Sally nodded.
“Yes, that was just it. I was only sixteen. He’d have had to wait two years at least, and he couldn’t afford to wait.”
“What’s all this about?” said James in a serious voice. “Why couldn’t he afford to wait? Why should he want to marry you at all, if it comes to that?”
Sally’s lips parted in a tremulous smile.
“Some people do,” she murmured. “Some people want to very much. You said you did yourself. But Ambrose—I’m afraid it wasn’t that with Ambrose—ever. You see—I’ve got—rather a lot of money.”
“Three hundred a year? Jocko told me you had three hundred a year.”
“And the rest,” said Sally in a very small voice.
James said without looking round, “And what’s the rest?”
“It’s about three thousand a year really. Do you mind?”
“Why did J.J. lie about it?”
“I th-think he knew I was in love with you, and he didn’t want to put you off.”
After a minute James said, “That’s a pretty big compliment. I don’t know if I do mind. It’s a bit of a shock. Why have you got such a lot?”
“It was my mother’s money. Jocko’s a half-brother, you know. Both our mothers were Reres. But his mother hadn’t any money. That’s why Aunt Clementa left him hers.”
“I see,” said James. “Get back to Ambrose Sylvester. He married Hildegarde. When?”
“Five years ago. I was seventeen. I thought my heart was broken, but if Hildegarde had been nice to me, it would have mended up again and I should probably have taken her in and worshipped them both. I—I’ve got quite an affectionate nature, James.”
He put his hand on her shoulder.
“Wasn’t she nice to you?”
“Beastly,” said Sally. “Every time I was with her she made me feel as if everything about me was wrong—the way I did my hair, and the way I put on my clothes, and the things I said, and the things I didn’t say. Oh, I don’t suppose any man can understand, but she made me feel just wrong everywhere, and every time she called me darling she made it sound like ‘See how kind I am to this awkward little schoolgirl.’ And she used to look at Ambrose, and Ambrose used to look back at her, and I used to wish I was dead.”
“Silly,” said James with his hand still on her shoulder.
Sally rubbed her cheek against it.
“You wouldn’t like to tell me I’m rather nice and all that sort of thing, would you?”
“No,” said James. He patted the shoulder. “I can’t do it here—not properly. And you’re not getting on about Ambrose. What makes you think he’s crooked?”
He felt her wince.
“Little things—stupid things—piling up one on another. Little things—about money. He’d bought Warnley Place with the money from Links in the Chain, and at first when he used to come down and see me at school he used to talk a lot about it. And then he started saying what a lot of money it took to keep it up. I don’t think his second book sold as well as Links—second books hardly ever do when you’ve made a tremendous hit like that. And then there were some short stories, and then he never wrote anything again. I never knew him when he was writing, and by the time he married Hildegarde I think he was pretty desperate. And everyone thought she must have lots of money, because they began to entertain and go about a lot. But she hadn’t, because once she was quarrelling with Henri, and I thought they knew I was in the room, but it turned out afterwards they didn’t, and he said, ‘It is your doing—you married him.’ And she said, ‘What can one do without money? One must do something. I hadn’t a sou.’ And then Henri saw me and hushed her up, and I thought I had better pretend I was asleep. That’s one of the little things. And another time I was passing the library window at Warnley, and I heard Ambrose say with a sort of groan, ‘Why did I ever begin?’ And Hildegarde said, ‘One must have money, my friend.’ And he said it wasn’t worth it, and she laughed and called him a coward.”
“Where did the money come from?” said James.
“I don’t know. I think Hildegarde and Henri showed him a way of getting it. I think it’s something dangerous, something against the law. I know it is. They wouldn’t go to such lengths to cover it up unless it was very dangerous indeed. But I don’t know what it is—I really don’t.”
James ran over the possibilities in his own mind. Spy work—sabotage—He frowned dubiously. Not likely. Not enough money in it. Crime—a great many dangerous possibilities here. Forgery—blackmail—dope—it might be any of these.
He said, “Go on.”
Sally drew a long breath.
