The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith: A Golden Age Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

“Well, did she?” said Jane.

  “I don’t know,” said Mr. Todhunter gloomily. “She cried such a lot, and we were both rather confused, and she’s most awfully frightened, you know.” He glared at Jane as if she had something to do with Renata being frightened. “If I’m to take up this job of mine, I have to sail in three days’ time. I want her to marry me and come too; but she says that, if she runs away, they’ll make sure she heard something, and, if it’s the farthest ends of the earth, they’ll find her and kill her. It seems Molloy told her that. And if she stays here and they bully her again, she doesn’t know what she may give away. It’s a frightful position, isn’t it?”

  “Why don’t you go the police?” said Jane.

  “I thought of that, but they’d laugh at me. I haven’t heard anything, and I don’t know anything. Molloy would only say that Renata was under age, and that he had locked her in to prevent her running away with me. Then they’d kill her.”

  “I see,” said Jane. Then—“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  All the time that Mr. Todhunter had been glooming and groaning, running his fingers through his hair and depicting Renata’s appalling position, the Great Idea had been slowly forming itself in his mind. Every time that he looked at Jane, her likeness to Renata made him feel quite giddy. The Great Idea intoxicated him. He began to decant it.

  “Miss Smith, if you would—you see, if we could only get a clear start—what I mean to say is, South America’s a long way off—”

  “Quite a distance,” Jane agreed.

  “And if they thought that you were Renata, they wouldn’t look for her—and once we were clear away—”

  “My dear Mr. Todhunter!” said Jane.

  “I could take you up the fire-escape,” said Mr. Todhunter, in low, thrilling accents. “It would be quite easy. They would never know that Renata was not there. You do see what I mean, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” said Jane in rather an odd voice. “You’ve made it beautifully clear. Renata is in a position of deadly peril—I think that’s what you called it—and the simple way out is for Renata to elope with you to South America, and for me to be in the position of deadly peril instead. It’s a beautiful plan.”

  “Then you’ll do it?” exclaimed the oblivious Mr. Todhunter.

  Jane looked away. Immediately in front of her was a strip of gravelled path. Beyond that there was green grass, and a bed of pale blue hyacinths, and budding daffodils. Two-and-elevenpence, and then the workhouse—the ascent of a fire-escape in the April darkness, and at the top of the fire-escape a position of deadly peril.

  “Of course,” said Jane, speaking to herself in her own mind. “I might try to be a housemaid, but one has to have a character, and I don’t believe Cousin Louisa would give me one.”

  She turned back to the chafing Mr. Todhunter.

  “Let’s talk,” she said briefly.

  Chapter Three

  Jane took down the telephone directory, opened it, and began to run her finger along the column of “M’s.” As she did to, she wondered why the light in public call offices is so arranged as to strike the top of the occupant’s head, and never by any chance to illumine the directory.

  “Marbot”—“Marbottle”—“March, The Rev. Aloysius”—“March, George William Adolphus”—“March, Mrs. de Luttrelle.”

  Jane made a mark opposite the number.

  When Rosa Mortimer married Henry Luttrell March, she thought, and often said, how much nicer the Luttrell would look if it were written de Luttrelle. If her husband had died six months earlier than he actually did, the name in this improved form would most certainly have been inflicted upon an infant Henry. As it was, the child was baptized and registered as Henry Luttrell, and ten years later took up the struggle over the name where his father had left it. Eventually, a compromise was effected, Mrs. March flaunting her de Luttrelle, and Henry tending to suppress his Luttrell under an initial. His mother never ceased to bemoan his stubbornness.

  “Any one would think that Henry was not proud of his family, and he may say what he likes, but there were de Luttrelles for hundreds of years before any one ever heard of a Luttrell. And Luttrell Marches is bound to come to him, or practically bound to, because, whatever Henry may say, I am quite sure that Tony will never turn up again.”

  The very sound of the aggrieved voice was in Jane's ears as she unhung the receiver and gave the number. She supposed that Henry still lived with his mother, and that Mrs. March would still keep an indignant bridge table waiting whilst she discoursed upon Henry—his faults, his foibles, his ailments, and his prospects of inheriting Luttrell Marches.

