Evelyn groped for a connecting thread.
Pearl Palliser had married Jim Field in December, 1914. Why would it suit her if Laydon should prove to be Jim Field? Or how would it enable her to get married in church to the gentleman friend in a good way of business?
She looked blankly at the large pink, powdered face.
“Weren’t you—weren’t you married to Jim Field?”
Miss Palliser was not in the least discomposed.
“December the seventh, 1914,” she said. “At the Upton Road registry office. Nosey Parker’d been looking it up too. It was all right, I told him. And I get my widow’s pension regularly, thank the Lord. I’m sure I don’t know what I’d have done without it. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get an engagement nowadays. Mind you, I’m not one of those to go round blaming everyone else when they can’t get a shop. I’m past my best, and I know it. It’s not so much anno domini as the extra three-stone-ten that’s done it. I was all right as long; as the war lasted. But put me among the cakes, and I’m lost; I can’t keep off ’em. But there, what’s the good of worrying? It might have been drink or drugs—and then you go to bits. But taking it all round, it’s time I left the stage and settled down.”
Evelyn held on firmly to Jim Field.
“But if he’s Jim Field—I mean if Mr Laydon is Jim Field—, you can’t marry and settle down, because you’ll still be married, won’t you?”
Miss Palliser began to polish her finger nails absent-mindedly, using the left leg of the flame-coloured tights as a pad.
“Well, dear, you see,” she said at last, “there’s more in it than meets the eye; and the fact is I can’t make up my mind whether to tell you the whole lot and get it off my chest or not. In a way it’d be a relief. But once the cat’s out of the bag, you can’t put it back—can you?”
Evelyn looked straight at her.
“I know you married Jack Laydon in March, 1915,” she said.
Miss Palliser’s mouth fell slowly open; she went on rubbing her finger nails mechanically. After about half a minute she gave a slow, deep chuckle.
“That’s bright of you. But how did you find out?”
“It was accident, really. My uncle, Sir Henry Prothero, was looking for the other entry, and he stumbled on Jack Laydon’s name.”
“Oh,” said Miss Palliser. She seemed quite composed and cheerful. “Well, that’s that. Does Mr Nosey Abbott know?”
Evelyn shook her head.
“Only my uncle and me. He won’t say anything if I ask him not to. Don’t you think you’d better tell me the whole thing?”
“I dare say I had.” She let the flame-coloured tights slide to the floor. “I wouldn’t so much mind telling you, for I don’t mind saying I’ve taken a liking to you. It’s funny too, for I can remember the time when I hated you like poison. Jack and me’d been pretty good friends; and then all of a sudden he dropped off, and I heard he was going to marry a girl with a lot of money. Naturally I was wild. And if you can understand what I mean, what made me so wild was thinking about the money. If a boy likes a girl better, he likes her better. But if it’s just for money,—well, I was hot about it.”
“Miss Palliser!”
“Well, dear, I’d never seen you, so it was natural enough. After I’d seen you I thought different—I’m not a fool. And now, as I say, I’ve taken a liking to you, and I’ve a jolly good mind to tell you the whole thing from the beginning.”
“I wish you would,” said Evelyn. “I won’t get you into trouble over it—I won’t indeed.”
“No, you’re not that sort. As a matter of fact, I’ve not done anything to get into trouble over. Still it’s just as well to be on the safe side, so I’ve kept my mouth shut.”
“But you’re going to tell me now?”
Pearl Palliser tipped her chair to and fro.
“All right, I will,” she said. The front legs of the chair came down rather hard. “All right, I’ll tell you the whole thing. It’s a pretty fair old mix up one way and another.” She paused, leaned towards Evelyn with her elbow on her knee, and said in a confidential voice, “Well, dear, it all began when I was seventeen, and I ran away from home to spite my step-mother and married Ted Edwards, that was about the biggest blackguard in London—though naturally I wasn’t to know that. Well, it didn’t take me long to find out—not just how bad he was, but quite enough. I got on at the halls through a friend of his; and I made a hit with a song that I dare say you never heard of—‘Inky, Minky, Dinky Doo.’ Very catchy chorus it had; they were humming it on buses in about a week.”
