The Wind Off the Sea

by Charlotte Bingham

  Gloria too was leaving the party, although resolutely not alone.

  ‘Come on, Mr Astley,’ she cried to Waldo, dangling the Buick’s car keys at him from one small, white hand on which a large diamond sat as a toad on a stone. ‘Time to go home and play Patience, whoever she is.’

  ‘Is this wise, Mrs Morrison?’

  Waldo’s large, round dark eyes swept from his party hostess to his permanent hostess, and he nodded significantly from Meggie to Gloria as if to encourage Meggie to say something.

  ‘Nothing that is fun is wise.’

  Waldo shrugged his shoulders, placing his hat carefully on his head.

  ‘Do you enjoy taking your life in your hands, Mr Astley?’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  ‘Mrs Morrison? I do think that perhaps you should let Mr Astley do the steering bit—’

  ‘And so I shall, Miss Gore-Stewart, always providing he can find his keys.’

  With a roguish look at Richards, who was standing surveying the break-up of the merry party with some evident satisfaction, Gloria swept laughingly out into the drive only to be restrained by Meggie from climbing into the wrong car.

  ‘That’s mine, Mrs Morrison. I think you’ll find that Mr Astley’s Buick is over there.’

  ‘I can honestly say, thanks to your mix, a good time was had by all, Richards,’ Meggie said once they were back in the hall. ‘And if it wasn’t, then they must be teetotal or members of the Salvation Army, and that is the plain unvarnished truth.’

  Richards sighed with sudden nostalgia, his eyes full of quiet contentment.

  ‘Nice to hear the old place ringing with social chat and laughter once again. Just like in Madame Gran’s day. Just like the old days, before the war.’

  Waldo was forced to let Gloria take the wheel, since not only was she in possession of his car keys, but, as he said to Gloria as soon as he had walked out into the drive of Cucklington House, it made very little difference who drove, since they were both five sheets to the wind.

  ‘What is more my driving record in Bexham is not all that it should be,’ he continued. ‘However. However.’ He stood back, seeing Gloria weaving towards the Buick. ‘However, seeing the state you’re in, Mrs Morrison, maybe we should walk after all.’

  ‘Nonsense. I’m as sober as a bishop at a confirmation.’

  Waldo sighed, followed her into the car, and having spent some time helping her find the ignition sat back and lit two cigarettes for them, handing Gloria hers as she drove slowly but surely into the hedge outside the gates of Cucklington House.

  ‘The very place to stop and have a quiet smoke,’ he said, pulling slowly on his own cigarette, his hat lowered onto his nose.

  ‘The trouble with hedges in Sussex is that they are such party poopers, Waldo darling. If you have noticed, they are party poop-poop-poop-poopers, always placing themselves just where you don’t very well want them, and where they know they’re going to be at their most annoying.’

  Gloria reversed, narrowly missing a gatepost, after which they shot forward.

  ‘My oh my,’ Waldo exclaimed. ‘This is an interesting new route, but it might help if you watched the road and not me, you know, on account of the estuary. Only because I haven’t packed my bathing trunks, Gloria honey … another time perhaps.’

  After this short episode Gloria settled down to driving too fast, imagining herself to be Veronica Lake, peering sexily out from under a peek-a-boo curl of hair, chatting gaily as she bounced the Buick along the Sussex lanes, with Waldo beside her smoking nonchalantly, for all the world as if she was the greatest and safest driver in the land.

  ‘Watching the road isn’t really your forte, is it honey?’ he asked at one point as Gloria took another lit cigarette from him, and thanked him while she continued to drive with her face turned fully towards him.

  Gloria certainly wasn’t watching the road as she finally swung the large car into the lane behind her house to park it. Instead she was too busy teasing Waldo about the effect he was having on the womenfolk of Bexham.

  ‘You’re stirring up all the hens in the coop, Waldo darling, as I knew you would.’

  There was a sudden bump as, still laughing at her own observation, Gloria tried first to back and then to straighten the Buick and in doing so hit something horribly hard, which caused the car to lurch and both its passengers to reach for the hand brake.

