The Thief of St Martins

by Caron Allan

  There seemed nothing left for her to do but to go back to the car. Casting a final despairing look at the back door, then at the front door, showed nothing had changed. No one stood by either door peering out, wondering where their caller had gone. The place was desolate. It was a fine beginning to this visit to her relations.

  Chapter Five

  Sure enough the pub in the village had a couple of rooms they let out to visitors. The pub, called The Sheep Fold, was a sweet little white-washed, thatched-roofed affair, snuggled in under a hill as if sheltering from the oncoming bad weather. She had pulled the car off the road and into a yard that served as a sort of mews at the side of the place. The overhanging trees made it quite dark here, and her headlamps picked up the figure of a man in his middle years coming out to meet her, extending a hand to help her out of the car.

  ‘Afternoon, miss. Brought the rain with you I see. You just get yourself inside out of the weather, miss, I’ll bring your luggage in,’ he told her with a broad grin. She could almost have hugged him, she was so relieved to hear a friendly voice. Once more grabbing her hatbox, handbag and briefcase, she hurried into the pub, skirting a large, well-decorated Christmas tree right inside the door. She looked back to see him lifting out her suitcase, slamming down the little luggage door, then turning back to head for the entrance, his head bent against the sudden squall. He left the suitcase by the bar, tipped his hat to thank her for the shilling she handed him, and departed.

  ‘Good afternoon, miss. Can I help you?’

  ‘I need a room for the night, if you have one.’ Dottie gave the aproned young man behind the bar her brightest smile. He blushed.

  ‘I’ll go and find out,’ he said. ‘Excuse me a minute.’

  Dottie looked around her. The place was almost empty, apart from a soft buzz of conversation from somewhere away to her left, behind a huge oak door that had surely been in place since well before Victoria’s reign.

  The young man came back. ‘Er, well, I think we may be able to... Is it just for the one night?’

  ‘I’m not certain. I was supposed to be staying with relatives. If I can’t reach them, I might be going home again tomorrow.’

  He turned his pink countenance away from its perusal of her face and picked up a glass-cloth. He began to wipe a wine glass. ‘That’s quite all right. We have a charming room facing the road, or madam might prefer a quieter room at the back of the inn?’

  Madam tried not to laugh at being called madam in a pub by a boy younger than herself. Evidently he aspired to a larger, more refined establishment. Dottie told him that the room overlooking the front would be lovely, thank you, and arranged about dinner and breakfast. When he had given her a room key, she said, ‘I need to make two telephone calls, I hope that’s all right? You do have a telephone here?’

  He told her with pride that they did indeed have a telephone. ‘It was put in last year, madam. And quite private too, as it’s out back by the door to the... yes, madam, we have a telephone.’

  She grinned at him, leaning forward to say in a pleading tone, ‘And is there any chance of a pot of tea please? I’m so cold from my journey.’

  His whole face was red again. ‘Certainly madam. I will arrange for tea to be sent up to your room immediately. And if madam can give me the telephone numbers, I will arrange the calls for you.’

  He was sweet. After the reception—or lack of one—at St Martins House it was refreshing to meet someone so eager to please. She told him the numbers for her home in London, and St Martins House nearby. Her brief hope that the young man might hear St Martins House and say, ‘Oh yes, that family is staying here at the moment due to a sudden difficulty at home...’ flared and died as he looked merely politely interested but offered no comment. He said only, ‘I’ll let you know when the calls are through. I’m Edwards, madam. Please let me know if there is anything else at all I can do for you.’

  She thanked him and went across to the stairs, hoping she had imagined that slight emphasis on ‘anything else at all’. She made her way up to her room, and a few minutes later, he arrived with her suitcase and was immediately sent away again by the older woman who accompanied him. The woman brought in a tray, and setting it down, showed Dottie where the bathroom was, promising her plenty of hot water if she wanted a bath. The tray held a pot of tea, sandwiches and a cherry scone with butter and jam. It took Dottie no time at all to dispose of the lot.

