Jean Chantry put a hand to her head, frowning nervously.
“I’m sorry – that probably sounded unkind,” she tried to calm her voice. “I don’t mean to be unkind. I’m really very glad to see you.”
A man’s voice broke in:
“If unkindness is all you encounter in this house, Miss Allen, you’ll be lucky. You should prepare yourself for far worse things.”
He was standing in the doorway of the room from which the loud voice had reached Isobel. He was only two or three years older than she was and was tall, with a muscular breadth of shoulder, short, fair hair, blue eyes and a square, blunt-featured, bulldog’s face. A bulldog that had quite lost its normal air of slightly bemused amiability and was staring at it through a blinding glaze of anger.
“You know, you’re in danger, Miss Allen,” he said. “You’re unlikely to believe me, so I won’t go on trying to make you. All the same, I mean that warning. This is a very dangerous place.”
Jean Chantry turned on him.
“Will you please go! I have tried to treat you decently, because I thought I understood your feelings. But now I begin to think I may have been as mistaken in you as in your sister and that you only came here to make trouble.”
He gave her a swift glance, then looked back at Isobel.
“I’m not a trouble-maker, Miss Allen,” he said, “but I could be, if it was necessary. So remember that if you get into difficulties here. My name’s Michael Howarth and I work on the Wallcliff Record.”
He strode out and the door slammed behind him.
Isobel saw Jean Chantry draw a deep breath, then, with an effort, she arranged her features to produce a smile.
“That’s a scene that will take a little explaining, won’t it?” she said. “But I don’t think you need really worry about being in any immediate danger. Let me show you to your room now. My sister is out at the moment, but she’ll be home quite soon.”
She picked up one of Isobel’s suitcases, turned to the staircase and started up it.
For a moment Isobel did not want to follow her. Anger always had a disastrous effect upon her, even when it was not directed against herself.
The sense of being caught in a trap suddenly and frighteningly returned. Yet she knew that the only trap in which she was caught was the trap of her own decision to find a job at once – any job, so long as it was a long way from home.
Picking up the second suitcase, she followed Jean Chantry, who led her along a passage and into a small, bright bedroom. At the sight of it, Isobel gave a cry of pleasure and some of her nervousness faded. She began to think of it as a sort of stage-fright, which had afflicted her because she had been too anxious to make a good impression.
She took off her coat and started to comb her hair in front of a gilt-framed mirror.
Jean Chantry’s pale face, reflected in the mirror, had lost the flush that had given it vividness and Isobel saw it now as an unhappy face with something smouldering away painfully behind the dark eyes.
“My sister is a cripple,” she explained again. “It happened in a car accident, six years ago. For a time we all thought she would never walk again. But now she can get about a certain amount on two sticks. And her husband, who was a dentist in Wallcliff – we’re about five miles out of the town, as you probably know – somehow managed to keep his practice going and yet look after her. But three months ago he died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage... Well, I came, of course, and I’ve stayed. But I have work in London and I can’t stay indefinitely. And my sister won’t move to London. So we agreed between us to try to find someone who would live here with her and do the housekeeping and drive her about and keep her company.”
“That’s what she told me on the telephone,” Isobel said.
“But of course we realised – or I realised – that nowadays that wasn’t going to be easy,” Jean Chantry said. “All the same, we found someone almost at once, someone we both liked, a girl from Wallcliff, who had been one of my brother-in-law’s patients and who knew the whole situation and seemed eager to come here and help my sister. And after only a fortnight this girl had to be sacked for forging my sister’s credit at a shop in Wallcliff.”
Their glances met again. Puzzled, Isobel saw a curious embarrassment come into the other’s dark eyes.
“It was a stupid business,” Jean went on quickly. “She had ordered a lot of things by letter – stockings, cosmetics, gloves and so on and had them all put down to my sister’s account. Naturally, when the bill came in, we found it out. The girl tried to deny everything, but the things were all in her room and the signature to the letter, which the shop sent to my sister when she queried the account, was an obvious forgery. And the letter had been typed on Alison’s old typewriter and was on her writing-paper. It was horrible for us all. My sister said she wouldn’t dream of prosecuting, because she was sure it had been the result of an ungovernable impulse and that Connie Howarth was really good at heart and ought to be given a chance. As I saw it, that simply meant a chance to cheat somebody else. However, my sister may have been right. It was her affair, anyway. But I couldn’t go away, leaving her in the care of someone who was subject to ungovernable impulses, could I?”
“No,” Isobel said in a subdued voice. “No, of course not.”
“So we sent the girl home. And the young man you saw a few minutes ago is her brother, who seems only just to have found out why his sister suddenly came back from her new job. He came out here to threaten actions for wrongful dismissal and defamation of character and everything else he could think of. Of course, he can’t have meant any of it, because of the evidence we have, but still I’m thankful that my sister happened to be out at the time. She has more than enough to endure as it is.”
“Suppose he comes back,” Isobel said. “What ought I to do then?”
“That’s really why I told you about him – just in case,” Jean Chantry said.
“And I don’t understand, why did he say I was in danger here?”
