Bargain Wife

by Mary Burchell

  When she came out of the club from rehearsal someone touched her arm and said, ‘Excuse me, miss,’ and turning back quickly, she found Cyrus Manton’s chauffeur standing at her elbow.

  For a moment she supposed her sensations were not unlike those of an escaped prisoner when a policeman touches him on the arm. Then she recovered herself, and with the resigned admission that things were now taken out of her hands, she said:

  ‘Yes? What is it?’

  ‘Have you an hour to spare, miss? There’s someone who wants to see you rather urgently.’

  ‘Wants to see me?’ She was completely bewildered. Her first idea had been that he wanted to make himself a nuisance. But of course he could not have any inkling of any intentions she had had of impersonating Sonia. And, in any case, his manner was entirely inoffensive. Much more persuasive than threatening, she couldn’t help thinking.

  ‘But who wants to see me?’ she asked curiously.

  He hesitated a moment. Then he said:

  ‘It was Mrs. Manton that sent me.’

  ‘Mrs. Manton!’ For a wild moment she wondered if Sonia had escaped from that plane wreck. Then the man said:

  ‘The first Mrs. Manton, if you understand me, miss.’

  Tina remembered the former wife mentioned in that long obituary notice then, and said that she understood him.

  ‘But why does she want to see me?’ Tina wanted to know.

  ‘Perhaps you’d best let her explain that herself,’ the man said respectfully but quite firmly. And after a moment’s thought Tina made up her mind.

  ‘All right, I’ll come.’

  ‘The car’s round here,’ the man told her, and led her into a side street, where there stood the sleek, shining Cadillac in which they had all driven out to the airport only yesterday.

  Partly because she wanted to question the man and partly because of an instinctive distaste for sitting where she had sat yesterday, she sat in front with the chauffeur.

  They drove in silence for a few minutes. Then he said:

  ‘You’ll have heard of the accident, of course?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tina said. ‘I heard about it last night. It’s a dreadful business, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘When did you hear about it?’ she asked, after a minute.

  ‘This morning. Mrs. Manton telephoned for me. She’d read the news in the morning’s paper and knew I’d have been the last to see him. She wanted to know if I could tell her why he was on that particular plane, and so on.’

  Again there was a slight pause. Then Tina said:

  ‘Did you tell her?’

  ‘About Mr. Manton marrying again, you mean?’ The man was evidently no fool. ‘Yes, I told her. That’s why she wanted to see you.’

  ‘I don’t quite see the connection.’

  ‘You and me were the witnesses,’ the man said cryptically. ‘Here we are, miss.’ And the car drew up outside one of the big houses on Riverside Drive which Tina had often passed but never expected to enter.

  He got out and rang the bell for her, but it seemed he was not coming in with her, because as soon as the door was opened he simply said to the manservant: ‘This is the young lady that’s expected,’ and then went back to the car.

  Tina felt slightly nervous but intensely curious as she followed the servant through a long, flower-filled hall to a room at the end. He opened the door for her but made no sort of announcement, and Tina went forward into a lofty, light room, furnished with incredible richness. She had no time to notice details, but the overwhelming impression of luxury was like nothing else she had ever experienced.

  And the woman who rose to her feet at once as she entered was as beautifully dressed as anyone Tina had ever seen outside a film.

  She was in black but whether as a tribute to the late Cyrus Manton or her own dazzling fairness, Tina would not have liked to say and as she moved, her dress seemed to be part of her. She smiled too, graciously, but rather with that graciousness which exalts the dispenser and abashes the recipient. Evidently there was little doubt in her mind where to place Tina in the social scale.

  ‘My dear, do come in and sit down. I understand you are the special friend of the young woman who was killed with my husband yesterday. I wanted so much to speak to you. It must have been a frightful shock for you, this accident.’

  ‘Why, yes,’ Tina agreed gently, ‘it was. But it must have been a great shock for you too.’

