One Man's Heart

by Mary Burchell

  Her eyes went back to the letter. Jerringham’s in New Bond Street about four-thirty to-morrow. That was the rendezvous. And she found suddenly that the dismay was not so deep as it should have been, and there was a feeling of nervous excitement which had nothing to do with the trouble which the cousin might make.

  Well, there was no harm, of course, in seeing him on something which was strictly business. A pity that they had to meet again—even a little unsettling, but she could hardly allow this wonderful engagement of his to go on the rocks for want of a few words of explanation from herself.

  She would keep this appointment to-morrow, hear what it was that he wanted her to do, and then feel comfortably certain that this time at least they could lay all the ghosts of past indiscretions.

  Jerringham’s in New Bond Street is not a large place, but the spacing of the tables and the discretion of the lighting give one an impression of privacy and seclusion that is very acceptable when one is conduct­ing delicate conversation. Hilma recognised at once that he had chosen well as she entered the place the following afternoon. Anyone might run into an ac­quaintance quite casually there and, having done so, would undoubtedly settle down to talk in this pleasant atmosphere.

  His air of pleased surprise as he rose to meet her was admirable, and she thought from the sparkle in his eyes that he rather enjoyed giving an artistically complete impression of the rôle he was playing.

  “This is delightful. Please do join me, won’t you? Or are you expecting someone else?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” whispered Hilma as he took her coat, but she rather wished that Roger would sometimes do nice, silly things like this.

  They sat down opposite each other, and she glanced at him quickly to see if he bore any signs of marked anxiety about the dilemma in which he found himself. She could not discover any, but decided that he would be unlikely to show concern in any case.

  They talked trivialities until tea had been brought. Then, as she began to pour out, Hilma said:

  “Well, what is the position? Serious?”

  “At the moment, yes. He is under the impression that one of my weaknesses is to entertain lovely ladies in my flat with considerable regularity, but at most irregular hours.”

  “Feels it his duty to save his cousin from a penni­less adventurer, in fact?” suggested Hilma.

  “Oh—well, rather more than that. If that were the only charge, I suppose I shouldn’t have a leg to stand on.”

  “What do you mean?” Hilma looked startled.

  “Why, Lieb­ling”—he smiled straight into her eyes, as he took his tea from her—”what else would you call me?”

  She bit her lip slightly. Then she said:

  “All right, we’ll let that pass.”

  He laughed.

  “We both are, you know,” he reminded her teasingly. “Oh, very charming adventurers, of course, but”—he smiled regretfully—”adventurers.”

  Hilma’s reluctant little laugh gave something like assent to that, though she thought she would rather like to have argued with him the subtle distinction between exploiting someone and giving them value for their beastly money.

  “Well, anyway, that’s beside the point,” she said a little hastily. He was gravely attentive at once, though there was still something rather teasing about him. “I suppose he read the worst into our—our supper party?”

  “He read into it exactly what we told the police sergeant, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I forgot that we piled up the evidence against ourselves.”

  “Yes. It seems to me now that I added several artis­tic details that were hardly necessary, though at the time they seemed admirable,” he admitted.

  “Well, there wasn’t much time to think things out, was there?”

  He shook his head, and they both smiled slightly, to remember the adventure they had shared together.

  “Briefly, it comes to this, Lieb­ling.” He roused him­self to more practical matters. “He challenged me with having someone in my flat for—shall we call it?—a disreputable purpose. I told him that if he would give me a day or two to find my proof I could satisfy him entirely, and he reluctantly agreed to keep his information to himself for the time being.”

  “I see. Now it’s up to me to give him a convincing account of what I was really doing.” He frowned, but she ignored that and went on determinedly: “Of course, there’s no actual proof—he’ll have to accept my word for it—but I think I can convince him that I’m not quite the type of young woman he imag­ines.”

  “I don’t like the business at all.” The interruption came almost violently. “I don’t know what I was thinking of to suppose that I could let you go and tell that fool all about your private affairs.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Hilma was perfectly cool. “We’ve been over all this before. It wouldn’t be any more than a momentary embarrassment for me. I don’t know him. I’m never particularly likely to see him again. What is that measured against the wreck of your marriage? You aren’t much of an adventurer, when it comes to the point, you know,” she added with a smile.

  He smiled too, but reluctantly.

  “There ought to be some way out of it without dragging you in,” he declared impatiently.

  “Well, there isn’t.” Hilma was firm. “Besides, I’m not being dragged in. If you remember, I forced my way in, in the most unmistakable manner. That’s what the whole trouble is about. It would be too absurdly quixotic of you to allow yourself to be compromised, simply because some girl, whose name you don’t even know, broke into your flat by mistake.”

  He smiled again—not at all reluctantly that time, but brilliantly, with all his admiration in his eyes.

  “I do know your name now. It’s a lovely name—Hilma.”

  She laughed.

  “It has a sort of Scandinavian sound that suits my colouring, I suppose. That’s why people usually like it.”

  “Yes, it suits you. But ‘Lieb­ling’ suits you better. Hilma is Scandinavian, as you say, and a little—cold.”

