Will O’ the Wisp

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Er—Eleanor’s home.”

  “Yes, she’s home.”

  “She all right?”

  “Going strong. She’s down at Ford staying with Betty. Better come and look us up.”

  Tommy dropped his eyeglass again.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ll come—but I don’t suppose it’s any earthly.” He screwed up his jolly face and looked deprecatingly at David. “I’ve always been an ass about her, and I always shall be, and it’s never been any earthly. There you are—I don’t think she minds me when I don’t make too big an ass of myself.” He brightened a little. “When shall I come along?”

  “What about to-morrow? I’m driving down.”

  The prospect of the tête-à-tête drive with Folly was one of the things which was making David monosyllabic. He positively grabbed at Tommy Wingate. But Tommy shook his head.

  “To-morrow I lunch with an aunt and take three flapper cousins to the Zoo, or a cinema, or some other low haunt. And when that’s over I dine with a great-uncle who has the worst cook in London. He lives on nuts—give you my word he does—weighs ’em out on a little thingummy-jig that sits on the table in front of him. Last time I went there he ate half a walnut too much and was dreadfully fussed. It’ll be a roaring sort of evening, my lad, and no mistake. I’ll totter down to you next day—what? Hullo, there’s Devlin!”

  Tommy precipitated himself into a crowd which had just stopped dancing and was now moving in every direction at once. David saw him accost a tall, thin red-haired man and a party which included no less than three extremely personable young things, with one of whom Tommy presently took the floor.

  David cast his eyes about the room in search of Folly March. The place was crowded with an odd medley of people—young men and old in dinner jackets and long coats; girls in hats, and girls in evening frocks; women with the minimum of clothing and the maximum number of pearls that it is possible to crowd upon the human frame. At the table on his right there sat a woman huddled in cloth of gold to the ears. She had a dead face and pale, square-cut hair as lank as tow. She held a cigarette in a very long amber holder, but never put it to her mouth, and during all the time that David was in the room she neither moved nor spoke to her companion. Just opposite, by a table near the door, a very tall woman was talking to half a dozen men at once. She wore a little black cap that hid her hair, and long emerald earrings that fell below her shoulder; her dress was a glittering black sheath that ended above the knee. She might have been Pierrot from the zeal with which she had whitened her face. The magenta lips appeared to emit a steady flow of bad language.

  David glanced at his wrist-watch. All the theatres must be out by now. If Folly did not turn up in five minutes, he would just have to go to the flat and wait for her there.

  As he looked up again he saw her coming into the room with St. Inigo. She was looking all round her like a pleased child, and she wore the new little black curls tied on with a pale blue ribbon which ended in an artless bow over one ear. Her frock might very properly have appeared at a breaking-up party of the most decorous of schools—little white frills and a pale blue girdle. She wore a coral necklace—not coral beads, but a necklace of the real old-fashioned spiky red coral which all little girls possess and break.

  Something pricked David sharply at the sight of the coral necklace. He was being got at. And knowing that he was being got at, he said to himself, “Little devil!” and then was pulled up sharply by the very patent fact that St. Inigo was drunk.

  Folly slipped her hand into St. Inigo’s arm and they made a half circuit of the room. They came to a standstill a yard or two from David.

  Without any plan he got up and walked over to them. St. Inigo was certainly drunk—steady enough on his feet and steady enough with his tongue, but drunk for all that, his very handsome features pale and expressionless, his light eyes fixed and glittering.

  David said, “Hullo, Folly!” and just for an instant the little devil in its schoolgirl dress made a movement towards him. It was so slight a movement, and so quickly checked, that he wondered why he had imagined that Folly was glad to see him. She stood there looking down and tapping with her foot. A complete absence of make-up allowed him to see that her colour had risen. St. Inigo stared.

  David’s temper began to rise.

  “Can you spare me a moment? I’ve got a message for you—from Eleanor.”