  ‘Yes, it was a shock for me too, of course. Though my husband and I had not been seeing much of each other for the last three years. But we were very good friends, you understand.’

  Tina murmured something to indicate that she understood this peculiar state of affairs exactly.

  ‘But do tell me about your poor young friend. She had been seeing quite a lot of my husband, hadn’t she?’

  ‘She was married to him,’ Tina stated bluntly, seeing no reason why they should circle round the point any longer ‘I thought you knew that.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Merton did mention a ceremony of some sort yesterday.’ This was murmured regretfully as though they were discussing a luncheon engagement which had rather unexpectedly occurred. ‘I understand that you and he were the witnesses.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And no one else was present?’

  ‘No,’ Tina said. ‘No one else was there.’ She felt her breath beginning to come rather quickly. Was it possible that this woman was going to play straight into her hands?

  ‘Had she any family, this friend of yours? any relations in this country?’

  ‘None at all.’ Tina said that quite calmly and looked at the late Cyrus Manton’s wife very frankly.

  ‘Poor child! How sad.’ Mrs. Manton exclaimed almost genially. She was quite unable to conceal her relief under a decent cloak of sympathy. Then she was quite alone? except for you, of course. Simply no one to be interested in what happened to her?’

  ‘No one,’ Tina agreed deliberately.

  ‘I see.’ Mrs. Manton spoke as though an entirely new aspect of the case had suddenly occurred to her. She even got up from her seat and walked up the long room and back again.

  Then she stopped in front of Tina with almost dramatic suddenness.

  ‘Do you know I’ve just been wondering if it wouldn’t be better I mean, it isn’t as thought here’s anything in it to harm the poor girl’s memory or anything—’

  She paused, as though lost in thought, and Tina, feeling faintly embarrassed that this little comedy for saving Mrs. Manton’s face was so dreadfully transparent to her, cut through the tangle of pretence.

  ‘Are you trying to say that for various reasons it might be better that this marriage of your husband’s should remain a secret?’

  ‘Well, you know, the idea did just occur to me as we were talking.’ (‘Liar,’ thought Tina dispassionately.) ‘You see I don’t expect you’ve had much to do with lawyers and lawyers’ fees. But I have. And in a case where there is any dispute about a big estate well, my dear, they take everything. But simply everything. There’s practically nothing left for the wretched beneficiaries.’ And she flung out her hands dramatically to emphasise the degree of poverty to which she would probably be reduced.

  ‘Not to mention the first Mrs. Manton,’ thought Tina with grim amusement. ‘I suppose she would have heroics about it too. Not that I have any right to criticise them,’ she reminded herself ruthlessly the next moment. They’re no better and no worse than I am. It suits every single one of us that Sonia’s disappearance should go unnoticed. I feel awful to be concerned in this. But then what is there that I should or could do about it? It’s not as though there are the rights of anyone else to be protected.’

  She became aware that Mrs. Manton was watching her with an anxiety which was completely undisguised by her studied air of considering the whole question simply on its merits.

  ‘Mrs. Manton,’ Tina said slowly, ‘if you see no reason to make public your husband’s secret third marriag
e, I don’t think anyone else will. I have no reason to talk about Sonia either.’ (If this woman only knew how she had every reason not to!) ‘I’m terribly, terribly sorry that this dreadful thing happened to her. But, as a matter of fact, I felt I’d probably said goodbye to her in any case. I’m going back to England myself in a few weeks’ time, and I was very unlikely to meet her again. Certainly not for some years.’

  ‘But how fort—that is, interesting’.’ Mrs. Manton swiftly recovered herself. ‘And do tell me—were there any other friends of hers who knew about this romantic marriage?’

  ‘There was no one,’ Tina said quietly. ‘Of that I’m absolutely certain. She was only engaged for a couple of days and she was rather anxious to leave all her old life behind, you know.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ This was evidently a sentiment with which the other Mrs. Manton could sympathise. Then you and Merton—’

  ‘Are the only people to know about it. Unless, of course, Mr. Manton himself mentioned it to anyone.’

