Mr. Brading's Collection

by Patricia Wentworth

‘She being a first-class advertisement — or am I being earthy?’

  She couldn’t help an answering glint of laughter. It didn’t get beyond her eyes, but of course he knew it would be there. She said in a reproving tone,

  ‘You are rather. It’s a bit of incredible luck getting a subject like that.’ Then, after the least possible pause, ‘I didn’t know you were going to be here.’

  ‘You can look upon me as a bonus. Fortunate, aren’t you? Well, now that you are here, and I am here, I think we’d better have a business talk.’

  ‘We haven’t any business to talk about.’

  ‘You mayn’t have any, but I have. Let us make an assignation. What about tea in Ledlington tomorrow? There’s a café there where the sixteenth-century interior is plunged in almost total gloom and the buns are still quite good. If you take the bus from here at a quarter past two and get off at the next halt beyond Ledstow station, I will pick you up. Unless, which of course would be much simpler but not so much like an assignation, you just let me call for you here in a perfectly ordinary way.’

  She was startled into another change of colour.

  ‘No — I won’t do that.’

  His odd crooked eyebrows went up.

  ‘Not a breath of scandal? All right, darling — your lightest wish and all the rest of it. The first halt beyond Ledstow.’

  Stacy’s colour ebbed.

  ‘I don't think so. We have nothing to say to each other.’

  ‘My sweet, we haven’t drawn breath. Personally I could go on without repeating myself for a month of Sundays. There will be no need for you to compete. Didn’t Solomon say that a silent woman was like an apple of gold in a frame of silver?’

  ‘No, he didn’t!’ said Stacy indignantly. ‘You made that one up!’

  ‘Perhaps, but how profoundly true. And so beautifully easy. I will discourse, and you shall sit and eat buns.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Well, I think you’d better. I really have got something to say. I’ll be at the first halt.’

  The music stopped. Stacy felt robbed. They ought to have danced, not talked. There was no divorce between their steps. The smooth, gliding rhythm could have carried them away for those few minutes at least. But she wouldn’t dance with him again. She said abruptly,

  ‘I’m going up now. I don’t want to dance any more.’

  Charles kept his hand on her arm.

  ‘Oh, but you must give Jack Constable a turn. He can’t just monopolise Maida. I want to have a look in myself. I always fall for red-heads, especially the green-eyed kind. Attractive, isn’t she? What I can’t make out is the immediate status of Robinson — whether disembodied, looming, or relegated to being a mere provider of alimony. Take Jack off her hands and give me a chance to find out. By the way, what are you calling yourself? Did I hear Myra say “Miss Mainwaring”?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  Charles said, ‘Damn silly!’ He looked down at her left hand and found it bare. ‘So you’ve taken off your ring?’

  ‘Three years ago.’

  He had his hand on her arm, steering her across the emptying floor. As she said, ‘Three years ago,’ they fetched up beside the red-haired Maida and Jack Constable. Still holding Stacy, Charles took him also by the arm.

  ‘Here, Jack I want you to meet Stacy Mainwaring. She dances like a dream. Have this one with me, Maida?’

  EIGHT

  MAJOR CONSTABLE WAS a hearty soul and a good if daring dancer.

  ‘Look here, I’ll show you a new step you can do to this tune. Rather amusing — picked it up in Chile. I danced it with the belle of the local party, and her boy friend got so worked up he ran a knife into me.’

  Stacy said,

  ‘You must find Warne dull — no new steps, no boy friends with knives.’

  ‘But a much better floor.’

  He had missed his chance to say, ‘A much better partner.’ It seemed to come over him suddenly. He dodged between two couples in a very agile manner, and said,

  ‘I missed my cue there, didn’t I? Take it as said. You really are a better partner than the girl friend.’

  Stacy couldn’t help being amused, but she thought she would probably have to watch her step. One of those fast workers. She said, ‘Thank you,’ and put a touch of frost into her voice. More to change the subject than for any other reason, she added,

  ‘Have you known Charles long?’

  Because if he had, it was odd that she hadn’t heard of him before.

