last look round the room that had been so long the nerve-centre of a great business, and departed.

  3

  MRS. EALES

  * * *

  * * *

  Saturday, November 14th

  Mr. Du Pine was quite right. Wherever Ballantine was, he was not with Mrs. Eales. In fact, while Mr. Robinson and Mr. Prufrock were making their enquiries in the City, that lady, sitting up in her bedroom in Mount Street over the remains of a very late breakfast, was wondering earnestly why he was not. A pile of letters lay beside her. They were, and were likely to remain, unopened. Every envelope, she knew, contained a bill, and at the moment she had not the strength of mind that would bear ascertaining how much she owed. In her mind’s eye, however, she could not but see some of the items in those bills, and they made her shiver. Her extravagance had in the past been the cause of endless quarrels with her protector, and now, as she glanced at the ominous heap, she automatically reflected: “There’ll be a first-class row when he sees that lot.” Then, with the dismal realization of how much better was an angry man than no man at all, she felt near to tears.

  There was a knock at the door, and before she could answer it, her maid came into the room.

  “What is it, Florence?” asked Mrs. Eales, with a smile more charming than is usually accorded to their servants by securely placed women.

  Florence did not return the smile. Her manner was abrupt—almost insolent.

  “Will Mr. Ballantine be coming in today?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Florence, I’m sure. Why do you ask?” Then receiving no answer, she went on hastily: “You can have this afternoon off if you want it. I shall be able to manage quite well, even if he does come.”

  “Thank you, m’m,” said Florence, ungraciously. “And can I have my wages for last week, please?”

  “Oh, yes, of course, how stupid of me!” cried Mrs. Eales, a thought shrilly. “Fetch my purse from the dressing-table, will you? Now let me see. . . . Oh, dear! I’m so sorry,” she exclaimed, fumbling in the purse, “but I seem to have run terribly short. Will it do if I give you ten shillings on account and the rest on Monday?”

  Florence took the proffered note without comment, but her eyes rested for a moment on the unopened letters before she went on: “Mr. Du Pine was on the telephone just now.”

  “Mr. Du Pine!” said Mrs. Eales quickly. “I can’t speak to him.”

  “He didn’t want to speak to you. He was just enquiring after Mr. Ballantine. I told him he wasn’t here and then he rang off.”

  “I see. Did he say—did he tell you anything about Mr. Ballantine?”

  “No. He just rang up to make sure he wasn’t here, he said. He didn’t sound as if he thought he would be, somehow.”

  “That will do, Florence,” said her mistress coldly. “Will you take the breakfast things, please?”

  Florence sulkily removed the tray. At the door she turned, and said over her shoulder:

  “If the Captain calls, am I to let him in?”

  “Oh, go away, go away!” cried Mrs. Eales, at the end of her patience. The last man in the world of whom she wished to be reminded at that moment was Captain Eales.

  4

  THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN

  * * *

  * * *

  Saturday, November 14th

  A little before noon a cab drew up outside a small white villa on the outskirts of Passy, and there set down a thin middle-aged man. He was observed and recognized from a first-floor window by a dishevelled maid, who with a “Tiens!” of annoyance and surprise set down her feather duster and hastened to make herself presentable before admitting him.

  “Bonjour, Eléonore,” said John Fanshawe on the threshold, when the door was at length opened to him.

  “Monsieur! Mais, que cette arrivée est imprévue!”

  “Unexpected, but not unwelcome, I hope,” said Fanshawe in French which a long lack of practice had made somewhat uncertain.

  Oh, monsieur was joking! As if he could be unwelcome at any time! And had monsieur had a good journey? And was he well? But she could see for herself that he was well—only thin. Mon Dieu! How he was thin! She had hardly known him at first.

  “And mademoiselle?” asked Fanshawe, as soon as he could make any headway through the flo
od of words. “How is she?”

