by Carol Hedges
Harriet casts her eyes down, thus missing the wink the doorman exchanges with the housekeeper, who gives her a brisk little push through the door.
“Go and find your parents, Harriet. And please do not attempt to pull any tricks like that again,” she says, hurrying off.
Harriet drags herself into the lobby, and hauls herself across it, feeling as if every eye is upon her, and every guest is judging her and finding her wanting. She mounts the stairs to the first floor and knocks on her parents’ door.
“Yes? Who is it?” calls her father’s voice from within.
A cold feeling of dread steals over her at the sound of it. “It’s me, Harriet,” she says dully.
There is a second’s pause, then the door is flung open, and Harriet is clasped passionately to the maternal bosom. “Oh Harriet, Harriet! How could you run away like that?” sobs her mother, “How could you make us suffer so much? Wicked, wicked girl! To run away from your loving family! What were you thinking?”
Harriet struggles to free herself.
“Now, Charlotte ~ control yourself,” her father says. “Remember what we discussed? Harriet, come and stand here. No, here, by the writing desk. Now look me straight in the eye and tell me plainly where you have been hiding for the last three days. And I want the truth. I shall know if you are lying to me, so do not waste my time.”
Harriet stares into her father’s cold stone-grey eyes. “I have been at great aunt’s house,” she says in a small voice. “I wanted to see my parrot.”
“Aha!” A look of fierce triumph crosses her father’s lean face. His features relax into an expression of comprehension.
Harriet does not quite understand it, but decides to capitalise, nevertheless. “I am sorry for what I have done. I did not cause any trouble to great aunt. And I saw my Aunt Wilhelmina while I was there.”
Again, her father’s eyes light up. To her utter amazement, he smiles at her. “I see. Well, you are back now, and it is almost teatime, so we shall say no more about it, for the present. Go to your room and make yourself presentable ~ you need to change your pinafore and wash your hands before we go down to the dining room. We shall speak about this later.”
Harriet stares at him. She had mentally prepared herself for a couple of hard smacks, a deal of hard words and several days on limited rations. Puzzled, she backs out of the room, almost falling over Hanover, who is listening at the keyhole. He glares resentfully at her.
“Why didn’t he wallop you one? He’s been saying he was going to beat the living daylights out of you when you came back. He was going to break your spirit, he said. My eye ~ were you going to get it!”
Harriet deconstructs this. “Maybe he was just worried about me, and now he’s pleased I’m back.”
Hanover shakes his head. “No, he’s definitely been raging. I heard him. The whole hotel probably heard him. He seemed to change when you told him you’d been at great aunt’s house.”
“Yes, he did, didn’t he?” Harriet agrees thoughtfully. “And when I told him I’d met Aunt Wilhelmina, he actually smiled. Why?”
“What did she look like?” Hanover asks. “Did she talk about father? And the money?”
“Mind your own business,” Harriet says tartly.
She runs along the corridor and wrenches open the door to her room. Then, before Hanover can enter and ask any more questions, she turns the key. Harriet lies on her coverlet, staring at the ceiling, thinking things out. She knows she should be feeling guilty, but she does not. Part of this absence of guilt comes from the absence of punishment. An almost unheard-of event. She decides to focus her attention on it.
Gradually, realisation dawns. Her father is not punishing her because she has seen her aunt. He wants to hear what happened. He wants to find out whether Aunt Wilhelmina is going to get a share of the money, and she is the only one who can confirm or deny it. A slow smile spreads across Harriet’s face. It is not often that she holds any leverage over her cold unloving parent. So now that she does, she is going to make the most of it.
****
Detective Inspector Stride considers himself to be a fair man. A fair man who does not like to disappoint his colleagues. A fair man who will do whatever it takes to track down a criminal, wherever he may choose to hide. And now, he has failed. He has been unable to track down the murderer of a young parliamentary clerk who had his whole life and career in front of him. He has had to face the man’s distraught parents and inform them that his officers, trained detectives at the top of their game, did not have a single clue regarding who had murdered their only son, nor why. That they had explored every avenue and found only dead ends.
