It was a shot that told. The young man looked disconcerted. The door behind him opened abruptly and the girl herself appeared.
CHAPTER 5
MODERN FLATLET
Once more she had changed. No longer, as she stood there, did she resemble the priestess gravely serving an unknown altar, no longer had she her air of a small and frightened child. She had changed all that, and now bore herself simply as a brisk and confident young business woman of to-day. She said to Bobby:
“You wanted to see me?”
“You are Miss Hilda May, on the staff of Jessop & Jacks?” Bobby asked.
“Yes,” she answered. She stood back a little to allow him to enter. “You had better come in,” she said. “There’ll be complaints if we talk here.”
“Thank you,” Bobby said, moving forward to accept her invitation; but when the young man showed some signs of following him he said: “I shan’t keep you long, Miss May, but, as it concerns your firm, we had better be alone.”
“Very well,” she answered. “You had better go home, Denis. It’s late enough.”
“I’ll wait,” he answered, scowling. “How do we know this chap really is a policeman? He may be after the Fellows necklace or something.”
Bobby swung round on him.
“What do you know about the Fellows necklace?” he demanded.
“Well, everyone knows old Jessop’s working overtime to sell it,” Denis retorted.
“Come inside, please. I don’t want complaints about talking out here,” Hilda interposed – but a little, Bobby thought, as if she wanted to cut short the conversation for reasons of her own.
Denis turned away and walked off down the corridor, and Hilda pushed the door to, Bobby having to come further inside to allow it to close. It was a tiny vestibule in which they stood now, one not more than a square yard or so in extent, and with two tall, narrow cupboards at one side, one for hats and cloaks and the other for brooms and brushes, though each so small the plural did not seem the appropriate number to use. Opposite was another door, admitting to the main apartment, into which Hilda now led the way.
“Sit down,” she said to him. “Well, what is it?”
With some hesitation, for he was not quite sure that it would not collapse under his weight, Bobby lowered himself into the chair she indicated, and, under pretence of not quite knowing what to do with his helmet, gave about him one of those quick, searching, intent glances by which he had trained himself to observe and memorise every detail of his surroundings, no matter how apparently trivial or unimportant it might seem.
The room had a pleasant and attractive look, and considerable pains must have been taken with the colour-scheme, to tone wherewith even the flowers in the vases on the table, before the window, on a corner bracket, had evidently been carefully chosen. To the masculine eye there was perhaps a lack of really comfortable-looking chairs, but there were many cushions and pouffes, on one of which, ingeniously shaped like a pig, Hilda had now seated herself. Altogether a very feminine apartment, Bobby thought, with its many photographs and knick-knacks – on the mantelshelf stood a perfect Zoo in tiny models of animals, ranging from expensive things in bronze to others in papier mâché, bought probably at sixpenny stores – and its general appeal to the aesthetic sense rather than to any mere vulgar ideal of comfort. But, then, ideas of comfort are relative, and Hilda May’s idea of it was to sit on the floor with her legs tucked under her and her head against a chair she seldom thought of using as a seat, just as her idea of a really satisfying meal was a soft boiled egg, followed by a plentiful supply of cream buns and eclairs.
At one side of the room, curtains, matching perfectly those before the windows, and making, with the table cover, a delicate harmony too subtle for Bobby’s imperfect colour sense to appreciate, veiled a recess he guessed contained a divan bed. The table cover, however, he did notice for its beauty. It was really an Indian shawl with a lovely golden thread running through the pattern. Owing to two small accidental burns it had suffered, it had been relegated from its status of evening wrap to its present use, the two small, neatly darned holes being less noticeable so. Two doors admitted to what were probably, Bobby supposed, a bathroom and a kitchenette, and he noticed on a wall bracket what at first he thought was a real cat, till a second glance showed him it was manufactured from some soft black furry material that with the aid of a well-modelled head gave it quite a life-like appearance.
“Well?” Hilda asked again.
