Nothing Venture

by Patricia Wentworth

  “It belonged to a famous smuggler called Old Foxy Fixon. He lived about a hundred years ago, and after his grandson died people said the place was haunted, and nobody would live there. It’s still called Old Foxy Fixon’s house. It belongs to the Tetterleys, and I expect they were very glad to get it let.”

  Nan went on looking at the house over her shoulder until a turn of the road hid it.

  A bare quarter of a mile farther on they turned in at the Tetterleys’ gate.

  Basher, alias Sir George Tetterley, proved to be a massive, silent person. He had kind eyes, and a ridiculously soft voice which he used as little as possible. Lady Tetterley talked enough for a half a dozen.

  Rosamund did not appear until lunch had been announced, when she strolled in looking exquisitely cool.

  “Robert’s going to be late. Something’s the matter with that damned car of his. It just got us here and no more. He’s tinkering with it down at the garage. I say the scrap-heap’s the only cure. The brute nearly killed us yesterday, and I’ve told him I’m not going out in her again.”

  Mr Leonard came in half way though lunch. He looked hot, and explained that he hadn’t been able to get his car going. Nan had been placed between him and her host. She had, therefore, an empty chair on one side of her for the first twenty minutes or so.

  Sir George made one remark about the weather, and another about the crops. Before, after, and between these remarks he ate his lunch. Oddly enough, Nan did not find this silence unpleasant. It was a companionable silence; it did not exclude, but admitted her an intimacy in which one spoke if one had something to say. At the moment, Sir George had not anything to say to her. He looked at her kindly and seemed to take it for granted that they should both listen to the flow of conversation from the rest of the party. He smiled appreciatively once or twice, frowned when Lady Tetterley produced a piece of unpleasant gossip about a neighbour, and did more than justice to the efforts of the new cook.

  When Robert Leonard took the empty chair beside her, Nan would have preferred a more conversational neighbour on her other side. In desperation she leaned towards Sir George and said,

  “Lady Tetterley said you used to know my father’s people.”

  Sir George nodded and said,

  “Long ago.”

  “Will you tell me about them? They quarrelled with him about his marriage, and I’ve never seen any of them.”

  “Haven’t seen them for years,” said Sir George—“twenty years. Used to stay there when I was a young fellow—very kind to me and all that.”

  Nan looked disappointed.

  “I know my grandfather’s dead,” she said.

  Sir George nodded again. He took up his glass, emptied it, and signed to have it refilled.

  “All gone,” he said. “Place sold. Great pity for an old place to go out of the family.”

  “My father had a sister,” said Nan. “I’m called after her.”

  “Yes,” said Sir George. “That’s why I thought you belonged to the family. She wasn’t Anne, you know; she was Nan—christened Nan.”

  “So am I,” said Nan. “Am I like her?”

  “Yes,” said George Tetterley—“very.” His face and his voice were quite expressionless. He helped himself to a vegetable that was being handed to him and then remarked that it was too late in the season to expect decent peas.

  When the dish had gone on its way, Nan said,

  “Do tell me about her. Is she alive?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did she marry?”

  “Yes—quite a good chap.”

  From the other side of the table came Ferdinand Fazackerley’s voice:

  “When I was in Mexico in ’24 …” He proceeded to tell a lively story of an encounter with a guerilla band. The name of Pedro Ramirez emerged from it. It appeared that Ferdinand had been uncommonly lucky to have escaped the undesired role of providing entertainment for a temporarily idle band. “They’d got a really high-class show all fixed up, with me for the star performer. There was a kind of William Tell turn, with all the best shots seeing how close they could shave me without actually putting me out of action. And there was a Mazeppa turn, with me for Mazeppa, and the worst-tempered bronco in the bunch for the Wild Horse of the Ukraine.”

  “How divine!” said Mabel Tetterley.

  “Well, that’s not the adjective I should use myself—but I was brought up a Primitive Methodist, and it rather cramps my style when it comes to really adequate alternatives.”

