Flossie caught hold of Ernie, not because he was Ernie, but because he was there. She hadn’t ever fainted, but she felt as if she were going to faint. She heard Aunt say, “She isn’t dead!” And then Syd had tumbled into a chair and was sitting with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands and saying,
“They don’t know whether she’ll get over it. Mrs Hodge doesn’t think she will.” He began to cry in a gentle girlish way. “She’s got a knock on the head and she was nearly drowned. And the police have been asking where Billy was. Isn’t it dreadful? Poor Ivy, I always liked her. Mrs Hodge says she won’t ever get over it.”
Mrs Palmer bent over him, patting a heaving shoulder.
“Now, Syd, don’t you take on so. And don’t you talk to me about Mrs Hodge. Makes up her mind to the worst before anything’s happened—that’s Mrs Hodge. I haven’t patience! Where’s Ivy? In hospital? Then you’ll see she’ll be all right. Flossie, don’t you stand there holding on to Mr Bowden like that! It’s what I call right down forward. Now, Syd, Mother will make you a nice cup of tea and you’ll be quite all right.”
She went out to fill the kettle.
Syd pushed back his long fair hair and looked tearfully at Flossie.
“Isn’t it dreadful, Floss?” he said with a catch in his voice.
“Suppose it had been me,” said Flossie in a sort of horrified whisper.
CHAPTER VIII
Miles Clayton put two advertisements in the papers and sat down to wait for possible answers.
Mrs Agnes Smith, formerly of Laburnum Vale, Hampstead, believed to have married again, and Ada—, formerly in service with the above, were requested to communicate with M. C. Box 150.
The advertisements came out on Tuesday. On Wednesday Gilmore took him to dine with his brother Freddy and his brother Freddy’s pretty new wife. Miles and the two Gilmores had been at school together. He found Mrs Freddy an engaging child of nature with a rolling blue eye and an amazing collection of other people’s confidences. She retailed them with extreme candour and a wealth of sympathy. Miles liked her, but couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before she landed Freddy head over ears in a libel action.
They had a pleasant little dinner, perfectly cooked and deftly served by two very decorative maids in scarlet. The table and chairs were of glass, semi-opaque and icy looking, with a concession to the climate in the shape of scarlet velvet cushions to the backless chairs. Floor, ceiling, and walls were a dull, lustreless black against which Mrs Freddy’s lacquered gold hair and alabaster skin, her scarlet mouth and finger-nails, were all most flatteringly relieved. She looked like a poet’s dream of a poster, and talked like the gossip page of a Society paper. It was quite entertaining.
The prettier of the scarlet maids was filling his glass, when Mrs Freddy, with both elbows on the table and a cigarette lightly diffusing smoke over an already sufficiently flavoured omelette, addressed him in a low pulsing voice as “Darling Miles.”
Flossie Palmer so nearly said “Coo!” that she turned hot and cold and her knees shook under her. With great self-control she kept her hand steady and filled the glass without spilling a drop.
“Darling Miles,” said Mrs Freddy—“you’ve been too utterly exiled, but I thought everyone must have heard about Moldavia and the Grand Duke. He’s one of my very greatest friends, and he told me he had practically ruined himself buying her the Ethnovinsky pearls. Fancy being able to feel you were going about with a man’s whole fortune round your neck! Too marvellous! Freddy, my sweet, won’t you ruin yourself—just to give me the thrill of feeling you cared enough to do it?”
Freddy, a cheerful thick-set young man with steady good-natured eyes, kissed his hand to her across the table.
“Nothing doing, darling.”
The blue eyes rolled mournfully.
“He hasn’t got any soul,” she said. She puffed at her cigarette and the ash fell into her plate. “If anyone does want to ruin themselves for me, let it be black pearls—that’s all I ask. Too marvellous on my skin, wouldn’t they be? A long rope, you know, hanging down over something very filmy—not quite white—something like what I’ve got on.”
“Miles is looking for a string of black pearls,” said the elder Gilmore with a sardonic gleam in his eye. “If he gets them, you can vamp him for them, or steal them and put up Freddy to take the blame. I daresay he’d go to prison for you at a pinch. Lila.”
