Through The Wall

by Patricia Wentworth

  Ina went back to listening at the window which overlooked the street. She didn’t think Marian was locked in a lavatory, and she was quite sure she couldn’t be alone in a railway carriage with a lunatic, because the trains were always crowded till much later than this. But Mrs. Deane’s anecdotes had not been reassuring. There were a lot of other things that could happen to you besides getting locked in and meeting lunatics. Look at what you read in the papers every day. And it was all very well when it was happening to someone who was just a name in a column of newsprint-you read it, and it made a break in the dull everyday things which were happening all round you. And you didn’t mind very much even if it was something rather dreadful, because it didn’t seem real unless you knew the people yourself. But if something dreadful was to happen to someone you knew-if something dreadful was to happen to Marian-Her hands and feet were suddenly cold.

  And then she was listening and looking out, because the bus had stopped at the end of the road and people were getting off. One of them was a woman, and she was coming this way. She didn’t look like Marian. The road was not very brightly lighted. The woman passed into the shadowed stretch between the lampposts. Ina opened the window and leaned out. Now she was coming towards the light again- yellow light, spilled like a pool on the damp pavement. It must have been raining.

  The woman came into the pool of light, and Ina drew back, catching her breath. Because it was a stranger. It wasn’t anyone she had ever seen before. It wasn’t Marian.

  She shut the window and turned back into the room. She was really frightened now. It was after nine o’clock. Marian would never be as late as this unless something had happened. Something-the word was like a black curtain behind which all the imaginable and unimaginable terrors crouched. At any moment the curtain might lift or part. She stood there looking at the clock, whilst the cold spread upwards from hands and feet until she was shivering with it.

  At eighteen she had been quite unusually pretty, with dark curling hair, eyes like blue flowers-it was Cyril who had made this comparison-and the fine delicate skin which takes such a lovely bloom in health and fades so soon in illness. Ina was not actually ill, but she had lost her bloom. She led a dull, uninteresting life, and she had no energy to do anything about it. By the time she had tidied up their three rooms and walked round to the shops, where she had to stand in a queue for fish, it was as much as she could do to get as far as the library and change her book. She wouldn’t have missed doing that for anything in the world. Her fatigue would vanish as she took down book after book from the shelves, dipping here and reading there, fleeting the morning away till it was time to go home and make her lunch of whatever had been left over from supper the night before. Sometimes she didn’t even take the trouble to warm it, and then as often as not she would leave it on her plate. Once or twice a week she took a bus at the end of the road and met Marian for lunch at a cheap café, but they couldn’t afford to do it very often. Then she would take the bus back again and spend the afternoon lying on the sofa waiting for Marian to come home. It was Marian who cooked whatever Ina had bought for supper. It was Marian who brought in her stories of what had been happening in the office-who was taking what house-young people getting married-old people going to live with a son or daughter-Mrs. Potter who was putting in a second bathroom and turning the flower-room into a kitchenette so that she could divide her house and let off half of it.

  “You remember Maureen Potter, Ina-she was in the sixth when we first went to school. She married someone with a lot of money. She came in with her mother. I think dividing the house was her idea really, and she said at once, ‘You’re Marian Brand, aren’t you? Miss Fisher told me you were working here. How do you like it?’ And she asked after you, and said how pretty you were, and said something about coming to see us. But I don’t suppose she’ll have time-she’s only here for a few days.”

  There was never anything more exciting than that. Of course if Cyril was at home, everything was different. Sometimes he came back with plenty of money, and for a few days life became almost too exciting. He made love to her in an exigent, masterful way, he took her out to lunch, to tea, to dinner. And then either the money ran out or he became bored-Cyril found it terribly easy to be bored-and he would go off again with an airy “Goodbye-I’ll be seeing you.” It was worse when he came back without any money at all, because that was when Marian put her foot down and kept it there. Cyril could have house-room, and the same meals that she and Ina had, but no more. If he wanted money for drinks or cigarettes, or even for bus fares, he must earn it. Cyril would stick his hands in his pockets and stride dramatically up and down the sitting-room telling Ina just what he thought about the meanness, the callous hard-heartedness of Marian’s behaviour. Ina could, of course, see his point. A man must have some money in his pocket-he must be able to buy a packet of cigarettes and stand a friend a drink. But she could see Marian’s point of view just as clearly, and sometimes she was tactless enough to say so.