  “Did you do Mazeppa?”

  “Well, no. I reckon I wouldn’t be here now if I had.”

  “But you’re not telling us what happened,” said Mabel Tetterley.

  “Well,” said Ferdinand, “this is a very instructive tale—one of the real mother’s-knee kind, all around the text of ‘If you do a good turn, it’ll come back to roost.’ I’d done my good turn getting on for eight years before and forgotten all about it. I’m not going to tell you what it was, because I’ve got a real modest disposition, but just when those bright boys were going to get going with their quick-shooters, that good turn came home to roost—deus ex machina, same as in the Greek plays when they want to get the mess cleared up at the end. I don’t want you to think I’m a Greek scholar, but I’ve a profound admiration for the translations of Professor Gilbert Murray.”

  This was the occasion for one of Sir George’s smiles.

  “You’re not telling us how you got away,” said Mabel Tetterley.

  “Pardon me, Lady Tetterley, that is what I am doing.” He paused and looked around the table.

  Sir George was smiling; Rosamund Carew lighting a cigarette with an air of calm detachment; Jervis—well, just Jervis; Mabel Tetterley faintly bored at the digression into Greek plays; Robert Leonard in the act of lifting a tumbler of whisky and soda to his lips; and Nan an eager child waiting for the end of the story.

  “My deus ex machina was a man called Hermann Eisenthal.”

  Robert Leonard’s glass continued its upward way. He drank as if he was thirsty and set it down.

  Ferdinand was looking at Lady Tetterley. But those glancing eyes of his certainly had the faculty of being able to see two things at once. He had most certainly seen the knuckles whiten on Robert Leonard’s broad red hand. Ferdinand judged that the glass it was holding had missed being a casualty by a fairly narrow margin. He finished his story.

  “Hermann Eisenthal remembered the good turn which F.F. had forgotten. He had the guerilla chief in his pocket, and it was pull for the shore, sailor, pull for the shore. And if you’ve ever been all trussed up and ready to take the floor as a high-class target with a nasty half-breed monarch-of-all-he-surveys waiting to give the word for the shooting to begin, you’ll know just how glad I was to see Hermann. I tell you he’d got Mr Pedro Ramirez feeding out of his hand. It’s no good your asking me why. He’d got him sitting up for sugar like a circus dog. Well, I’ve often thought it would be interesting to know what the sugar was.”

  Ferdinand’s bright brown eyes went past Robert Leonard to Nan. Perhaps they were looking for something as the passed. Perhaps they found what they were looking for.

  “Your husband wasn’t with me that time, Mrs Jervis,” he said, “or I’d have put the whole thing down to his luck. He’s the sort that falls on his feet, you know, and if there’s any bad luck going, it kind of richochets off him and lands back where it came from.”

  XXIV

  What did F.F. mean? Did he mean anything at all? Or were his words just an echo of something in her own mind? Nan couldn’t make out. Or were the words nothing, and she was just reading into them the accusation which filled her thoughts? It was as much as she could do to sit next to Robert Leonard without crying this accusation aloud—“You’ve been trying to kill Jervis!” She caught the inside of her lip in her teeth to hold it against those words. What would everyone say if she called them aloud?

  Sir George Tetterley was giving her a potted version of his last game of golf; t
o such a mellow mood had lunch and her likeness to that earlier Nan Forsyth brought him. Curiously enough, some delicate extra sense informed her that of all the people around the table Sir George would be the least surprised if she were suddenly to say what was in her mind about Robert Leonard. Quite definitely Sir George did not like him—oh, quite definitely. Neither did he like Rosamund—much. This surprised Nan. She was young enough to give beauty too many points in the game.

  Rosamund had begun to smoke before she had begun to eat. She ate very little, and she lit one cigarette from another all through the meal. She wore a straight, plain dress of heavy white washing silk. In contrast to Mabel Tetterley, whose thin neck was hung with beads like small golf balls, Rosamund’s throat was bare. Seen through a bluish haze of smoke, she had the air of beauty withdrawn behind its own impalpable veils.

