by Roy Vickers
Thus did the judge make it all sound simple and straightforward. His law, of course, was impeccable, but his moralising was slovenly. If Bladlow had been as insensitive a scoundrel as all that, there would have been no ‘tangential accident.’ The latter was a foreseeable consequence of his respect for the woman he murdered.
Detective Inspector Rason—without committing himself on the word ‘tangential’—certainly regarded his own success as pure luck—in the first instance. The luck drifted on to his table in the Department of Dead Ends in the form of a portrait in oils of a girl of ten. Attached was a label to the effect that the picture was a forgery of the work of an artist named Merthyr. This certainly led him to Bladlow—but not in connection with the murder.
James Bladlow, born in 1900—and bred in the stern tradition of middle-class respectability—was a house and estate agent. He had inherited a small business in West Kensington, founded by his grandfather, which was yielding a net income of about eight hundred pounds, with occasional windfalls—one of which had recently enabled him to open a small branch at Shaldon-on-Thames, some thirty miles out of London, where he lived.
In February, 1932, another windfall was impending in the form of instructions from the bank, as executors of Sir Anstruther Henson, recently deceased, to sell the latter’s house and contents, together with five other houses in the neighbourhood. To his office a few days later came Miss Henson, daughter of deceased and sole beneficiary.
She was a meagre, pinched little woman of fifty-two, looking rather older than her age. Bladlow’s first impression was that her dress, though new and of good material, was ill cut and old fashioned. Under her outmoded muff, her hands were twitching with shyness. When he addressed her by name and asked her to sit down she bowed like an Edwardian dowager. She sat upright in the visitors’ armchair, her breathing laboured with embarrassment.
“I must confess, sir, that I have never before entered a business office, and I beg of you to bear with me.” The words sounded like a quotation from a Victorian novel, as indeed they were. The voice was equally startling, coming from the throat of a woman in her fifties. It was not a young voice—it was juvenile: it went on: “My father would, of course, disapprove. But—you don’t mind, do you? It’s nothing to you that he would disapprove, is it?”
While Bladlow reassured her and chattered a little, to help her, he noted that her face, now unquestionably plain, might have been attractive in youth. The wide-set, blue eyes were not stupid—they were, he thought, sensitive and vaguely pathetic.
Gradually she lost some of her nervousness and let him draw her out. In something less than twenty minutes he had learnt much about her, including the reason for her visit. He was able to infer that she had lived alone with her father all her life, for the greater part of which he had been a tyrannical invalid.
“Now about this sale, Miss Henson! I understand that you wish to withdraw the furniture of two of the rooms, including everything that was in the rooms—”
“Everything in the rooms was mine!” She had become bold enough now to interrupt him. “The rooms were mine. He never once came into them. He promised he would not come in—ever. And he always kept his word.”
Her nervous insistence revealed much of the atmosphere of her home life.
“I daresay that could be arranged. If you’ll give me their name, I’ll telephone the solicitors who are handling Sir Anstruther’s affairs.”
“My father did not approve of lawyers. I suspect that he, too, knew little about business. Before he died he told me the bank would do everything.”
“Hm! Banks are heavily tied by the letter of the law. Never mind. You can ‘buy in’ at the auction.” He explained that she would ultimately be paying the money to herself. She understood only one point.
“I haven’t enough money,” she said. “There’s a portrait by Merthyr—you will be aware that his standing has increased since his death.”
Bladlow had never heard of Merthyr. She explained, and astonished him again by her practical knowledge of art values. He gathered that the portrait might fetch a hundred guineas or more at auction.
“The best thing to do would be to ask your bank manager—”
“I have never had any dealings with a bank.” The juvenility of the voice was pronounced as she added: “But I’ve been saving my pocket money for years. Eighty-three pounds! I have it all in my muff, but it won’t be enough.” And then: “Oh, do please help me!”
A shrivelled, middle-aged woman with the air of a child waiting for a grown-up to help her. Bladlow found it unnerving. So far from ‘planning to destroy her,’ he planned to comfort her. He felt that quite deep emotion which some persons feel when a stray dog whines and cringes for food. It is the cringeing that is an unbearable indictment of one’s humanity. This poor little old scarecrow ought not to have been possible.
It might be six months or more before probate could be granted for her father’s will, which, after taxation, would bring her some thirty thousand pounds. Within a week the carpets would be taken from under her feet, by which time some pickpocket would probably have acquired her savings. She would be temporarily penniless and homeless—would think that everyone was going to be as cruel to her as her father had been.
“I’m glad you came to see me, Miss Henson—it wasn’t such an ordeal after all, was it! I’ll see that you get what you want. If you will come back to this office at four this afternoon I think you’ll find, everything will have been settled.”
When she left him, he allowed himself to be momentarily overcome, even found it necessary to wipe his spectacles.
“That’s a damned scandal if you like!” he told the enlarged photograph of his late father on the opposite wall. “A selfish swine battening on his daughter’s vitality without even the excuse of poverty! What fun can that poor old thing have had in the whole of her life? And now she’s too old to enjoy the money!”