  Dottie was looking forward to having a hot bath once she had spoken to her parents and hopefully got through to her aunt. She opened her suitcase and got out the things for her bath, and a warm dress to change into for dinner, just to get out of the suit she’d worn all day for travelling.

  An hour later, there was a knock at the door and she followed young Mr Edwards downstairs to the telephone. He went to the bar, and Dottie went to the telephone. She picked up the receiver to hear him saying, ‘Your call to London, madam.’ He had put on a low breathy kind of voice, perhaps hoping to sound seductive. Dottie smiled. Then she heard her mother’s voice giving the phone number.

  ‘Oh Mother! Such a mix up! Yes, yes, I got here perfectly well. No, no hitches at all. The weather was glorious, it was such a lovely run down. I didn’t get lost once. Well, I did take the teeniest detour but it was all right, and only set me back a few minutes. A nice elderly farmer set me back on the right road.’

  At the other end, Mrs Manderson was praising and exclaiming by turns. Dottie didn’t want to listen to all that so she butted in with, ‘Can you check the address for me. I went to where we thought it was and there was no one there. The place was empty. No staff, nothing. I knocked and knocked. I even tried the back door. The place was completely deserted.’

  She waited for almost a minute whilst her mother went to find her address book, then came back to read it out very loudly and slowly. Dottie compared it to the directions she had written down in her diary. It was very odd, she thought. She felt utterly baffled. Her mother didn’t understand it either and was convinced Dottie had gone wrong somewhere.

  ‘But that’s where I went. I’m sure I... No Mother, I’m telling you, I did go there. It was the right... Well the name was on the pillars at the gate. And there was only... Yes, I know but as I say, the name was on the gate, and there was only one road. Well it doesn’t make any sense to me either.’

  She couldn’t think of an explanation for why no one had been at her aunt’s home to greet her. She had to wait whilst her mother went to fetch her father, then she had the same conversation with him. He started by telling her she must have gone to the wrong place. She defended herself as best she could, feeling irritable and worried by the time she said goodbye. She promised to come straight home again in the morning if she couldn’t find her aunt’s home. Resisting the urge to snap, ‘I found it the first time!’ Dottie said goodbye and sat on the padded leather bench to wait for the next call.

  It didn’t come. When she ran into the bar to query this with the young man, he told her he hadn’t been able to get her connection. He was waiting to hear back from the exchange. Ten minutes later, the telephone exchange phoned him to say that there was no reply from the number given. He relayed this information to a very puzzled Dottie in his low breathy voice. She thanked him briskly and returned to her room, even more worried than before. She sat down on the window-seat to think about things.

  All she could do was wait until the morning then try again. If there was no reply to the telephone, she supposed she would have to drive back to the house and see if anyone was there, before giving up altogether and driving back to London.

  She had her bath. Then she dressed and went downstairs for dinner. On the way to the little private room that was used as a dining room, Dottie went into the bar. The young man was there, blushing madly when he saw her coming.

  ‘I forgot to check,’ Dottie said, ‘But you did ask for the name of the residents as well as the house name when you spoke to the exchange?’

  ‘Yes madam. Mr or Mrs Lewis C
owdrey. St Martins House. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, exactly right, thank you.’ Dottie bit her lip, still puzzling. ‘Do you know the family at all?’

  ‘Not really madam. The gentlemen sometimes call in here for a drink, or whatever. Mr Guy used to play darts or have a drink with his friends. But we don’t see him so much these days.’

  Dottie thanked him and then went in to get her dinner.

  After dinner, Dottie had returned to her room to sit by the window. In summer months, it was doubtless a charming view of the road lined with cottages and gardens. But now, in the depths of winter with its short days and long nights, the window only gave onto a darkness broken here and there by a lamp glowing in a cottage. The effect was rather dreary. Mostly all Dottie could see was her own pale face, slightly strange-looking, thrown back at her from the glass. Sitting there, Dottie felt edgy and tense. Nevertheless, she tried to concentrate on the three-day-old newspaper she had found in the bar.