“I think Aunt Clementa knew. I think she found out. I think Rere Place was being—used. You see, Aunt Clementa was supposed to be bedridden. My father was her trustee—he looked after everything. And when he got ill he got the trusteeship transferred to Ambrose, and after that he made him my guardian. Ambrose’s mother was a Rere too—rather a distant one, but they all hang together. So there was Aunt Clementa bedridden and wandery, and Ambrose could do anything he liked. Well, he got rid of all the old servants. It was quite easy. I saw it being done. Hildegarde used to go over and snoop at them till they gave notice. She put on her most foreign accent and said things like ‘You do not know how to polish in England. In Belgium we would not call this a polished floor. A Belgian maid would think that you English servants do not know your work at all.’ Well, you can imagine how they liked it. Annie stuck it out longer than any of them, but they got rid of her, saying that Aunt Clementa must have a proper nurse. Hildegarde got the doctor to say so.”
“Were the new servants foreign?”
Sally shook her head.
“Oh, no. Hildegarde was too clever for that. It would have made talk. But I didn’t like them—any of them. Quite well trained and all that, you know, but a most horrid feeling as if they might say something outrageous at any moment. I simply hated going there. What nobody knew was that Aunt Clementa wasn’t really bedridden at all. She got out of bed and walked about the house in the dark, and one night she found something. She found out that her house was being used, and I think she found out what it was being used for. She found out, and she got away with some very incriminating evidence—something in a book. I don’t know what it was. It might have been letters—or lists—names and addresses—or signatures—I don’t know. But it must have been something pretty damning, because that’s where all the trouble began. They wouldn’t have tried to kill Jocko if they hadn’t been pretty desperate—and your Mr. Jackson—and—”
“Me,” said James.
“What?”
“A convenient landslide of bricks last night. Nearly got me too. And this morning it had all been tidied away. Efficient staff work.”
Sally shuddered and came closer.
“You’re not hurt?”
“Of course I’m not. Go on. I’ll tell you about it afterwards.”
“I’ve told you everything—I really have. I think they missed whatever it was that Aunt Clementa found, and then they got the wind up. The poor old pet may have said things—I think she rambled a lot. Anyway I’m sure they knew she had hidden something, so when Jocko got that letter they panicked and tried to do him in.”
“How do you know they haven’t found whatever it was they were looking for?” said James.
“Because they’re still looking for it. They were looking for it that afternoon when we met in the hall and I grabbed you and said ‘Run!’ They were in Aunt Clementa’s room. I could hear them whispering, and I was trying to find a good crack to put my ear against, when the board outside the door creaked. Someone came running, but I didn’t wait. I slid the banisters and bumped into you in the hall, and if we hadn’t run, I expect they’d have shot us dead.”
“Who?” said James bluntly.
“Henri, I should think. He’s a much better shot than Ambrose.”
“A pretty big risk to take.”
“People who do the sort of things they are doing h
ave to get accustomed to risks. They’d have dug a hole in one of the cellars, and we’d never have been heard of again. Rere Place has the most revolting cellars. And if anyone had heard the shot, there was a nice, handy ghost story to account for it. I think they’ve cultivated that story about Giles Rere and the Queen’s necklace rather carefully. It’s an old story, but it’s been a lot more talked about lately. None of the village people at Warnley or Staling will go near the house after dark nowadays, and they used not to mind, so I think someone’s been boiling the story up. It’s a very, very handy one. They’re awfully dangerous people, James.”
“Why did you go on living with them? You’ve got your own money. Why on earth did you stay with them?”