  It appeared that they had knocked about together in the desert — Tobruk, Hell Fire Corner, Alamein, and so forth. He sounded all over Charles, and began to tell her stories about him, the sort that had made it so easy to fall in love with him three years ago, concluding with,

  ‘Very dashing fellow. And always something to say to make you see the funny side. Pity about that girl he got tied up with.’

  Stacy said,

  ‘Perhaps girls are always rather a pity.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Oh, well, Charles likes them. She wasn’t the first, and she won’t be the last.’

  Conversation with Jack Constable seemed to involve a constant change of topic. Her colour becomingly heightened, Stacy enquired whether he was staying at Saltings. It appeared that he was.

  ‘I ran into old Charles the other day in town, and asked myself down. I say, he’s done pretty well out of converting the house into flats. Lucky to have had the capital to do it with.’

  Stacy’s heart did a horrid sort of sidestep. But he hadn’t any capital, he hadn’t any capital at all. That was just the trouble. She said,

  ‘I thought he sold Saltings.’

  Jack Constable shook his head.

  ‘Oh, no, he did much better for himself than that. Sold the family diamonds or something and put the proceeds into converting the place. He’s made an awfully good job of it. Haven’t you been up there to see?’

  Stacy said, ‘I only came this afternoon.’ She leapt for yet another subject. ‘Talking of diamonds, have you seen Mr. Brading’s Collection?’

  He laughed.

  ‘Sounds like the sort of thing nobody’s got enough money for nowadays. Who is he — and what about it?’

  She made the Collection last until the dance was over.

  She did get away after that. Pausing to say goodnight, she had a brief interchange with Mrs. Constantine, who wanted her to stay, but finished up with saying,

  ‘All right, all right — you go and get a good night’s rest. There’s always another day tomorrow, isn’t there? There was a little German Jew fellow played the piano in a road-show I was in, he used to say that — in German, you know, “Morgen ist auch ein Tag”? She produced an accent fearfully and wonderfully British. ‘Sounds funny, don’t it? All right, my dear, off you go! And you can start doing my picture tomorrow. Half past ten, if that suits you.’

  As Stacy looked back at the room before she left it she saw Jack Constable dancing with Lilias, and Charles with the red-haired girl in his arms. Lewis Brading was standing against the wall watching them.

  Her room was the small one at the end of Mrs. Constantine’s suite. It was really the dressing-room of a bigger room next door. Hester Constantine slept there, and Myra had the bedroom and dressing-room opposite, with the sitting-room beyond. Like her bedroom it looked out towards the sea. Stacy’s room looked sideways to the annexe, built against the hill to house Lewis Brading’s Collection. Thirty feet of bare glazed passage connected it with the house, and in that passage a light burned all night long.

  When Stacy was ready for bed she pulled back the curtains and looked out. It would not be dark for half an hour yet, and she was in no hurry for sleep. She looked out to the annexe and the dark trees surrounding it. There were no windows. Electric light and an excellent air-conditioning plant did away with the need for natural light and air. Even the light-hearted Stacy of three years ago had found something rather horrid about that. And Lewis Brading didn’t live there then. Now, she
gathered, he did, or at any rate slept there — he and the humourless secretary who had stepped on her feet. Gosh — What a party!

  She went on thinking about Lewis Brading because she didn’t want to think about Charles. It had been dislike between them at first sight, and she wondered why. Most people liked her all right. Charles had loved her. Or had he? Had she ever really been the theme, or just one of the variations with which he amused himself? At any rate he hadn’t married any of the others.... ‘For God’s sake — are you priding yourself on that? The worst day’s work you ever let yourself in for. Why do you want to go and rake it all up now when you’ve got clear of it?’ Jack Constable’s voice came back — ‘He’s made a good job of the house... Sold the family diamonds.’ She had a quick horrifying picture of Charles with the diamonds in his hand and the life freezing at her heart. How many times could you die?

