“Oh no—I couldn’t! And it’s not at all a bad place—really it isn’t.”
He could not shake her. She stuck to it that the place was all right. He elicited that she slept in the basement, and that Mrs Green slept there too. Mrs Green sounded respectable and good-natured. The house, as described by Kay, sounded as dull and respectable as any house in London. An invalid old lady—a hospital nurse—a cook who had been there for years—the ordinary routine of such a household. But it was from this house that Flossie Palmer had run out into the fog shaken with terror because she had seen a hole in the wall, and the head of a wounded man, and cruel eyes watching her.
Kay slipped her arm through his again.
“You know, Miles, we really were talking about Aunt Rhoda. I don’t know how we got off on to me, and it’s no use, so let’s go back. I was just going to tell you something when you switched off like that—something—well, something very odd, Miles.”
“About Mrs Moore?”
“Yes, about Aunt Rhoda. But I want to ask you something first.”
Miles gave up for the moment. He wasn’t going to give up altogether and she needn’t think it, but just for the moment he didn’t mind talking about Aunt Rhoda again, especially if Kay had something to tell him. He said,
“Go ahead.”
“Well, this girl Flossie—what did you say her surname was?”
“Palmer.”
“I thought so. And her mother? I mean the woman who adopted her. Do you know what her name was—her Christian name?”
“Florence. She was called Flo—Flo Palmer.”
He felt her squeeze his arm.
“Oh, Miles!”
“What is it? You don’t mean to say—”
“Yes, I do—Miles, I do! Aunt Rhoda said it.”
“Said Flo Palmer’s name? To you?”
They stood still in the dark between the lamps. She clasped his arm tightly.
“Not to me—not to anyone. It was when she was ill, before she died. I don’t think she knew what she was saying.”
“And she talked about Flo Palmer? Will you tell me just what she said? The exact words, if you can remember them.”
“Yes, I can. It’s very little. You see, she was talking all the time, only you couldn’t make out the words. And then all at once she said quite clearly, ‘Tell Flo Palmer.’ And then she seemed to wake up. I was sitting there, and she looked at me and asked for something to drink, and while I was getting it she said, ‘What did I say just now?’ So I told her, and she said, ‘Flo’s dead. I don’t know what’s happened to the child. It doesn’t matter—I’ve got you.’ Then she drank some milk, and she asked me to promise not to leave her.”
“Kay, you’re sure she said that?”
“Quite sure.”
He felt her tremble a little against him.
“Because if you’re sure, it means that Flo Palmer did get Flossie from your aunt. It means—Kay, I don’t know what it might mean. I must go home and try and sort it all out.”
The clock in the church tower of St Barnabas’ struck with three heavy strokes. Kay started.
“That’s a quarter to ten!”
“Well, you needn’t be in till ten—you said so.”
“I’ve got to put my cap and apron on again and be ready to take up the old lady’s Benger. Oh, Miles, listen! What’s that?”
It was a faint mewing sound somewhere in the darkness. Kay called “Kitty—Kitty!” and in a moment something warm and soft brushed against her ankles. She stooped and picked up a small wailing kitten.
“Miles—look! No, you can’t look here. Come down to the lamp. It’s the dearest little soft thing. Feel it! And the milkman was telling us about it this morning. The people at No. 10 have just turned it out. Isn’t it a shame? And Mrs Green said if it came to us, she’d take it in because the mice are dreadful. But the milkman said it was so wild it wouldn’t let anyone catch it. But it came to me at once—didn’t you, Kitty? Look—isn’t it a darling?”
She stopped under the lamp and showed him a little grey ball of fur cuddled up against her cheek.
“Miles, it’s purring. Listen! Will you come home with me, Kitty, and have bread and milk and a lovely smell of mouse? Oh, Miles, you don’t know how our basement smells of mice! And Mrs Green says there are rats in the cellar, but I hope it’s not true. She never goes down there, and she says they don’t come up, so I don’t see how she can possibly know—do you? Miles, I must run!”
He held her. Under the misty light with the kitten against her cheek she was the sweetest thing in the world. It was monstrous to have to let her go back to that house again.
“Kay—meet me to-morrow!”