  ‘My God, Waldo – I’m sure I’ve hit someone. I do, I think I’ve hit someone.’

  Unsurprisingly Waldo was out of the car in a matter of seconds, while Gloria remained sitting at the wheel, her cigarette burning a brown hole in her evening glove.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she shouted through the open car window. ‘Oh, my God, what have I done.’

  Waldo came round to her side of the car.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you, Gloria my sweet, you appear to have run over a very large stone mushroom. It is now mortally injured.’

  ‘You mean a saddlesone?’ Gloria’s voice came out in what she knew to be a strangled whisper. ‘I mean you mean a staddlestone?’

  ‘If that’s what large stone mushrooms are called in Bexham, yes. Its head has just rolled down to the gate, and its body is even now settling itself into the hedge. Shall I call the police or will you?’

  Gloria threw her cigarette past Waldo, and leaning forward she put her head on the steering wheel. As always when she had sinned against herself and humanity in her own eyes she vowed to God that from now on she would always be good, forever and ever, amen.

  ‘Come on, Gloria. Time to go in and make heavy work of that cold collation your housekeeper left us, bless her.’

  ‘Coming, Waldo darling.’ Gloria stood outside the car. ‘Oh dear, I fear I might have scratched your Buick’s backside.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Well, I dare say that’s better than someone else’s. Now where do you think you might have put the front door keys?’

  Gloria smiled. ‘Don’t be so American. We don’t use front door keys in Bexham, never have and never will. If you can’t trust the village, who can you trust, is what we always said when we were growing up here.’

  ‘Well, that’s novel at any rate.’ Waldo turned the handle of the front door, his face now lit by the dim porch lamp. He stood back to let Gloria pass, and hardly had she done so when he reached out and flattened her against the hall wall, at the same time raising a finger to his lips to quieten her as he saw a door opening at the back of the hall.

  ‘What?’ Considering her state Gloria’s whisper was commendably quiet. ‘What?’

  ‘There’s somebody in the house.’

  ‘Where?’

  Waldo dived towards the end door. ‘Here!’ He brought the figure down with a flying tackle, pushing it to the floor as Gloria put the light on.

  ‘My God!’ Gloria cried. ‘And what is that?’

  Waldo stood up and looked down. ‘That,’ he said feelingly, ‘is a girl, I do believe, unless you grow them different here in Bexham. And I appear to have just knocked the poor kid out.’

  By the time Waldo had examined his victim’s head, and Gloria had helped clean the superficial cut with warm water and antiseptic, they both concluded that the only real damage had been the stunning blow the girl had received when falling.

  ‘Do you think she ought to go to the doctor, darling? Do you think she’s seriously damaged?’ Gloria wondered, putting a hand gingerly to where a bandage now covered the brow of the slowly awakening girl. ‘Or do you think she’s going to be all right?’

  ‘Maybe it’s a question of let’s wait and see. If she gets a headache, shall we say, or starts getting double vision, then a visit to el médico will have to be considered. As it is since she is now coming to perhaps it’s time we introduced ourselves.’

  The girl sat slowly up, looking understandably dazed.

  ‘Hello there. I’m Waldo Astley,’ he said affably. ‘And this is Mrs Morrison – who lives here. And you are? Not a potential maid come to apply for a job h
ere, I hope? Because if so I dare say you might be thinking better of it if Mrs Morrison regularly entertains guests who knock people out.’

  The young woman frowned, looking at the doorway through which Gloria had just disappeared.

  ‘Mrs Morrison?’ she repeated, then frowned deeply as if the name puzzled her. ‘Mrs Morrison.’

  ‘That’s right, Mrs Gloria Morrison – in whose house I am a guest at the moment. And you still haven’t told me who you are. Can you remember who you are? Perhaps you don’t know who you are?’

  The girl looked round at him and Waldo was aware of the dark shadows under her eyes and her over-pallid complexion.

  ‘My name’s Sykes,’ she said quietly, her eyes back on the doorway. ‘Rusty Sykes.’

  ‘OK, Rusty Sykes – and so what were you doing out this late? Were you on your way home or what? Is there someone we should call?’