  Horrible to have it come back like that. She picked up a book which she had bought for the train and began to read aloud from it quick and low. You can think if you are reading to yourself, but you can’t think if you are reading aloud. That was one of the things she had found out three years ago. She hadn’t had to do it for a long time now, but she had to do it tonight. She stood there in the light breeze from the open window and heard her voice go monotonously on and on without sense or meaning. It didn’t need to have sense or meaning. It was just a barrage against thought.

  She put down the book at last with a deep sigh. The wind from the sea had freshened, she was cold in her thin nightgown. Her feet were like ice, and she was deadly tired. It was too late to read any longer. The passage to the annexe was lighted from end to end. She got into bed, covered herself to her chin, and almost at once she was asleep.

  She didn’t know how long it was before she woke up, or what it was that waked her. One moment she was deeply, dreamlessly asleep, and the next she was up on her elbow, wide awake in the dark. She stayed like that for a moment listening, and then got out and went over to the window. The wind was cold and everything was dark. But it oughtn’t to be dark. Why not? There wasn’t any moon. The sky was dark, and the hill, and the trees. And the annexe was dark because it had no windows to show a light. But the passage from the annexe to the house — that ought to be lighted. Myra Constantine had talked about it — ‘There’s only that one way in, and it’s a steel door, so it wouldn’t be an easy proposition for a burglar.’ But of course she knew all that three years ago. Lewis Brading’s precautions against being robbed were public property and the more public the better, Burglars keep out!

  Stacy frowned at the darkness. The passage had been lighted when she turned from the window to her bed. It wasn’t lighted now. And then from just beneath her there came the smallest possible sound. She thought a door had been closed, softly and carefully, but the latch had clicked. She was sure it was that sound and no other, and she was sure that it came from the door between the passage and the house. Someone had pulled it to, but the handle had slipped and the latch had gone home with a click — right there, underneath her window. Quick on that the light in the passage came on and showed it bare from end to end.

  And this time Stacy wasn’t sure. She wasn’t quite sure. She thought the steel door to the annexe moved as the light came on. She thought it was closing too. But she wasn’t sure.

  NINE

  THE SITTING WENT very well next day, the morning light not too bad, and Myra Constantine in quite terrific form. The autobiography which had begun with nine people and a slum basement was carried on in a colourful manner. Sometimes Stacy listened, sometimes the words passed her by whilst she registered the play of expression on those dark ugly features, and the snapping malice, the satyric gleam, the blazing enjoyment, which looked out by turns from the big black eyes. With each change she wanted to cry, ‘Stay!’ and felt, between enjoyment and despair, ‘If I could only get her just like that!’

  ‘Pity the girls don’t take after me, isn’t it? When I said that to Tom Hatton he said, “Poor little devils — why should they?” “All right, all right, Tom,” I said. “Beauty’s skin deep, and you’ve got your whack of it, but I’ll have the better time all my life.” He drank himself to death, you know.... Oh, no, he wasn’t their father. I married when I was seventeen. Constantine’s my proper name. Clerk in an office, Sid was. Nicely brought-up young fellow with no money and no constitution. Just got a cold and died before I was twenty, and left me with two kids on my hands. Het’s his spit and image.’

  Her face had fallen into heavy tragic lines. Stacy sat waiting, and in a moment everything was changed. The lines broke up in laughter, the eyes twinkled outrageously.

  ‘I wasn’t having any more husbands after that, and if they wanted anything different, I’d laugh in their faces and tell ’em I was a respectable widow and I’d thank ’em to bear it in mind.’ She cocked her head and chuckled. ‘It didn’t stop ’em of course. Do you know who asked me to go off jaunting to Paris with him, and me never going to see fifty again? Well, maybe I’d better not tell you. But I’ve always had the men after me, and that’s a fact.’

  Stacy put up a hand.

  ‘If you could keep that expression, Mrs. Constantine—’

  It broke up almost before she had spoken. The big mouth widened in a laugh.

  ‘Well, I can’t, my dear. If you could have seen your face! Did you think I meant your Charles?’

  Stacy laughed too, anger just under the surface.

  ‘He’s quite free, if you want him.’

  ‘No, thank you, my dear. And as to being free — well, what do you mean by that? He’s still fond of you — sticks out all over him when he looks at you.’