“I can’t.”
“You’ve got a most damnable habit of saying you can’t. You said you couldn’t to-night, but you did. I’ll be up at the corner of the Square at nine o’clock, and if you’re more than five minutes late, I shall come and fetch you.”
“Oh, Miles!”
“Oh, Kay!” said Miles. Then he put his arm round her shoulders and gave her something between a hug and a shake.
She laughed, a little soft, shaky laugh, and ran away. The lamp under which they had been standing was the next one beyond the corner of Varley Street. He watched her cross the patch of light at the corner still holding the kitten with both hands. Then he lost her in the shadows.
CHAPTER XIX
Miles went back to his hotel and got down to sorting things out. He took a block and a fountain pen, and wrote:
Mrs Syme:—
Was Mrs Agnes Smith, in whose house the Macintyre baby was born, July 1914.
Says Mrs Macintyre’s sister paid all expenses and removed baby, also all Mrs Macintyre’s belongings.
Says she has no idea where she went or what she did with them.
N.B. There is no sister.
Further, Mrs Syme says Flossie Palmer isn’t her niece. Says Flo Palmer adopted her.
Declines to say any more.
Very disagreeable person.
Mrs Palmer:—
Serious, formidable person. Conscientious. Fond of Flossie.
Very angry with Mrs Syme for letting out that Flossie is an adopted child. Flossie doesn’t know.
Flo Palmer got Flossie from a Mrs Moore in July 1915. She had just lost her husband and a baby aged six months. Flossie was about a year old.
Kay:—
Says her aunt, Rhoda Moore, spoke about Flo Palmer when she was dying. Actual words, in semi-conscious state: “Tell Flo Palmer.” Then, after rousing; “What did I say just now?” and, “Flo’s dead. I don’t know what’s happened to the child. It doesn’t matter—I’ve got you” (Meaning Kay)
N.B. Ask Kay if she knows anything about her aunt having charge of any other child or children. Also her exact relationship to Mrs Moore.
He stopped and read the notes through.
Well, he had here four different women—Mrs Syme, formerly Agnes Smith; her sister, Flo Palmer; Flo’s sister-in-law, Mrs Palmer; and Kay’s aunt, Rhoda Moore. Flo Palmer linked the other three together. She kept turning up. That was the thing that struck him very forcibly—the way Flo Palmer kept on cropping up. He wondered whether the sister-in-law had told him all she knew. He didn’t think so. He had come away from her, as he had come away from Mrs Syme, with the feeling that a door had been shut in his face. Behind Mrs Syme’s door there might be some criminal knowledge. He wasn’t sure. She might have invented Mrs Macintyre’s sister, disposed of the jewels, and farmed the baby out. Flo Palmer might have aided and abetted, and after the loss of her own child she might have adopted the baby, in which case Flossie was the Macintyre heiress. The thought tickled him a good deal. But it was the purest supposition. Flo Palmer was dead, and Rhoda Moore was dead—the woman who had adopted the child, and the woman from whom it had been adopted. That meant that the two middle links in the chain were gone. There remained at the one end of it Mrs Syme, and at the other Mrs Palmer. Mrs Syme would not incriminate herse
lf, and Mrs Palmer struck him as being the sort of person whose motto would be “Least said, soonest mended.” He had certainly got Mrs Moore’s name out of her. But then she couldn’t possibly have supposed that it would mean anything to him.
He went to bed, and dreamed that he was cast on a desert island with Mrs Syme. It was one of the most unpleasant dreams he had ever had.…
Kay came in at the area door rosy and breathless with the kitten on her shoulder. It arched its back, flaunted three inches of tail, and purred a small but resonant purr.
Mrs Green stared and exclaimed, “Well, I never! What do you call that, I should like to know.”
“Oh, Mrs Green, it’s the kitten—the one the milkman told us about. It came to me at once. You said you’d keep it.”
Mrs Green laughed.
“What’s the good of a little bit of a thing like that? It won’t catch no mice—though they do say the smell of a cat’ll drive ’em away. Here, what are you doing with my milk?”
“Only a little drop—please, Mrs Green. It’s so hungry—aren’t you, Kitty?”