  At that moment Henry, appropriately enough, was gazing at a photograph of Jane. It must not be imagined that this was a habit of his. Three years ago was three years ago, and Jane had receded into the distance with a great many other pleasant things. But to-night he had been looking through some old snapshots, and all of a sudden there was that three-years-old Cornish holiday, and Jane. Henry sat frowning at the photograph.

  Jane—why was one fond of Jane? He wondered where she was. It was only last week that some one had mentioned old Carruthers, and had seemed surprised that Henry did not know how long he had been dead.

  The telephone bell rang, and Henry jumped up with relief.

  “Hullo!” said a voice—and “Hullo!” said Henry.

  “Is that Captain March?”

  “Speaking,” said Henry.

  “It's Jane Smith,” said the voice, and Henry very nearly dropped the receiver. There was a pause, and then Jane said:

  “I want to come and see you on business. Can you spare the time?”

  “Er—my mother’s out,” said Henry, and he heard her say, “Thank goodness,” with much sincerity. The next moment she was apologising.

  “Oh, I say, Henry, that sounded awfully rude, but I really do want to see you about something very important. No, you can’t come and see me. I’m one of the great unemployed, and I’m not living anywhere at present. No, I won’t meet you at a restaurant either. Just tell me your nearest Tube Station, and I’ll come along. All right then; I won’t be more than ten minutes.”

  Henry turned away, feeling a little dazed. Being a methodical young man, he proceeded to put away the photographs with which the table was littered. A little snapshot of Jane he kept to the last, and ended by not putting it away at all. After he had looked at it for some time, he put it on the mantelpiece behind the clock. The hands pointed to nine o’clock precisely. Then he looked at himself in the glass that was over the mantel, and straightened his tie.

  Henry’s mother naturally considered him the most beautiful of created beings. Without going quite as far as this, Henry certainly approved of his own looks. Having approved of himself, he proceeded to move the clock back half an inch, and to alter the position of the twisted candlesticks on either side of it. Then he poked the fire. Then he began to walk up and down the room. And then the bell rang.

  Henry went out into the hall and opened the door of the flat, and there on the threshold stood Jane in a shabby blue serge coat and skirt, with an old black felt hat. Not pretty, not smart—just Jane. She walked in and gave him her hand.

  “Hullo, Henry!” she said. Then she laughed.

  “Or, do I call you Captain March?”

  “You call me Henry,” said Henry, and he shut the door.

  “I expect you’d like to come into the drawing-room”—this came hurriedly after a moment’s pause. He moved across the hall, switched on the light, and stood aside for her to pass. Jane looked in and saw more pink cushions and pink lamp-shades than she would have believed it possible to get into one small room. There were also a great many pink roses, and the air was heavy with scent.

  “I’m sure that’s not where you see people on business,” said Jane, and Henry led the way into the dining-room.

  “This is my room,” he said, and Jane sat down on a straight, high-backed chair and leaned her elbows on the table.


  “Now, Henry,” she said, “I’ve come here to tell you a story, and I want you to sit down and listen to it; and please forget that you are you, and that I am I. Just listen.”

  Henry sat down obediently. It was so good to see Jane again that, if she liked to sit there and talk till midnight, he had no objection.

  “Now attend,” said Jane, and she began her story.

  “Once upon a time there were twin sisters, and they were called Renata and Jane Carruthers. They had a cousin Junes—you remember him—my darling Jimmy? Jimmy wanted to marry Renata, but she refused him and married John Smith, my father, and when I was five years old she and my father both died, and Jimmy adopted me. Now we come to the other twin. Her name was Jane, and she ran away to America with a sort of anarchist Irishman named Molloy. She died young, and she left one daughter, whom she called Renata Jane. I, by the bye, am Jane Renata. The twin sisters were so much alike that no one ever knew them apart. Jimmy had photographs of them, and even he could never tell me which was my mother and which was my Aunt Jane. Now, Henry, listen to this. My Cousin Renata is in London, and it seems that she and I are just as much alike as our mothers were. In fact, it’s because Renata’s young man took me for Renata this afternoon that I am here, asking your advice, at the present moment.”