There was a silence. It was only a short one – as long as it took Jean Chantry to catch her breath and let it out again. Then she said with a certain harsh flatness:
“He was implying, you see, that one of us wrote that letter to the shop and put the stockings and things in Connie’s room on purpose to be found and that we might do the same to you.”
“But why ever should you? Why would you get me all the way here, just to do that?”
“Why indeed?”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
Isobel saw a smile of relief light up Jean Chantry’s face. It was a smile of unexpected friendliness and charm.
Yet as she turned to the door, telling Isobel to come downstairs when she had unpacked and that perhaps by then Mrs. Buckle would have returned, she left Isobel in the grip of an acute uneasiness. Isobel knew it was unreasonable, yet she felt as if, along with the job and the pretty little bedroom, she had helplessly inherited some of the distrust that the other girl had roused in these people.
Her unpacking did not take long. When she had put her belongings away in the drawers and wardrobe, she changed her dress and went downstairs.
As she came into the living-room a crippled woman turned awkwardly to greet her. Behind her a man watched the woman’s clumsy movements and there was something protective and full of a gentle concern in his attitude.
To some extent Mrs. Buckle was still beautiful, for the head that was carried on the distorted body was very handsome. At a distance, Isobel thought that there was a strong resemblance between the two sisters. But as she moved further into the room, she saw that there was also an immense difference. Their features and colouring were alike, but beside the calm good nature in the face of the crippled sister, that of the other looked restless and insecure.
Mrs. Buckle was holding a bunch of violets which she held out to Isobel with a smile that was kind and astonishingly cheerful.
“Look,” she said. “I’ve been bunching these all the afternoo
n, until it grew dark. The rest will be going off to Covent Garden, but I saved these for you. Of course, they’re from Dick, too, because they came out of his garden. He owns the local market garden – you will see it from your bedroom window. Now let’s have a drink, Jean. Dick can only stay for a few minutes, but he said he had to come over to take a look at Isobel.”
Dick Fogden had indeed been looking at Isobel until Mrs. Buckle said this, then he at once glanced away. He was a very shy-looking man, with a long, mild face under a thick thatch of grey hair, and he had abrupt, ungainly movements. Muttering that he hoped Isobel had had a comfortable journey, he swallowed a glass of sherry very quickly, said a sudden goodbye and hurried out.
When he had gone, Mrs. Buckle gave a quiet laugh.
“Poor Dick – he is terrified of strangers, particularly of girls,” she said. “But he’ll get over it. Perhaps he isn’t the brightest soul on earth, but he is nearly the kindest. Now, tell me, Isobel, do you really think you can face living here with me?” she asked. “I knew from your voice on the telephone that you were young, but not how very young, or I think I’d have given you more of a warning about how dull you’re going to find it – anyway, when Jean leaves us. I live very quietly. The last girl who came here couldn’t stand it.”
“I told Isobel about the last one,” Jean said. “I told her the real reason why she left.”
“Oh, why did you do that?” Distress puckered Mrs. Buckle’s forehead. “I thought we had decided to tell no one what happened – no one at all.”
“Yes, but when I thought it over, I came to the conclusion it was better for Isobel to hear the facts from one of us than perhaps in some quite exaggerated form from somebody else.”
“From whom else could she have heard it?”
Jean put down her glass and went towards the kitchen door.
“Oh, things like that get around, somehow, however careful one is. Now I’ll go and finish off the cooking. No – ” she added as Isobel stood up and started to follow her. “Stay and talk to my sister. You can start learning your job tomorrow.”
So Isobel sat down again and Mrs. Buckle reached for a cigarette.
“I hope you don’t feel I was trying to deceive you just now about something important,” she said, gazing into the fire. “It could have been deceiving you, I suppose, not to tell you the truth about Connie Howarth.”
She had a soft, tired voice, Isobel thought that it gave away far more of the pain with which she lived than her bright, gentle face.
“You see, Jean and I disagreed about her,” Mrs. Buckle went on. “I liked her. She was very kind to me. I know that what she did was something serious and we couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened, but still, I think we might have tried to help her more than we did.”
“I expect you did everything you could,” Isobel murmured. Mrs. Buckle gave a little shrug.
“Now let’s not talk about her any more. Tell me about yourself.”
She smiled and Isobel, to her own surprise, found herself telling the story which she had resolved never to tell to anyone. She told Mrs. Buckle first about her mother’s second marriage and how unhappy it had been almost from the start, yet for two years, Isobel said, she had been so stupid and so blind as not to dream that she herself was the cause of the trouble. She had only felt that, little by little, life was becoming insecure and ugly and that her home had become a place where incomprehensible forces of hatred had taken possession. She had not even felt quite sure, after a time, that there was anything unusual in this. She had had terrible doubts that this was merely how the world came to look to you as you grew older. And then she had heard her stepfather telling her mother, in the soft, flat voice in which he said all the really bitter things, that she had married him only because she had wanted him to pay for her daughter’s training. He added that she had never loved him and never would, that she had spoiled her daughter beyond redemption, turning her into someone who only thought of what she could get out of him. He finished by saying he was tired of it and tired of his wife, too.