So, it is an unhappy detective inspector who makes his way to his favourite lunchtime watering-hole off Fleet Street. Pushing open the door of Sally’s Chop House, his nose is assailed with the customary odour of over-boiled cabbage and fatty meat. To his surprise and delight however, he is greeted by the eponymous Sally, who has returned from his holiday. His face is sunburned ~ which is the only difference about him that Stride can spot. His gravy-stained apron looks identical to how it was before he left.
Stride’s face brightens. “Good to see you, Sally,” he says, making his way to his usual booth at the back.
“And you, Mr Stride,” Sally responds, following him at a cautious distance.
The detective might be one of Sally’s regulars, but he is not one of his favourite customers, having rather too much the air of policeman about him. If Sally could find a cogent reason to bar Stride, he would. Customers, however innocent, do not like to be reminded of the forces of law and order, especially when they are harmlessly eating their lunch. Stride places his order, then enquires about Sally’s holiday.
“Well, you know how it is, Mr Stride,” the big man says, mopping down the table with a grey dishcloth. “Once you’ve seen the sea, you’ve seen it. I don’t go much for this new-fangled sea-bathing lark myself, but the brother and his wife were all for it, so I went along like. Just glad to be back in London. At least the pavements don’t crunch and go up and down.”
On that elliptical note, Sally goes to fetch Stride’s food, leaving his customer to muse on the peculiarity of people. While he is gone, Stride takes a look at one of the newspapers. Sally’s patrons favour reading matter at the less intellectually exhausting end of the spectrum, preferring big bold headlines, lots of exclamation marks and short words.
Stride turns the pages listlessly. There are the usual horror stories of giant pigs running riot in the sewers, babies that have grown fins and headless bodies prowling the midnight streets. The corners of the pages are still damp from the licked fingers of previous readers. He consoles himself that, for once, there are no stories, true or false, featuring Scotland Yard and the detective division.
Sally eventually reappears with Stride’s plate of chops, gravy and a boiled potato and plonks it down in front of him. “You enjoy your lunch, Mr Stride,” he says, retreating to a discreet distance to keep an eye on him, so that the moment Stride sets down his knife and fork, Sally can whisk his plate away, take his money and see him off the premises.
Stride picks at his food morosely for a while. He sighs. Puts his cutlery onto his plate and stares moodily into the middle distance.
“Everythin’ to your satisfaction then, Mr Stride?” Sally asks, stepping speedily out of the background into the foreground. “Bit more gravy with that?”
“No, Sally. Thank you. The food is fine. I was musing upon a recent investigation.”
“That’s orlright then,” Sally says.
“I wish it was. I have had to disappoint my colleagues. It does not make for a happy atmosphere.”
“That’s a shame, then.” Sally’s experience of staff relations involves shouting at the potboy and nagging the kitchen staff to cut corners.
“It is a great shame, Sally, I agree. Here we had a fine young man, his whole life ahead of him, and I have had to close the investigation on his untimely death as we have no cr
edible witnesses to his demise.”
“Can’t win ’em all, Mr Stride, is what I say.”
“Somebody has got away with murder. That sticks in my craw, Sally. Justice has not been done.”
Sally’s face is a mask of diplomatically feigned solicitude. In the not-too-distant past, he was a small-time thief of some inadequacy, until he decided to give up a life of crime for a career in catering. The concept of justice evaded is dear to his heart, though never part of his personal experience.
“Nobody who takes another man’s life should ever be free to walk the streets,” Stride declares, thumping the table with his fist.
“A sentiment wot I totally agrees with, Mr Stride,” Sally nods. Taking another man’s watch, his umbrella or, in one case, his canteen of cutlery, was a different kettle of fish altogether.
“Justice should be meted out to everyone who breaks the law of this land,” Stride continues.
Sally clamps his mouth shut. If there’d been a bit less meting out, he wouldn’t have spent quite so much time behind bars for events that were, in his opinion, more a redistribution of wealth than actual larceny.