  Henry smiled a somewhat puzzled smile. “Have you asked my advice?” he said; but Jane did not smile. Instead, she leaned forward a little.

  “Are you still at Scotland Yard, Henry?”

  He nodded.

  “Criminal Investigation Department?”

  He nodded again.

  “Then listen. Renata is in what her young man calls ‘a position of deadly peril.’ In more ordinary language, she’s in a nasty hole. Do you know anything about Cornelius Molloy? That’s the Anarchist Uncle, Renata’s father, you know.”

  “There aren’t any anarchists nowadays,” said Henry meditatively.

  “I was brought up on anarchists, and I don’t see that it matters what you call them,” said Jane. “‘A’ for Anarchist, ‘B’ for Bolshevik, and so on. The point is, do you know anything about Molloy?”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Henry admitted.

  “Nothing good?”

  “We don’t hear much that’s good about people—officially, you know.”

  “Well, Arnold Todhunter says that Renata is supposed to have overheard something—something that her father’s associates think so important that they’re keeping her under lock and key, and seriously contemplating putting her out of the way altogether.”

  "Did she overhear anything?” asked Henry, just as Jane had done.

  “No one knows except Renata, and she won’t tell. Molloy goes back to the States to-morrow. They won’t let him take Renata with him, and Arnold Todhunter wants to marry her and carry her off to Bolivia, where he’s got an engineering job.”

  “That appears to be a good scheme,” said Henry.

  “Yes, but you see they’ll never let her go so long as they are not sure how much she knows. Arnold says she was walking in her sleep, and blundered in on about twenty-five of them, all talking the most deadly secrets. And they don’t know when she woke or what she heard. And”—Jane’s eyes began to dance a little—“Arnold has a perfectly splendid idea. He takes Renata to Bolivia, and I take Renata’s place. Nobody knows she has gone, so nobody looks for her.”

  “What nonsense,” said Henry; then—“What’s this Todhunter like?”

  “A mug,” said Jane briefly. She paused, and then went on in a different voice:

  “Henry, who is at Luttrell Marches now? Did your Cousin Tony ever turn up?”

  Henry stared at her.

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “Because,” said Jane, with perfect simplicity, “Renata is to be sent down to Luttrell Marches tomorrow, and somebody there—somebody, Henry—will decide whether she is to be eliminated or not.”

  Henry sat perfectly silent. He stared at Jane, and she stared at him. It seemed as if the silence in the room were growing heavier and heavier, like water that gathers behind some unseen dam. All of a sudden Henry sprang to his feet.

  “Is this a hoax?” he asked, in tones of such anger that Jane hardly recognised them.

  Jane got up too. The hand that she rested upon the table was not quite steady.

  “Henry, how dare you?” and her voice shook a little too.

  Henry swung round.

  “No, no—I beg your pardon, Jane, for the Lord’s sake don’t look at me like that. It’s, it’s—well, it’s pretty staggering to have you come here and say…” He paused. “What was it you wanted to know?”

  “I asked you who is living at Luttrell Marches.”

  Henry was silent. He walked to the end of the room and back. Jane’s eyes followed him. Where had this sudden wave of emotion come from? It seemed to be eddying about them, filling the confined space. Jane made herself look away from Henry, forced herself to notice the room, the furniture, the pictures—anything that was commonplace and ordinary. This was decidedly Henry’s room and not his mother’s, from the worn leather chairs and plain oak table to the neutral coloured walls with their half-dozen Meissonier engravings. Not a flower, not a trifle of any sort, and one wall all books from ceiling to floor. Exactly opposite to Jane there was a fine print of “The Generals in the Snow.” The lowering, thunderous sky, heavy with snow and black with the omens of Napoleon’s fall, dominated the picture, the room. Jane looked at it, and looked away with a shiver, and as she did so, Henry was speaking:

  “Jane, I don’t want to answer that question for a minute or two. I want to think. I want a little time to turn things over in my mind. Look here, come round to the fire and sit down comfortably. Let’s talk about something else for a bit. I want all your news, for one thing. Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself.”