At that point Isobel had walked out of the house. She had gone to a newsagent, bought several newspapers, taken them to a café and, over a cup of coffee, had read every “Situations vacant” advertisement in every one of the papers. Then she had gone to a call-box and telephoned Mrs. Buckle.
“You see, this is really the only sort of job I’m qualified to do at present,” Isobel said.
Then, because Mrs. Buckle remained silent, she added: “I really can cook quite well and I can drive a car.”
“I’m sure you can,” Mrs. Buckle said. “What I was thinking is that I don’t think you were the cause of those quarrels at all. If you hadn’t been there, the man who said the things you have just told me would have found some other way to hurt your mother. Meanwhile coming here gave you the escape you wanted and it gives Jean the escape she wants and it gives me someone to help me whom I think I’m going to like. So we should all be pleased, shouldn’t we?”
Yet Mrs. Buckle did not sound pleased. She sounded despondent and suddenly very tired.
It seemed to Isobel that she was far more hurt than she would ever admit by the fact that her sister did not want to stay with her and was ready to leave her in the care of a stranger.
In the next week or two, however, it appeared that Jean Chantry was in no hurry to depart to London. It was clear, in fact, that she had no intention of leaving her sister in Isobel’s care until she was certain that Isobel was to be trusted.
In the meantime, Jean instructed Isobel in her work.
Old as the house was, with odd steps in unexpected places, low doorways and beams and splintering floors, the kitchen at least was modern. There was a shining new sink unit, an electric cooker with an automatic timer for the oven, an electric mixer and other attractive gadgets.
Somehow Isobel did not quite succeed in making up her mind about Jean Chantry and, on the whole, was looking forward to the time when she left. For Jean’s obvious longing to be gone, her grudging of her help and her company to someone as sweet and courageous as Alison Buckle, could surely only spring from a certain hardness of heart. Jean was obviously a talented young woman and she could be kind and friendly. But Isobel sensed a streak of ruthlessness in her – a determination to put her career and her desires before anything or anyone else.
At least, that was how Isobel thought of her until the day when, coming downstairs, she found Jean at the telephone.
Jean was protesting with tears that she did care for whomever it was she was talking to, did love him with all her heart, but that if he loved her, too, he must try to understand that it was impossible, really impossible, for her to leave her sister as things were at the moment.
Jean was not aware of Isobel, standing near her. Turning to the sitting-room door, Isobel opened it quietly, went to the kitchen and out through the back door into the garden. Wandering off along the path through the orchard until she reached the gate that marked the beginning of Dick Fogden’s property, she leant her elbows on the top of the gate and thought about what she had just heard.
Now it seemed to her that the only thing that could be keeping Jean from the man to whom she had been talking was distrust of Isobel, distrust either of her honesty or of her competence. Yet what had she done to make Jean feel that it was necessary to remain to keep an eye on her?
Biting her lip and frowning, Isobel decided that this could not be allowed to go on. She would have to speak about the matter to Jean. It would be embarrassing and, of course, Jean would absolutely deny distrusting her. Yet it must be done.
With her mind made up, Isobel presently returned to the house.
Jean was alone in the sitting-room. Surprisingly, she herself raised the subject.
“If I leave you now, Isobel, you can manage, can’t you?” she said. There was still the wetness of tears on her lashes, but her smile had an unusual brilliance.
“Now?” Isobel was startled, for it sounded as if, after all the delay, Jea
n intended to walk out of the house that very moment and not come back. Apart from anything else, it happened to be Isobel’s afternoon off and she had been intending to go into Wallcliff to do some shopping and have her hair done.
“Soon, I mean. Some time soon,” Jean explained.
“Oh, yes,” Isobel said. “Of course I can.”
“Oh, I know you can do the job itself,” Jean said. “You are wonderful at it. You’re a treasure. I saw that at once.”
“Then everything is all right, isn’t it?” Isobel said rather drily.
“Yes – yes, I suppose so.” And yet there was doubt in Jean’s tone.
“If it will help,” Isobel said deliberately, “I’ll swear solemnly not to steal the spoons or anything. But it won’t help, will it, because I mightn’t be honest about that, either? So there’s nothing for it, I’m afraid, but for you to decide if you can trust me or not.”
“Trust you – oh, Isobel!” A wave of red swept over Jean’s pale face. “Why, I’d trust you with everything I possess. So would anyone. Oh, heavens, is that what you’ve been thinking – that I didn’t trust you? What a fool I am. And how are we to get over it now? How can I make it quite, quite clear that I trust you completely? Well, I suppose that brings me round to where I started. I can do it by going away and leaving you to look after things by yourself. Only what would you do if – ?”
Jean paused, then looked up suddenly at Isobel with her bright, penetrating glance.
“I suppose if you run into trouble of any kind, you can keep your head, can’t you?”
“Do you mean trouble with the Howarths?” Isobel asked.
“It might be, but I meant – oh, just trouble of any kind. But it was a stupid question. You are going into Wallcliff this afternoon, aren’t you? Well, enjoy yourself and don’t forget the last bus back is ten-ten.”
“Oh, I don’t expect I’ll stay out nearly as late as that,” Isobel said, and began to lay the table for lunch.
The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas and Other Mysteries Page 6
