Walk with Care

by Patricia Wentworth

  Rosalind caught at his sleeve.

  “Jeremy, give me back that letter! You mustn’t show him that,”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t think you ought to see him at all.” Her hand dragged on his arm. “Jeremy, don’t! Don’t go off in a hurry like this!”

  He said, “Why not?” again. Then, when she did not answer, “Have you got a reason? If you have, don’t you think you’d better tell me what it is?”

  She let go of him suddenly and sat down again, leaning on the end of the sofa. He heard her murmur,

  “Wait—wait! You’re in such a hurry.”

  He let her have a moment. Then he said,

  “I am waiting—for your reason.”

  She spoke from behind a screening hand.

  “Jeremy, I’m so tired—I can’t think clearly—but I don’t think it’s safe—”

  “Why?”

  She said, “Frank—” and then stopped in distress.

  “Well?”

  “He—he thinks—you—”

  A bright angry look came into Jeremy’s eyes.

  “He’s been warning you against me. Is that it?”

  Rosalind’s hand dropped. She really looked worn out.

  “Don’t be angry, Jeremy—I don’t think I can bear it.”

  “But he did warn you against me? Was that why you were being a polite stranger on Sunday?” He turned. “I’d better go.”

  Oddly in Rosalind’s mind there rose the feeling that if he left her, she would be desolate indeed. And she had told Perry that he would stay. She had no strength in her to meet Perry’s disapproval. She called him faintly.

  “Oh, Jeremy, don’t go!”

  He came back. He was still angry. He still felt a great deal older than Rosalind. He stood there and lectured her in a way that would have surprised him yesterday.

  “What’s the matter with you is that you don’t trust people. You’ve known me pretty well for the last three years, but you’re ready to believe I’m the lowest sort of a swine of a blackmailer, and—” he checked for a moment, but his anger carried him through—“you funked my showing that letter to Benbow Smith because you were not really sure that Gilbert didn’t write it.”

  When he had said it, he was afraid. He expected her to be angry. He wouldn’t have minded if she had been angry. Instead, she turned a beaten, heart-sick look upon him and said,

  “Yes.”

  All Jeremy’s anger went out of him. He felt as if he had struck someone who was too badly hurt to hit back. He knelt by her and kissed her hand.

  “Rosalind—don’t!”

  “It’s true. I’m like that. You know, Gilbert was being blackmailed. I heard something one day when he was telephoning. Frank Garrett asked me about it the other day—he said didn’t I notice Gilbert was worried. I said yes, and I told him that he was being blackmailed. He said didn’t I ask him about it, and I made up an answer, but the real reason—Jeremy, the real reason was because I was afraid. If Gilbert had done anything, I didn’t want to know. I was sick with terror lest he should tell me—I wouldn’t be alone with him if I could help it. I filled the house with people—we hardly ever saw each other—because I was afraid. If I had let him tell me—perhaps—he wouldn’t have died.”

  Jeremy did not kiss her hand again, but he held it very hard. She went on speaking in a soft heart-broken voice.

  “Frank said not to trust you, and that medium woman said so too. I don’t believe them, but I kept hearing what they said in my mind. I’ve been just as fond of you as if you were my brother, but I began to—wonder—” She threw up her head and dragged her hand away. “You see, you were right—I can’t—trust properly.” Her voice became quite quiet and steady. She said, “I killed Gilbert. If I’d trusted him, he’d be alive.”

  Jeremy got up.

  “You don’t know that. He’d hate you to say it. We’ve got to do the best we can now. I’m sorry I said what I did.”

  Rosalind smiled at him faintly.

  “Don’t be sorry, Jeremy—it’s done me good.”

  He crossed the room with a purposeful air.

  “Then I’ll just ring up Mr Smith.”

  Rosalind’s lips parted and closed again. Her hand went out in a nervous gesture and fell as if by its own weight. She was too tired to struggle any more. She felt ineffectual and ashamed. She had failed Gilbert once. If she were to call Jeremy back, perhaps she would be failing him again. She leaned back in the sofa corner and listened to Jeremy speaking.