She jumped up, struck an attitude, and gathering the once pink négligé well above the knee, she pirouetted with astonishing lightness and sang at the top of a loud, rollicking voice:
“Inky, Minky, Dinky Doo,
How I’d like to marry you.
Honey for me, and honey for you,
Inky, Minky, Dinky Doo.”
She plumped, giggling, into her chair again.
“I’d a high kick at the end that brought the house down. You bet I had a good time, and you bet I didn’t cry my eyes out when Ted Edwards got a five years’ stretch for one of his nasty crooked games. He’d have spent all my money if he’d had a chance—spent it on other girls too and beaten me into the bargain. Honest, dear, he was the worst man I’ve ever met, and the only one I’ve ever been afraid of.” She shivered, and a large tear rolled down her cheek, leaving a glistening track in the pink powder.
Evelyn spoke on a quick impulse:
“I’m so sorry.”
“You needn’t be.” Miss Palliser swung round, snatched the powder-puff from the crowded table behind her, and rapidly dabbed her face with it. Then she resumed: “I did have a good time the next six years or so—lots of money, lots of good pals, lots of everything. I was a bit frightened when Ted’s time was up; but he went off to Australia, and never came near me. I couldn’t think why, till I found out quite by accident that there was something much worse against him, and he was afraid of it coming out.” She put her face quite close to Evelyn’s, dropped her voice, and whispered, “Murder.”
“Oh!” Evelyn drew back.
“’M. That’s the sort of man he was. Well, I went on having a good time. And when I hadn’t heard anything of him for three or four years, I made up my mind he was dead, and I married a fellow I’d known before I ran away from home. Albert Laycock his name was, and I’d always had a bit of a fancy for him, if you can understand me. It was soft of me, because I could have done better ten times over. But I fancied Albert. And we got married, and I left the stage and went and lived at Tooting, where he’d a nice little hair-dressing business.” Miss Palliser’s large dark eyes took on a dreamy, sentimental look. “We were very happy,” she said, and another large tear splashed down. She plied the powder-puff vigorously. “I don’t say it’d have lasted—most likely it wouldn’t. Anyhow, after eighteen months I heard a rumour about Ted being alive, and Albert said his conscience wouldn’t let him live with me any longer, as his people were chapel, and he’d been very strictly brought up. That’s what he said; but I’ve always thought he was getting a bit fed up. Anyhow he sold the business and went out to his brother in Ontario, that was always writing and asking him to come. And I went back to the halls. That was—let me see—somewhere about ought-five or ought-six. And I didn’t marry anyone else till Jim Field came along. And when I married him, it was more than seven years since I’d had word of Ted Edwards—and that’d put me right in a court of law any day of the week. Well, dear, I married him on December seven, fourteen; and I used my stage name with my own Christian names stuck in between—Pearl Harriet May Palliser. And I put ‘widow,’ because I hoped I was a widow.” She made a sound between a sob and a laugh. “Oh, Lord, dear, if you’d known Ted Edwards, you’d have hoped so too.”
Evelyn began to see daylight.
“You poor thing,” she said. “And afterwards you found out that your first husband was still alive? Was that it?”
Miss Palliser gulped down her emotion.
“Well, I don’t know about poor thing,” she said frankly. “I liked Jim Field all right, but I wasn’t going to put up with any nonsense from him. And when I found he was going to turn nasty if I said howdydo to anyone else, we had words. So perhaps it was all for the best.” She gave a retrospective sigh, paused, sighed again rather more voluminously, and added, “February it was when I got the letter from the parson in Australia to say that Ted was really dead at last—yes, the last week in February, because Jim had just had his leave and gone out again. The parson gave all particulars, and as luck would have it, it seems Ted died on December the eighth, just the day after I married Jim.”
“Then it wasn’t legal.”
