Beggar’s Choice

by Patricia Wentworth

  There was, of course, no ladder. The drop was nothing in itself, but there’s too much of me to drop any distance at all without making a noise; also I should have to leave the trap open behind me. It couldn’t be helped, however. I took off my shoes, suspended them round my neck, hung by my hands, and dropped, I hoped, lightly.

  Whilst I was putting my shoes on again, I thought I heard a noise on the roof, and as I stood up, I did hear some one raise the skylight in the attic above. There was a sound of voices. Some one shouted. I didn’t wait to hear any more.

  I made tracks down the stair, wondering all the time when somebody would put a head out of a door and scream. Nobody did. I passed the landing with a light on it and began to go down the next lot of stairs, but before I had taken a dozen steps there came a heavy banging on the front door.

  Of course I knew exactly what had happened. The man who had been following me across the roofs had found the unbolted skylight and, I dare say, had taken a look inside; in which case he’d seen the open trap-door as well. He couldn’t follow me, because I don’t suppose that the law allows the police to break into a house, even in pursuit of a burglar, so he’d signaled from the roof to his pal below, and the pal was knocking at the front door. The minute any one came, there would be a request to search the house for a dangerous criminal; and with one man coming down from the skylight and another coming up from the hall, I would be fairly caught between two fires, unless I managed to get down into the basement before any one opened the door. Of course there might not be a way out of the basement.

  I hadn’t a chance to find out, because I hadn’t taken two more steps down, before I could hear some one coming heavily up the basement stair. That did me in. I couldn’t go on, because the next turn would bring me in sight of the front door. I went back on to the lighted landing.

  Two closed doors faced me. I listened first at one and then at the other. There wasn’t the slightest sound of any kind. I tried to see if there was a light on the other side, but I couldn’t make anything of it.

  The heavy steps below reached the hall. I heard a bolt drawn back and the rattle of a chain. Then voices-one very gruff, and the other a woman’s voice, sleepy and cross. She kept saying things like “What did you say?” and “No, you can’t see her-she’s in bed.” And then, “I didn’t catch the half of that.” And then “What did you say?” all over again.

  I guessed her to be an old servant, fussy, opinionated, and rather deaf. She kept the door on the chain, and had the policeman fairly bellowing before I heard her say, “Well, I’ll go and arst her.” And at the same moment I saw the handle of the farther door begin to turn.

  I’ve never moved so quickly in my life. Before that handle had finished turning, I had opened the other door and was over the threshold. I heard some one coming out of the next room, and I heard the servant coming up the stairs. I shut the door and turned to see where I was.

  I was in a lighted bedroom, and on the other side of it there was an old lady sitting up in bed.

  XXXVI

  It was a perfectly frightful moment.

  The room was full of solid comfort and very large Victorian mahogany furniture. There was a wardrobe that would have hidden half a dozen people comfortably; it took up all one side of the room. The bed and the fireplace were opposite. The bed was a big double one. The old lady was sitting up on one side of it with a great many pillows. She had a large fluffy woolly shawl round her shoulders, and a gray wig pushed crooked on her head. Across her knees was a newspaper, and a book or two. She had a writing-block in one hand and a pencil in the other. She didn’t look up.

  I advanced about three steps. There was a red carpet on the floor, and red curtains at the windows. The room was a double L-shaped one. From where I was now, I could see that both doors led into it. I had opened one at the exact moment that some one else had opened the other, with the result that I had come into the room as she went out, and neither of us had seen the other. I took another step forward.

  The old lady spoke without looking up.

  “A dark knight of Arthur’s court-and the name ought to have nine letters and end with an ‘S’,” she said in a deep, strong voice.

  I took one desperate look at the wardrobe, but it was hopeless to think of getting the door open without being seen or heard.

  The old lady tapped her block with her pencil.

  “Nine letters,” she said. “A dark knight-a dark knight.”

  I was brought up on the Morte d’Arthur. I counted on my fingers to make sure. Then I said.