The kitten lapped vigorously. Mrs Green chuckled.
“If you want a cat to catch mice, you’ve got to keep it hungry. They’d a sight rather have someone to cook for ’em. And I’m not cooking for no cats, Kay, so don’t you fret yourself. If that there kitten’s going to stay here, it’s got to work for its living same as you and me. Down to the cellar it goes nights, and it’s welcome to what it can find there.”
“Oh, Mrs Green, you can’t! Poor little thing!”
“Poor little nothing!” said Mrs Green firmly. “I’m not going to have my kitchen messed up, and that’s all there is about it!”
The kitten crouched close over the saucer which Kay had set for it. Its little pink tongue lapped eagerly. Mrs Green let it finish its meal. Then she picked it up by the scruff of the neck and waddled into the scullery.
There was a door which went out into the back yard, and there was a second door, rather low, set in a piece of bulging wall which rounded one of the inner corners of the room. It looked as if it might be the oven door in the story of Hansel and Gretel, for it was cross-barred with old rusty iron, and the irregular bulge into which it was set had something of the shape of a primitive stove or cooking-place. Mrs Green lifted the latch, pulled the low door towards her, and disclosed a flight of stone steps going down into unknown mouldy depths. She leaned over, dropped the kitten, banged the door, and fastened the latch again.
Kay’s colour was flaming and her eyes were wet.
“Oh, Mrs Green!”
“Oh, fiddlesticks!” said Mrs Green. “I tell you I’m not going to have my kitchen messed up! And for gracious mercy’s sake don’t look at me like that! There’s plenty of dry straw down there, and if it can’t make itself a bed, it’ll have to do without. I’m not going to tuck no cats up, nor yet sing ’em to sleep! And if you don’t want to be late with that there Benger’s, you’d better get a move on, Kay my girl. And don’t you go letting that there kitten out, or you and me’ll have words, which is a thing I don’t want nor won’t put up with, and if it comes to one of us having to go, I can tell you right away now which of us it’ll be.”
“Is there really straw, Mrs Green?”
Mrs Green tossed her head. All her chins quivered like jellies.
“Haven’t I said so? There’s enough for a hundred cats, let alone one little misery like that. Now just you hurry along!”
Kay hurried. She took up the Benger as the clock struck half past ten. Nurse Long opened the bedroom door and took in the tray. She did not say thank you, and she did not say good night. She just took the tray and shut the door again.
Kay went downstairs, and presently to bed. She was very sad about the kitten. She would have liked so much to have had it to sleep with her, but Mrs Green had been dreadfully out of temper when she suggested it. Any cat she had in her kitchen would go into the cellar for the night unless it went into the yard. Kay could take her choice. It would be one or the other.
Curled up in bed, Kay cried a little about the kitten. It was so small, and it had rubbed its head against her cheek and purred. And perhaps there were rats in the cellar. She did hope not, but suppose there were. Supposing it was very, very frightened.… Even Mrs Green was frightened of rats.… The kitten was so very small. Supposing a rat were to bite it … She cried herself to sleep.
CHAPTER XX
Flossie Palmer had also slipped out that evening. Ernie had written her the sort of letter which a girl who respected herself couldn’t be expected to take lying down, and if Ernie thought he could come it over her like that, Ernie had got to be shown where he was wrong. The Gilmores were dining out, and Cook was agreeable, so Flossie put on her bright pink dress and her beads and slipped out. Ernie was partial to a bit of colour, and as it was a mild night, she could leave the collar of her coat open. Those old beads did sort of make your skin look white. She took a final look in the glass, and was a good deal heartened by what she saw there.
Mr Bowden awaited her at the church end of the street. His letter had announced the firm intention of having things out whether or no. Either she could come and meet him, or he would come to the house and have it out there—“And if Mrs Gilmore hears about it, so much the better, and perhaps she’ll want to know what you’re doing taking up with one of her gentleman friends.”
Flossie halted under the lamp at the street corner. What was the good of having pink cheeks, blue eyes, and golden hair if they couldn’t be seen? And Ernie needn’t think he’d only to hold up his little finger to have her come after him. She didn’t mind coming as far as the corner, but she wasn’t going to come any farther.