Bobby decided to keep his helmet on his knee and transferred his attention to her. Sitting there, a little stiffly, she no longer made that impression of extreme grace and ease of bearing she had given before. Gone, too, was the suggestion of a radiant brightness her movements in the dance had seemed somehow to convey. Now she looked merely a somewhat heavily built, hefty young woman, a little awkward somehow, though probably one who would do well on the links or the tennis-courts. Before, Bobby had hardly been conscious of her looks, so much had they seemed subordinate to the unknown message hidden in the lovely harmony of her movements. But now it struck him that if anything she was almost plain, or at any rate with no pretensions to unusual good looks. The lower part of her face was much too heavy, with a wide mouth and large square chin contrasting with the small nose and low forehead. Her hair was dressed in the conventional permanent wave style, the only conventional thing about her, and her complexion, too, was dark, and apparently less laid over with cosmetics than is usually the case to-day. But her eyes were really fine; large, dark, and shining with a kind of inner light, though so carefully hidden beneath heavy, drooping lids they were seldom clearly seen. It was a mannerism, partly natural, partly acquired from a conviction, strengthened by experience, that their brilliance made them unsuitable for business hours. The general impression that she made upon Bobby, as indeed was often the case with others, was that of a personality of doubtful and yet perhaps tremendous potentialities. And another conviction that stole into Bobby’s mind was that she was afraid. He thought her hands were pressed together a little too closely, her eyes hidden a little too carefully, as if she did not wish to be seen what it might be they showed. Nor had her voice, he thought, been quite steady when she uttered that last “Well.”
“You are employed by Messrs. Jessop & Jacks,” he said slowly. “Can you give me Mr. Jacks’s private address? I have been to Mayfair Square, but I couldn’t get an answer.”
She got up slowly; and now she was standing he was impressed again by her height and build, and also he still noticed a certain heaviness, almost awkwardness of manner, that in her dancing had seemed to fall from her like a cast-off garment. He had the impression, too, that his question had come to her as a relief, as if she had feared something else. Stretching out a long, white, well-formed arm that showed, too, a ripple of muscle beneath the skin, she took down the life-like cat from the wall bracket and showed it had served as a cover for a telephone. Lifting the instrument, she dialled a number and said presently: “Miss May speaking – Hilda May, Mr. Jessop’s secretary. There’s a policeman here. He wants Mr. Jacks. No, he has not said why. He says he can’t make anyone hear at Mayfair Square.” She listened a moment, and then turned to Bobby. “Is it important?” she asked. “Can’t it wait till morning, or till Monday?”
" I am afraid not,” Bobby answered.
“He says not,” Hilda repeated over the phone, and, after listening a minute or two, turned again to Bobby. “Mr. and Mrs. Jacks are out. They went to the cinema and they were going on to play bridge. They didn’t say where – to friends. Mr. Jacks said they might be late. They aren’t likely to be long now, though. Is there any message?”
“No, except that I must see Mr. Jacks as soon as possible. Will you say I am coming on at once, and, if Mr. Jacks gets in first, will he please expect me and will he wait up for me. What is the address?”
Hilda gave it – a house in a Bayswater square. She had passed on his message, and now put down the instrument. Bobby said to her:
>
“Was Mr. Jessop a married man? Had he children, relatives?”
“He is a widower,” Hilda answered. “He has a service flat – Bloomsbury. There’s one daughter, I think. She lives in Australia. I don’t know of any other relatives. I expect there are some. I don’t know. Why? Has there been an accident? Or?”
“Or – what?” Bobby asked.
“Or what is it?” she completed her sentence quickly, but not, Bobby fancied, as she had originally intended. “What do you want Mr. Jacks for? At this time... asking about – relatives,” she concluded, a little breathlessly.
“Mr. Jessop has been shot,” Bobby told her then.
“Shot?” she repeated, and, oddly, his first impression was that this word brought her overwhelming relief. But then her expression changed as she seemed to realise more clearly what was implied. “Shot?” she repeated. “You don’t mean... not on purpose... not – killed? Not – murdered?”
Bobby made an affirmative gesture. He was watching her closely. He saw that she had gone very pale, and she turned a little away, as if to steady herself with one hand against the wall, and also, he thought, to escape to some degree his gaze.
