The Coldstone

by Patricia Wentworth

  Susan had found herself wondering, guessing, jumping to a wild conclusion. She could not verify it unless she had the book in her hand; but if she had it, it would not take more than a minute to put it to the test. If the blotted letters made words, then her wild guess would have hit its mark, and the Septima Aegloga—the July eclogue, the eclogue of the month in which the English fleet met the Armada—would prove to contain Philip Colstone’s message to his son; a message so important that he would not write it down plainly, so secret that he had neither trusted it to his wife nor to William Bowyer. And Camilla had given Garry the receipt. When? That was the all-important question.

  At the terminus she went straight to a telephone box and rang up Camilla. It seemed ages before she heard a rather breathless “Hullo!” Thank goodness Camilla was at home. It would have been so exactly like her to be flying to Australia.

  Susan drew a breath of relief and said, “Susan speaking.”

  “How nice, my dear! Are you in town? Because if you are, you must come and have lunch with me and meet Lois and—”

  “Camilla—listen! I got your letter this morning. When did you give that receipt to Garry?”

  “When? Oh, my dear, weren’t you touched at his offering, actually offering, to see the whole thing through for you?”

  “Camilla, do listen! When did you give him the receipt?”

  “I think,” pursued Camilla in a warm, pleased voice, “I think it really does show that he is becoming more altruistic.”

  “Look here, Camilla, I have not come up here to discuss Garry’s character. I’ve come up about that receipt, and I want to know when you gave it to him.”

  “I found it,” said Camilla, “the very day you came up, after I’d had all the trouble of writing to Sarah—you know I told you I thought she’d got a dispatch-box of mine. Well, it was after that. And Garry came in next morning—no, afternoon—or was it next day? Yes, yesterday, because I know Lois wasn’t there, and she was the day before, so it must have been yesterday.”

  “You gave him the receipt yesterday?”

  “Yes, darling—that’s what I keep telling you—yesterday afternoon. And then I wrote and told you about it. But I couldn’t stop my letter to Sarah, because Stella posted it after she came to tea the day before—no, it was the day you were up, because I was still painting the drawing-room.”

  “Where—is—Garry?” said Susan in her loudest and firmest tones.

  “Darling child, I haven’t the least idea. He may be anywhere—positively anywhere.”

  Susan strove for patience.

  “I mean is he in his old rooms?”

  “Oh, so far as I know.”

  Susan rang off. If Camilla had really only given Garry the receipt yesterday afternoon, The Shepheard’s Kalendar might still be in the Museum. Susan had a sort of feeling that the woolly old gentleman would not give up Spenser’s autograph without a struggle. She began to consider what would happen if she went straight to the Museum and said, “Look here, the book belongs to me.” That might stop them giving it up to Garry; but on the other hand it would probably result in their hanging on to it indefinitely on the plea that the ownership was in dispute. All the same—

  Susan came out of the telephone box and looked at her watch. It was eleven o’clock. Quite suddenly she made up her mind to go first to Garry’s rooms. If he was there, he was going to hear some plain home truths, and if he wasn’t there, she would just have a look round. She had a feeling that it might be quite interesting to spend half an hour in Garry’s rooms.

  She took a bus, and then walked. It had been sunny in the country, but the London sky was blurred and grey. There was no breeze, and the air had a sort of chill stuffiness.

  Susan rang the bell of a tall, narrow house standing in a row of other tall, narrow houses, and was told that Mr. O’Connell was out.

  “When will he be in?” she said.

  The slatternly woman who had opened the door fingered her pale chin with limp, smudged fingers.

  “Well now, that’s more than I can say.”

  “Can I come in and wait?”

  The woman looked sideways. Her voice sounded sulky.

  “Not in the morning, with all the work of the house to be done.”

  “Will he be in in the afternoon?”

  “He might be.”

  “Then I’ll come back.”

  She made her way to the Museum. She was a fool not to have gone there first. She had wasted time and accomplished nothing.