Stride eats a few more mouthfuls, mops up his gravy with a piece of bread, then places his knife and fork together on his plate. Sally immediately leans over his shoulder and removes it.
“’Nother drink?” he asks solicitously.
Stride shakes his head. He pays for his meal and picks up his hat from the bench.
“I am glad you have returned, Sally. I have missed our little chats.”
“So have I, Mr Stride, so have I,” the big man lies, accompanying Stride to the door to make sure he leaves. The only good thing about this particular customer, he thinks, as he takes Stride’s plate to be sluiced in the bucket of cold water behind the bar, before it is used for someone else, is that he always pays for his food without quibbling and doesn’t pocket the eating implements on the way out.
****
Meanwhile, over at the Excelsior Hotel, the Interrogation of Harriet is about to begin. Here are Sherborne Harbinger and his older brother Arthur, seated behind one of the big tables in the deserted dining room, which they have temporarily commandeered. In front of them, standing on a small, tapestried stool, is Harriet herself. The set-up is deliberately designed to be as intimidating and awkward as possible for the young girl.
Arthur Harbinger has actually brought some important looking files with him, which he has opened and spread on the table to add to the gravity of the occasion. It is his intention to make notes of the ensuing interrogation, possibly for use in some profitable capacity in the future. Sherborne is wearing his black business suit. Harriet, in a clean pinafore and frock, eyes them both cautiously, but behind her impassive face, her active mind is already busily at work.
“Now, Harriet,” Arthur solemnly says, while folding his arms in as intimidating a manner as he can, “when did you see your Aunt Wilhelmina?”
Harriet remains mute.
“Answer your uncle, Harriet,” Sherborne says. He has taken the role of good relative. Temporarily.
“You know when I saw her,” Harriet says finally.
“But Uncle Arthur wants to hear it from your own lips, Harriet,” says the good relative testily.
Harriet rolls her eyes, mainly because she knows how it irritates her father. “I saw Aunt Wilhelmina at great aunt’s house. She was paying a morning call.”
“And where were you during this morning call?” Arthur asks.
Harriet gives him a cool stare. “I was in the back parlour, behind the folding doors.”
“So, you could see and hear everything that went on?” Sherborne prompts.
Arthur Harbinger raises a warning hand. “Not so fast, brother. One step at a time, if you please. First, we need to find out whether the woman really was Wilhelmina. Now, Harriet, I want you to describe your aunt to us. What did she look like?”
Harriet stares at the far wall, upon which hangs a painting of a fine three-masted Elizabethan galleon breasting a stormy sea. She imagines herself standing on the deck in a tricorne hat, the parrot balancing itself on her shoulder. She has a sword at her belt, and she is riding the waves, captain of her own craft, hearing gulls crying overhead. She has instructed the crew to aim the ship’s cannons at her father and uncle.
“I am waiting. Please answer my question, Harriet,” says the bad relative, drumming his fingers upon the table.
Harriet gives her crew the order to fire.
“She was very beautiful, with long dark ringlets, and a green silk dress. She had a lovely bonnet with feathers and lots of sparkling rings on her fingers.”
Harriet had toyed with portraying her aunt as a fellow pirate but decided that might stretch the credibility gap a bit too far. As it was, she is gratified to see a look of alarm pass between her father and her uncle.
“Rings, you say?” Sherborne queries.
“Sparkling rings?” Arthur adds.
“Oh yes. Lots. I saw them when she took off her gloves. And she arrived in a carriage. I heard the horses. She brought great aunt some lovely presents ~ chocolates and roses. Great aunt was very happy to see her. She said so.”
There is a pause while this extremely unwelcome information is processed. Harriet changes the imaginary scenery. Now, her father and uncle are inching along a thin, whippy plank. She is prodding them, cutlass in hand. Beneath them, sharks circle. Waiting.
“Well, brother, this is unexpected. Our sister seems to have come into money after all,” Arthur says. “I wonder where she got it from?” He shoots Harriet a stern glance. “I am quite sure that you wouldn’t lie to your family, would you, little girl? Lying is against the teaching of God.”