“It’s that necklace, that awful necklace,” she muttered.
“You mean the Fay Fellows necklace?” Bobby asked.
“We’ve been trying to sell it,” she answered. “To different people – the Duchess of Westhaven and others. I showed it her. Was it that? Had he it with him? Where did it happen?”
“At a house in Brush Hill.”
“Brush Hill? Where’s that? Had he the necklace...?”
“We know nothing at present,” Bobby said. “Nothing more than that a man has been found shot and identified as Mr. Jessop. If there is anything you can tell us... anything you can suggest...?”
She shook her head.
“Do you mean... he’s – dead?” she asked again, as if unable or unwilling to believe it.
“Can I use your phone?” Bobby asked.
She did not answer, and, taking her assent for granted, he lifted it and rang up first the Yard to report himself and then Mr. T.T. Mullins’s number, to get in touch with Ulyett and report what he had done.
He explained that he intended to go on to Mr. Jacks’s address to wait for that gentleman’s return, and was told to do so and to bring him on to Mullins’s house, where the investigation was still in full progress.
“Found nothing of any interest, though,” the voice at the other end of the wire said. “Hope Jacks can give us a line to follow.”
“I am phoning from the flat of Mr. Jessop’s secretary, Miss Hilda May,” Bobby continued. “Shall I ask her to come with us?”
The distant voice asked one or two questions and then decided it was hardly necessary to trouble the young lady that night. If there was anything she knew likely to be immediately useful she could tell Sergeant Owen what it was. Anything else could wait till morning, when perhaps she would be kind enough to answer a few questions. Bobby also asked if one of the police cruising cars could be instructed to pick him up and take him to Bayswater, and was told decidedly not. They were all far too busy trying to pick up Mr. Percy Augustus Wynne. It was also intimated that he was expected to get to Bayswater just as quickly as if a car could be spared for him, and that the fact that by this time all normal means of communication had stopped was immaterial. His business was to get there, not to talk about it.
Bobby, well used to being told to make bricks without straw, sighed, hung up the receiver, and, by way of taking a chance, hinted that if Miss May had a car, and could lend it to him, he would be greatly obliged. Hilda let the suggestion drift by her unheeded. She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts, from which, however, she awoke abruptly when Bobby said:
“You said you showed the Duchess of Westhaven the Fellows necklace. Was that while you were her secretary?”
“No. Afterwards,” she said. “How did you know I was with her?”
“We get to know things,” he answered vaguely, not willing to expose the communicative Kendrick to the risk of a rebuke for gossiping. “Do you smoke?”
He offered her his cigarette-case as he spoke, but she shook her head.
“Not now,” she said, depriving him of the chance he had wished for to notice how steady was her hand, for there was still something about her, about her attitude, about her silence even, that troubled him a little, and that he felt he did not understand.
“Have you been long with Mr. Jessop?” he asked. “You came to him direct from the duchess? Were you with her long?”
“Three years,” she answered. “It was my second job. I have been six months with Mr. Jessop. I came to them when the duchess sacked me.”
“Oh,” said Bobby, a little taken aback at this plain way of putting it. “There was some disagreement, I suppose?”
“Denis,” she answered briefly.
“Denis?” he repeated, not understanding.
“The boy outside, if he’s still there and hasn’t pushed off home,” she explained. “I had better see, perhaps. You’ll want to ask him questions too, perhaps? I suppose the police always do. You see, Denis wanted me to marry him. The duchess didn’t. So she sacked me.”
" Is Mr. – Denis?”
“His name’s Chenery.”
“But had the duchess any right to say anything about it?”
“He’s one of the family. He may be the duke himself some day. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.”
“May I take it, then, you are engaged?”
“You may not, nor shall we be. I’ve told him so again to-night. Denis hasn’t a penny, and, even if he ever does inherit, it won’t be for years and years. The one before him is an invalid who can’t possibly have children but may live as long as Denis.” She paused, hesitated. “You may as well know,” she said. “I suppose you’ll be going on asking questions, and there’ll be plenty ready to tell you. Denis may be a duke some day, and I’m a bastard.”