  ‘Most unlikely,’ stated his widow firmly, evidently drawing on some special knowledge she had of him. ‘And Merton, of course, is so very, very discreet. Besides,’ she added with apparent irrelevance, ‘he’s so very fond of his little cottage on the Connecticut estate.’

  ‘Then it seems you have nothing to worry about, doesn’t it?’ Tina said, concealing a certain degree of amusement.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t worried about anything,’ Mrs. Manton assured her, with a sweet, low-pitched laugh. ‘I only wanted so much to do what was best for everyone. And you’ve helped me so much, my dear. And I’m so interested in this journey of yours to England. If there is any way in which I can help you I, mean, I do know travelling is so expensive, and when a girl is earning her own living—’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, but there’s nothing really nothing that I need,’ Tina assured her with great firmness. And she rose to go.

  For some reason or other she experienced a terrible revulsion of feeling at this hardly veiled offer of money. To take what Sonia had meant her to have, even in irregular circumstances, was something she could justify to herself.

  But the idea of accepting hush-money for obliging this smiling, insincere woman that was something quite different, and quite horrible!

  She made her escape as soon as possible after that. And as she walked along Riverside Drive in the sunshine her mind was completely made up. Fate had played into her hands in an almost fantastic manner. Difficulties had been cleared away, whether she wanted it or not. She was to go to England.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘LESS than an hour, Sonia, and then we should be in.’

  Tina glanced up from the book which had been holding only half her attention in any case.

  ‘Yes, we’ll soon be home,’ she agreed, smiling a little, because there was something so very pleasant about the way young Dr. Morrison’s eyes twinkled that one usually did want to smile in return.

  It was a very alert twinkle, hardly in keeping with his slow, faintly drawling Southern voice. But then nor was his studiedly casual manner any indication of his keen and intensely living mind. Tina liked him all the more for that. There was something intriguing about such marked contrasts.

  During the first hour or so out from New York, Tina had put him down as e charming but casual person, with no special aims or ideals. But in the enforced intimacy of the air cabin she had come to know him better. Earle Morrison had very definite aims and very definite ideals though he might have hesitated to apply that word himself. His tone had been almost careless as he explained how he had given up a promising practice in order to come to England and give his services to a small and struggling research unit.

  There was something rather reassuring about discussing other people’s plans, Tina thought. It made one forget for a moment one’s own fantastic and even perilous position.

  ‘One of those ideas that come to you in the middle of the night, you know.’ And he grinned. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve got a friend in England in a similar field. We were fellow students in Vienna several years ago. He’s really what you mean by a swell guy.’ He paused, in thoughtful contemplation of his remarkable friend, and Tina, knowing the American capacity for hero-worship, smiled sympathetically.

  He became a doctor too?’ she inquired at last.

  ‘Yes. Wizard of a fellow. We always kept up a fairly regular correspondence since the Vienna days.’

  ‘So you have his own word for it that he’s marvellous?’ suggested Tina mischievously.

  ‘His own no, certainly not.’

  ‘Oh, he’s very modest about his achievements?’

  ‘Well no.’ Earle Morrison grinned again in sudden real amusement. ‘He knows he’s a genius, come to that.’

  ‘How horrid!’

  ‘Not at all. You can’t undo people’s faces and put them together again unless you have a bit of self-confidence.’

  ‘N—no,’ Tina agreed. ‘No, I should think it takes a good deal of courage. I wasn’t really disparaging your friend’s work. I only meant one likes a man to wait and let others do the appreciating.’

  ‘I don’t think,’ said Morrison reflectively, ‘that Charles ever waited for anyone else to do something he thought he could do himself.’