  “Hullo!” And then, “Can I speak to Mr Smith? … Yes, just for a moment … Mr Ware …”

  There was a pause. Her heart began to beat with fear. Why had she let him telephone? Why hadn’t she called to him? Was it too late? The old sickening doubts came whispering back. Then he was speaking again.

  “I’m awfully sorry to bother you, sir. I’m afraid you were having dinner. I wanted to ask if I might come and see you. I hope you won’t think I’m taking advantage of your kindness—” A pause. … “That’s most awfully good of you, sir—” Another pause. … “Yes, it is rather urgent. May I bring Mrs Denny with me? … Yes, Gilbert Denny’s wife. You spoke of him the other day. We’re both concerned. I’d like her to be there if you don’t mind. … Thank you, sir, that’s very good of you. In an hour from now.”

  At the first mention of her name Rosalind sat up, her cheeks burning. Then, with his next words, everything changed. It was the strangest thing that three words should make such a difference. When Jeremy said “Gilbert Denny’s wife,” it was just as if he had opened a door and pushed her gently through it into the old happy time before things began to go wrong. There wasn’t anyone in the world except Jeremy who would have called her Gilbert’s wife; to everyone else she was Gilbert’s widow. For the first time since her conversation with Garrett she felt sure about Jeremy.

  He hung up the receiver, and in the hall Perry rang the dinner bell.

  CHAPTER XXI

  “YES,” SAID MR SMITH—“er—yes.” He broke a silence that had lasted for some little time.

  A pleasant mellow light filled the room. A pleasant fire burned on the hearth. Ananias had retired into his sleeping-apartment and snored tranquilly under a green baize shroud. Mr Smith sat in his usual chair facing the fire. A little to his left, in the other large chair, was Rosalind Denny. The white fur coat which she had only just discarded trailed across the arm. Jeremy stood looking down on them with his shoulders against the mantelpiece. He spoke now, rather quickly and with a forward thrust of the chin.

  “I told you it was an impossible sort of story to believe.”

  One of Mr Smith’s long decorative hands was propping his head. He made a slight gesture with the other.

  “Not at all,” he said with vague politeness.

  Jeremy’s black eyebrows twitched.

  “I didn’t realize just how impossible it was until I heard myself paying it out. The only thing is, sir—if I was inventing it, I do believe I’d have produced something a bit more credible.”

  “That,” said Mr Smith gravely, “is a point.”

  Rosalind said nothing. Her arms lay along the arms of the chair, white smooth arms coming out of sleeves that were like black wings, her head against the dark leather, her hair shining under the light, her lids half closed.

  “Well?” said Jeremy.

  Mr Smith leaned back and folded his hands. He gazed meditatively at the topmost row of books to the left of the fireplace.

  “Let us,” he said, “get down to the—er—bare bones of these impossibilities. I like my impossibilities in the nude. Truth, as you will remember, came naked out of her well. If she had been a skeleton, it would have been a loss no doubt to Art, but the earnest seeker would at least have been sure that there were no more blinding veils. That, of course, is a digression. I should—er—like
to ask some questions.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Mr Smith nodded.

  “Better take the episodes in order. Episode one. … You enter Mr Mannister’s house by the scullery window because, in the middle of having supper with Mrs Denny, you remember that you have left some work unfinished. Did you—er—mention this to Mrs Denny at the time?”

  “Yes,” said Rosalind, “he did.”

  “That might have been a blind,” said Jeremy.

  “Er—yes—the point had not escaped me. Well, you did enter the house. Whilst you were at work in the library you saw what you at first took to be a ghost, but which in the light of—er—later events appears to have been a young lady walking in her sleep. You followed her down into some very ancient and interesting cellars, where she disappeared. This, I suppose, explains your interest in the early topography of Marsh Street and its surroundings. The—er—cellars would be the original cellars of the Golden Lyon. Now have you any clear idea of just where the lady disappeared?” Jeremy produced an envelope and a pencil, drew a few quick lines, and came round to the side of Mr Smith’s chair.