The blue eyes rolled again.
“Would you, my sweet?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Freddy. “So you’d better not try it on, darling.”
Lila Gilmore turned her attention to Miles.
“You know, when Narina Littlecote sold her sister-in-law’s rubies, there was a most terrible fuss. Narina told me all about it afterwards. She said no one had any idea how unkind Victoria had been. She said if it had been her, she’d have been only too glad to think the wretched things were being some use instead of just lying in a safe. Because you know, my dear, really they were too archaic—an absolutely pre-Edwardian necklace, with great vulgar lumps of stones plastered on with diamonds. And to think of Victoria ever wearing it positively made one blush. Well, as Narina said, it really was doing her a kindness—and Victoria was downright disagreeable about it. Why are you looking for a string of black pearls? What are you going to do with them when you’ve found them? You know, if you haven’t got the right skin for pearls, they make you look too, too repellent.”
“I wasn’t thinking of wearing them myself,” said Miles, laughing.
“Darling Miles, you’d look sweet! Perhaps just a shade too bronzed, but I expect you had a quite too marvellous complexion when you were a baby. Tell me all about the pearls. Ian and Freddy can talk to each other. Is it a real string? Has it been stolen? Are you being Miles Clayton, the marvellous sleuth? Pearls are the hardest things to trace of all. Do you know how many there are?”
As it happened Miles did know. Both Marion Macintyre’s women friends had been able to tell him the number of pearls in that envied rope. He ignored the other questions and said,
“Three hundred.”
Lila drew an ecstatic breath.
“Casilda only has two hundred in hers! Three hundred would go at least twice round and hang right down! Wouldn’t I look marvellous in them? Darling Miles, if I were to be frightfully nice to you, would you give them to me?”
“I haven’t found them yet,” said Miles. “And as they were stolen twenty years ago, I don’t suppose I ever shall—and if I do, they won’t be mine.”
Lila sighed.
“And most likely some frightful old hag with a yellow neck is wearing them, and looking too foul for words.” She took another little puff at her cigarette and some more ash fell.
Freddy burst out laughing.
“Did you ever see anyone smoke like Lila?” he said. “You know, darling, I don’t know why you do it. You hate the taste, you make silly little puffs, and you cover everything with ash.”
Lila nodded mournfully.
“But Fitz gave me such a pet of a holder for Christmas—I’ve just got to use it, my sweet. Fitz would be most awfully hurt if I didn’t.”
They played bridge after dinner. Flossie Palmer, looking across at Miles as she helped the parlour-maid to set out drinks, thought him “ever so nice.” She was now quite certain that he was the Mr Miles whom she had snuggled up to in the fog on the Embankment. It gave her a most romantic secret thrill to think she had leaned her head upon his shoulder. She’d pinched his arm too, good and hard. A shiver went over her. She let two glasses touch one another with a sharp ringing sound. The parlour-maid nudged her, and her colour rose.
Miles, suddenly aware of her gaze, thought what a pretty girl she was. She looked quickly away, her heart thumping. He was the only person in the whole world who knew just what had happened to her at No. 16 Varley Street. He was the only person she could talk to about it. And she must talk to him—oh, she must. Ever since she had heard about Ivy she had
had the most awful sick feeling of fear. She didn’t believe that Billy had pushed Ivy into the river, and she didn’t believe that Ivy had thrown herself in. Ivy wasn’t the sort of girl to throw herself into a river, not if it was ever so. And she’d no reason neither, because she and Billy had made it up, and the day fixed and all. No, Ivy had been pushed. And Billy couldn’t have pushed her, because he was over with his brother in Bermondsey, and lucky for him there were plenty to swear to it.
She shivered again. If she could talk to Mr Miles, she might get it out of her head that Ivy had been pushed because she, Flossie, had gone to 16 Varley Street as Ivy Hodge and seen what she hadn’t been meant to see. Another glass clinked. She was glad to get out of the room.