  Folly shot him a glance, but he made nothing of it. Suspicion—appeal—no, he couldn’t place it.

  He began, “I won’t keep you”; and then Folly said in her little purring voice:

  “Do you know Stingo? You ought to. Stingo, I’m sure you’re pleased to meet David. He’s my deputy chaperon.” Then she looked at David with little dancing green sparks in her eyes. “That’s what you’re here for, aren’t you? I suppose Eleanor sent you. Did she?”

  “Well, I’ve got a message from her.” He turned to St. Inigo. “Will you excuse Miss March for a moment? Mrs. Rayne asked me to give her a message.”

  The bright, glittering eyes shifted a point. Folly went on quickly:

  “How did you know I was here?” The purr was an angry one. “Did Eleanor tell you to come after me? Did she? Did she tell you to follow me round and—and make a laughing-stock of me? I suppose she told you she’d forbidden me to come, and so she sent you to fetch me home as if I was five years old!”

  “Perhaps you’d better go,” said St. Inigo with a sneer.

  Folly sparkled at him.

  “Shall I?”

  “Oh yes—much better go with him. Always go home with your chaperon. Let him take you home and tuck you up in bye-bye.” Mr. St. Inigo’s look and voice were even more offensive than Mr. St. Inigo’s words.

  David controlled his fury and addressed himself to Miss Folly March:

  “Folly, Julie’s expecting you, and I think—”

  Folly had turned quite white; she was so angry that she could hardly speak. But her anger was with David. It shook her from head to foot. She was not often angry, and she did not know why she was angry now. She felt that she would kill David if he looked at her. She was one blazing flame of fury, and she did not know why. She caught St. Inigo by the arm and whirled him round.

  “Stingo, I want to dance! We came here to dance—didn’t we?”

  David watched them plunge into the crowd of dancers. Over Folly’s shoulder St. Inigo looked at him, a long, cold, insolent look.

  He came out of the club in a black rage. Short of making a public scene he could do no more. For Eleanor’s sake he would wait at the flat until Folly came in. If St. Inigo were with her, he might possibly have the pleasure of knocking St. Inigo down.

  The air was very cold. He walked quickly. By the time he reached the entrance to the block of flats his anger had passed into disgust. If it were not for Eleanor, Folly might go her own way. What could you do with a girl who took up with a swab like St. Inigo? Disgust sharpened into contempt, and then, quick and vivid, came the picture of a child in a white frock and a coral necklace, with bobbing black curls put on to please him. The something that had tugged at his heart in the drawing-room at Ford plucked at him now, and the more shrewdly because he winced away from it.

  CHAPTER X

  David stood by the entrance to the block of flats and considered gloomily that he might have to keep his eye on it for hours. He began to walk up and down Chieveley Street. Fifty yards one way with the wind in his face, and hundred yards back with the wind behind him.

  After half an hour it occurred to him that he had mentioned to Folly that Julie was expecting her. It was unlikely that she would have a spasm of sanity and go straight to the Aldereys’, but it was possible; in which case David would be walking up and down Chieveley Street till daylight overtook him.

  When he had walked for another half hour he began to wonder how long one could walk up and down the same street without attracting the attention of the police. He also wondered what he would say if he were asked what he was doing. The p
lain truth would hardly have convinced a child of five. “My cousin, Mrs. Rayne, has a flat up there. She’s away, and my other cousin, Miss March, who has a key, is coming there. And I’m waiting to tell her she can’t stay there alone, and to take her to yet another cousin, Mrs. Frank Alderey.” A simple tale and one likely to leave Robert cold. With a shrug of the shoulders he put Folly and her affairs away, and let his mind swing back to the problem which had burdened him all day.

  The words of the advertisement stood out in a garish dazzle, senseless and bewildering. His thoughts beat against it like moths, only to fall back in confusion. If it was a practical joke, it was both cruel and pointless; and who was there who knew enough of his private affairs to jest with them? If it was serious, from whom did it come? From Erica herself? He couldn’t believe it. If by some extraordinary chance she had survived, she would have written to him—she must have written to him.