  “But, darling, she really hasn’t got it. We only just manage as it is.”

  It didn’t go down at all well. Cyril would pause in the current stride and give a sardonic laugh.

  “That’s what she tells you! She would! And you take her part! You don’t care how much I’m humiliated!”

  At which point Ina was apt to dissolve into tears. Taking one thing with another, the dullness of the times when Cyril was away was preferable to the strain and exhaustion of the times when he was here.

  Tonight Ina could forget everything and feel sick with longing for his presence. When he had been away for some time she could, and did, superimpose the hero of her latest novel upon her recollections of Cyril. It helped a lot. And now, when she was feeling so frightened about Marian, she thought how wonderful it would be to have Cyril’s arms round her, and his voice telling her how stupid it was to get the wind up. In the book she had finished at tea-time Pendred Cothelstone had had a very hearty way with feminine fears. The longing she felt was actually a longing for someone who would be hearty about Marian not being in at half past nine after saying she would be back by seven.

  Half an hour later it is doubtful whether Pendred himself could have reassured her. Mrs. Deane had been up again with a fresh batch of stories. This time they were about people who had disappeared and were never heard of again.

  “There was a gentleman, I forget his name, but he was walking down Victoria Street with his wife-rather a lot of people about and the pavement crowded, so she got a step or two ahead of him, but talking all the time if you see what I mean. Well, presently he didn’t answer something she’d said, and she turned round and he wasn’t there, and from that day to this there wasn’t a word or whisper, or anyone who could say what had happened. Just vanished right there in Victoria Street in the middle of the afternoon. And she never even got to know whether she was a widow or not, poor thing.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Deane, don’t!”

  “Well, my dear, you can’t get away from it, such things do happen, and no good worrying or upsetting yourself. Never meet trouble half way-that’s what my poor husband used to say, and I daresay he was right, though, I usen’t to agree with him. Better be prepared for the worst, I used to tell him, and then if it turns out all right there’s no harm done.”

  It was half past ten before a taxi stopped at the door and Marian Brand got out. She had had to borrow the money to pay for it, because her bag was still somewhere under the wreckage. She thanked the driver, and he gave her his arm to help her out and up the steps, because now that it was all over she was stiff and aching from head to foot. Her key was in the lost bag, so she had to ring the bell. And then there was Mrs. Deane, opening the door on the chain in the manner of one who expects armed burglars, and Ina running down the stairs to push her aside.

  “Oh, Marian-where have you been? I thought something had happened. Oh!”

  The “Oh!” came as the door was shut and the passage light showed quite unmistakably that something really h
ad happened. The dust and blood had been washed from Marian’s face, but there was a dark bruise on her forehead and a narrow line of strapping above it. There had been so little left of her hat that it had not been worth while to bring it away. The right-hand sleeve of her suit had been wrenched from the armhole, and the skirt was fit for nothing but a rag-bag.

  “Marian!”

  “Oh, Miss Brand!”

  The two horrified faces swam in a haze. Marian heard herself say,

  “It’s nothing, really. There was an accident-but I’m quite all right.”

  She groped her way to the foot of the stairs and sat down on the second step.

  Chapter 5

  Cyril Felton came home on the fourth day after the accident. Someone drew his attention to a paragraph in the evening paper, and he took the first train back. Not too pleased to discover that his wife and sister-in-law had gone to London for the day, but Mrs. Deane was in a chatty mood and more than willing to invite him to tea in her sitting-room and tell him all she knew. If it was impossible to regard him as a good husband, she did think him very handsome and romantic, and she derived considerable satisfaction from the fact that she had just done her hair in what her “Why be dowdy?” column called “a queenly style.” She began to get out her best tea-set.