He rang his wife. He presented the case, not from the angle of the stray dog, but from that of the substantial client in difficulties while awaiting probate.
“If you can’t stand her, we’ll push her along after a few days. But if you can, it’ll probably mean a good deal of juicy business for us, one way and another.”
That speech was as sincere as the speech he made to his father’s photograph. He expected to act as general agent for her and intended to charge full fees for his services, but on a scale sanctioned by trade custom.
Before she returned, he fixed a loan for her for five hundred pounds, and opened a banking account in her name at Shaldon-on-Thames—which helped him to overcome her scruples about accepting hospitality from a stranger. He conceded that she should pay the out-of-pocket cost of her board.
Aileen Bladlow, without prompting, picked up something of the stray-dog point of view. In a few days, she coaxed her protégée into a shopping expedition and helped her to choose clothes of the right kind—thereby awakening Miss Henson’s dormant femininity. The couple treated her with indulgent kindness—though Cedric, their five-year-old, reserved judgment. In a month the spontaneity of Aileen Bladlow’s welcome wore thin, but loyalty to her husband’s business interests evoked a synthetic geniality, so that Miss Henson noticed no difference.
On the other hand, Bladlow’s benevolent interest became the stronger as the personality of Miss Henson opened, flower-like, in the sunshine of normal friendliness. In three months she no longer looked skinny. Bladlow began to take a pride in her improving health. The shadow of her father was lifting from her—lifted, one might say, by James Bladlow. Her growing confidence of speech and manner he regarded as his own handiwork.
And so did Miss Henson.
In short, the rather unctuous little fairy story of the strong man stooping to help the drab old maid whom everyone despises was coming true. Even to the point where the strong man earns the undying gratitude of the beneficiary, to say nothing of her boundless admiration.
He had yet to discover that the catch in that par
ticular fairy story is that the drab old maid, who ought to turn into a delectable princess, more often reveals herself as an Old Man Of The Sea who cannot be shaken from the shoulders of her rescuer.
He received his first warning when probate was granted and Miss Henson became a comparatively affluent woman in her own right.
Chapter Two
It must be emphasised that Miss Henson was of normal intelligence and even of studious tastes. She knew a great deal about the history of art and literature and was something approaching an expert in her judgment of paintings. She could herself draw very competently. She was eccentric only in her ignorance of the rough-and-tumble of everyday life, and even this was unobtrusive. In casual contact she would appear an ordinary middle-aged spinster of the sheltered classes, a little more fluttery than is usual nowadays. Instructed by Aileen in the science of buying clothes, she applied her own knowledge of line and colour and now looked very presentable.
For the rest, she could sustain a drawing-room conversation, and she could buy food and domestic necessities as competently as any housewife. But the mental habit of years made her attention panic away from anything to do with business.
Bladlow tried hard to explain the nature of investment.
“Let me put it another way, Miss Henson. The bank, through myself, has sold all your father’s property, paid his debts and the taxes, and so has finished the job it undertook. It won’t do anything more until you tell it what you want it to do with your money. It has thirty-one thousand pounds and a few hundreds over belonging to you. If you will go and see the manager he will advise you how to invest it.”
“It seems such a lot of money.” Miss Henson was overawed and uneasy. “How do you think I ought to spend it?”
That started it all over again. Miss Henson became worried and unhappy until she struck a bright idea.
“But it’s ‘business,’ isn’t it, Mr. Bladlow? Couldn’t you do it for me? I know it’s a lot to ask after all the great kindness of Mrs. Bladlow and yourself. But I am painfully aware that I am uninstructed and very stupid at this sort of thing.” And then, once again:
“Oh, do please help me!”
He said he would gladly do his utmost to help her and she thanked him effusively, glowing with gratitude and admiration.
She signed a power of attorney without asking what it was. He would have told her, at this stage, if there had been the remotest chance of securing her attention and understanding.
He had done well out of his commissions on the sale of the properties. Further, he paid himself a consultation fee and decided that three hundred pounds a year would be a fair retainer for managing her investments. Also, he would persuade a stockbroker to treat him as a half-commission man. Legitimate pickings.
A few nights later he gave his wife a present of one hundred pounds. Aileen was the kind of wife commonly described as ‘most suitable,’ by both women and men, including her husband—a good-looking blonde of amiable temperament, cool, self-disciplined and domestically efficiet. Her affection lacked the spice of romantic adoration. She approved of him for his unadventurous ordinariness. She thanked him prettily for the cheque.
“You’ve earned it, darling!”
“I’ve tried to!” she admitted. “What’s the next step, Jim? I mean, when is she going?”
Bladlow found himself shirking the question, unworthily wondering whether he ought to have made the cheque one hundred and fifty pounds.
“We must give her a week or two to find her feet,” he said. “Let the suggestion to move come from her. I know she’s very anxious to get her furniture out of the warehouse.”
“I hope it won’t be longer than a week or two!” Aileen was being wintry about it. “She isn’t good for Cedric. He doesn’t like her, but I’m sorry to say he lets her buy his good will with little presents. It’ll make him greedy and calculating.”