  “I’m rather cold by temperament,” Hilma assured him calmly.

  “No, Lieb­ling, not by temperament. By force of circumstances, perhaps. But that’s a very different thing.”

  “Well, we didn’t come here to discuss tem­peraments.” She said that much more sharply than she meant to, and he immediately leant his elbows on the table and smiled at her coaxingly.

  “But it’s a very interesting subject to discuss, don’t you think?”

  She refused to be drawn, however.

  “Perhaps so. But we were going to arrange about my meeting Evelyn’s cousin.”

  “No, we weren’t,” he retorted obstinately. “We were discussing whether it was necessary for you to meet him at all.”

  “But if there’s any doubt about the matter, where’s the sense in our meeting like this? Your sole reason for asking me here was to arrange about meeting the cousin, I suppose.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” He thrust his hands into his pock­ets and looked boyishly sulky. “It was a heaven-sent opportunity for seeing you again.”

  She felt her heart melt so absurdly at that expres­sion of his that she had to make an effort to speak as dryly as the occasion demanded.

  “If you got me here on false pretences, I think there’s no point in my staying. And that means you cheated over the name and address, too,” she pointed out curtly.

  “Lieb­ling!” He looked genuinely startled. “I must have made you very angry for you to speak like that.”

  “No.” She spoke more gently that time, because her control was slipping a little. “No, not very angry. A little angry, because I don’t like cheating.”

  “It wasn’t cheating, really,” he pleaded softly. “I did imagine we should arrange something—only I was happy, too, that I had to see you. Now I begin to have misgivings again about your seeing the cousin.”

  “Well”—she very lightly, touched the hand that was resting on the
table now—“you’ll have to banish the misgivings, because I’m quite determined to see this cousin. What’s his name, by the way? We can’t go on calling him ‘the Cousin,’ like a character in a melodrama.”

  “Moorhouse. The same as Evelyn’s name. And it is slightly like a melodrama, isn’t it?” he smiled at her.

  “Is it?” She considered that thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose so. Blackmail, murder—and a couple of adventurers. Dear me, how horrified Roger would be if he could hear that.”

  “He hasn’t a great sense of humour, our friend Roger?”

  “No.” Hilma said. “No, Roger’s worst enemy wouldn’t accuse him of having a sense of humour.”

  “You have a great sense of humour, Lieb­ling.”

  “Well, no doubt I’ll get over it,” Hilma told him dryly. “In five years’ time I daresay I shall wonder what I found funny in half the things we laugh over.”

  “Or perhaps you will even have forgotten they happened—in five years’ time.”

  “Perhaps,” Hilma said. And then, because she had a great reluctance to pursue that subject, she added almost at once: “Do you suppose we could go along and see this Mr. Moorhouse now?”

  “At his flat?”

  “Um-hm. Do you think he would be in?”

  “I could ring up and enquire.”

  “Well, I think that would be a good idea, don’t you?”

  “If you’re quite determined to tell him your story.”

  “Quite determined,” she smiled firmly.

  He got up then, and stood for a moment looking down at her.

  “Tell me quite truthfully, do you hate it very much?”

  She laughed and gave a slight shrug.

  “I have enjoyed other things more. But I imagine that this too will be forgotten—in five years’ time.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, but went off to find a telephone.

  When he was gone, Hilma sat idly turning her cup round and round in its saucer.

  Five years’ time. Five years of married life with Roger. She would be thirty then. The mould of her married life would have become absolutely set, and she would have become used to the pleasant easy ways of a prosperous existence. She would look back on these days as unreal, very slightly absurd, half forgotten, as she had said.

  Or did one perhaps not forget things quite so easi­ly?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As he came back across the room towards her, he smiled, and she thought:

  “He’s quite unfairly good-looking. No wonder Eve­lyn decided it wasn’t necessary for both of them to have money.”

  “Well”—he stood looking down at her again from his great height—”you win. Moorhouse is in, and quite willing to see us if we go round there now.”

  “Come on, then.” She stood up with an air of deci­sion, “Let’s go at once.”

  He paid the bill and followed her out into the street, still with that faint air of indecision that made her want to take his arm and say, “Don’t be absurd. I’ve owned up to much more unpleasant things than this.”

  When they were in the taxi what she did say was:

  “Since you now have the unfair advantage of knowing my name, do you think we might even things up by your telling me yours?”

  He laughed, and the worried air vanished.

  “Yes, of course. It’s Buckland Vane.”

  “Oh.” She repeated the name reflectively, and he enquired with more anxiety than the occasion warranted:

  “Do you like it?”

  “Yes,” Hilma said, “I think I do. It’s slightly fantastic. Quite in keeping.”

  “With me, do you mean?” He was not very pleased.

  “Um-hm.”

  “I didn’t imagine there was anything fantastic about me.”

  “Well, perhaps it’s more the circumstances in which I met you. Besides, I suppose you’re what’s called fantastically good-looking,” she added calmly.

  To her surprise and amusement, he flushed.

  “Do you think so?” he said with that odd touch of boyishness.

  “Yes. Doesn’t Evelyn?” She was smiling teasingly.