  As he paced up and down, he saw, not Chieveley Street and the lamps shining in a frosty air, but the tilted deck of the Bomongo; his ears were filled again with the sounds of wreck and disaster; he saw, as he had not seen it for years, Erica’s ghastly face against his shoulder, and felt the rigid terror of her clasp.

  David went on walking, sometimes on one side of the road and sometimes on the other. He looked at his watch and made it half-past two. A perfectly fresh access of anger came to him and he quickened his pace a little. At his usual turning place he paused, looked up and down the street, and walked on to the corner. There was a lamppost there. He stood under it looking into the dark side street; and as he did so, he saw something move.

  He had hardly taken more than half a dozen steps away from the lamp when the moving something came out of the shadows at a stumbling run and caught at him with two little icy hands. The light showed him Folly March in a dark fur coat with her curls all crooked. She looked dreadfully white, and the hands that clutched his arm were shaking.

  He exclaimed sharply: “Folly, what on earth!”

  “Take me home,” said Folly in a ghost of a voice. “I want to go home at once.”

  “You’re just there.”

  He was walking her along, his anger gone, and a fear that had no words in its place. What had happened?

  Eleanor’s flat was on the second floor. They reached the door without a spoken word on either side. Folly put the key, a cold key in a little cold hand, into David’s palm and the door swung open. He switched on the light and took her into the room where he and Eleanor had had tea.

  “Folly, what’s the matter? Can’t you tell me?”

  “It’s so cold,” said Folly on a caught breath.

  David put his arm round her.

  “My dear, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” said Folly.

  She leaned hard against his arm for a moment, then went and sat down in the corner of the sofa, holding her fur coat about her.

  “It’s so cold! Do light the fire.”

  At his wits’ end, David knelt on the hearth and put a match to the neatly laid fire. As the flame went up and the sticks caught, Folly gave a little sigh and leaned towards it holding out her hands. With his back to her David fed the blaze with coal. He kept his eyes away from the little shaking hands. After a while she sighed again and said in a childish whisper:

  “Stingo was rude.”

  David turned, still on his knees.

  “Folly, for the Lord’s sake tell me what’s happened! The swine was drunk. Has he hurt you?”

  Folly caught her breath.

  “N-no—he frightened me.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was bringing me home in a taxi—he was rude—I got out.”

  “He let you?”

  “I b-bit him.”

  “What!”

  “I b-bit him hard. He wouldn’t let go, and I bit him as hard as I could. I wish I could bite twice as hard. I wish you’d been there. You would—wouldn’t you?”

  David’s relief broke from him in sudden laughter.

  “I would what?”

  “B-bite,” said Folly viciously.

  “I should probably have pushed his face in. Go on. What happened?”

  “I b-bit—and he swore—and I got the door open—and I got out on to the step—and he grabbed at me—and I jumped. And there was a policeman at the corner, so he didn’t follow me, and I walked home—and it was miles. Ooh! What a lovely fire!”

  “You’ve got to come away from it. Julie’s expecting you.”

  David got up as he spoke. Folly looked at him sideways. Her hands were still shaking a little, but her colour was coming back.

  “Why can’t I stay here? You can stay and look after me. You can have the sofa and Eleanor’s eiderdown.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense!” said David.

  “I call it nonsense to go out and be frozen to death just when I’m getting nice and warm.”

  “Well, you’ve got to.”

  “Why have I got to?”

  “Because Eleanor says so.”

  Folly pursed her lips and looked into the fire. After a moment she said in a meek little voice:

  “Does Mr. Grundy always do what Mrs. Grundy tells him?”

  David looked at his watch.

  “You can have another five minutes. I’m afraid you’ll have to walk—there isn’t an earthly chance of getting a taxi at this hour.”

