Outrageous Fortune

by Patricia Wentworth

  She kneeled on the bed and focused the torch upon the cavity. It was a little cupboard with a shelf across it. In the bottom of it was a pencil and a button. Caroline remembered them quite well; she had put them there ages and ages ago. They were part of a terribly secret game. The pencil was Jim’s; his initials were on it in an ink-smeared scrawl. The button was an old-fashioned waistcoat button of dark blue enamel with a paste centre.

  There was nothing else at all in the little secret cupboard.

  A sort of numbness came on Caroline. She couldn’t move, and she couldn’t think. She kneeled on the edge of the bed and stared along the ray of her torch at the empty space behind Ralph de Burgh’s shield. Presently the numbness passed. She got up and closed the shield. You had to turn the apple again to do this. Half a turn to the right lifted the latch; then, when the door was shut, you turned the apple back again and the latch fell down and held it fast.

  Only someone who knew the trick could open the shield.

  Who had opened the shield?

  Caroline went to the door and looked down the passage. It was empty. The secret place behind the shield was empty. Had it been empty this afternoon when Caroline Bussell looked into the ink pool? Nesta had said, “Where are the emeralds?” and Caroline Bussell had begun to describe this room and this bed. Was the place behind the shield empty then? Or were the emeralds there? If they were there, who had put them there? If they were there then, where were they now? Who had left the secret door standing open? Who had left the outer door standing wide?

  Where was Jim?

  Caroline had no answer to any of these questions. They were like great stones that she couldn’t move. They blocked her path on every side. It was like a horrible dream. She couldn’t move them and she couldn’t get by them.

  She came out of the Blue Room and passed along the passage to where it joined the main corridor. She had been sure for some time that she was alone in the house. Jim wasn’t here. Yet she forced herself to make sure. It was strange to be alone in the house which had always been so full. She went all over it, opening door after door and throwing the light of the torch round the empty rooms. This was the nursery, and this the schoolroom. This was Jim’s room, and this long bare attic playroom and muddle-room. This was Aunt Margaret’s own little room. The delicate, gracious presence rose again as Caroline stood on the threshold. It was Aunt Margaret who had gathered the orphan children of three families under her sheltering care—Jim, Pansy, and little Caroline. Here was Uncle James’ study—he was only a cousin really. Poor old Uncle James—so lost when Aunt Margaret went. Aunt Margaret would never have allowed the quarrel with Jim to go on.

  Caroline came slowly downstairs into the hall. The house wasn’t empty now. It was full of all the people she had known when she was a child—Mrs Crofts, the very fat cook who made such frightfully good spongecakes; Miss Milton, the jolly young governess who had only stayed six months because Major Palmer fell in love with her and whisked her off to Egypt; Aunt Margaret’s maid, Halliday, frightfully grim; Nanna, who spoiled them all; and a succession of parlour-maids, house-maids, and between-maids, with one or two standing out from the rest—that very pretty Cissie Jones who married the milkman, good-natured Maggie, who had to be called by her surname, because her Christian name was the same as Aunt Margaret’s, and Emily, whom nobody liked. There had been a little mystery about Emily—she just went without any notice. That wasn’t like Aunt Margaret. Looking back, Caroline wondered what Emily had done. A prying girl—Nanna’s word—with a fib always ready if she was blamed.

  Caroline had looked into the drawing-room and library. It was whilst she was opening the dining-room door that she remembered Emily’s surname. It came to her in one of those quick irrelevant flashes which sometimes show one things which have been forgotten for years. A moment before, she might have said that she had never known it; but as she opened the dining-room door, there it was in her mind, clear and distinct—Emily Rudd.

  The dining-room was quite empty.

  She came to the back door again. The house was empty behind her. Jim wasn’t there. The key was on the inside of the door. She hesitated, and then left it there. Jim might come back. Something stabbed at her heart. She didn’t think that Jim would come back. She thought that he was gone. Something had happened, and he was gone. She felt very tired.

  She switched off her torch and stepped out into the dark yard, closing the door of the house behind her.