  “I don’t know. I never thought about it.” He sounded supremely uninterested in Evelyn’s reactions.

  “Well, I expect she does.” Hilma tried to sound as though it were a very interesting point. Then: “What does one call you for short?”

  “Oh, most of my friends call me Buck, of course.”

  Hilma laughed.

  “I told you it was fantastic. Buck Vane! It sounds like someone from the Regency period. The kind of person who gambled madly on a thousandth chance and that sort of thing.”

  “I’m not the kind of man to gamble on a thou­sandth chance,” he said rather sombrely. “Sometimes I wish I were.”

  “No? Really? Whatever for?” She was still deter­minedly gay. “Gamblers nearly always lose.”

  “Gamblers, Lieb­ling, are not the only people who lose,” he said. “Sometimes the steadiest and most common-sense person in the world can lose a great deal.”

  “I wonder what you mean by that.” Hilma smiled casually at him.

  But he didn’t attempt to tell her, perhaps because the taxi drew up at that moment outside the block of flats.

  It gave Hilma a very queer sensation to go once more into that well-remembered building. Even the porter—now on day duty—was the same as on the night of the murder. He failed to recognise her, but, as Hilma glanced at him, she could almost hear him say again, “Terrible business, this murder, isn’t it?”

  Perhaps she looked a little pale and strained, because, even as they stepped out of the lift at the fourth floor, her companion said:

  “There’s still plenty of time to go back if you would rather.”

  “No, of course not.” To anyone who could make up her mind as determinedly as Hilma, it seemed quite absurd that a change should be suggested at this last minute. “I don’t even want to,” she added with perfect truth, for she was more than anxious now to have the whole thing over and done with.

  Alan Moorhouse opened the door of his flat himself and from his slightly truculent air, Hilma felt certain that he had as little liking for this interview as she herself.

  This made it much easier somehow, and the perfectly frank smile she gave him as they came into his sitting-room did something towards warming the atmosphere at once.

  Probably he did find it a trifle difficult to reconcile the glimpse he had had of her before with the self-possessed girl in the simple but undeniably elegant pink-and-white outfit which might have been worn by his own sister.

  “Not so much the Piccadilly touch this time,” thought Hilma with a good deal of concealed amusement. She supposed no one could look exactly at an advantage upon emerging from behind a curtain at the request of a police officer. No wonder Alan Moorhouse had remembered her in rather lurid terms!

  She accepted the chair he offered, but Buck chose to remain standing on the hearthrug, lounging slightly against the side of the mantelpiece. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, and he was frowning slightly and unhappily. “Looking the picture of guilt, as a matter of fact,” thought Hilma.

  She smiled up at her host again in that disarming way and plunged straight into the matter in hand.

  “I’m awfully sorry to have caused so much trouble for you and Mr. Vane,” she explained earnestly, “particularly as you’ve neither of you anything to do with me at all and must feel pretty sick at being dragged into my affairs.”

  “Oh—well—” Alan Moorhouse cleared his throat. “Very good of you to come along and explain.”

  “Oh, no, it was the least I could do,” Hilma assured him. “You see, it was not Mr. Vane’s flat that I meant to come to that night. It was Mr. Martin’s.”

  “What?”

  She saw she had scored a bull’s-eye, so far as sur­prising her host was concerned.

  “Yes.” Hilma nodded firmly. “I must explain that I—that I knew Mr. Martin quite w
ell some years ago. It was quite an innocent friendship—though I must ask you to take my word for that. Not that the fact is specially interesting to you, of course,” she added. “I was silly enough to write a letter then which he had kept and was going to show my fiancé. It was not at all the kind of letter I should want my fiancé to see—a very difficult letter to explain, however innocent our connection may have been.”

  “Yes, I see.” Almost against his will, her host was interested.

  “I expect you read enough about the inquest to gather that he was not above a little profitable black­mail.”

  “Yes, dirty skunk!” agreed Moorhouse heartily. “I always suspected he was that sort anyway.”

  “I was quite—desperate.” Hilma bit her lip slightly, because describing the whole thing like this brought back just how desperate she had been. “I decided to go and steal my letter back again. If Mr. Martin had not—had not been killed the evening before, his flat should have been entirely empty on that particular evening. The fact that a light was blazing from the window helped to confuse me. I came up the fire-escape, and let myself into Mr. Vane’s flat by mis­take.”

  “Great Scott!” Moorhouse’s conversation seemed to her to have become reduced to half-admiring, half-shocked ejaculations.

  “You can imagine how very—embarrassing the whole thing was. For both of us, to tell the truth.” Hilma smiled faintly. “But I managed to convince him that I hadn’t really intended to burgle his flat.”

  “The fact that she had already broken open my desk somewhat prejudiced me.” The dry interruption was the first part Buck had taken in the conversation.

  “Yes, I’m sure Mr. Vane can show you the splintered lock, if you want confirmation,” Hilma added eagerly. “No doubt there’s still some sort of mark, however well it has been repaired.”

  “No, no, that’s all right.” Moorhouse seemed much more interested in hearing the completion of the story than in seeking confirmatory evidence.