  “I don’t know a thing, Mrs. Deane, except what I saw in the paper.”

  “Oh, Mr. Felton-fancy their not letting you know!”

  “Oh, well, I was moving about. They wouldn’t know where to write. But what’s happened? All I saw was three or four lines about Marian being in an accident just when she’d heard she had come in for some money.”

  “Yes, that’s right. That’s just how it was-on Tuesday. She came home with the clothes pretty well off her back, and a bruise on her forehead. It’s gone down nicely now, and you really wouldn’t notice it. Mrs. Felton was in a terrible way, but there wasn’t any real harm done, and they went off at ten o’clock this morning to do some shopping and to see their uncle’s lawyer-something about the house that was left. Down by the sea, it is, and Miss Brand wants to get Mrs. Felton there as soon as possible, the sea air being what they always say would do her good.”

  Cyril said sharply, “There must be something more than a house.”

  Mrs. Deane put two spoons of tea in the pot.

  “Oh, as to that, I’m sure I couldn’t say, Mr. Felton-I’m not one to pry. But no cause to worry, I’m sure. Mrs. Felton’s been so excited ever since it happened, you wouldn’t know her for the same person-singing all over the house, and quite a colour.”

  He had time to feel very impatient indeed before his wife and sister-in-law came home.

  Ina’s eyes were shining like stars. She had had her hair set. She had bought all the sort of things she had never been able to afford for her face-a whole range of vanishing creams, cleansing creams, night creams, lipsticks, two different and enchanting shades of rouge, a face-powder which was a dream, and several different shades of nail-polish. The girl in the beauty-parlour had showed her just what to do, and she was in a state of quivering pleasure. She looked what she used to look like when she was eighteen-no, better than that, because she had never had any of these lovely things before. She felt like the heroine of a novel, she felt romantic and sophisticated. She was wearing new shoes and stockings, and a coat and skirt which had cost more than she had ever paid for anything in all her life. She rushed into Cyril’s arms and poured the whole thing out, finishing up with,

  “Oh, darling, isn’t it marvellous? Just look at me!”

  Cyril looked, at first with amazement, then with genuine admiration, and lastly with a good deal of apprehension, because he knew what things cost and he hoped she wasn’t putting too much in the shop window. All very well to have everything new and costing the earth-and he wouldn’t say Ina didn’t pay for dressing; every woman did-but the really important thing was, what did it all amount to in hard cash, and how much of it was going to come his way. In fact Mr. Mantalini had, as it were, taken some very appropriate words out of his mouth a hundred years ago by enquiring “What’s the demd total?”

  It wasn’t, of course, the moment to come out with it as bluntly as that. He had to look and admire, and stand with his arm round Ina while she chattered away nineteen to the dozen, for all the world like she used to when she was a schoolgirl.

  “Oh, Cyril, isn’t it all simply too marvellous! There’s a house-did I tell you there was a house-and it’s by the sea-in Ledshire-a place called Farne-and we’re going there just as soon as ever we can. I can’t believe it, I really can’t-we’re going to the sea! I have to keep saying it out loud, because it doesn’t seem as if it could be true. The house is really two houses, only Uncle Martin’s grandfather had such a big family he threw them into one and lived there with all his relations. Rather frightful, but people used to. At least, it would be fun if you liked them, and perhaps you would-”

  “Darling, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She rubbed her cheek against his.

  “That’s because it’s all so wonderful-it won’t get into words. I’m so thrilled about the house. You see, Mr. Ashton says-”

  “Who is Mr. Ashton?”