  Nan’s heart hurt her very much as she looked across the table at this beauty of Rosamund’s. Jervis’ very anger against her was the measure of his love and his loss. Having loved Rosamund, it could not be possible that he should ever love Nan.

  She shrank away from these thoughts, and gave Sir George so earnest a listener that he not only played out that round of golf but began upon a previous one and took her through it without omitting a single stroke.

  They went out into the garden after lunch and had coffee under the shade of two enormous cedars. As they crossed the lawn with the sun pouring down upon them, the party broke up into twos and threes. Nan found herself walking with Ferdinand.

  “What did you mean?” she said without looking at him.

  “I?”

  “Yes, Mr Fazackerley.”

  Ferdinand stopped dead, rumpled his hair, and looked at her with a half shy, half bold expression which reminded her of a sparrow looking at a crumb.

  “I just hate you to call me that,” he said.

  Nan blushed a little with pleasure, and he threw out his hand in an odd gesture.

  “I’d hate it worse if you were to think me fresh.”

  “Fresh?” said Nan.

  The queer bright eyes twinkled at her.

  “That’s just American for forward. I shouldn’t like you to think I was pushing myself into being friends with you—but I’d like it mighty well if we were friends.”

  Nan said, “Oh—” It was a little sound with a quiver in it. Her eyes were soft and misty. “Oh, how nice of you!” she said.

  Mr Fazackerley stuck his hands into his pockets.

  “That’s for fear I’m going to take right hold of your hand and pretty near shake it off.”

  “How nice of you, F.F.!” said Nan.

  They began to walk again. The sunlight dazzled round her. She didn’t feel afraid of Rosamund any more. Here was a really, truly friend of Jervis’ who wanted to be friends with her. She found it immensely strengthening. Ever since she had married Jervis she had felt as if she were walking through a strange, empty desert place alone. F.F. wanting to be her friend was like suddenly finding out that the desert wasn’t quite empty. She came back to her first question.

  “What did you mean at lunch?”

  “Perhaps I didn’t mean anything.”

  “You did—you told that story on purpose, and you looked at him—Mr Leonard. What did you mean?”

  Ferdinand turned and waved a hand in the direction of a most undeniable view. The trees had been cut away to frame a glimpse of the sea.

  “That’s pretty good—isn’t it?” he said.

  Nan hadn’t anything at all to say about the view.

  “Who was Eisenthal?” she said.

  Ferdinand turned in a leisurely fashion and let a roving glance travel about the lawn. Lady Tetterley and Mr Leonard had reached the shade and were already disposed in comfortable chairs. Sir George was in the act of joining them. Jervis and Rosamund Carew had taken a wide circle away from the cedars and were entering upon a shady path overarched by tall rhododendrons. A footman had just emerged from the house bearing the coffee-tray.

  “Who is Eisenthal?”

  It certainly seemed safe enough to answer her.

  “A fellow I met out there.”

  He got a frown, and a clear indignant look.

  “What was he?”

  “A chemist,” said Ferdinand.

  “You mean—an experimental chemist.”

  “Yes—that was quick of you.”

  She shook her head.

  “Why could he make the guerilla chief do as he liked?”

  “Chemists are sometimes useful.”

  “How was Eisenthal useful?”

  “A handy fellow,” said Ferdinand.

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Well yes, I know.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “Well, that’s what I don’t know.”

  “Why?” He saw a faint sensitive clouding of those eager eyes. Her lips parted. “You’re not going to tell me—”

  He told her what he hadn’t meant to tell anyone—yet.

  “Eisenthal was a genius gone wrong. I don’t know what he’d done, but he’d made his own country a hundred degrees or so too hot to hold him. He looked like any other professor, only more respectable, and he’d a fierce brain. Well, he’d got an invention that had been mighty useful to that guerilla chief.”

  “What was it?” said Nan.

  “What’ll you do if I tell you?”

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Certain sure?”

  “I won’t—really.”