  “Sir Palomides the Saracen.”

  I wondered if she was going to scream. I tried to look as little like a criminal as possible. I hoped that she had a grateful heart and would remember that I had given timely aid with her cross-word puzzle.

  She didn’t scream. I went on hoping. She wrote the word down quite calmly-at least she began to write it and then stopped and asked me how it was spelt, all without looking up. I wondered what on earth was happening in the house. I could hear footsteps on the stairs-formidable, earthshaking footsteps.

  The old lady finished writing Palomides. Then she counted the letters on her fingers, just as I had done, and heaved a sort of satisfied sigh.

  “Palomides it is,” she said. Then she put down her pencil and looked up.

  She had brown eyes, rather bulging, queer thick gray eyebrows, and a large fleshy nose. She looked at me with a bit of a frown.

  “There wasn’t the slightest occasion for you to come,” she said.

  I was so taken back that I nearly burst out laughing. If I could have thought of something to say, I’d have said it; because of course my voice was one of the things I was rather relying on to show her that I wasn’t the low-class ruffian I probably looked after shinning up and down all those wet roofs.

  “Not the slightest occasion,” she repeated.

  I thought her voice had slowed down and lost some of its ring. It struck me that she had seen the state of my knees. But she went on speaking.

  “I told my niece there wasn’t the slightest occasion to send for you. It was a momentary faintness, and I am feeling perfectly well again.” Here she paused, frowned, took up a pair of spectacles which lay on the bed beside her, and putting them on, took a good long look at me.

  I felt a most awful fool. When she spoke again, which she did after one of the longest minutes I have ever known, she was quite brisk. She said,

  “You’ve had a busy day taking over from your uncle. I hope he’ll enjoy his holiday. You are Dr. Wilmington’s nephew, aren’t you?”

  “You know I’m not,” I said, and waited for her to scream; but she only nodded her head.

  “Speak the truth and shame the devil, I’ve seen you going up and down this street for the last three years. What do you want?”

  She might well ask me that. It must have been nearly eleven o’clock, and I was in her bedroom.

  I said, “Shelter,” and heard a trample of feet go past the door at my back.

  “What have you done?” she asked with a good deal of interest.

  “Nothing.” I wondered if she was going to believe me.

  “Not murder?”

  I laughed-I couldn’t help it.

  “H’m!” she said. Then, very quickly, “Get inside that wardrobe!”

  I didn’t wait to be told twice. The door was ajar, and I was inside and closing it in about half a second. If I hadn’t been quick, I should have been caught, because the other door, round the bend of the L, had opened too.

  The niece came fussing into the room. She fussed about half-way across it, and then stopped and said, in a voice that was bright on top and all shaky underneath,

  “Well, dear Aunt, you must have wondered where I was.”

  “No,” said the old lady. “No, not at all.”

  “Ellen wanted me for a moment,” said the niece.

  “Quite so,” said the old lady. “My dear Fanny, how flushed you are! Ellen’s conversation must have been
very exciting-or was it the police?”

  I could almost hear Fanny’s jaw drop. She made a sort of bleating sound.

  “Dear Aunt-”

  “Oh, I know a policeman when I hear one-thumping up and down the stairs. What’s the matter? Is any one murdered?”

  “I don’t know,” said Fanny twittering. “They didn’t say. They’re looking for a man who got away over the roofs- from a house down the street-and they think he might be here, because our skylight wasn’t bolted. They’ve been searching the house.”

  “I heard them,” said the old lady very dryly. “Did they find him?”

  “No, they didn’t. And of course I wouldn’t let them come in here, because, as I told them, you never leave the room, and I’d been here all the evening, and no one could possibly have come in without our seeing them, so of course there wasn’t the slightest need to search this room. I kept telling them so.”

  “Dear me, Fanny,” said the old lady, “you’re very flustered about it all. I should have been delighted to see them, I’m sure. Have they gone?”