  Mademoiselle was well. It was a thousand pities that she was not there to greet her father. If monsieur had but let her know of his approach, how happy she would have been. But it was like monsieur to spring a surprise so happy upon her. And now mademoiselle was out and would not be returned until that afternoon, and nothing was prepared. Monsieur would excuse the confusion in the house, but mademoiselle would of course explain. But what was she—Eléonore—doing? Monsieur was hungry, of course, after his so long journey at this terrible season of the year. Monsieur must eat. There was not much in the house, but an omelette—monsieur would have an omelette aux fines herbes, would he not? And some of the Beaujolais wine that he always took with his déjeuner? If monsieur would wait but a little quarter of an hour he should be served.

  With a final flurry of words she darted away to the kitchen, and Fanshawe with a sigh of relief made his way to the salon and sat down to await his meal. His face, which had lit up with pleasure at the well-remembered sound of Eléonore’s eloquence, now resumed the expression of wary cynicism that was habitual to him. A mistake, he reflected, to arrive anywhere without warning—even at your own daughter’s house. He was old enough to have known better. This was what happened when you had been marking time for years, waiting, concentrating on the one event which would bring you back to life again. You forgot that for the real, live world outside things didn’t stand still, as they did for you. He had so often in imagination arrived at this villa to find his daughter on the threshold ready to leap into his arms, that it had not occurred to him that any arrangements were necessary to ensure her being there. A luncheon engagement—an appointment at the hairdresser’s—and there was the great reunion scene manqué, and the prodigal parent left to eat his omelette alone.

  Fanshawe shrugged his lean shoulders. He was making a great fuss about nothing, he told himself. A man comes out of prison a week or so before he is expected to. He visits his daughter in France without warning. Not unnaturally, she is out when he arrives. That was all. But the other half of his intelligence was not so easily satisfied. If that was all, why had Eléonore been so plainly upset at his first appearance? And now, as she appeared with the announcement, “Monsieur est servi!” was there not a trace of pity in the eager friendliness of her manner?

  Fanshawe detained her in the dining-room while he ate his lunch. He had had enough of solitude during the last few years. She gossiped with him readily enough about all manner of past acquaintance and happenings, but was reticent on the one subject that interested him at the moment. Once, in a pause in the conversation, she remarked suddenly and apropos of nothing in particular: “Without doubt, mademoiselle will have many things to tell her father.”

  “Evidemment,” said Fanshawe in curt agreement, and did not pursue the matter further.

  The meal over, he returned to the salon, there to smoke and drink the excellent coffee which Eléonore brought him. Tired as he was, he would have slept in his chair, if some part of his consciousness had not remained ceaselessly on the alert, listening for the sound of the front door opening. The lines in his face grew deeper as he waited, and the expression of patient disillusionment more marked.

  It was not long before he heard the unmistakable sound of a key being fitted to the door. He rose and took a step towards the hall, then as he heard footsteps hurrying from the interior of the house, returned quietly to his chair. So Eléonore had been on the watch too! The sounds of a whispered colloquy on the doorstep came to his ears, and without hearing what was being said, he realized that for some reason she found it necessary to break the news of his arrival to her mistress. The delay was but a short one, but it seemed long enough to Fanshawe before the door was flung open, and with a cry of “Father!” his daughter was in his arms again.

  She quickly broke away from his embrace, and held him at arm’s length so that she could see his face, murmuring broken little phrases of concern at his pallor and grey hairs. He on his side looked at her narrowly. She too had changed, he remarked. She had lost some of the girlish charm that he remembered, but in its place had gained the poise and good looks of mature womanhood. “Just the type to attract a Frenchman,” he said to himself. Just now her cheeks were flushed, and there was an expression in her eyes which caused him to raise his brows in a mute question.

  She noticed it, and by way of answer drew a little further away from him. “I didn’t think you would be—be free for another week,” she murmured. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I gathered so much from Eléonore.”

  “Then you didn’t get my letter?”

  “Evidently not, since I am here. That is, I presume that the letter was to tell me not to come?”

  She looked away, in evident distress.

  “Father—this is so horribly difficult. . . .”

  “Not at all.” Fanshawe’s dry, unemotional tones were not unkindly. “I am in the way here. That isn’t very surprising, is it?”