  She did not accomplish very much at the Museum. After some delay there appeared, not the woolly old gentleman, but a much younger man. No, he said, he was afraid he couldn’t help her at all. Yes, he believed someone had been making inquiries about the book—Mr. Wrexham had mentioned it. No, Mr. Wrexham wasn’t here this morning. No, he couldn’t say whether he would be here this afternoon. No, he was afraid he couldn’t show her the book, as he believed Mr. Wrexham had locked it up in his private room. He was very sorry not to be able to assist her.

  Susan thanked him and came away. Over a cup of coffee and a bun she wondered whether she ought to have said that the book belonged to her and was on no account to be given to anyone else. She began to feel depressed and inefficient. And then all at once she thought that what she ought to have done was to stay at the Museum and make sure that Garry didn’t get away with The Shepheard’s Kalendar. Only you can’t stay in a Museum for ever, and even if she went back there now, Mr. Wrexham might have returned, and Garry might have come and gone again.

  She went back to Garry’s rooms, and this time the woman let her in. She had not exactly washed her face, but this morning’s black smudges had, as it were, been merged into a general dingy grey. She had removed her dirty apron and wore a sack-like collarless garment of magenta repp, pinned crooked at the neck with a large cheap paste brooch.

  “You can go up, but I’m not saying when he’ll be back, though he did say something about coming back to pack his bag, and if you’re his young lady, he’ll be put out above a bit if he misses you. Recognized you at once, I did, from the photo in his room—though I always say there’s some of these photos is dodged up so as their own mothers wouldn’t know them. But there—it stands to reason a young lady wants to look her best when she has her photo took—specially if it’s to give to her young gentleman. Go right up, and it’s the first door on the top—and a nice light room too, if the roof does slope a bit.”

  Susan found her way up a stair that grew steeper with every flight. Only the bottom flight was carpeted; the others were covered with a cheap cracked linoleum. There were three doors on the top landing. The first on the right opened into Mr. Garry O’Connell’s sitting-room, which was furnished chiefly with a round old-fashioned mahogany table and a large shapeless armchair. The table had a battered top and an air of having come down in the world. On one side of it was an inkstand, a dirty blotter, and a huddle of papers; on the other, relics of Mr. O’Connell’s last meal such as a pot of marmalade, a few lumps of sugar in a cracked basin, and a litter of toast crumbs. Against the opposite wall there was a cheap gimcrack cupboard, and, partly on the floor and partly in piles on a bamboo bookcase, there were a good many books. The window, looked down into the street, and on the other side of the room a narrow door led into the bedroom.

  Susan took a good look out of the window and then started to hunt for The Shepheard’s Kalendar. If Garry had got it yesterday it might be here, and that would save a great deal of trouble. After ten minutes she decided that it wasn’t there, unless it was locked up in the dispatch-box under Garry’s bed. Of course it might be. But Garry’s dispatch-box was always full to bursting, and there was no sign of a wad of papers having been thrown out to make room for something more important.

  Susan sat down in the lumpy armchair and wondered what Anthony was doing. She felt all of a sudden as if she wanted Anthony very much. She also wanted to cry.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Anthony was engaged in looking
for a needle in a bundle of hay. He was so set on getting to London that it was only when he had garaged his car and attended to a little matter of business that it occurred to him that he really hadn’t the slightest idea how he was going to find Susan. He thought himself rather clever when the idea of looking for Camilla in the telephone directory occurred to him. Since Camilla was Susan’s stepmother, her name was bound to be Colstone. He looked for a likely Mrs. Colstone, and when he found a Mrs. Ralph Colstone he rang her up.

  There was no reply from Mrs. Ralph Colstone. He tried twice more, and then gave it up. Then the idea of the British Museum came into his mind and stuck there. Susan had come up to town about The Shepheard’s Kalendar. She’d be bound to go to the Museum—only she had a couple of hours’ start, worse luck. He jumped into a taxi.