  “Uncle Martin’s solicitor. We’ve been seeing him. He says the house can quite easily be made into two again. It would only mean shutting the doors that were cut through, and we could have an electric stove in the old kitchen, and then we shouldn’t have to turn the relations out, which he says would be frightfully difficult-and of course rather horrid. I mean, you don’t want to start with a family row, and then have to live next door to each other for ever and ever-too, too grim!”

  He had his arm round her and he called her darling, but his voice had an edge to it.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, darling.”

  Marian had gathered up her parcels and gone into her own room. Like Ina she was wearing a new suit and everything else to match, beautifully cut and very becoming-one of those grey-green shades which are flattering to dark hair and grey eyes. She had said “How do you do?” and taken up her parcels and gone away. At the time he had been pleased, because of course he would get more out of Ina if they were alone. But she didn’t come back, and he was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t something rather marked about her not joining in. Nobody could say Marian was stupid. She had a head on her shoulders all right, and she must know perfectly well that he would want to hear just what it all amounted to. Ina’s enthusiasm was like so much whipped cream-all very fluffy and nice, but nothing you could make a meal off. He wanted to know just what Cyril Felton was going to get out of it.

  He didn’t listen very attentively whilst Ina told him about the relations.

  “Aunt Florence Brand-she’s the widow of Uncle Martin’s brother Alfred, and of course he was my father’s brother too. They both were-Martin and Alfred, I mean-only it seems so funny when we had never heard of them. Alfred married Florence Remington who was some sort of a cousin, and when he died and Uncle Martin’s wife died she came and kept house for him. And he hated her. Her sister, Cassy Remington, came and lived there too. And he hated them both. Then there’s Felix, who is Aunt Florence’s son. He plays the piano-”

  Cyril woke up.

  “Not Felix Brand!”

  “Yes, that’s his name. Do you know him? Oh, Cyril-how exciting!”

  His voice became very cold indeed.

  “He’s Helen Adrian’s accompanist. He’s got a foul temper. I don’t know him.”

  Ina gazed at him in an ecstasy.

  “I’ve heard her-on Mrs. Deane’s wireless-she was lovely! Do you suppose he was playing for her then? Darling, it’s almost too romantic! The secret cousin!”

  The arm that had been round her dropped.

  “Look here, Ina, stop babbling! I’ve had a hell of a time- everything going wrong that possibly could. I’m not in the mood for all this talk. I want some plain facts. You’ve got it all in your head, but I haven’t
. Nobody tells me anything. I’ve had nothing but three lines in a paper to go on, and I want to know where we stand.”

  Ina continued to gaze, but the ecstasy was a little dashed.

  “But I’ve told you. Uncle Martin came down here and called himself Mr. Brook, and pretended he wanted a house, and saw Marian-only of course she didn’t know who he was-”

  “He didn’t see you?”

  “Oh, no. He went to the office-he was supposed to be looking for houses. He saw Marian, and he went away and made his will.”

  “Now we’re getting there. He made a will. I want to know what was in it.”

  “But, darling, I told you. He left her everything-just like that.”

  Ina drew back a little, because he was looking quite frightening. Not really of course-it was just being on the stage- it was just-

  “What was in it, damn you!”

  She drew in a sharp breath. He oughtn’t to swear-she hadn’t done anything-she had told him. She said,

  “I did tell you. He left everything to Marian.”

  “Not to you?”

  “No-I keep telling you-to Marian.”

  “You don’t get anything at all?”

  “No.”

  She had gone back another step. He was angry. Of course she could see that it was disappointing for him, but it wasn’t her fault.

  He was quite pale with anger. His eyes were light and cold. He said in a hard undertone,

  “But she’ll give you some of it. She’s bound to do that in common decency. What has she said about it?”

  “She hasn’t-said anything-not about sharing.”

  “What has she said?”

  “Cyril-don’t!”

  “What has she said?”

  “She wants me to have-an allowance.”

  “How much?”

  “A hundred a year.”

  “How much does she get?”