Anthony and Shirley were still sitting on Miss Pocklington’s steep and dusty stair. This was partly because they had a great deal to say to one another, and partly because there was nowhere else to sit. There didn’t seem to be a single chair on the premises. After ranging over their past lives they had returned to Miss Maltby. Shirley was doing her best to remember exactly what the muttering voice had said whilst she crouched behind the Potato Field and clutched her nose against the impending sneeze—“And you don’t know how difficult it is to be interested enough to remember anything when a sneeze is just going to go off like a bomb and land you in the deepest dungeon below the castle moat.”
“I want you to try all the same. What sort of things was she saying? See if you can remember any of them. Shut your eyes and imagine you’re back behind the picture and she is walking up and down muttering to herself. What is she saying? Keep quite still for a minute and see if you can’t repeat any of it.”
Shirley leaned back against the wall and shut her eyes. Presently she said in a sort of half voice,
“It was rather horrid really, Anthony. I think she’s—not right in her head.”
Anthony’s voice was very low too. He said,
“Try and remember.”
Shirley’s hands took hold of one another in her lap—grubby little hands, with grimy nails from crawling on Helena Pocklington’s grimy floor.
“She said things like, ‘All that money’, and, ‘You shouldn’t have let me down, Jane Rigg.’ She said Jane could have lived if she’d wanted to, and if she’d lived another six months, Miss Maltby would have got her share. She seemed to think Jane had died just to spite her.”
“Was that all?”
“Darling—of course it wasn’t! She went on for hours—at least I suppose not really, but the sneeze was slipping and it felt like years. I got out a book from the Free Library once which said there wasn’t any such thing as Time. I didn’t read it all, because it made my head go round, but I did read that bit, and when I was lurking behind that awful picture and the Maltby was raving up and down on the other side of it I understood exactly what the man meant—not just then, you know, but looking back on it now, because it really did seem like hours. Practically everything has since six o’clock yesterday evening when I started to run away.”
Anthony patted her.
“Go on telling me what Miss Maltby said.”
“Well, it was all like that—round and round, like a gramophone record. I don’t believe she knew what she was saying half the time. There was a bit about ‘All that money to Shirley Dale’, and then, ‘She shan’t have it! She shan’t have it! She shan’t have it!’ I remember that bit, because that was where I began to long passionately for a policeman and a nice safe prison cell, because honestly, darling, she sounded too horribly hating. And then there was something about her Share, and a Mr Phillips, and someone called Ettie. She seemed to think she could put them in prison, but I don’t know why unless—unless—” She opened her eyes, jerked forward, and clutched at Anthony. “Oh! Do you suppose that Ettie could be Pierrette?”
Anthony submitted to being clutched. He put up a hand and covered hers.
“You’re sure about those names?”
“Mr Phillips, and Ettie? Yes—she said them. Anthony—”
“Pierrette—Ettie … It might be … Only she was French—”
“They came to England—Perrine’s widower and the child. Aunt Emily said so. It was just before the war. He was ill—not fit to serve when the war came. He was in some office. He wrote and told my mother he wanted to be naturalized. He wanted to bring Pierrette up in England. My mother wrote and told Aunt Emily. I believe he was naturalized. Then when the war was over my father and mother died, and I came home to Aunt Emily. And she never heard any more about the Meuniers, so I don’t know what has become of them.”
“You say he was naturalized?”
“Aunt Emily thought so. There was something about putting his name into English.”
“What was the name—Meunier? That would be Miller. Pierrette Meunier—Ettie Miller. It seems to me we’d better look out for a Mr Phillips and a Miss Ettie Miller. It looks very much as if they were the people behind these attempts to get you into trouble. If you are disqualified for the Merewether money, Pierrette Meunier, who may be Miss Maltby’s Ettie, scoops the lot.”
“But who is Mr Phillips?”
Anthony laughed.
“Well, I should say at a guess that he’s probably married to Pierrette, in which case, darling, you’ve got a very fine bargain of a nephew.”