Sally said, “I had to,” and caught her breath. “I can’t touch my own money till I’m twenty-five—unless I marry. The money’s there all right. Ambrose is only one of three trustees, but it’s left to him to say what allowance I have till then. He could cut me down to fifty pounds a year if he liked. Hildegarde has threatened me with that. But that’s not why I’ve stayed. I could have appealed to the other trustees and brought pressure to bear. It wasn’t that—it was Jocko—I’ve been horribly frightened about Jocko ever since Aunt Clementa died. James, you don’t know how horrible it’s been. I loved Ambrose so much, and I always hated Hildegarde, but in the end I came to be worse frightened of him than of her. It was like kissing someone and finding out afterwards that they’d got leprosy or something frightful like that.” She shuddered violently. “You don’t know how dreadful it’s been. And I couldn’t prove anything. If I’d said out there at Holbrunn, ‘Ambrose Sylvester and his wife have just tried to kill my brother,’ who do you think would have believed me? I should have been just a neurotic female who had probably gone off the deep end about her handsome guardian and been snubbed for her pains. My name would have been mud, and if I’d had a convenient accident, everyone would have been all set to believe I’d committed suicide.”
“Sally—don’t!”
“It’s true. Do you think I haven’t gone over it, and over it, and over it? What I arrived at was this—they’d taken a chance with Jocko and failed, but they’d got away with Aunt Clementa’s letter—at least I suppose they had. I never felt quite sure about that, because if they did get it, why haven’t they found what they are looking for? I think Jocko may have read the letter when he was alone and destroyed it. Anyhow they’d had their try, and it hadn’t come off. And Jocko was going back to India. I thought perhaps—oh, I don’t know what I thought. I did try to get away, but it wasn’t any good.”
“You ought to have gone to your other trustees,” said James.
“I couldn’t. I used to think about it, but the more I thought, the more I knew I couldn’t do it. You see, they wouldn’t have believed me. One of them is General Forrester, and he doesn’t believe anything unless he has seen it in print. If I was murdered, he wouldn’t believe it until he saw it in the Times. The other one’s a solicitor—too respectable. He belongs to a firm that’s never, never had anything to do with crime. Neither of them could possibly have believed my story—I’ve often found it very difficult to believe it myself. So I stayed. And then Henri began to make love to me, and I got a sort of general impression that it would be much safer if I didn’t turn him down. I get my money if I marry, and I suppose they’d rather get my money legally if it could be done. I mean why run the risk of murdering someone if you can marry them? Besides, I attract Henri.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” said James in an exasperated voice.
“Yes, I think so. That’s one reason why Hildegarde hates me—she thinks Henri is her property. Well, you see, I stayed. I thought it would be safer for Jocko, and I thought I could manage Henri, but it’s all got too difficult, and I’m frightened, and Jocko won’t listen to a single word.”
The tears began to run down Sally’s cheeks, and she let them fall. She leaned back and let them fall. She felt too tired to lift her hand or brush them away. She had said the things she had never been able to think of saying to anyone, and it had left her feeling as if all the strength had gone out of her.
James didn’t speak, and Sally wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to speak. After a bit she didn’t want him to, because her own effort had spent her, and if James were to speak, she would have to make another effort. She would have to listen, and attend, and say things. She felt quite weak and empty. The things that had troubled her so much had gone past.
Presently she stopped crying, and saw a green holly bush in a bare hedge, and the leaning shapes of trees, wind-set and stripped to a delicate tracery of twig, and branch, and bough.
They had gone a long way, when James said in his usual everyday voice,
“Where do you want to be put down, Sally?”
Sally said, “I’m going to Rere Place.” She said this because it was what she had meant to do when she set out, but when she heard the words they surprised her, because there was now no strength in her to want to do anything.
“I thought so!” He grinned suddenly. “What will Jocko say?”
Sally didn’t care. She said so in a dragging voice.
“That’s all right,” said James.
They were in the neighbourhood of Wilder’s Heath. Pedlar’s Hill, with its long ascent, lay before them. Rising gradually at first, it has a bend about half way up, beyond which it becomes very steep. After the bend there is a long drop on one side, and on the other a ditch and broken ground.
It was as they drew clear of the bend that James looked up and saw the lorry. It came over the brow of the hill and down it at a break-neck speed, full tilt in the middle of the road. There are two places on this part of the hill where the slope is one in seven. The lorry appeared to jump the first of these and come down at them like an avalanche. And James saw that the driver’s seat was empty.
The hill runs dead straight, and the lorry had the crown of the road. Sally stopped breathing, and waited for the crash. She found time to be glad that they were together, and she found time to think, “I ought to put my hands over my face—I don’t want to be cut to bits.” There was just time to think of that, and then, with death roaring down on them, James put the Rolls at the ditch.