  She couldn’t shake off the feeling that she had done all this before. Just six months earlier she had sat in a hotel, admittedly an expensive hotel, located on the Yorkshire coast. The summer days had been bright and cheery long into the evening but even so, the feeling of dreary sameness endured.

  Sitting here in this room in Sussex was exactly like when she had waited to tell her parents about the death of Diana, Flora’s husband’s sister. Dottie’s hands gripped one another in her lap. When the young man tapped on her door she almost leapt out of her skin.

  ‘Call for you, madam. The London number again.’

  She hurried down the stairs in his wake, and out to the telephone. She snatched up the receiver. ‘Hello?’ She had to listen hard, the noise from the bar had increased dramatically in the last hour or so.

  ‘Dorothy dear,’ her mother said without preamble, ‘I think we may have committed an error here.’

  ‘Oh dear, really?’ Dottie’s heart sank, if possible, even further. She huffed out a breath, making her fringe fly into the air and back down again.

  ‘Did you manage to get through to your aunt?’

  Dottie said she hadn’t, that the exchange said no one was answering the call.

  Her mother said, ‘Of course, I noticed at the time how tattered and damp the envelope was when it arrived, but I’ve only just studied the post-mark.’

  ‘But the letter said, two weeks on Thursday,’ Dottie pointed out, shifting the phone to fish in her bag for the letter to herself that had been enclosed with the one to her mother. She unfolded it, scanned the contents hurriedly, and said, ‘Yes, just as I thought: ‘Dorothy may come to us two weeks on Thursday’, that’s definitely what she says.’

  ‘Yes dear. But I thought the letter was dated the 12th. However, now I’ve managed to decipher the date on the envelope, and it was postmarked the 17th, so almost a week later. I borrowed your father’s magnifying glass, and well, yes I think I’m right, that what I took for the 12th could just about have been 17th; the stamp is rather blurred.’

  ‘Hmm. I see. So they weren’t expecting me until...?’ Dottie counted on her fingers. ‘The 4th of January? Not for another week!’ She leaned against the wall, closing her eyes. This only made things worse, even if it did shed some light on the matter. ‘That’s obviously what’s happened. How aggravating.’

  ‘It’s just like Cecilia to be so unclear about things.’

  ‘That probably accounts for me not getting any reply when I rang earlier. Oh Mother, I can’t believe I’m here a week too soon!’

  ‘I’d have thought that at least the butler, or a maid would answer the telephone. They keep a larger staff than we do here. They’re very well-to-do, and it’s a much larger house.’ The frown was just as clearly discernible in her mother’s voice as it would be on her face if they were together.

  Dottie said, ‘Perhaps they closed up the house to go away for Christmas? Perhaps they took all the staff with them, and they’re coming back in a day or two?’

  ‘You’re probably right, dear.’ Her mother gave a sigh that came down the phone wire and prickled Dottie’s ear. From the bar came the sudden sound of raucous laughter. Dottie transferred the receiver to her other ear, hoping she’d be able to block out some of the sound so her mother could hear her better. Mrs Manderson went on, ‘But it’s created a very inconvenient situation for you. Are you coming home again?’

  ‘I suppose so. I don’t want to stay here for a week waiting for them to come home. As it is, I’m in two minds about this whole visit.’

  There was silence from the other end. Mr and Mrs Manderson and Flora had all been against the idea from the outset, thinking it would do no good for Dottie to get to know her aunt better. But they’d made no attempts to dissuade her. She knew they’d wanted to let her make her own choice.

  After a pause, Mrs Manderson said in a gentle voice that was quite uncharacteristic, ‘Why not wait and see how you feel about it in the morning? Telephone the Cowdreys again, or I could telephone for you from here. Who knows, they might come back late tonight or first thing in the morning. You won’t lose too much time. Even if you have to come back home again, it’s been a useful experience, driving there and back.’