  “We could telephone for one.”

  “We could; but I don’t think we will.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well—I don’t think we want to advertise this show, you know. Anyhow it’s no distance. Now you’d better go and pack your bag.”

  She got up and stood for a moment looking into the glass that hung above the mantelpiece.

  “My curls won’t stay straight,” she murmured. “They look awfully drunk when they’re crooked—don’t they?” She straightened them, whisked round, and dropped him a curtsy. “You do like them though—don’t you?”

  “Go and pack!”

  “How impatient you are! David, do say you like them.”

  She came quite close to him, her fur coat slipping from her shoulders.

  “Where’s your necklace?” said David, speaking quickly and saying what he hadn’t meant to say.

  Folly went back a step. She put her hand to her throat, and the quick, bright colour flamed in her cheeks; her eyes looked away from him.

  “It—broke.”

  There was just a moment’s strained silence, and then, with one of the quick movements which reminded him of a kitten, she ran out of the room.

  Left alone, David felt a wave of nausea sweep over him; the words had brought Folly’s danger just too near. He flung round to the hearth with a jerk and began to rake out the fire.

  Folly found him on his knees there when she came back with her suitcase.

  “Ooh! My nice fire!” she said. But she handed over her case and followed him out of the flat without any further protest, a good deal to his relief, for it had occurred to him more than once that if she really insisted on staying at the flat, he would just have to let her stay.

  They came out into the dark street and the nip of the wind. Folly slipped a hand inside his arm, and when they had gone half a dozen steps she pulled on it.

  “Is my case heavy?”

  “You know it isn’t.”

  “Do you mind carrying it?”

  “No.”

  They passed a lamp-post as he said, “No,” and he looked down at her, frowning. The collar of her fur coat stood up about her ears; the curls were lost in it; the ribbon showed like a pale streak. Her eyes were like pools of sad green water. She pulled at his arm again.

  “David—”

  “What is it?”

  “David—” in a very small voice indeed.

  “Well?”

  “Did you come to that place to look for me?”

  “You seemed pretty sure of it at the time.”

  “’M—I was angry. Did you come there to look
for me?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Because Eleanor told you to?”

  “Eleanor didn’t know where you were. Frank Alderey said St. Inigo was a member of The Soupçon, so I just dropped in on the chance of finding you.”

  Folly pulled her hand away.

  “What’s the matter now?”

  “Didn’t any more relations send you? Didn’t Grandmamma tell you to come?”

  “Don’t be a little idiot!”

  After a moment she snuggled up to him again.

  “Would you have come of your very own self if Eleanor hadn’t sent you?” Her cheek just brushed his sleeve.

  “Eleanor didn’t send me, I tell you.”

  “’M—would you have come just of your very own self?”

  David stiffened.

  “I don’t know,” said Folly. “Would you?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  Folly pulled her hand away again. This time she did not put it back. Halfway down the next street she was visibly lagging. David took her by the elbow and felt her quiver.

  “We’re nearly there,” he said in a kind voice. With Julie’s door only half a dozen houses away, it was safe to be kind.

  “I wanted to stay at that flat,” said Folly.

  “Well, you couldn’t. This is the house. Wait till I find the key. There’s a gas-fire in your room, so you’ll be warm—the first to the left at the top of the stairs.”

  “Aren’t you coming in?”

  He produced the key and opened the door before he said: “No, I’m going to the office.”

  “Oh! Have I got your room?”

  David pushed the door open. There was a light in the hall. He set the suitcase down and went out on to the step again.

  “In with you! Good-night,” he said, and ran down the steps.

  Folly pulled the door to within half an inch of closing and ran after him.

  He heard “David!” in a breathless voice and turned.

  “Folly, go in!”

  “I’m going. I wasn’t going to say good-night. But you did walk about for hours and wait for me. Eleanor didn’t tell you to do that, did she?”