“No, dear, of course it wasn’t. And by that time, I don’t mind saying, it was a bit of a relief. And when Jack Laydon came along a month afterwards, and said, would I marry him, yes or no, I said yes. He didn’t know about Jim of course, and Jim didn’t know about him; and I wasn’t taking any risks this time, so I married him in my proper, legal name as Harriet May Edwards, widow. Of course it was a bit careless to go back to the same registry; but there was such an awful lot of marrying going on, I didn’t think anyone’d notice, what with the name being different and all.”
“You say Jim Field didn’t know,” said Evelyn. “Do you mean he didn’t know that you weren’t legally married to him?”
Miss Palliser heaved an expansive sigh.
“Sounds deceitful, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t meant that way. What I thought was, why, either of ’em might be killed any day, and why not let the poor boys be happy? Jim’d have cut up awful rough if he’d known he’d lost me for good and all. So I thought I’d just wait. And I thought, if he wasn’t killed, there was time enough to tell him, and if he was, I shouldn’t have it on my conscience that I’d thrown him over.”
Evelyn gasped.
“He never knew?”
“No, dear,” said Miss Palliser, “he didn’t. Well then, when he and Jack got killed the same day, of course I had to think about my pension. You see if I claimed as Mrs Jack Laydon, it might have been awkward. There were quite a few of my friends knew I’d married Jim Field, for one thing; and once you get started explaining things, there’s a lot comes out that you’d just as soon didn’t come out. Now, no one knew I’d married Jack Laydon, because we’d kept it precious dark; so I thought, least said, soonest mended, and I put in for my pension as Mrs Jim Field. See, dear?”
Evelyn saw. As stated by Miss Palliser, the transaction appeared quite simple. She struggled to emerge from this odd world in which one married, and un-married, and re-married with such engaging simplicity. That Pearl Palliser’s story was true, she had no doubt. She sat for a while, looking down at her own folded hands and trying to see whether this astonishing story threw any light on the Laydon problem. At last she said, frowning a little,
“Miss Palliser, you haven’t told me one thing—the most important thing of all; you haven’t told me whether you recognized Mr Laydon when he came here the other day.”
Pearl Palliser began to pleat the crumpled folds of pink satin that fell away at her knee.
“Oh, well,” she said.
“You said you’d seen a ghost. Whose ghost did you think it was?”
“Oh, well,” said Miss Palliser again. Then she gave a deep chuckle. “It wouldn’t suit me to have Jack Laydon turn up, would it? I don’t want him now any more than he’d want me. If it comes to that, I don’t want Jim Field either. Why shouldn’t it be the other one—the one you married? Come, that’s an idea! Why shouldn’t it be the other one?”
Evelyn stood up, her hand at her throat, her eyes dark in a white face. Something was shaking her—anger?—fear?—doubt? She tried to speak, and her voice failed.
Pearl Palliser got up too. Her laughter stopped.
“Well, what’s the matter with it?” she said. “Don’t you want him back either? Is that it? It’s a funny world, isn’t it, dear? I expect you cried your eyes out for him ten years ago. I know I did for Jack. And now—well, there it is, we don’t want ’em.”
“Oh,” said Evelyn, “don’t! How can you?”
“Well, there it is,” said Miss Palliser composedly. “You can’t get from it. Ten years ago I wanted a smart young chap to go about with; but nowadays I can’t be bothered. I want someone like the gentleman I told you about—comfortable, you know, and glad to stay at home of an evening.”
“Oh, stop!” said Evelyn desperately. She felt she had had as much as she could bear, but she steadied herself for another effort. “Miss Palliser, can’t you tell me whether you recognized him? Don’t you see it isn’t a question of whether it suits you for him to be Jim Field or Jack Laydon? It’s a question of fact. Did you recognize him? What did he say to you?”
“He said his name was Laydon. And he said Jim Field had told him he’d married me. And he said he’d promised to see after me if anything happened to Jim.”
“Yes?” said Evelyn. “Yes?” The words came quickly, eagerly. “Please, please go on. Oh, please tell me, did you recognize him?”
“Well, I thought I did,” said Pearl Palliser.