  ‘There most certainly is, Waldo darling,’ Gloria announced, having just come back into the kitchen. ‘The police.’

  ‘The police? What for, Gloria?’ Waldo stared at Gloria, remembering her parlous state of a few minutes before, her terror at the idea that she might have run someone down. ‘I hardly think we need to bother the police because this poor young woman here slipped over and banged her head.’

  ‘We need to call the police, Waldo, because someone has been in here while we were out and helped themselves to some of my silver, not to mention some money that I left out on my writing desk.’

  Rusty was on her feet at once. But Gloria was standing right behind her and the moment Rusty rose Gloria put both her hands firmly on her shoulders and pushed her back into the chair, while Waldo stared down at her with a sympathetic look on his face.

  ‘Try her pockets, Waldo,’ Gloria suggested. ‘As well as that handbag of hers.’

  ‘Do you want to turn out your pockets, Rusty? Or shall we have to do it for you?’

  Rusty eyed Waldo, but since Gloria still had her hands firmly on her shoulders she sank both hands in her coat pockets and produced several small articles of silver – snuffboxes, a cigarette case and lighter. Finally she gave her pockets another rummage and took out a ten-shilling note and three half-crowns that she placed on the table alongside the other loot.

  ‘The brazen cheek of it. You keep an eye on the little thief, Waldo darling, while I go and telephone the police.’

  ‘Gloria honey – if you don’t mind – since I am a fully registered and paid up liberal, let’s first hear what this young lady has to say, shall we?’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘I think you do, Gloria – after all, only a moment or two back there you thought you’d killed someone. And let’s face it, driving the way you were driving, with what you had on board …?’ Waldo looked at Gloria, hooding his big dark eyes the way he normally did only when he thought she was about to make a cracking ass of herself at the bridge table. ‘Good. So, now then, Miss Sykes.’

  ‘Mrs Sykes.’

  ‘I beg your pardon. Mrs Sykes. Now I may be wrong here, but you don’t look like a hardened criminal to me. In fact you look like someone who could do with a long soak in a hot bath and a square meal. Is that perhaps why you broke in here – because you’re hungry? Because you’re far from home – and longing for a nice hot shower? Which you won’t get here, I’m sorry to tell you. Here what you get is a tub only – a truly dreadful English custom to my mind. Sitting in dirty water.’

  Rusty shook her head. ‘I live in Bexham. I was born and bred in Bexham, and so were my father and mother and both my brothers, and my grandfather.’

  ‘Take it easy, slow down – take it easy.’ Waldo smiled and held up a hand. ‘All I was trying to do was to lighten the atmosphere. In other words, get you to relax. After all, we’re never going to understand why you’re here with a pocketful of silver and a bump on your head unless we find out a little about you, and – well, when people like you commit this sort of crime they generally have good reason. I say generally because of course some people are just greedy and lazy, but most people have some sort of reason why they steal – or commit murder or whatever – and theft as a pretty general rule is usually based on need.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’ Rusty put a hand back to her head and frowned at him as if in pain.

  ‘You just need money? Or do you need money for something? That’s what I mean.’

  Rusty frowned. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember actually.’

  Gloria rolled her eyes to heaven, impatience written all over her. ‘Guess what – she doesn’t remember.’

  ‘So let’s start again, shall we? You know your name, Rusty Sykes – so that is at least something. Now, if you can remember your own name, can you remember where you live? You have just said that you live in Bexham, so that much you do know – but whereabouts precisely?’

  Rusty glanced fearfully from one face to the other. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’

  ‘I think you can.’ Waldo told her gently but firmly, seeing the fear in her eyes. ‘I think you do remember, Rusty. I also think you don’t want to tell us, in case we tell your family you were caught here stealing Mrs Morrison’s silver. Because that might be just a trifle embarrassing, mightn’t it?’

  ‘There’s a Sykes who’s a garagiste,’ Gloria recalled. ‘Runs that shabby little garage at the top of North Hill. Nice young man though. Poor soul lost a leg in the war. Peter Sykes – that’s right. War hero. Remember his father from before the war.’