  XXV

  Jim Randal had told Caroline that she was not to come again to Hale Place, but he did not really expect that she would obey him—she had in fact immediately announced that she would not. When, therefore, he returned from a walk across his own dark fields at a little after ten o’clock, he did not lock the back door behind him, but left it just ajar. Caroline, if she came, would not be here very much before eleven, since she must wait till Pansy was safely asleep.

  He went into the kitchen and sat on the edge of the table. He had spent the day in trying to remember, and had gained nothing but a horrid sense of strain. He made up his mind not to try any more. What had come back to him already had come without effort.

  He began to feel drowsy in the dark, and lighted one of the candles which Caroline had brought. The windows were shuttered, so it was safe enough to have a light. As he struck the match, he had a sudden vivid recollection of the man whom he had followed into the Blue Room the night before. What on earth did the fellow want? He had walked in and struck a match as if the place belonged to him. Jim cursed himself for a fool for not having waited to see what he was after.

  He blew out the match and stepped back, and then and there a voice spoke aloud in his mind: “Eight green stones—five windows like slits—no one knows where they are but me.” He stood just where he was, and the words said themselves again. Then the voice stopped. He was left staring at the candle flame with a most frightful feeling of apprehension. The words were horribly familiar. He knew them by heart. They said themselves without effort. They linked Elmer Van Berg’s emeralds with the Blue Room.

  The shock of the thought was tremendous. If the emeralds were here at Hale Place in the Blue Room..…… How could they have come here? There was only one answer. If they were here, he must have brought them. If they were here, then he had shot Elmer Van Berg.

  They couldn’t be here.

  A little mocking devil began to turn catherine-wheels in his mind. It cocked snooks and dared him—“Couldn’t be here, couldn’t they? Yah! Go and see! You daren’t—yah! And why? Because they’re there, and you know it!” A devil with the lowest gutter manners. Jim pitched him out of his mind and banged the door. “You daren’t!” shrieked the devil through the keyhole. “Yah to you!”

  Jim took the candle end which he had lighted and went upstairs to the Blue Room. If the emeralds were here, if he had brought them here, there was just one place where they would be. They weren’t there—they couldn’t possibly be there—but he was bound to satisfy himself that the impossible hadn’t happened.

  He went up to the four-post bed and threw the candlelight upon the headpiece with its carving of the Tree of Knowledge. It was a very set, symmetrical Tree, with Adam and Eve on either side, rather prematurely dressed in fig-leaves. The Serpent trailed his length across the whole panel and doubled back to coil about the Tree. There were four apples on one side and four apples on the other, and right in the middle of the Tree, just over the Serpent’s head, the shield of Ralph de Burgh, bearing a crenellated castle and three spear-heads.

  Jim set the candle end down upon the bed and twisted the bottom apple on the right-hand side; at the same time he pulled on the shield. It opened like a door. He remembered how thrilled Caroline had been when he showed her the trick of it. He bent forward and dropped his left hand, because the shadow of it was dark across the hole behind the shield. His hand fell, and the yellow candlelight shone into the cavity.

  Jim took hold of the bed-post to steady himself. He had one knee on the bed, an
d for a moment he was in danger of losing his balance; he had the feeling that the bed with its pillars and its massive head and foot-pieces had heaved beneath him. His hand clenched on the bed-post and he stared at the cavity. It had a partition across it like a shelf, and all the space above the shelf was a dazzle of gold, and white, and green—links of fine wrought gold strung with pearls, and a twist and more pearls, and a great green stone wedged sideways that drank the light like water.

  Jim stayed, staring. Here were the emeralds—here, in this secret place. He tried to stir his mind to thought, but nothing moved. The emeralds were here—that was a fact. You can’t get away from a fact. The emeralds were in the secret place behind Ralph de Burgh’s shield.

  His thoughts began to move again, but slowly and stiffly. He couldn’t remember putting the emeralds here. He ought to be able to remember. He remembered Elmer Van Berg’s hand under the light, and the eight green stones with the fine gold chains in between, and the pearls. And he remembered the piece about the Blue Room—“five narrow windows like slits.” But he couldn’t remember anything about the shield, and he couldn’t remember hiding the emeralds.