  It was just as the taxi stopped that he caught sight of a face which he recognized instantly. Coming towards him, with a parcel under his arm and a soft hat on his head, was the man whom he had seen glaring at him from the hedge by the Coldstone Ring and looking down from Nurse Collins’ window. He was also quite sure that it was the man who had leaned on the table in the dark housekeeper’s room, and the man who had talked to Susan in the medal room at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

  Anthony was leaning forward, his hand on the half-open door, his foot already moving towards the step, when he stopped, jerked the door to, and flung himself back out of sight. The man with the book under his arm passed so close that if Anthony had stayed where he was, he could have touched him. He waited a moment. Then he put his head out of the window and told the driver to follow the man with the parcel.

  Susan got very tired of waiting. Sometimes she wondered what she was waiting for. If Garry came back with the book, what was she going to do about it? She couldn’t take it away from him by force, and if he suspected what she suspected, he certainly wouldn’t give it up for the asking—and he must suspect something, or he wouldn’t have got the receipt out of Camilla. Garry being unselfish and obliging was an insubstantial and unconvincing figment of Camilla’s imagination.

  If Garry came back with the book—somehow Susan had a feeling that he would come back with it—well, what about it—what was she going to do? That was it. What was she going to do? All at once she knew, and her spirits rose with a bound. It might not come off, but it was worth trying. Anyhow she would be doing something. It was so frightfully depressing just to sit still and feel limp and inefficient whilst other people stole your hereditary secrets. Now at least she would be doing something.

  The first thing she did was to pick out from the jumble of Garry’s books the nearest in size to The Shepheard’s Kalendar in its needlework cover. Then she routed about and found some brown paper in Garry’s trunk and an odd bit of string in the sitting-room cupboard. She wondered how museums tied a book up, and then she wondered whether they would tie it up at all. The needlework cover reassured her—and one book tied up in brown paper looks very much like another. Anyhow it was a chance. It was more than a chance, it was a good chance; because if Garry had the book, he wouldn’t want her to see it, so he would try and put it down somewhere out of sight—he’d be bound to.

  She put the brown paper down on the table and laid the book upon it. The edge of the paper caught the jumble of letters there and pushed some of them off on to the floor. Susan stooped to pick them up. There was an envelope, two letters, and a newspaper cutting.

  One does not read other people’s letters; but newspaper cuttings are a different matter. Susan’s eye was first caught, and then held. Right at the top of the cutting was the sign which was cut upon the Coldstone, the sign of the two interlaced triangles. Over this sign ran the heading, “The Shield of David.”

  She read the whole paragraph with a beating heart and burning cheeks; and then, just as she came to the last line, she heard a door bang somewhere below. She pushed the cutting down inside her bag and finished her parcel in a rush. Then she tucked it under her coat, high up where she could hold it against her side by the pressure of her left arm. She was thankful she had come up in a coat and skirt, and not in a thin muslin dress. She felt as hot as fire. She ran to the window and once more looked down into the street. There was a black cloud darkening all the sky above the houses opposite—one of those inky clouds which promise rain and an early falling dark. There were hours of daylight still, but the light seemed to be failing every moment. She looked up and down the street for any sign of Garry. Three children were playing in the gutter on the right. A girl in a bright pink cotton dress and a bright green hat was wheeling a perambulator down the left-hand pavement and looking back over her shoulder at a young man who was staring after her. On the opposite pavement someone was standing looking up at the house she was in. She leaned right out of the window, and only just stopped herself from crying out, because the man was Anthony.

  And Anthony, staring at the house into which the man he had been following had just disappeared, lifted his eyes to the top storey and in a sort of agony of amazement recognized Susan.

  In the same moment Susan flashed round and faced the opening door. Mr. Garry O’Connell came in with a parcel under his arm. For an instant Susan thought the beating of her heart would have choked her. Then, as she bit the corner of her lip and told herself just what a fool she was, it dawned upon her that Garry was at least as discomposed as she was herself. Never had he seemed less pleased to see her. Then all of a sudden he threw his parcel on to a chair, tossed his hat down upon it, and came towards her with outstretched hands.