  They both knew at once they were on the right track since Rusty immediately dropped her eyes at the mention of Peter Sykes.

  ‘I suggest we telephone him. Just to see if his wife is home, or if she’s still out somewhere. Or if he’s looking for her.’

  ‘No,’ Rusty insisted very quietly. ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘Any particular reason why we should not?’ Waldo enquired.

  ‘Every reason,’ Rusty replied. ‘I’ve run away.’

  ‘In that case we won’t ring anyone—’

  ‘If I may say so,’ Gloria sighed, ‘a crime is a crime is a crime.’

  ‘And all sorts of crimes that aren’t crimes are crimes. Such as driving when you’re five sheets to the wind. This is a spur of the moment crime, Gloria – there was never any danger that someone might get hurt. Or killed. Or even run over. And no-one runs away without good reason. Now I suggest we allow this young lady the comfort of a good long hot soak – since half of her seems frozen, and the other half, petrified – while we talk this thing through.’

  Forced to agree, Gloria took Rusty upstairs holding her firmly by one arm and locked her in the bathroom to have a long hot bath while she and Waldo decided her fate over several cups of strong coffee.

  ‘As a woman you should be able to understand her predicament far better than I,’ Waldo reasoned. ‘You would have to be not quite in your right mind to leave house and home during weather such as this unless you had a pretty darned good reason.’

  None the less, Gloria was still reluctant to let her burglar off scot-free. She had little sympathy for anyone who stole from other people simply because they were too idle to earn for themselves the things they stole. As far as she was concerned, if the girl at present locked upstairs in her bathroom preferred to steal rather than work for a living then Gloria was damned if she could see why she should go against her better judgement and offer the girl forgiveness and understanding.

  ‘The little so-and-so just walked off the street and helped herself to things that don’t belong to her. So why on earth should that deserve any tolerance, understanding and patience, I have to ask myself.’

  ‘Try the long view, Gloria. There’s no real harm done, in as much as we got here and stopped her before she could get away with anything. So instead of retribution, maybe some good may come out of it. It happens sometimes, believe me.’

  ‘Very well, Waldo,’ Gloria agreed, with extreme reluctance since the last thing she was feeling was cle
ment. ‘If you insist we shall let her go. But you mark my words – the moment I let her out of that bathroom and send her on her way, you can bet your last farthing she’ll go straight to someone else’s house and do the very same thing all over again.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t think so. I don’t think the young lady is a professional thief. I think something has happened to her – something disturbing perhaps, certainly unsettling – and because of whatever it is, I don’t think she’s quite herself. Don’t ask me why – it could be the look in her eyes, or the way she talks. There’s something not quite right with her, and maybe that’s why she’s behaving out of character. And hell – maybe it’s better to risk being too tolerant rather than being too harsh and condemning someone out of hand for the wrong reasons. I really do believe that this young lady did what she did out of sheer desperation.’

  ‘Oh, Waldo darling.’ Gloria sighed, and laughed. ‘You are such a ragged trousered philanthropist, aren’t you? With such a tender heart but still such a fool. You just wait and see – young Mrs Sykes will soon prove how wrong you are.’

  Even so, Gloria took herself upstairs to let her burglar out of the bathroom on whose door she was now busily knocking. Waldo, meanwhile, pulled a curtain to one side to stand and stare out into the darkness of the winter’s night to consider what he might be able to do for the sad and pretty young woman found burgling Gloria Morrison’s house.

  Chapter Five

  Waldo walked Rusty home, having decided that one post-cocktail party incident behind the wheel was enough for one evening. At least he walked her wherever it was she was going, since at first neither of them seemed to have any definite idea of their final destination.

  ‘You don’t want to go home?’ Waldo asked her again, having made the initial enquiry as to which direction they should take. ‘But I thought—’

  ‘Assumed, you mean,’ Rusty muttered. ‘Though why – search me. After all that stuff in there about something awful happening and all that.’ She nodded her head backwards in the direction of Gloria Morrison’s house, sinking her hands deep in her coat pockets and trudging down the lane that led only to the estuary.