There was a short appalled silence. Shirley’s hands dropped back into her lap. She drew as far away from Anthony as the width of the stair allowed and gazed at him with heartfelt reproach.
“That’s the most disagreeable thing I’ve ever had said to me in all my life.”
“I can do better than that,” said Anthony cheerfully.
“And I suppose you think I’ll marry someone who is going to throw odious middle-aged nephews and nieces in my teeth all the time!”
“Darling, you do look so funny being haughty with a smudge on your nose.”
“I haven’t got a smudge!”
“You’ve got six. Come here and I’ll kiss them, and then you’ll know just where they are.”
Shirley opened her mouth to put him in his proper place, but she had got no farther than “If you think—” when a key scratched in the key-hole, the latch clicked back, and someone pushed unavailingly against the door. The word froze on her lips, and with an entire loss of dignity she grabbed at Anthony’s arm and pinched it severely. Anthony froze too. If it was Miss Maltby whose key was scratching round in the lock, she would certainly want to know why the door wouldn’t open. And when Miss Maltby wanted to know anything she made it her business to find out. Shirley’s eyes asked a horrified question. Anthony’s replied, “I don’t know. Keep still!” and then the injured voice of Jasper Wrenn came to them from the other side of the door.
“It’s me—Jasper. Let me in!”
He came in with the suit-case and the consciousness of having a very fine story to tell. Only why tell it on the stairs? To do it justice there must be room for a certain freedom of movement. He had a dramatic climax in view, and it demanded gesture. To gesticulate on Helena’s stairs was to invite physical damage of one kind or another. He pressed an adjournment to the studio.
Anthony leaned past him and shot the bolt of the front door again. “Nowhere to sit,” he said. And, “Why doesn’t your Cousin Helena have any chairs?” said Shirley.
“She doesn’t like furniture,” said Jasper—“not real furniture. There are some canvas chairs behind the stove—you know, beastly folding things with stripes. They make me feel sea-sick, but I can get them out if you like.”
They went up to the studio and got out three chairs. Miss Pocklington’s taste in colour was extremely robust. The stripes were in the fiercer shades of emerald, orange, and magenta.
“If we sit on them we shan’t see them,” said Shirley helpfully. “Now, Jas, hand over the swag!”
Jasper did not sit down. He gave Anthony the suit-case and stood back. Shirley prattled on.
“The emeralds are in the pocket of your pyjamas. You’d better get them out. And then we must make a plan about getting them back to Mrs Huddleston, because as long as we’ve got them we’re in simply frightful danger. I mean, I suppose—Darling, you could say you had snatched them from a burglar and were taking them back, and the police might believe you. That’s why I put them in your pyjama pocket, just on the off chance of its going down with a nice believing sort of policeman. But if it didn’t go down we should all be in a prison cell together, and it wouldn’t be at all nice for you, being a barrister and all. Or do you think that would help you to wangle us out of it?”
“Not a wangle,” said Anthony.
He opened the suit-case, tossed out the pyjama legs, and ran his hands over the jacket. He did this a second time, frowne
d, shook out the dressing-gown, and then went back to the pyjama legs. There were no emeralds anywhere.
Shirley made a faint sound of dismay. Jasper’s moment had arrived. He plunged into his story. He had fetched the suit-case. Without his actually saying so, Shirley and Anthony received the impression that it was only by the exercise of considerable skill and presence of mind that he had managed to evade the vigilance of the police and reach Findon Road with his trophy. The nose-bleeding episode was lightly touched upon. If they inferred that it was the result of a hand-to-hand conflict, that could not be helped. Jasper had not in fact tried to help it. At break-neck speed he reached his room, changed his collar, and bathed the honourable wound. Thence to the dramatic moment on the stairs when the suit-case plunged from his hand and, bursting open, flung out the emeralds under the very gaze of Miss Maltby above and a police-constable below. Jasper found his moment very enjoyable.
Shirley’s eyes were like saucers. Anthony Leigh stared at him in dismay.
“Don’t tell me the police have got the emeralds! We’re done if they have!”