  “It’s like this, sir. Here’s Marsh Street, and here’s Tilt Street running in at right angles. Mannister’s house is on the corner and takes up about sixty feet of Tilt Street as well as the Marsh Street frontage. That blob is where the stair goes down to the cellar. The vaulted bit, which is really a sort of hall, is under the kitchen and hall of the house with doors opening off it. Then there’s a passage which runs along under the back of the house. It’s walled up here on the Marsh Street side, but on the other side it turns at right angles and runs along under Tilt Street. There are cellars opening off it, and one right at the end. Rachel went into the one at the end. By the time I got there, there wasn’t any sign of her. I’ve been back since with an electric lamp, and if there’s an opening, I can’t find it. The walls and the floor are solid stone blocks.”

  “But if there were an opening, it would be into the cellars of some house in Tilt Street?”

  “Number One Tilt Street,” said Jeremy with his pencil on the paper at the spot where the side wall of Mannister’s house ended.

  Rosalind’s eyelids lifted for a moment. Jeremy was stooping over the arm of Mr Smith’s chair. Both men were looking at the envelope which Mr Smith was holding. Rosalind looked too. Her eyes were bright and startled. A shadow flickered across the brightness, and the lids fell again.

  “And who lives at Number One Tilt Street?” said Mr Smith.

  “The name in the directory is Dart—Miss P. Dart.”

  Rosalind’s hands had contracted stiffly. The edge of the chair cut her palms, but she felt nothing until afterwards. She only knew a violent dread of hearing Asphodel’s name, and an equally violent relief when it did not come. Her grip relaxed, and in a moment she was wondering whether Miss P. Dart was Phoebe who had let her in, and why the house should be in her name and not in Asphodel’s. She had missed something that had been said. Jeremy was going back to the hearth. She caught Mr Smith’s eyes upon him in a regard that puzzled her, but by the time Jeremy turned, the dreamy gaze had once more lifted to the cornice.

  “Episode number two,” said Mr Smith. … “This—er—includes a number of very important points. I want to be sure that I’ve got the chronology right. You will—er—correct me if I am wrong. … On Saturday at midday Mr Mannister received an important foreign letter in a blue envelope. He went out of his way to tell you how important it was before he gave it to you to lock up in the safe. Now was that the last time the safe was opened?”

  Jeremy spoke, frowning deeply.

  “No—he sent me to the safe just before he told me to go off duty. He wanted a letter out of the Geneva bundle. The blue envelope letter was right in front of the same shelf—one end was touching the Geneva pile. I had to lift it to get the letter Mannister wanted.”

  “And you put it back again?”

  “I certainly put it back again.”

  “In the same position?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was Mr Mannister watching you?”

  Jeremy took a moment.

  “No, he wasn’t—he had his back to me.”

  “So you had the opportunity of—er—removing the letter in the blue envelope?”

  “I had the opportunity,” said Jeremy soberly.

  Mr Smith’s gaze passed vaguely over him for a moment and then returned to the top row of books.

  “Let us—er—continue. … You gave the key of the safe back to Mr Mannister. You did do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “He then left the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time was that?”

  “It was after four.”

  “Was he on foot, or in a taxi?”

  “He had ordered a taxi. I saw him drive off. He was catching the four twenty-five to Bournemouth. He must have caught it, or he wouldn’t have been in time for his meeting. He certainly addressed the meeting, because it was reported in all the papers.”

  “Yet at something after midnight your ghost reappeared with the key of the safe. The safe was discovered to be open and the letter in the blue envelope no longer where you had left it, but locked in the bottom drawer of your own writing-table.”

  “Yes,” said Jeremy again. There was an obstinate note in his voice. He was thinking that he had had a nerve to come here with a story like that.