They swung to take it, and Sally saw the sky and the high front of the lorry blotting it out, and the sky again, and the grass slope, all swinging too. And then they were over, with a shocking bump and a lurch which sent Sally banging up against the door, and a thud, and another lurch which flung her back against James. From behind them came a rending, splintering noise, and a crash which sounded as if someone had dropped a load of sheet-iron over a cliff.
James held the wheel with very strong hands. His shoulder stiffened against Sally. The car righted itself and plunged forward on to a comparatively level piece of ground, where he braked and brought it to a standstill.
Without a look or a word he opened the door and jumped out. Sally was perfectly safe, but what about Colonel Pomeroy’s car? His whole concern was for the Rolls. To deliver a new car with so much as a single scratch upon her coachwork would be a most unpleasant humiliation.
Sally watched him stooping, bending, moving from point to point, completely absorbed, intent upon his examination. He made it a most thorough one, and long before it was ended her teeth had ceased to chatter. They had chattered at first, because being so near death had made her icy cold. She hoped James hadn’t noticed, and presently decided that he had not. He hadn’t been thinking about her at all. He had been much too much taken up with his precious car.
Warmth came back into Sally, and a sparkle into her eyes. The weakness and fatigue of ten minutes ago had gone. One bit of her was furiously angry with James, and another bit laughed. It was good to be angry and it was good to laugh, and oh, how good it was to be alive.
James opened the door on the driver’s side and got in.
“Not a scratch,” he announced in a tone of relief. “She took that ditch pretty well, didn’t she? Of course,
I shall have to tell old Pomeroy that he’d better let me take her back to be thoroughly gone over in case anything’s been strained. But I don’t think so. I think she’s all right—I really do think so. It would have been the most frightful thing if I’d had to go and tell him I’d smashed her up.”
“If the car had been smashed, we should have been smashed too, and you wouldn’t have had to tell him,” said Sally. “There’s always a bright side if you look for it.”
James burst out laughing and hugged her.
“You’re not hurt, I’m not hurt, and the Rolls isn’t hurt. It’s a pretty good day!”
Sally rubbed her cheek against his.
“Darling, why put me first? I know my place. I’m not a car.”
“Of course,” said James, kissing her in rather an absent-minded manner—“of course she may have broken a leaf in one of the springs.”
XXVIII
They lost quite a lot of time over the lorry. James climbed down and viewed the corpse. The owner’s name he made out to be Curling or Gurling.
He climbed up again, and about half a mile along the road another lorry hove in sight. This one appeared to have no desire to run them down. On the contrary, the driver slowed up and shouted, “Have you seen a lorry, sir?” upon which James stopped the Rolls and got out. The name of Curling was printed large upon the lorry, which had also stopped. The driver leaned over the side and repeated his question.
“Have you passed a lorry same as this? Someone’s been and pinched it.”
James looked grim.
“Someone pinched it, did they? Well, it’s scrap iron at the bottom of Pedlar’s Hill now. Ran over the side and nearly took me with it. I went down to have a look, and the name was Curling.”
“Bloke dead?” enquired the driver.
“Wasn’t any bloke,” said James. “She was running loose—no one at the wheel.”
The driver whistled.
“That’s a rum start! He must have let her get out of control and jumped for it. And what he wanted to pinch her for passes me. They’re straightening out a bend about a mile along the road here, and we’re delivering ballast. Well, there’s a place that sells minerals very handy, and we’d gone up there for a drink, the other man and me, and when we came back my lorry was there and his lorry was gone, and all anyone could say was that a chap had run past on a motor-bike with another chap up behind, both of them in caps and goggles so that nobody wouldn’t know them from Adam. And one of the men that’s working on the road says he heard the bike stop and start again, and the next thing there was one of our lorries going off down the hill, and he thought it was all right till we come back. Well, I suppose I’d better go along and look at the damage. How far down the hill did you say? And perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving me your name and address.”
Run! Page 16