“My! You were clumsy with those glasses!” said the parlour-maid. “What are you shivering for? Hot as hot, I call it. I don’t know how she stands it. But there—she doesn’t wear anything under those evening dresses of hers—not a stitch of any sort or kind, if you’ll believe me. It’s not what I call nice, myself.”
The bridge was rather inconsequent, because Lila talked all the time. She had an artless way of looking over Freddy’s hand and commenting on what she saw there, and she was also very generous in imparting information about her own.
“Oh, my poor sweet—what a perfectly foul hand! Only two court cards! I do wish I could give you some of mine—I’m simply stiff with them! Now, if you had my ace and king of hearts—Ian darling, talking of hearts, have you heard the latest about Posh Winterbotham? He really has broken off with that Margarita woman at last, and she’s bringing an action for breach of promise against him. She must have the most positively iron nerve!”
It was during the fourth rubber that Fitz cropped up again, a drop in the incessant spray of Lila’s conversaversation.
“Fitz says—”
And then all of a sudden Ian Gilmore was asking rather abruptly, “What’s all this, Lila?”
Miles was dealing. He and Freddy had been talking, and then Freddy had cut to him and he had started to deal. He looked up from the cards when Ian spoke and the thought went through his mind, “What’s up with Gil?”
Lila looked a little hurt.
“Darling Ian! Everybody’s talking about it! Fitz says it’s what he calls a hang-over from the Vulture affair!—Miles darling, you simply must listen, because if you’re aiming at being a sleuth, it’s all in your line and really too intriguing—Fitz says the Vulture was the most marvellous super-crook with irons in the fire all over the place, and when he was killed it was the most shattering blow, but the organization’s been pulling itself together again, and they think they’ve got a new head, and the American government and the French government—”
Ian Gilmore hacked his brother Freddy sharply on the left shin bone, whilst at the same moment he interrupted Lila.
“When you say the French government, which of them do you actually mean? They’ve had seven in the last two years.”
Freddy took his kick like a man. Without any change in his agreeable expression, he said,
“I say, are we playing bridge, or aren’t we? I don’t mind, but I should just like to know. I say, darling, I suppose you know that your nose is all shiny at the corners?”
Lila gave a low heart-felt cry of “Oh, Freddy—you beast!”, tore open a gold vanity-case, gazed earnestly into a little round mirror, and began to apply first aid to the maligned feature.
Freddy proceeded to drive the insult home.
“I can’t see how you can expect not to go shiny when the room’s as hot as this—and you know you made me swear to tell you.”
Lila blew him a kiss with her lipstick. Having restored her nose, she was now reinforcing the scarlet of her mouth.
“Darling sweet, you haven’t any tact. Miles darling, when you do get married, you just remember this—all any girl wants is to be told she’s looking perfectly marvellous at least a dozen times a day. Freddy’s no good at it at all, and if I didn’t love him to distraction, I’d divorce him to-morrow. You know, that’s why the Poker-Pockington menage broke up. Sally said if she went on much longer with Poker looking at her as if she was his grandmother’s chest of drawers or any other old bit of Victorian furniture, and never noticing whether she’d got her hair on or off, or whether she was red, or black, or platinum—well, she might as well be a bit of furniture. So she took up flying—”
“Are we playing bridge?” said Freddy.
They finished the rubber, and the party broke up.
Ian Gilmore came down the stairs with Miles, but just short of the hall he said abruptly,
“There’s something I want to see Freddy about. I’ll say good night.” After which he let Miles out and went upstairs again.
CHAPTER IX
Miles came out upon a dark, damp street. It had been raining, and it was probably going to rain again, but at the moment no actual rain was falling. The air was still, and it was much warmer than it had been some hours ago.
The Gilmore’s house was about half way between two lamp-posts. Miles turned to the left and walked towards the pool of yellow light which surrounded the next lamp. He had reached and crossed it, when he heard the sound of footsteps behind him. They were light, hurrying footsteps. They came up behind him, and as they drew level, a voice called his name—a breathless voice which matched the hurrying steps.