  Ferdinand had another look about him. Jervis and Rosamund had disappeared. The coffee was half way across the lawn. Lady Tetterley was flirting with Mr Leonard. Sir George had retired behind The Times.

  He began to speak in the sort of voice that barely carries a yard:

  “About a month before he’d copped me, Mr Pedro Ramirez had brought off a mighty useful little coup. He was carrying on operations in the Madalena district and harassing the government quite a bit. Then they turned nasty and sent up some real troops—and that’s where he brought off his coup. There were three trains, and they left Madalena at three-hour intervals. The first of them ran off the line on the edge of the big pass where it enters the hills. It went down a couple of hundred feet, and there weren’t any survivors. The second train crashed through the parapet of the bridge over the Madalena River about five miles short of the hills. And the third ran off the track only ten miles out of Madalena.”

  “How?” said Nan.

  “Eisenthal,” said Ferdinand.

  “Yes—but how?”

  F.F. waved his hand toward the sea.

  “I’m not a chemist, but I got away with the idea that Eisenthal had invented a thing that disintegrated certain substances. The man who told me said he’d seen the sleepers where those three trains left the line, and they were just mush.”

  Nan looked at him with eyes like saucers.

  “But, F.F.—the first train got as far as the hills.”

  He nodded.

  “Why didn’t it crash sooner? It must have run over the places where the other two trains went off, and the second train must have run over the bit of line where the third one crashed.”

  “Yes. You’re bright—aren’t you? I was bright too. I said to the man who told me, ‘Look here, what are you giving me?’ He said, ‘I don’t know—but as I told you, so it happened.’ Afterwards I asked Eisenthal. I’m not an inquisitive man, but I kind of like to know how things happen, so when I got a chance I asked him, and he told me it was all a matter of careful timing. You spray the stuff on, and it takes just so long to make a thing dicky, and so much longer to rot it right through. It must all be calculated very carefully—so much stuff to the square inch, and it takes just so long to work. Well, the place where the first train crashed was done first. It ran over the other two places before they’d got dangerous. He said he’d experimented most carefully and timed the whole show to the minute.”

  Nan looked away to the distant blue of the sea. She said under her
breath,

  “The stuff made wood rotten?”

  “So I’m given to understand.”

  “Jervis’ bridge was rotten.”

  “That’s when I began to think about Eisenthal.”

  Nan turned round quickly.

  “What happened to Eisenthal?”

  “I’m not quite sure. I think he’s dead.”

  “He’s not …?”

  “Leonard? Not on your life! It’s not so easy as that. The nearest I’ve got to it at present is that they were both in the South American continent at the same time—but that’s not very incriminating for Mr Leonard.”

  “Will you tell Jervis?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not a bit of good telling Jervis. I shall keep my eyes open. Don’t you want any coffee? I’ve got a hunch we’ve been admiring the view just about as long as we’d better.”

  They crossed the grass slowly. Ferdinand talked about Constantinople. South America was a long way away. Eisenthal was dead. They came out of the sun into the shade.

  Robert Leonard was sipping his coffee. He looked cool and comfortable. He smiled pleasantly at Nan and engaged her in conversation whilst Lady Tetterley transferred her attentions to Ferdinand. Sir George kept The Times firmly between himself and the outside world. After a little while he ceased to turn the pages; the sheets crumpled and sank lower, and a steady rhythmical sound came from behind them.

  XXV

  The path under the rhododendrons was cool and dark; a faint breath of damp rose up from between the twisted stems. There was water not very far away. Jervis walked beside Rosamund Carew, but he didn’t look at her; he looked into the green gloom ahead of them. When they came to the place where a couple of planks crossed a runnel of water, he stood still and said,

  “What do you want to say to me?”

  “Quite a lot of things.”

  “Well, suppose you get down to it.”

  “I’m not in any hurry.”

  Jervis looked at her in order to ensure the direction of the portentous frown.

  “If you’ve really got anything to say to me, I think this would be a good place to say it, and then we can go back and join the others.”