  “No,” said Fanny. “But I told them they couldn’t see you and they had no right to bother you.”

  “Rubbish!” said the old lady. “Open the door!”

  I hadn’t quite shut the wardrobe, because I’d been afraid that Fanny would hear the click. I was standing behind the mahogany panel with a piece of fur tickling the back of my neck, and a silk dress hanging down over my left shoulder and rustling when I breathed. There was a strong smell of old clothes and lavender. I was thankful it wasn’t napthalene, because napthalene always makes me sneeze. It would have rather torn it if I had sneezed just as the policeman was coming into the room. I should say by the sound of his voice that he was standing about a yard away from me, just inside the same door that I had come in by.

  I wanted to laugh. He sounded so awfully stodgy and embarrassed and polite.

  “Sorry to trouble you, ma’am.”

  And then the old lady, as sweet as honey:

  “It’s no trouble at all, constable.”

  “I understand you’ve been in this room all the time, ma’am.”

  “All the time,” she said.

  “And no one could come in without your seeing them, I take it?”

  “Quite impossible,” she said. “If you’ll come over here by the bed, you will see for yourself.”

  I heard him cross the floor.

  “And the other lady was here too?”

  “Until she went down to see who was knocking us up so late.”

  I heard him come back again.

  “Well, ma’am, I’m very sorry you’ve been troubled, but we’ve got to do our duty.”

  “It’s most agreeable to feel that we are so well looked after,” said the old lady. “Good-night, constable.”

  He said “Good-night” and shut the door. I could hear him speaking to the other man on the landing. Then one of them went upstairs and the other down. After a minute the front door shut. I began to wonder what was going to happen next.

  Miss Fanny came back all in a flurry. I suppose she’d been seeing them off-or one of them; for I suspected that the second man had gone out by way of the skylight.

  “You’re not upset, dear Aunt? Now you are not to let it keep you awake. I’m sure I tried to prevent his coming in, but you mustn’t let it excite you.”

  The old lady bit her head off.

  “Don’t be a fool, Fanny!” she said. “Or if that’s too much to expect, don’t be more of a fool than you can help! And if you want something to do, go and make me a cup of thin arrowroot. And remember it’s got to simmer, so if you come back and say it’s done in less than ten minutes, I shall know that it’s not fit to drink.”

  I just caught a glimpse of Fanny as she went past my chink-a kind, limp, poking sort of woman with eyes like pale blue gooseberries, and light sandy hair that was turning gray. She had on the kind of clothes that make you feel that they must have been picked up secondhand a bit at a time. She stopped by the door. I could hear her fidgeting with the handle.

  “I don’t like leaving you.”

  “And why not?” said the old lady very short and sharp.

  “You won’t be nervous? You’re sure? I don’t think I ought to leave you.”

  “Am I to make my arrowroot myself?” said the old lady in an ominous voice. “I didn’t ask you to think.”

  Fanny let go of the handle in a hurry. I heard her fuss away downstairs, and I opened my wardrobe door and came out.

  The old lady wasn’t looking at me. She had gone back to her cross-word.

  “Seven,” she said-“it must be seven letters. Now, what’s a word with seven letters which means fine-drawn?”

  “What about tenuous?” I said.

  “Good!” she said. “Good-good-good! Yes-seven letters! That’s broken the back of it! I shouldn’t have slept a wink if I hadn’t got the better of the thing.”

  She put down her pencil and beckoned to me.

  “Come over here and tell me what you’ve been up to. Fanny’s safe for ten minutes, and I want to know.”

  “I really haven’t done anything,” I said.

  “Nobody ever has. What do they say you’ve done?”

  “I’m not quite sure.”

  “Then why did you run away?”

  “Because it was the best thing to do.” I thought this sounded rather bad, so I went on in a hurry: “I really haven’t done anything, but I mightn’t be able to clear myself.”

  “Because of some one else?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “A woman, I suppose? And you’re in love with her? Is that it?”

  I felt myself getting red; but it was because I was angry, not because I was embarrassed.