“Mr Miles—”
Miles stopped dead. It was a girl’s voice—and, by gum, it was the girl’s voice! The girl in the fog. The girl who had sobbed on his shoulder and pitched him a tale about a head, and a hole in the wall. He said “Well, well,” and turned round to have a look at her. He hadn’t seen her at all in the fog, and he couldn’t see much more of her now—just a dark blur, and something that looked like a raincoat. She stopped about a yard away, and he said,
“Hullo, Flossie!”
“Oh, Mr Miles!” said Flossie in a breathless voice.
“We do seem to meet—don’t we?” said Miles cheerfully.
“Oh, Mr Miles—I just had to come after you! Did you reckernize me?”
“I knew your voice. I’m very good at knowing voices. But I don’t see how you knew me.”
Flossie giggled.
“It was when she said ‘Miles darling.’” She giggled again.
Miles clasped his brow.
“I say, do you mind telling me what you’re talking about?”
“Coo!” said Flossie. “Then you didn’t reckernize me. I thought you didn’t. Of course you was talking and I wasn’t, so I had a better chance, as you may say.”
“You know, you’re right up over my head. You’ve got to make it easier. I’m no earthly good at cross-words.”
Flossie gave another giggle.
“Coo, Mr Miles! And I saw you looking at me too!”
“Where? Hand out the clues.”
“At Mrs Gilmore’s where you’ve just come away from. I got a place there—housemaid, and help in the dining-room when there’s company.”
Light flowed in on Miles.
“Were you the pretty one?”
“Ooh—Mr Miles! You’d better not let Gladys hear that! She’s not a bad sort, but she does fancy herself, and of course it isn’t everybody likes fair hair best.”
She was the pretty one. He said aloud,
“All right, I’ve got you placed. And now what can I do for you?”
“Well—” Flossie hesitated. “Mr Miles, I don’t want you to think bad of me. I’m not the sort of girl that runs after young men, and I’ve got my boy friend I told you about, Ernie Bowden, and next door to being engaged, so I don’t want you to think—” There was a ring of honest distress in her voice.
Miles felt a good deal relieved and just a little disappointed.
“I’m not thinking anything, Flossie—honest I’m not.”
She came a little nearer.
“Mr Miles, I’m frightened.”
An odd sort of thrill went through him at the words. It was as if they roused an echo in
him. It was a quite momentary but very odd feeling. He said,
“What are you frightened of?”
“I didn’t tell Aunt nor anyone,” said Flossie in a low hurrying voice. “You know—what I told you down on the Embankment. I don’t know why I told you, but I just had to tell someone, and I never thought I’d come acrost you again. And then when I got home, it took me the other way. It didn’t seem as if I could tell Aunt, or Ernie, or anyone. For one thing, Aunt’d never have let me hear the last of my being out all night, and for another, she’d have gone round straight away to 16 Varley Street and wanted to know all about it, so I dursn’t.”
He got the thrill of her fear again. There was no manner of doubt about it, she was frightened.
“Well, if you feel like that—I mean if you think there’s something really wrong about the house—why don’t you go to the police and tell them just what you told me?”
Flossie caught at his wrist with both hands.
“Mr Miles, for Gawd’s sake don’t you go bringing the police into it! You got to give me your word of honour you won’t—reelly!”
“All right, all right, there’s no need to get in such a flap over it. I’m not going to do anything. All the same—look here, why are you so afraid of going to the police?”
There was a cool, detached moment in which he considered the possibility that she was afraid of going to the police because she had been romancing and he had called her bluff. It was such an unbelievable tale.
Flossie had very strong little hands. They closed on his wrist and shook it.
“You’re not to do it! You’re not to go to the police, and you’re not to try and make me go neither!”
“All right, easy on—I said I wouldn’t. I’m only asking why.”
Flossie stopped shaking him, but she still held his wrist. She held it very tight indeed, and her hands were very cold. She said in a different voice, low and shivery,
“Because I don’t want to go in the river like Ivy.”
The shiver ran down his back.
“Flossie, what on earth do you mean?”
She said still lower, “Ivy went in the river. Ooh, Mr Miles—she did!”
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