  Without altering his position, he put out a hand, took hold of the gold chain, and pulled it out of the cupboard. It swung as he had seen it swing from Elmer Van Berg’s hand—eight square green stones with pearls between them—“like a kid’s green beads.” He checked the swing of the chain with a jerk of his lifted hand. Ridiculous! They weren’t in the least like beads! Beads were pierced; but these square stones were set in heavy gold. It kept coming back—“like a kid’s green beads.”

  “I didn’t say that. Who said it?”

  He had got as far as that, when the first sound reached him. As he half stood, half kneeled at the bedside with the candle end burnt to its last inch on the white coverlet, he was in full view, not only of the door, but of the whole length of the passage between the door and the main corridor.

  The man who had turned the corner a moment before had first started back and then come cautiously on. He could see the lighted panel of the door, and beyond it the bed head with the right hand pillar, and Jim half turned away, a knee upon the bed and his left hand just out of the picture. Another yard, and the hand was in view—the hand and what it was holding—the eight green stones, rimmed with gold and dripping with pearls. The low candle made black shadows everywhere.

  The man came soft-foot to the door, as soundless as might be. Yet there must have been a sound, for Jim let go of the post and made to turn. At his first movement the man charged him, snatching at the hand which held the chain. They came down together across the bed. The darkness came down too. As he fell, Jim struck the jutting shield with his head. The chain was wrenched out of his grasp. He had the man by the shoulder with an awkward left-hand grip—a hard, wiry fellow with a twist on him like an eel. He was twisting all the time. If Jim could not get a better hold, he would lose him. He tried to roll over, to get his right arm free, but the soft bed gave no purchase. He was a little dazed with the suddenness and the blow to his head. The smothered candle smelled to heaven. With a violent effort he heaved over, and as he did so, the man wrenched aside and got his teeth into his left wrist. He bit deep, jerked backwards, and with a rip of cloth he was free. He must have been as quick on his feet as a cat, for in the same moment he was across the room and through the door.

  Jim stumbled up, heard the sound of running feet in the passage, and gave chase. He had cut his forehead and the blood ran down into his eyes and bothered him. The man had the start of him, and this time Jim was not sufficiently sure of himself to slide the banisters. As he came to the foot of the stairs, he heard the dull thud of the baize door which led to the kitchen wing. When he reached it, the wind was blowing to meet him down the long stone passage.

  He dashed his hand across his eyes and ran at top speed down the passage and out of the open door.

  XXVI

  The head-long instinct of pursuit carried Jim across the yard and out of the gate. There his mind checked him. He stood still and listened. It was no use just blundering on in the dark. He’d got to listen, and he’d got to think. If the thief was a local man, he would take some side path or cut across the garden. If he was a stranger, he would probably stick to the drive.

  Jim caught the sound of crushed gravel and began to run again. The fellow was sticking to the drive. That looked like a stranger. He wondered how he had got here. If he had a car or a motor-bike, he was as good as gone already. If he was on his flat feet, he might be come up with. The dark was very hampering. Only a novice would go on running away when every hedge and bush offered a hiding place. Remembering the wriggle-and-twist brand of fight the thief had put up, Jim didn’t think he had to do with a novice.

  He had almost reached the gate, when he stopped suddenly and ran back again past the house along a gravel path which wound between shrubberies. He had taken a sudden decision and was going nap on it. To catch a lighter, faster man with a twenty yard start and the darkness to help him offered no chances. In a rapid survey of the possibilities he had seen only one real chance.

  There are three ways out of Hazelbury West—the main north road, to take which the thief would have had to turn right-handed as soon as he passed the gate; the Ledlington road, for which he would have to turn left; and the path across the fields to Hinton which was the nearest railway station. If you walked to the station, you took the field path, and the distance was four miles. If you drove, you followed the Ledlington road, and it was six.