Jasper drew himself up.
“No—I’ve got them,” he said with modest pride, and fished them out of his trouser pocket.
“Oh, Jas—how clever! How did you do it?”
Jasper told her.
“And nobody saw you?”
“They only saw me picking up the pyjamas.”
The moment lasted all too short a time. Then Anthony was packing the things back into the suit-case again and saying,
“Now we’ve got to make up our minds what we do next.”
He clicked the catches home and held out a casual hand to Jasper.
“I’d better take charge of the gew-gaws.”
Jasper handed them over with a relief just tinged with regret. They were romance and adventure, but they were also crime and the menace of the law. He felt that it was someone else’s turn now, but he would have preferred that the someone else should not be Anthony Leigh.
Anthony took the brooch on his palm, and dangled the headband over his forefinger. The laurel-leaves caught the fading light. Shirley said quickly,
“I ought to hate them, but they’re too lovely—I can’t.”
Anthony laughed softly.
“Napoleon—Italy. The laurels of Lodi, Arcola, and Rivoli. Josephine—Josephine who didn’t want him back, but fancied the laurels—” He swung the headband to and fro. “Funny to think of her wearing this—and after her Lord knows who, and then great-grandmamma Robinson, whom I can just remember as a very fat old lady with about six chins. She kept peppermint lozenges in a bead bag and always gave me one when I was taken to see her. After her Aunt Agnes. And after her”—he laughed again and looked at Shirley—“I believe she’s going to leave them to my wife. Perhaps she’ll give them to us for a wedding present. Would you like to have them?”
Jasper’s heart beat very hard and loud. They were engaged—Shirley was going to marry him. He had really known it, but it didn’t hurt the less for that. He heard Shirley say,
“I don’t know. They’re lovely. Anyhow she wouldn’t dream of it.”
“She might,” said Anthony. He picked up the brooch and turned it over to see the N on the back. “I say, darling, are you sure you cleared your coat out this time? Because oughtn’t there to be more of these things? I seem to remember another brooch—and earrings.”
“Yes, there are—I mean there ought to be. But they’re not in my coat. I felt every bit of the hem.”
“Well, I think we’ll make sure. And we’d better have a light. Where’s the switch?”
They put on the light, two bright unshaded bulbs in the ceiling. The windows had curtains which matched the blue of the paint. When they were drawn, Shirley took off her coat and she and Anthony felt it all over inch by inch, whilst Jasper gloomed at the Potato Field. The coat was innocent of any more emeralds, search they never so carefully.
“Well, where are they?” said Anthony. “Can’t you see, there’s no doubt they’ve all been taken. If the earrings and the other brooch had been left, Aunt Agnes would have said so, but it was just a long, loud wail about the emeralds being gone, and how unique they were, and what great-grandpapa Robinson paid for them, and all that sort of thing—not a single syllable about anything being saved from the wreck. So the whole lot had been pinched all right, there’s no doubt about that. And whoever pinched them planted you with this brooch and the headband and kept the earrings and the other brooch. With any luck they’ve got them still, and if we can trace them, it proves your story and lets you out.”
Jasper looked over a hunched shoulder and said, “If.”
Anthony went on without taking any notice of him.
“Someone hid those things in the hem of your coat—first the diamond brooch, and then the emeralds. You said the catch of the brooch was damaged.”
“Yes, it was.”
“I’ve got an idea it had been tampered with. Someone wanted to make sure the brooch would be in the limelight. It came off, didn’t it?”
“It came undone.”
“Whilst you were there, and whilst Possett was out, so that it was a certainty that you would have the handling of it. I think that was all according to plan, but I don’t know whether the emeralds were or not. Probably. Or they may have been suggested by the fact that you had helped Possett to put them away on Wednesday. In any case they make the theft a good deal more important—intrinsic value, historic associations, and all that—so I should think they were part of the plan all right. Well then, the plan was made to get you into trouble, and we’re rather working on the assumption that it was made by Pierrette Meunier or by someone who is in with her—say the man Phillips. The plan might have been theirs, but it could only have been carried out by someone in the house, and that means Cook, Possett, or the new girl—what’s her name?”