  “You cannot account for this?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, well—we are going a little too fast,” said Mr Smith. “Chronology is not—er—my strongest point. Events present themselves to me in—er—groups rather than in sequences. We have omitted to deal with episode number three. … Let us return to the moment before midnight on Saturday when a piece of paper fell out of one of Mr Mannister’s books and you discovered that someone had written your signature all over it. I—er—have your assurance that it was not you.”

  “I don’t think my assurance would go very far with a jury,” said Jeremy in rather a grim tone of voice.

  “Perhaps not,” said Mr Smith mildly. “May I ask why you should picture yourself confronting a jury?”

  Rosalind’s eyelids lifted. Her eyes went from one to the other in a questioning look. Her breath came a little faster.

  Jeremy’s head went up with a jerk.

  “Well, sir, either I’m a liar, or else someone is trying to land me in the devil of a mess. I don’t know why anyone should try to forge my name, but I’ll swear I didn’t write those signatures.”

  “Have you—er—had your pass-book lately?”

  Jeremy gave a quick half laugh.

  “I’ve only had a banking account for about a fortnight.” He laughed again. “It’s really funny to think of anyone picking out my name to forge. I opened my account with twenty pounds out of the post-office savings bank—and I only did that because Mannister paid me with a crossed cheque and was absolutely horrified when I said I hadn’t got an account.”

  “That,” said Mr Smith, “is very interesting. Let me urge you very strongly to go through your pass-book. I do not think you should lose any time in doing so.”

  He paused and slightly shifted in his chair. “We will now go on to episode number four and the young lady who on this occasion not only walked, but talked, in her sleep. … Now you are convinced that she really was asleep?”

  Jeremy said, “Yes.” He spoke without hesitation and with a conviction that produced its effect.

  “Why?” said Mr Smith.

  “She didn’t know me when I spoke to her in the Park. She didn’t know that she’d ever seen me before. As soon as I told her my name she was terrified. You were watching us, sir. Couldn’t you see how frightened she was?”

  Mr Smith nodded.

  “That is a good point. But that came afterwards. Were you convi
nced at the time—and if so, why?”

  Jeremy frowned with a quick contraction of the brows which meant the effort to get thought into words.

  “I was convinced all right,” he said. “Anyone would have been if they’d seen her. She—wasn’t there at all. I could see her, and I could touch her, but she wasn’t there. You could see that she was in some kind of a dream—tremendously taken up with it—and when she said my name, it didn’t seem to have anything to do with me at all—not with the me who was standing there watching her, if you know what I mean.”

  “Er—yes—I think I do,” said Mr Smith. “Well then, you are sure that she was asleep. And in her sleep she talked. Now I think we might—er—tabulate the information to be extracted from what she said. You may, perhaps, care to write it down. There is paper on that bureau.”

  Jeremy came back with a block. He took a chair and leaned forward to write upon his knee.

  Rosalind was so still that she might have been asleep—a pale sleeping woman in a black dress, with a crown of shining hair.

  “Are you ready?” said Mr Smith. …

  “1. She knew your name.

  “2. She stated that the safe was open. She said, ‘He has left it open.’

  “3. Having quoted an unnamed he, she now quotes an unnamed she, her next remarks being, ‘She said, leave it open. Put the letter there and leave it open. You can say he pretended to lock it and left it open. He left it open. He’ll say Jeremy Ware took it.’

  “4. She stated that the safe was open and the paper gone.

  “5. She produced the key of the safe. You had by this time discovered that the safe really was open, and that the letter in the blue envelope was no longer where you had left it when you locked the safe and gave Mr Mannister the key at a little after four o’clock. Upon this, you asked her where the letter was, and without answering you directly she gave you this information.

  “6. She stated that the letter was in Jeremy’s drawer. She said, ‘They’ll find it there. He said so.’

  “You did find the letter, and put it back in the safe, after which she locked it and went away. Now have you any idea to whom she was referring when she quoted: ‘She said’?”