  ‘Even to blowing his own trumpet?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make him sound conceited. It’s only that oh, he has tremendous vitality and a great belief in himself, and he can be rather self-centred about it all, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, I see he has the quality of making a very good friend, anyway.’ And Tina smiled kindly, though she privately thought the casual, unassuming Earle Morrison was probably a great deal more likeable than the friend he admired so much.

  After that there had been several talks between them the sort of long, inconsequential talks that one has only while travelling, when the subjects range from food to religion and from chamber music to football. Sometimes Tina wished that the journey could go on for ever. She hated to remember that when it ended she would have to face what sometimes seemed a chain of unending risks and sometimes just .the simple fulfilment of Sonia’s wish and her own.

  Even now, she could hardly believe that she had really taken on this extraordinary business. Each time anyone said ‘Miss Frayne’ she used to wonder if she gave the faintest start of surprise. But no one ever seemed to detect the slightest strangeness in her manner, and as hour succeeded hour on the rather monotonous trip, she had the curious impression that in leaving the New World for the Old, so she left the identity of her old self behind and gradually was transformed into Sonia Frayne. Not the Sonia Frayne she had known, of course, but a Sonia who was going home to England, to claim old Aunt Maggie’s legacy.

  It was odd how, at every turn. Fate had seemed to conspire to make the deception easy. Even after her conversation with Mrs. Manton, and the oblique assurance that certainly no relation of Cyrus Manton would be anxious to give publicity to this third marriage, she had been afraid that some enterprising newspaperman would ferret out the romantic story that the millionaire had really been killed on a honeymoon trip. It was so exactly the sort of thing in which the newspapers delighted. But no mention was made of Sonia either by name or as ‘a mystery girl.’

  By some strange coincidence it seemed that the passenger list had never been completed, and the burnt-out wreck of the machine had provided tragically few clues as to the number and identities of the passengers. That ‘three, if not four, other passengers, whose identity is as yet unknown’ was the nearest they ever came to mentioning Sonia’s presence.

  Even the papers which Tina would need to help substantiate her claim seemed ready to her hand. Not only the passport itself, but letters from ‘Aunt Maggie’, and even among several old and unimportant papers, kept for no special reason a copy of Sonia’s English birth certificate.

  When Tina thought how securely her position was buttressed, she told herself that it was ridiculous to feel even a flutter o
f nerves.

  ‘And it isn’t as thought here’s even anything fundamentally wrong about it,’ she thought over and over again. ‘Sonia wanted me to have the money—meant me to have the money. It was only a matter of days, perhaps hours, before the whole thing would have been made legal.’

  Every detail went without a hitch. No one appeared to have dark suspicions about her identity. No one seemed to think she looked the dangerous kind of person who tried to enter on a false passport. And by the time she and Earle Morrison had found seats in the airport bus, her spirits were soaring and she was perfectly prepared to enjoy every moment of the journey.

  She was home at last! Back in the only country that mattered to her. On every side she seemed to recognise dear, familiar sights, characteristic of the life she had remembered so poignantly and longed for so futilely until a few weeks ago.

  ‘Well happy to be back?’

  She became aware that Earle was watching her with sympathetic amusement, flushing a little, she nodded.

  ‘Oh, yes! You don’t know how I’ve longed for this summer and winter, waking and sleeping. It’s the only country for me.’

  ‘And yet you’ve been away from it most of your life, haven’t you?’

  The first bad dip! She must be more careful must not get her facts muddled like this.

  ‘Y—yes. But I’ve always dreamed of coming home,’ she explained, end then hastily changed the subject.

  It was a lovely journey after that. She had to pretend to find certain Things as strange and unfamiliar as he did, but apart from that, there was no strain, because Earle was the easiest person in the world to be with.

  Only when they were nearing London did he say something which profoundly disturbed her.

  ‘I’m hoping Charles will meet us. I sent off a wire while I was waiting for you to get that trunk of yours cleared through the Customs. I hope he can make it. I’d like you to meet him. Maybe we could all have dinner together. That is—’ he looked frankly inquiring ‘if you haven’t got people meeting you?’