XXI
When Evelyn came out of the house where Miss Palliser lodged, she walked quickly to the end of the street, and then stood still for a moment drawing a long breath or two. It was a bitterly cold afternoon, dry now for a little space between showers of icy rain. The cold, cutting wind felt keen and fresh after the cabbage-haunted stair and Miss Palliser’s violently scented room.
Evelyn walked on. She felt battered. She wanted to go home and go to bed; and she remembered with horror that she had promised to dine and dance with Chris Ellerslie. She didn’t want to see Chris or any other human being she knew she wanted to go to bed and lie still in the dark; she wanted to be quiet. She certainly did not want to see Cotty Abbott or his wife; yet, as she turned her own corner, she almost ran into Sophy.
Sophy stopped. Evelyn could do no less.
“Ah!” said Sophy in a tone of satisfaction. “I thought I’d missed you. Now I can just turn and walk back with you. I mustn’t stop of course, but I can just come in and have a quiet talk.”
There was no escape. Sophy always began a visit by saying that she could not possibly stop for more than a moment. She would probably stay for an hour, and then go away offended because she had not been pressed to remain.
The curtains were drawn in Evelyn’s room, and the tea-table stood ready. Sophy Abbott took a cup of tea under protest.
“I really cannot stop. And tea means nothing to me; I never have any appetite. Cotty often says he wonders how I exist. Only this morning at breakfast he said to me, ‘My dear Sophy, you eat nothing, absolutely nothing!’ Oh, no, not any cake, thank you. I never touch cake.”
“Did you want to see me about something?” said Evelyn after a little pause.
“Well, yes, I was particularly anxious to see you. As I said to Cotty, ‘Evelyn should be informed—Evelyn should certainly be informed.’” Here Sophy Abbott absent-mindedly reached out for the piece of cake she had refused, took a mouthful, swallowed it, and added, “At once—without delay.”
“Yes?”
“Cotty agreed with me. And as he was going-down to Laydon to see his uncle, I put all my other engagements aside in order to come and have this talk with you. As Cotty said, neither of us are people who shrink from what they feel to be right.”
Evelyn said, “Oh.”
It was always so very difficult to make suitable responses to Cotty and Sophy. At regular intervals they would pause for a response, and Evelyn always had the feeling that her answers were weighed and found wanting.
“We felt that you should know without delay. My brother Tom thought so too.”
Sophy finished her piece of cake and took a macaroon.
“Yes?” said Evelyn.
“Yesterday,” said Sophy with an air of triumph, “Cotty made a very important discove
ry.”
“But I saw him yesterday.”
“He made the discovery later. He considered that the moment had come for him to take matters out of the detective’s hands. As he said, ‘These people are useful in the early stages of an affair; but when it comes to dealing with really important developments, a higher class of intellect is required.’ My brother Tom agreed with him.”
“Did he?”
“He did—and so did I. I said to him, ‘If you want a thing well done, do it yourself.’”
“What did he do?—Will you have some more tea, Sophy?”
“Well, I oughtn’t to—I don’t usually—in fact I hardly ever touch tea.” She handed her cup to be replenished and took another slice of cake. “All the Mendip-ffollintons have such very small appetites. I remember Sir Archibald Crosby telling my dear mother that he had never in all his long experience come across anyone with so small an appetite. And I remember my dear mother’s answer, though I was only a child at the time. ‘Indeed?’ she said. ‘Am I really so singular, Sir Archibald?’ And Sir Archibald replied, ‘Singular, my dear madam? You are a marvel.’”
Evelyn set down her cup.
“Were you going to tell me something, Sophy?”
Mrs Cotty’s pale, bulging eyes took on a well-known expression. It indicated that the Mendip-ffollinton pride had been subtly offended. After a slight pause, during which she finished her piece of cake and took another macaroon, she said:
“Cotty made a most important discovery. He went himself to see this Palliser woman who was married to Jim Field.”
“What did he discover?”
“Ah!” said Sophy. She held out her cup mechanically for more tea. “Two lumps of sugar, please, Evelyn, and rather less milk. He went himself to see Miss Palliser, and she convinced him beyond all doubt that this so-called Anthony Laydon is nothing in the world but her husband, Tim Field.”
The Amazing Chance Page 15