  Jane slowly to the fireside. After all, it was pleasant just to put everything on one side, and be comfortable. Henry’s chair was very comfortable, and the day seemed to have lasted for weeks, and weeks, and weeks. She put out her hands to the fire, and then, because she noticed that they were still trembling a little, she folded them in her lap. Henry leaned against the mantelpiece and looked down at her.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “Well, that summer at Upwater—you know we were lodging with the woman who had the post office—Jimmy and I stayed on after all the other visitors were gone. I expect it was rather irregular, but I used to help her. You see her son didn’t get back until eighteen months after the armistice, and she wasn’t really up to the work. In the end, you may say I ran that post office. I did it very well, too. It was something to do, especially after Jimmy died.”

  “Yes, I heard. I wondered where you were.”

  “I stayed on until the son came home, and then I couldn’t. He was awful, and she thought him quite perfect, poor old soul. I came to London and got a job in an office, and a month ago I lost it. The firm was cutting down expenses, like everybody else. And then—well, I looked for another job, and couldn’t find one, and this morning my landlady locked the door in my face and kept my box. And that, Henry, is why I am thinking seriously of changing places with my Cousin Renata, who, at least, has a roof over her head and enough to eat.”

  “Jane,” said Henry furiously, “you don’t mean to say—so that’s why you’re looking such a white rag!”

  Jane was horrified to find that her eyes had filled with tears. She laughed, but the laugh was not a very convincing one.

  “I did have a cup of coffee and two penny buns,” she began; and then Henry was fetching sandwiches from the sideboard and pressing a cup of hot chocolate into her not unwilling hands.

  “They leave this awful stuff over a spirit lamp for my mother, and she always has sandwiches when she comes in. It’s better than nothing,” he added in tones of wrath.

  “It’s not awful,” protested Jane; but Henry was not mollified.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why
are you so hard up? Didn’t Mr. Carruthers provide for you?”

  Jane’s colour rose.

  “He hadn’t much, and what he had was an annuity. You know what Jimmy was, and how he forgot things. I am really quite sure that he had forgotten about its being an annuity, and that he thought that I should be quite comfortable.”

  Henry swallowed his opinion of Mr. Carruthers.

  “Was he your only relation?”

  “Well,” said Jane, who was beginning to feel better, “you can’t really count Cousin Louisa; she was only Jimmy’s half-sister, and that makes her a sort of third half-cousin of my mother’s. Besides, she always simply loathed me.”

  “And you’ve no other relations at all?”

  “Only the Anarchist Uncle,” said Jane brightly. She gave him her cup and plate. “Your mother has simply lovely sandwiches, Henry. Thank you ever so much for them, but what will she do when she comes home and finds I have eaten them all?”

  “I don’t know, I’m sure.” Henry’s tone was very short. “Look here, Jane, you must let—er, er, I mean, won’t you let…” He stuck, and Jane looked at him very kindly.

  “Nothing doing, Henry,” she said, “but it’s frightfully nice of you, all the same.”

  There was a silence. When Jane thought it had lasted long enough, she said:

  “So, you see, it all comes back again to Renata. Have you done your thinking, Henry?”

  “Yes,” said Henry. He drew a chair to the table and sat down half turned to the fire—half turned to Jane. Sometimes he looked at her, but oftener his gaze dwelt intently on the rise and fall of the flames.

  “What makes you think that your cousin is to be taken to Luttrell Marches? Did these people tell her so?”

  “No,” said Jane—“of course not. As far as I can make out from Arnold Todhunter, Renata is locked in her room, but there’s another key and she can get in and out. She can move about inside the flat, but she can’t get out of it. Well, one night she crept out and listened, though you would have thought she had had enough of listening, and she heard them say that, as soon as her father was out of the way, they would send her to Luttrell Marches and let ‘Number One’ decide whether she was to be ‘eliminated.’ Since then she’s been nearly off her head with terror, poor kid. Now, Henry, it’s your turn. What about Luttrell Marches?”