  ‘All right,’ Dottie agreed. ‘I’ll phone them again in the morning. If I can’t get them by lunchtime, I’ll come back home again. Either way, I’ll telephone to let you know what I’m doing.’

  They ended the conversation with a number of cautions from Mrs Manderson that a Young Girl Staying Alone At A Country Inn was prudent to observe, including Dottie’s old favourite: ‘And don’t forget to put a chair-back under the door handle. All too often these places use the same keys to lock all the doors, so really there is no security at all. Locking your door is not enough on its own.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mother, I’ll be careful,’ Dottie said, though she had no intention whatsoever of pulling a chair across the room to try and fit the back of it under the door handle to prevent anyone from opening the door—including the maid with her morning tea.

  Mrs Manderson, clearly feeling that her daughter was treating all too lightly the omnipresent dangers to single young women, then gave a final instruction, and it made Dottie giggle—this was her sister’s favourite of Mrs Manderson’s large repertoire of warnings:

  ‘And remember, when you go into the room, lock your door and make sure the key is straight in the lock. There are often perverted men in these out-of-the-way places who take great pleasure in looking through keyholes in the hopes of seeing a young girl undress.’

  Stifling her laughter, Dottie promised faithfully—her fingers crossed behind her back—to lock the door of her room in a manner calculated to foil all the peeping toms in Sussex. Mrs Manderson humphed, almost as if she knew her warnings were all in vain. They exchanged a few more comments then said goodnight.

  Dottie immediately asked for another call to be put through to her aunt’s house, but after listening to the phone ringing for almost two minutes, she was forced to conclude there was still no one at home.

  She decided she would have an early night and went back upstairs. On reaching her room though, she didn’t feel the least bit relaxed, so she opened her briefcase and drew out two thin ledgers along with two manila folders, one considerably thicker than the other. She was still on tenterhooks about the uncertainty and confusion of the situation regarding her visit. She’d wasted time making this journey and began to feel cross with herself. She should have been getting on with things at the warehouse. She had been a fool to come down just as she was getting to grips with the new range of clothes she was planning. It was as well she’d brought the work with her, thinking there might be odd quiet moments when she could get on with something useful, but it wasn’t the same as actually being at the warehouse every day.

  Taking a seat at the little table by the window, (a chair without the kind of back you could readily thrust under a door handle, being too well-padded and too low) she checked and double-checked the figures for the la
st month’s sales, and then went on to check her business expenditure. She looked over and approved purchase orders, wages, sundry bills and other items. Then she turned back once more to the folder of new designs.

  Feeling chilly, and deciding she might as well be comfortable, she carried the folder across to the bed. She put on her nightdress and got under the bedcovers. Then she opened the folder to reveal the pleasantly thick sheaf of papers. This was the part she loved.

  She plumped up her pillows behind her and stretched her feet out under the blankets. A delicious sense of anticipation seized her as she reached for the pages once more. It was a feast for the senses.

  The thick foolscap paper crinkled in her hand. The sharp crack of it deepened her excitement, the sound triggering the memory of all the other times she had held these sheets of paper and gazed at their contents. Her fingers recognised the smooth cool surface of the paper; the scent of the ink teased her nose. She could smell the unique freshness of the small new pieces of fabric. Goosebumps stood out on her forearms, not just because it was four days before the close of the year, and the fire was dying down, the orange and grey of the coal peeping through the black bars of the grate. Just to hold the pages was wonderful to her. Everything else fell away and was forgotten.

  If, in the early days of running the warehouse, Dottie had sometimes despaired of learning enough, and learning it quickly enough, to be able to truly honour her friend’s legacy; if she had doubted she possessed the skills required, or the knowledge, or the experience that comes only with many years of work, she doubted no more. After only half a year of hard work, now as she held the new season’s designs in her hand she knew she was doing the work she was made for, and she was determined to try even harder to improve and to acquire the skills necessary to perform that work to the best of her ability.