  The path along which Jim was running came out upon the field path to Hinton, cutting the corner. If the thief was making for Hinton with the idea of catching the last train there, Jim had a reasonable chance of intercepting him. He hadn’t gone north; Jim had heard those running footsteps go off to the left before he himself turned back. Of course, even setting aside the possibilities of a car or bicycle, the fellow might take the high road to Hinton and then leave it by the Packham fork, but somehow it didn’t seem so very likely. If he was a chance-come thief, yes; but if he knew that he had snatched the Van Berg emeralds, then Packham would be about the last place on earth that he would be heading for. No, if he knew what he had got, he would make for Ledlington, and later perhaps for London.

  As he ran, Jim wondered whether they had altered all the trains. Seven years is a long time to be away. There used to be a crawling local train that stopped at Hinton—the twelve-twenty-five—and fetched up at Ledlington about one. It didn’t go any farther.

  Jim kept a steady pace across the fields. The farther he went, the more of a wild goose chase did the whole thing appear. He had had a hunch, and he had followed it. Sometimes hunches turned out all right; sometimes they let you down. He began to feel gloomily certain that he was going to be let down flat.

  He wasn’t in training for running four miles; besides there was plenty of time. He ran a bit and walked a bit. The heavy rain had made the path rather soggy. He wondered if the other man was before him or behind. He might be either. If he had been very nippy, he might have got past the Hale Place back gate before Jim emerged from it. On the other hand, if he had slacked off a bit, he was probably behind—probably, with a query. He was probably a mile or two away on some perfectly different tack. All the same, Jim was going to Hinton.

  His pace admitted of thought, and he had plenty to think about. He had to think about the emeralds. How had they come to be where he had found them? As far as he knew, only two people now living knew of the secret hiding-place behind Ralph de Burgh’s shield. Uncle James and Aunt Margaret had known, and Uncle James had told him with a good deal of humming and hawing and some heavy business on the lines of, “Family heirloom—family secret—future head of the family, my boy”; and, “It will all be yours some day.” He remembered saying, “I hope it won’t—not for ages, I mean.” And Uncle James, a good deal embarrassed, pulling at his walrus moustache, and saying, “I hope not—I hope not—but you never can tell.” Well, that was eight years ago,
and he had told Caroline to console her before he went away. And of course Caroline might have told anyone. No, she wouldn’t—she had promised. Rubbish! A child’s promise! She had probably told all her bosom friends. No—not Caroline. He felt ashamed of having had the thought. He could hear her funny deep voice now: “Jim, I faithfully promise.” No—Caroline wouldn’t have told after that.

  He frowned impatiently. Any number of people might know about the thing. But if they didn’t—if only he and Caroline knew—then it was he who had put the emeralds there. It was a damned bad show. How could he have put the emeralds there? How had they got there if he hadn’t put them there? And why had he been haunted by snatches of memory in which the emeralds and the five narrow windows of the Blue Room came and went?

  An obstinate denial rose in him. He might have shot Elmer Van Berg, but he couldn’t have taken the emeralds. He said that he might have shot Elmer. He began to turn that over. He wouldn’t have gone to see Elmer with a gun on him—not in England. But if they had had a violent quarrel and Elmer had drawn on him, there might have been a struggle in which Elmer was shot. But in that case what had happened to the weapon? There wasn’t anything about a weapon in the newspaper stories. He wondered if that was one of the things the police were lying low about..…

  Well, say he and Elmer had quarrelled. What would they have quarrelled about? It would have to be something that made Elmer suddenly see red. Well then, it would have to be something about Susie. Susie liked to play him up and make him jealous. If Elmer was jealous, he’d be formidable—he’d be liable to forget where he was and pull a gun. But then Jim had a perfectly clear memory of drinking with Elmer. They weren’t quarrelling then. He could see that one moment of their interview perfectly clearly—his own hand lifting his drink, and Elmer’s hand under the light holding up the emeralds. He came to a puzzled obstinate certainty. He might have shot Elmer, though he couldn’t think why. He couldn’t have taken the emeralds and hidden them at Hale Place.