“Bessie,” said Shirley—“Bessie Wood.”
“Well, it lies between the three of them,” said Anthony.
Shirley shook her head.
“Not Possett—she was in Ealing. She met her sister, and they went down to see their mother. Besides it couldn’t possibly be Possett.”
“Then it lies between Cook and Bessie. And can you see Cook heaving herself up those kitchen stairs and shoving diamonds and emeralds down into the hem of your coat?” He laughed shortly. “No, it was Bessie. Whoever did it had to go into the drawing-room and pinch the diamond brooch off the mantelpiece. Aunt Agnes was asleep, but she might very easily have waked up. She probably would have waked if the person who came in had been someone who hadn’t any business to be there. What excuse could poor old Cook have possibly given for rolling into the drawing-room in the middle of the afternoon? But Bessie would have had a dozen good reasons for being there—a note, a telephone call, the fire—” He shrugged his shoulders. “You see?”
Shirley put out a hand and rested it on his arm.
“You don’t,” she said. “That’s all true, and I suppose it must have been Bessie. I don’t know why, or how she could, but—Anthony, don’t you see that everything you’ve been saying about her applies to me too? I wouldn’t have needed an excuse for going back into the drawing-room. I wouldn’t even have needed to go back. I could have brought the brooch away with me when I left Mrs Huddleston to have her sleep, and that’s what Bessie will say. She’s got a good character—I took it up myself. I’ve been accused of pilfering in the house where I lodge, and if it came to my being arrested, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if someone didn’t turn up who’d seen that business at the Luxe—someone who’d say I’d taken that glittering woman’s purse and put it in my bag. It’s no good saying it’s Bessie—we’ve got to prove it.”
Anthony nodded.
“That’s quite true. We’ve got to prove it, and we’re going to prove it. Now look here, don’t laugh. Is it possible that this Bessie is Pierrette?”
Shirley did not laugh. She looked puzzled for a moment. Then her face cleared and she
said, at first tentatively and then with more decision,
“No—oh no, I’m sure she’s not. Darling, how horrid! What made you think of that?”
“Well, it just occurred to me. I thought they might be keeping the affair in the family so to speak. If they employ someone like Bessie, they take a big risk and expose themselves to blackmail afterwards—unless they’ve got some kind of hold on her, which is quite possible. All the same I’d like to know why you’re so certain that she isn’t Pierrette.”
Shirley frowned.
“She isn’t—I’m sure she isn’t.”
“But why?”
She said, “Oh!” in a breathless, startled way, and then, “Anthony—how queer! I was going to say ‘I don’t know’, and all of a sudden something popped out of a door in my mind like a jack-in-the-box, and I know—I do know—I know quite well—because I believe I know who Pierrette is. She’s the glittering woman. You just see if she isn’t. You know—the one with the gingery man at the Luxe. And it would explain how her purse got into my bag, because of course she put it there to make me look like a thief.”
“But why do you think she’s Pierrette?”
“I don’t think—I know. That’s what Aunt Emily’s cook used to say. She was a tremendously determined person, and that’s what I am about the glittering woman—I know she’s Pierrette.”
“But why? You must have a reason.”
Shirley stamped her foot.
“Yes, I have—and it’s a horrid one—I hate it! She’s Pierrette because of the way she looked that’s like my mother. And I didn’t see it at the time, because, you know, I don’t remember my mother very well. I suppose I don’t really remember her at all, only from photographs. But when I got down to Acacia Cottage there was her picture hanging in the drawing-room—the one that was painted when she married Augustus Rigg, so Jane had it, and that was quite all right because she was the eldest daughter and I suppose Augustus paid for it. But I do think it’s abominable for it to be left to the Maltby—don’t you?”
Anthony put his arm round her, half laughing, half serious.
“You’d make a most awful witness,” he said. “You started out to tell me something about a likeness—”
Hole and Corner Page 20