  “My darling child—if this isn’t a pleasant surprise!”

  Susan got away from the window. If Garry was going to kiss her, it was just as well that the embrace should not take place where Anthony could hardly help seeing it.

  “It’s a surprise—but you didn’t look as if it was a pleasant one.”

  She avoided the kiss by about half an inch, and felt dreadfully self-conscious about the book, which she hoped her coat really did conceal. If Garry put his arm round her, he would feel it. She put the table between them.

  “Do you keep your kisses for him?” said Garry shortly.

  Susan put her chin in the air.

  “I don’t keep them for you, Garry,” she said. Her voice shook a little with excitement.

  “Do you keep them for him?”

  “I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Liar!” said Garry. He spoke smoothly and pleasantly and his lips smiled, but his eyes had the fierce smouldering look of a dog who is going to bite.

  Susan was never afraid of Garry when they were face to face, but afterwards she would be afraid when she remembered that look. She put out her hand as if she were pushing him away.

  “My good Garry!” Then, with a laugh, “No—honestly—I have not got time to quarrel—not this afternoon. Any other day I’d simply love to, but now—No, really, Garry—I’ve got to catch a train. And oh, do be an angel and tell me whether there’s anything between the four-forty and the seven-eleven.”

  Garry didn’t move.

  “Why did you come?” he said. One of his hands rested on the table. She saw it twitch.

  “Well, I came because Camilla told me you were going to get back some book my father lent to the British Museum. She said she’d given you the receipt. I suppose it’ll take simply ages. But I really mustn’t stay to talk about it now. I wouldn’t have stayed if I’d thought you’d be so long.”

  If Garry had The Shepheard’s Kalendar in that parcel under his hat, he’d want to get rid of her now, just as quickly as ever he could; he’d want to look her up a train and push her off to catch it in the biggest possible hurry. And the timetable was in the next room.

  She took a single hurried breath, and saw his face change.

  “Oh yes, there’ll be delays. I’m on the spot, so you’d better let me push it through. Of course the book mayn’t be worth much when you get it. What train did you want to catch?”

  “The four-forty, i
f I can.”

  “To Wrane?”

  “Yes, Wrane.”

  Garry flung away from the table.

  “Are you going to stay there for ever?” he said angrily. Then, as he passed her, he just touched her on the shoulder, said “Susan” rather as if the word hurt him, and passed quickly through the open door into the bedroom.

  Almost before he was out of sight Susan reached the chair where the parcel lay. She put her own parcel under the hat, and was back in her place by the table, her left arm tingling as she pressed it down upon what she felt certain was The Shepheard’s Kalendar.

  Garry O’Connell, coming back with the timetable, looked at her, and felt a sudden rush of admiration. According to his lights, he had loved Susan for years—loved her when she looked pretty, and when she looked plain, and when she looked tired, and when her nose was shiny. She was always Susan. But at this moment she touched beauty. He stood in the doorway wondering. Her eyes were bright and startled, her colour was like a wind-blown flame. She filled the bare, ugly little room with colour and emotion.

  Garry, his hands clenched on the time-table, stood there and took the colour and the emotion to himself for just one moment. The next carried him to Susan’s side. Before she knew what was going to happen he had his arms about her and she could feel the thudding of his heart. There was a moment in which they saw each other. What Susan saw she hated; and what Garry saw was this hatred looking out of Susan’s eyes. In a whirl of rage she twisted herself free and reached the door.

  “Are you mad?” And then, in the middle of being angry, something pricked her heart. He had turned so white. She said “Garry!” and he passed his hand across his face, breathing hard. She said “Garry!” again, this time with a note of appeal in her voice.

  He swallowed, let the time-table fall on the floor, and then stooped to pick it up again.