  Stacy put a little distance into her voice.

  ‘Charles looks at everyone like that. It doesn’t mean a thing. He’ll tell you so himself.’

  ‘Have it your own way,’ said Myra Constantine. ‘You needn’t believe me if you don’t want to, but I’m never wrong about this sort of thing. I remember when Henry Minstrell began coming around. I told Milly he was going to ask her, and she said he’d never think of it. “Well, someone had better think about it,” I said. “He’ll freeze you, and starch you, and make you over to suit his family, and it won’t be what I should call a gay life, but that’s your look-out, only you’d better get down to it and make up your mind if that’s what you want.” So she did.’ She threw up her head with a jerk. ‘Lord — I’d have died of it in a week! But she’s Sid’s daughter, not mine — she likes it well enough. Only trouble she’s got is there’s no boy — just a couple of girls at boarding school.’ She smoothed all the expression out of face and voice. ‘ “Yes grandmama — no, grandmama.”’ Her hands came together with a smacking clap, her shoulders rose in a shrug. ‘No blood in ’em, only nice pretty manners — poor Sid to the life, with a good shiny coat of Minstrell varnish! Well, as I’ve said more times than I can count, what’s the odds so long as you’re happy?’

  The sitting might be considered to be going well. But which of all these fleeting expressions, these vigorous sudden changes of countenance, was Stacy going to lure to the ivory? She made a dozen sketches on paper, looked at them in despair, and made a dozen more. Myra was vastly pleased with them.

  ‘Ugly old devil, aren’t I? Hit me off to the life, these do. You just go on and you’ll see it’ll come, and it’ll be a smasher. And now you go off and amuse yourself for the rest of the day.’

  Before this advice could be taken Stacy was called to the telephone. She felt a little surprised, for she could not imagine who could have tracked her here — so unless it was Charles—

  It wasn’t Charles. The sort of voice that suggests horn-rimmed glasses and an intellectual brow enquired,

  ‘Is that Miss Mainwaring?’

  Stacy knew it at once. As a matter of fact a large portion of the English-speaking public would have known it, since it was in the habit of making announcements to them over the air, not on the most important occasions, but in what may perhaps be described as the
donkey-work section.

  ‘Tony! How on earth did you know I was here?’

  Mr. Anthony Colesfort sighed and said,

  ‘Elementary, my dear Watson. You said you were going to Burdon. Enquiries gave me the number. The number said you had come to Warne House. So here we are.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I have an aunt who lives at Ledstow. I’ve got three days off and I’m staying with her. I suggest that you dine with me tonight. There is, I believe, a place in Ledlington where the food doesn’t exactly poison you.’ He spoke in a gentle, drawling manner and broke off to cough. ‘I beg your pardon, as they say on the air. I keep on doing it, which is really why I’m here. What about my calling for you at seven? I’ll rake up a conveyance.’

  Stacy hesitated.

  ‘Well, it’s very nice of you, Tony. Look here, I’m going out in the afternoon, and I don’t know when I shall get back, and I shall have to dress. I think you’d better make it half past.’

  ‘Say the quarter.’

  ‘All right.’

  She was just turning away, when the bell rang again. It was probably for someone else, but with just the chance that Tony might still be on the line she picked up the receiver and heard Lilias Grey say,

  ‘Can I speak to — Miss Mainwaring?’

  There was just the little significant pause before the name. With an inward feeling of having stepped back a pace Stacy said in what she could hear was a really horrid telephone voice,

  ‘Speaking.’

  There was an involuntary ‘Oh!’ And then, ‘It’s Lilias Grey.’

  ‘How do you do, Lilias?’

  ‘Oh, how do you do?’

  Lilias was fluting, a sure sign that she was nervous. Her voice became higher, and sweeter with every sentence.

  ‘My dear, I didn’t have a word with you last night. It wasn’t possible at dinner, and then you disappeared. But I do so want to see you, and to show you what we have been doing to Saltings.’

  The ‘We’ was a little barbed arrow that drew blood. Stacy found an arrow too.