Before the week or two had passed, Miss Henson burst in on them at tea time on Saturday, from one of her solitary walks.
“There’s a lovely house—The Cedars—at the corner of Malvern Avenue. The agent happened to be there and he showed me over it. And Mr. Bladlow, please, I want you to buy it for me, I mean—buying a house is good business, isn’t it?”
“In certain circumstances, but hardly if you mean to live in it. It’s a twelve-roomed house—”
“Yes, and the top floor is self contained!” panted Miss Henson. “And the agent said I could have a door put on the top staircase so that the top floor would be a flat. And I thought you could live in the rest of the house and we could all be together, only I shouldn’t be always in your pocket, as I am now. And it has a lovely garden—Cedric would love it.”
It was the suggestion of a woman wholly without social experience—of a child who cannot conceive that its company might not be desired. Aileen shrank from snubbing her, encouraged her to chatter about the house while she administered tea.
“It isn’t the sort of thing one can decide quickly, Miss Henson. I would advise you to talk it over with James before you take any definite step.”
James, thought Aileen, would be easier to manage than Miss Henson.
“The kindest way,” she said that night, “would be for you to tell her that the house is a hopeless dud as an investment—invent rotten drains or bad settlement or something.”
Bladlow hedged, pleading professional probity.
“But you don’t mean to say you want to fall in with her absurd plans!” exclaimed Aileen. “Why, we should never get rid of her!”
“I don’t say I want to! But the proposition is not without some solid advantages for us. It is a very good house. At least, we might think twice before we turn it down.”
Aileen said nothing, thereby alarming him. He felt guilty, without understanding the nature of his crime. At last she spoke.
“Jim! Don’t you know that the poor, pathetic old golliwog is in love with you?”
“Rot, darling! She’s too old.”
“That’s a very silly remark!”
“You started the silliness. For one thing, to her the idea of love is inseparable from marriage. Marriage, in her case, would involve divorce—and she’s a strict churchwoman. For another—why, dammit, if a man were to kiss her, she’d scream and call the police!”
“I didn’t suggest there was any danger of your kissing her. At present she only idealises you. She was bullied all her life by that horrible old father. You’ve been kind to her and made a fuss of her and, on top of it all, you’re hopelessly good-looking. She’ll soon start being a serious nuisance to you.”
Bladlow was ready to believe that at least half of it was true.
“Aileen, suppose you’re right—”
“You needn’t look so grim about it, old boy! We’re not having an official row,” urged Aileen. “The truth is that— though you didn’t mean to—you have woken her up. Don’t worry! When you’ve got rid of her, she’ll soon transfer it all to some other man.”
“Exactly! That’s where we stick!” he exclaimed. “I brush her off. She takes her money with her. That childish, ignorant old dear in unrestrained possession of thirty thousand quid! A sitting certainty for the first crook who spots her. He won’t even need to marry her—just tell her he understands all about ‘business’, and wants to help her, and she’ll hand him the lot—as she’s handed it to me!”
Aileen was convinced, but remained of the same opinion regarding the proposal that they should all live in The Cedars.
“Jim, dear—I know it’s a heartless thing to say—but does it matter to us if she throws her money away?”
It mattered very much to James Bladlow. A man must live up to his own moral pretentions or despise himself. The stray dog, once taken in, can never be turned out.
“I can prevent the love nonsense from becoming a nuisance,” he hedged. “And she means a good deal of business to us in commissions, don’t forget.”
“You aren’t thinking of the commissions.”
He let that go, but Aileen followed it up.
“What exactly are you thinking about, Jim?”
What indeed! Of a cruel old beast of a father, who made James Bladlow feel so happily superior. Of thirty thousand pounds. Of a stray dog, befriended, deemed to adore him for the rest of its life. Of the moral stature gained by chivalrously protecting an utterly unattractive woman. And again of thirty thousand pounds.
“She’s had a raw deal, Aileen. The money is no compensation because there’s not enough of her left to use it.”
Chapter Three
In the late autumn of 1932, they moved into The Cedars. When Miss Henson had distributed her furniture in her quarters on the top floor, known as the flat, she invited the Bladlows to dinner. There was only one picture on the wall of the sitting-room—an oil painting of a girl of about ten, vivacious, interesting, though the style of the artist was a bit beyond the experience of the Bladlows.
“That’s the Merthyr—obviously,” remarked Bladlow. Aileen gave him a warning glance, and he played for safety. “Charming!”
Miss Henson simpered. She was standing by the painting.
“I recognised you as soon as I saw it, Miss Henson,” said Aileen quickly. Bladlow took his cue.
“You’re more like yourself as a child than most people are, Miss Henson.”
She was delighted. She told them the story of the sitting and a great deal about Merthyr’s subsequent work, to which they listened with polite boredom. Towards the end of the evening, Miss Henson made them a little speech, extolling their kindness to her.
“And so I want you to accept the Merthyr—please—as a little token—”
Miss Henson was overcome and Bladlow himself was not unaffected because he knew that this decent little old thing was giving something which she prized very highly. Art, of course, was art—but in this case the picture was worth at least one hundred pounds—possibly a good deal more.