Harriet is quite sure that she would. There were so many things her Papa did that were against the teachings of God that a few additions on her part were neither here nor there. And anybody who called her ‘little girl’ in that dismissive tone of voice deserved to be copiously lied to.
“What did they talk about?” Sherborne asks eagerly.
“Lots of things,” Harriet says elliptically.
Arthur Harbinger waves a hand in a go-on motion.
Harriet looks deliberately vague. “Oh, I can’t remember everything. I am sorry. They spoke very quietly. But great aunt kept saying: ‘No? Did they? Oh, I am so sorry, how very cruel.’ And Aunt Wilhelmina said: ‘you cannot imagine what I suffered.’ She said that several times.”
Both brothers wince in fraternal unison and glance away.
“I told you,” Arthur hisses under his breath, and Sherborne bites his underlip.
Harriet moves her weight onto her left foot. The sharks, having enjoyed their meal, swim away. “Can I go now?”
Her father glances up. “No, you may not. We have not finished yet,” he snaps, good relative morphing suddenly into bad relative. “You have not told us how the meeting ended. Whether great aunt mentioned anything about her Will.”
Overnight, in the humid air of her small bedroom, while the rest of the hotel slumbered peacefully, Harriet has been thinking a lot about this. It was a case of creating a set of answers that would be believable, without being so fantastically far-fetched that it threw everything else she said into doubt.
“Well,” she begins, taking a deep breath. “I think I heard great aunt say something about how she planned to make it up to Aunt Wilhelmina for all the terrible things that had happened to her when she was growing up. And then she showed her a big green box of jewellery and asked her to choose some to take with her for the time being, as a keepsake.”
A low groan emits from Arthur Harbinger. He covers his face with his hands.
“And Aunt Wilhelmina said, ‘thank you very much’, and put a diamond necklace and a diamond bracelet on. Then she put more jewellery into her bag. And great aunt said she could have the rest after she died. And then she said goodbye. That was all I saw. And then the housekeeper found me and brought me back here. Can I go now?”
“Yes, g
o, go,” Sherborne waves her away.
Relief carries Harriet to the door, where she pauses, listening intently. She hears her uncle saying furiously, “The little swine has slipped in behind our backs. I cannot believe it! I will not tolerate it, Sherborne. We are going to have to move fast to rectify this. I blame you. If you hadn’t been so determined to cut her out of father’s Will, and then lose her address, we might have been able to stop her.”
“I?” her father snarls, “I was the one who suggested we gave her a small amount of money as a token gesture, to keep her sweet. This entire mess is your fault. I had high hopes that Charlotte would inherit the jewellery. The diamonds! The diamonds have been filched by our sister! They are reputedly worth a small fortune by themselves. The story always was that aunt was given them by some royal personage.”
“YOU expected the diamonds? Really? I am the older brother. The diamonds and the rest of the jewels should, by rights, go to me.”
“I don’t see why they should. It’s not as if you have a wife, or any other female dependants. I have two.”
“Oh really? And your wife mixes in the sort of circles where women wear priceless diamonds, does she? Or will she wear them to do the family washing?”
“How dare you impugn my wife, you scoundrel!” Sherborne shouts, jumping out of his seat and squaring up to his brother, fists raised.
Arthur Harbinger follows suit. Harriet, still paused on the threshold, waits wide-eyed and agog to see what will happen next. Alas, just at the moment when fisticuffs seem destined to break out, a waiter comes in with a tray of cups and saucers. Both brothers instantly lower their hands, sink sheepishly into their chairs, and Harriet hurries away.
She returns to her hotel room. It is small, and the view from the window is of the back yard of the building opposite, which seems to be some sort of warehouse. There is a dog tied up, who barks and sometimes cries. She tries not to dwell upon her two nights of freedom, sitting under the stars, warm and happy, when the whole world was full of possibility, and she had only to reach out and touch it. A knock at her door heralds the arrival of her mother, who, since she has returned, has taken to drooping and beginning every sentence with the same mournful plaint.