Mr Bowden came up glowering. He missed neither the yellow hair, the bright cheeks, the angry sparkle of the eyes, nor the whiteness of the neck, which the open coat collar allowed to be seen.
Flossie wasted no time, but plunged directly into the fray.
“Coo, Ernie Bowden—if you haven’t got a nerve! I shouldn’t of thought you’d have dared to come and meet me, not after the things you wrote in that letter of yours! If I was to show it to Aunt, well, I dursn’t think what she’d say nor what she’d do. The very least of it would be that I wasn’t never to speak to you again—and perhaps that’s what you’re after. And I must say that if I wanted to break off with anyone I’d been going with reg’lar, I wouldn’t do it in the sort of hinting underground way what you done it—no, that I wouldn’t! I’d tell them open, and say good-bye, and no harm done. I wouldn’t go sending them insulting letters—as good as taking their characters away. And, as I said before, if Aunt was to see what you’d wrote, well, I’d be sorry for you, Ernie Bowden.”
Mr Bowden was a good deal shaken. He had written the letter in a tearing temper. His heart quaked at the thought of losing Flossie. It also quaked at the thought of Aunt. He said in a deep growling voice,
“You don’t half carry on.”
This was an unfortunate remark. Flossie pounced on it.
“And what do you expect a girl to do when you’ve as good as told her she’s lost her character?”
“I never!” said Mr Bowden explosively.
Flossie took no notice.
“And if anyone else had said the half or the quarter of what you done, I’d have come to you, thinking you was my friend, and I’d have said, ‘Here’s someone that wants his face pushed in,’ and I’d have looked for you to do it for me—yes, I would, Ernie—till I got that letter!”
“Flossie!”
“It’s no good saying Flossie one minute and taking away my character the next!”
“Flossie, I never!”
The scene ran the course which Flossie had mapped out for it. When, thoroughly repentant and alarmed, Ernie was allowed to plead brokenly for pardon and reinstatement.
At somewhere about half past ten there was a complete reconciliation and a specially tender embrace on the steps of No. 12 Merriton Street.
“Ooh, Ernie—y
ou’re not half strong!” Flossie’s voice was a little breathless.
Mr Bowden nodded.
“I could choke you with one hand,” he asserted, and proceeded to demonstrate the size and strength of his hand by clasping it about her throat.
Flossie, thrilled and a little frightened, tried to twist away. She found that she could not move. Ernie’s arm was like a steel bar. If his hand were to close upon her throat—A shiver ran down her spine. Instead, the hand tilted her chin, the arm lifted her. She was very soundly hugged and kissed and set down again. Mr Bowden’s submissive mood had passed. He said roughly,
“You’re my girl, and don’t you forget it!”
Flossie ran into the house with a beating heart. Cook had let her have a key, but she’d to give it back and not be later than half past ten. She put on the light in the hall, and it was as she lifted her hand to the switch that she felt the sag and pull of the beads about her neck. She looked quickly down and clutched them. The string was broken. That was Ernie, when he pretended to choke her.
“Coo! He is strong!”
The little shiver went down her back again, and still clutching the beads, she stepped into the dining-room and felt for the switch inside the door. The lights went on, but the beads were slipping. It took her a moment to find the broken ends of the string, and in that moment some of them had dropped and rolled. She spread out her handkerchief, lowered the string carefully down upon it, and picked up all the beads she could find. It was well past half past ten, and she didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Cook. She knotted the handkerchief tightly, pushed it into her pocket, and ran downstairs with the key.
CHAPTER XXI
Kay woke from a dream of distress. She could not remember what the dream was about. She had been in some far empty place and had heard the wind go by. That was the nearest she could get to it. She sat up in bed and listened with straining ears. Had something really cried, or had it only been the wind of her dream? If anything had cried down there in the cellar, would she have heard it? She didn’t know how far the cellar ran under the house. She thought it must run a long way, because Mrs Green had said something about “those big old cellars.” She had said they did keep the house dry and that was about all you could say for them, nasty creepy things, and as for going down into them, she’d sooner give in her notice and have done with it any day of the week.
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