  “Father, you mustn’t say that. It sounds so——”

  “I can imagine a good many circumstances,” he went on, “in which the reappearance of an ex-convict might be embarrassing to his daughter. For example, it might be rather prejudicial to her prospects of a good marriage——”

  She drew a sharp breath and looked him in the eyes. He read in her face all that he needed to know.

  “We understand each other,” he said gravely. “On such occasions, it is the father’s duty to disappear as quietly as may be. Only, why didn’t you let me know before?”

  “I—I tried to, often, but I hadn’t the courage. I was a coward, I know, but I kept on putting it off and off until the last moment—I felt so ashamed.”

  “You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he assured her. “Who is the young man? That is, I hope he is young. He is a Frenchman, I suppose?”

  “Yes. His name is Paillard—Roger Paillard. He——”

  “Of the automobiles Paillard? I congratulate you. And his family, of course, know nothing about me?”

  She shook her head. “I am on my way to stay with them for the first time,” she said. “He is an only son, and his mother, of course——”

  “She, of course, thinks the world of him. And he is un jeune homme bien élevé, très comme il faut—and all the rest of it?”

  He mimicked the precise accents of an elderly Frenchwoman so well that she laughed in spite of herself.

  “Very good,” he went on. “I hope you will be happy, my dear. The family skeleton will now return to his cupboard and lock himself in. Where is Roger now, by the way?”

  “Outside, in the car. We’ve been lunching, and I only came in to pick up my bag.”

  “Then hurry, my dear, hurry. You mustn’t keep him waiting! He will be wondering what has become of you.”

  He kissed her lightly, and she turned to go. At the threshold she stopped.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Father, you never said anything about—I mean, you must be terribly short of money. If I can help——”

  “Money?” he echoed her gaily. “No, you needn’t worry on that score. We crooks, you know, have always a little nest egg put away somewhere.”

  She winced at the ugly word, and the ironically defiant tone in which he uttered it.

  “But what are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Perhaps Eléonore will let me stay the night here,” he answered. “Even two nights, if I feel like it. I shall be gone before you return, in any case. Then I shall go back to London. Your aunt has kindly promised to put me up for as long as I please.”

  “It will be very dull for you,” she murmured.

  “I don’t expect so. And in any case, two lonely people are less dull together than apart. And now you must go. I insist. Good-bye and—good luck.”

  She left him, and as she ran down the steps to the waiting car, the words “two lonely people” rang in her ears like a tolling bell.

  5

  AU CAFÉ DU SOLEIL<
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  * * *

  * * *

  Sunday, November 15th

  The Café du Soleil in Goodge Street is always busy at lunch time on Sundays. The narrow white-walled room with its two rows of little tables attracts a clientele from an area far wider than the somewhat shabby neighbourhood that surrounds it. The customers, indeed, are a mixed collection. Many are foreign, some are shabby, a few prosperous, hardly any smart. They are united by one characteristic and one only—that they know and appreciate good food. And Enrico Volpi, the stout little Genoese who learned the art of the kitchen in Marseilles and refined it in Paris, sees that they are not disappointed.

  Frank Harper, clerk in the firm of Inglewood, Browne & Company, Auctioneers and Estate Agents of Kensington, had discovered the Soleil in the course of a visit on his employer’s business to the Tottenham Court Road. He had been agreeably surprised by the food, and after his meal less agreeably by the bill. Regretfully, as he paid, he had decided that the Soleil was not an eating-house for poor men. He had resolved that so far as he was concerned it must be reserved for some special occasion.

  This was such an occasion. Harper had been to a good deal of trouble to plan a meal that should be worthy of it, and Volpi, who knew a young man in love when he saw one, had excelled himself in its execution. So it was with a tone of confidence well justified that over the coffee Harper murmured to his companion:

  “Well, Susan, enjoyed your lunch?”

  Susan smiled contentedly.

  “Frank, it’s been the dream of a lunch. I’ve made a perfect pig of myself, and I shan’t be able to eat anything at dinner. You’re a perfect genius to have found this place. If only—” Her candid grey eyes had a troubled expression.

  “If only—what?”

  “If only it wasn’t so ruinously expensive.”

  Harper’s rather fatuous expression of happiness gave way to a look of disgust.