CHAPTER 6
BACKGROUND
Bobby was used to many kinds of language. Once, in his uniform days, he had assisted in the arrest of a lady who, born in Liverpool between Scotland Road and the docks, had graduated in Chicago, and returned to polish and perfect her style in Soho night-clubs. Nevertheless, this calm application by Hilda to herself of a word against the use of which a certain prejudice still exists, did startle him a little. It was, of course, an example of what nowadays it is thought profound to call a “defence reaction,” but, all the same, a somewhat extreme example.
“Oh, yes. Yes,” he said, for the moment at a loss. Hilda seemed to think no other remark was necessary. But her feet began to sketch a movement, and he was aware of an impression that but for his presence she might again be seeking refuge for her spirit in that grave and solitary dance he had already seen her practising.
“I had better be getting on to Mr. Jacks,” he said, rising from his chair. “That is, if there is nothing else you can tell me. It would be after you left her employment that you showed the Fellows necklace to the duchess?”
“After she sacked me,” Hilda corrected.
“Was there any prospect of her buying it?”
“She wanted to badly enough. But she knew the duke would never let her.”
“Have there been any other negotiations?”
This time there was a momentary hesitation – very slight, but sufficient to emphasise her failure, Bobby had noticed, to answer directly his last question.
“I don’t know all the firm’s business,” she said then. “I was only Mr. Jessop’s typist. I showed her the necklace and she loved it. No one could help; it’s the loveliest thing. That’s all I can say.”
“Mr. Jacks would know, I suppose?”
“You must ask him,” she replied again with hesitation, so that he was certain there was something she either knew or suspected, something that she was keeping back. “I’ve told you all I know about that part of it,” she went on, with more assurance in her tone.
“The duke saw it, too. At Mayfair Square. He turned up one day and wanted to see it. I can’t imagine why – diamond necklaces aren’t his line; not unless he saw a chance to buy it cheap and sell it for twice as much somewhere else. Sixpenny pearl necklets at Woolworth’s are more his idea. Naturally he faded away as soon as he knew the price. The firm was quite bucked, though; they didn’t know him as well as I did. I told them there wasn’t an earthly, but I think they still hoped.”
“I see,” said Bobby thoughtfully. There could, of course, be no connection, but it was odd how continually references to the duke and to the duchess kept turning up. There was that odd business of the half-smoked cigar, too, with the monogram of the duke’s New York friend, Mr. Patterson. He went on: “You said your engagement with the duchess was not your first?”
“I was with a firm in the City before,” she answered. She gave their name – well-known ship-owners. “Then I was asked if I would like to go to the duchess as her secretary. It was Lord Harrowby who got the chance for me.”
“Lord Harrowby?” Bobby repeated; for the name was that of a peer equally well known in political and in sporting circles.
He thought to himself that this somewhat puzzling young woman appeared to have a wide acquaintance in the aristocracy. She saw his surprise, and explained:
“He is my” – she hesitated –”my father’s brother.”
“Your uncle?”
“No,” she said. She looked at him steadily. It was almost the first time he had seen her eyes, the first time he had realised their depth, their brilliance, a quality in them of hidden passion that might mean many things. “The law does not allow that,” she said. “For the law I do not exist. I am outside the law.”
He gave her a quick and doubtful glance, for this was a phrase, it seemed to him, of many implications.
“Hardly that,” he said.
“The family have been very kind,” she went on. “My mother died when I was born. My father died soon after. His brother succeeded him. He did what he felt was his duty. He paid for my education. He had me sent to a good school. He would have paid for me to go to college. He would have given me an allowance. He promised a settlement if I ever got married. But I wanted to know who I was. I found out. Then I preferred to be independent. The lawyers said I was a fool. That was my business. I expect Lord Harrowby was very relieved. He said he admired my spirit. Really, he has been very decent. I ought to be grateful. Every year regularly his lawyers write to say I am to remember that if I want any reasonable help, money, or advice, they are always at my disposal. I never have, but when people know that, it makes them careful.”
Mystery of Mr. Jessop Page 5