  “No, it’s not,” I said.

  “Then why don’t you clear yourself?”

  I didn’t answer that, and she saw I wasn’t going to. She took up her pencil again and tapped with it on the writing-block.

  “Well, well-what are you going to do next?”

  I didn’t know. There would probably still be a man in the street, and I didn’t suppose they’d finished searching the roofs yet.

  “Your best way is to wait till Fanny comes up with my arrowroot. Then you can get out into the yard and over the wall into the back garden of one of the houses in Ely Street. If you go out of the front door, you may just walk into a trap.”

  “I say-you’re most frightfully good!” I said.

  “I hope the Recording Angel thinks so,” she said. Then she put out her hand and beckoned to me.

  I came close up to the bed.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, looking up at me under her queer thick eyebrows.

  “Carthew Fairfax.”

  “Do they call you all that?”

  “No-Car.”

  “Is your mother alive?”

  “No.”

  “Grandmother? Aunts?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. Have you got a sweetheart?”

  The thought of Isobel came over me like the sun shining suddenly on a dark day.

  I said, “Yes.”

  “Will you tell me her name?”

  “Isobel.”

  She laughed in a queer sort of way.

  “Mine is Ginevra Cambodia Stubbs. That’s funny enough for a cross-word-isn’t it? Well, if things turn out all right for you, will you come and see me some day?”

  I said, “I’d like to.” I tried to thank her, but she stopped me.

  “I live entirely surrounded by old women. My doctor’s the worst of them-what Ellen calls ‘a proper old maid.’ She’s one herself, so she ought to know. So is Fanny. They’re all kind, they’re all fussy, and they all bore me to death. I like young men, and as I’ve no sons, and no grandsons, I never see one. I’ve watched you from the window going up and down-I told you that, didn’t I?” She stopped, picked up her pencil, and tapped on the block. “If I don’t do crosswords, I should get as soft in the hea
d as Fanny. Now you ought to be going. You’d better go down to the next landing and wait in the drawing-room till you hear Fanny come up with the arrowroot. You can get into the yard through the scullery. There’s a box of matches on the mantelpiece, if you haven’t got any. You’d better not turn on the electric light, because Ellen sleeps in the basement.”

  She shook hands with me, and I did my best to thank her, but I don’t think I made a very good job of it. I liked her most awfully, and I hope she knew how grateful I was.

  XXXVII

  I took the matches and went down to the next landing, which had two doors at right angles to one another just like the one above; they both opened into the drawing-room. I’d hardly got safely in before I heard Fanny coming upstairs. She must have hurried like mad over making the arrowroot.

  As soon as I heard the old lady’s door shut, I came out of the drawing-room and went down the stairs. There was no light below the bedroom landing, but I didn’t want to strike a match unless I was obliged to. The house was on the same plan as Mrs. Bell’s, so I thought I could manage.

  I crawled down the basement stairs, because of course I realized that Ellen would most likely not have gone to sleep again yet. I wasn’t quite clear about the kitchen, and the scullery, and her room; but Fanny had left the kitchen door ajar and I saw the glow of the fire, which was a stroke of luck I couldn’t have reckoned on.

  The scullery had an outer door with heavy bolts, the sort that were simply bound to make a row if I tried to shoot them back. I decided that it would be much safer to get out of the kitchen window.

  Well, I slid back the catch, pushed up the window, and was half-way out, when I heard a sort of flapping sound. I recognized it at once, because I’d noticed when she went upstairs that Fanny had on slippers which flapped on every step. I pulled my other leg up, but before I could drop into the yard the kitchen door opened with a push, and there stood Fanny with a waggling candle in her hand and her mouth open all ready to scream. I ought to have cut and run, but like an ass I tried to stop her.

  “Miss Fanny-” I began, and then she screamed. It was the most ineffectual scream I had ever heard. I think she was too frightened to put any breath into it. “I say-don’t do that! Mrs. Stubbs knows I’m here.”