She looked in the glass, and saw Miss Cannock at another glass, absurdly titivating. Every now and then she stopped to gasp and clutch at her side. Suddenly Meg could laugh at her, and felt better.
And then she saw the telephone-box.
She was standing at the end wash-basin. Immediately to her left an open archway led into the pleasant rest-room. Ashley’s did their customers well. Serving a large country district, they catered to women who had driven long distances to shop and who were often left with an odd half hour to put in before going on to lunch or tea.
The rest-room was restfully upholstered in green. There were comfortable chairs, there were magazines and papers, and there was a telephone-box. The sight of it filled Meg with a desire to talk to someone who didn’t twitter. It filled her, in fact, with a desire to talk to Bill Coverdale. It was four o’clock, and it was most unlikely that she would be able to get on to him, but she could try. It would at any rate defer the Cannock. And what a good thing the Cannock had had an urge to titivate, because otherwise she would still be sitting in a chair that faced the telephone-box—and the last thing Meg wanted was to talk to Bill under that mild inquisitive stare.
She stepped through the archway, and felt a secret pleasure in the realization that the telephone-box was quite out of range as far as the Cannock was concerned. She shut the sound-proof door and was grateful for the silence, and sorry that she had to break it by calling the exchange. Of course it was silly to think that she had the least chance of finding Bill in his hotel at this hour. She said that—just in case—but all the time something very strong and insistent was telling her that he would be there. And with miraculous quickness there he was, speaking a half impatient “Hullo!” into the receiver at his end.
“Hullo—hullo! Who is it?”
“Me,” said Meg, and had the thrill of hearing his voice change, and soften, and become the special sort of voice that was kept for her.
“Meg—is it you? I didn’t know you were on the telephone.”
“We’re not—no such luck.”
“Where are you speaking from?”
“A box—in a shop—in Ledlington.”
“What a bit of luck! I’d come in for some papers, and was just going out again. Meg, how are you getting on?”
“Mouldy,” said Meg. “That’s why I’m ringing up—I just felt I must hear a human voice. The Cannock isn’t human. I think she’s a sort of sheep—she blethers. That does sound like a sheep—doesn’t it? Blether, to rhyme with wether.”
It was frightfully silly, but her breath kept catching in her throat and the words wobbled.
“What’s the matter, Meg?”
“Nothing.”
“Your voice doesn’t shake like that for nothing.”
“I’m all right, but I nearly came to a sticky end just now, and when I heard your voice it sort of came over me.”
“Meg! What?”
“A tram,” said Meg—“a beastly juggernaut of a tram… Bill, don’t—I’m quite all right.”
“How?”
Bill’s voice had changed again. It wasn’t like anything she had ever heard from him. Somehow that steadied her.
“I don’t know. I suppose I tripped… Bill, I’m perfectly all right.”
Bill Coverdale said, “Thank God!” And then, “Have you had my letter?” and Meg said, “No.” And then the door of the telephone-box was opened, and there was Miss Cannock just behind her—blethering. There really was no other word for it.
“The air in these boxes—so confined, so hot! I am so afraid of your feeling faint, Mrs O’Hara—after your terrible experience!”
Meg heard this with one ear, while with the other she was aware of Bill’s saying faintly but insistently, “You ought to have had it.”
She took her lips from the receiver to say in a voice of cold fury, “I’m perfectly all right, Miss Cannock!” Then, into the telephone again, “There’s only one post. I expect I’ll get it tomorrow.”
Just as she said “tomorrow” Miss Cannock gave a little gasp and clutched at her arm. Bill was saying, a horribly long way off, “You ought to have had it today.” But how on earth could she talk to Bill with Miss Cannock’s choking whisper close against her uncovered ear?
“I’m afraid—I feel so—I don’t know—I think I’m going—to faint—” Very little satisfaction to be got out of talking to Bill with a swooning elderly spinster propped against her shoulder, and quite possibly listening in.
Meg said, “I’m sorry—I must ring off,” and hung up the receiver. She was so angry that it made her feel very strong. In ordinary circumstances she might have found it difficult to transfer Miss Cannock’s practically dead weight to a chair, but as it was, she hardly noticed it, being entirely taken up with combating a desire to shake her. If the Cannock felt faint, why couldn’t she stay in a chair and faint there instead of staggering into a telephone-box which she quite rightly described as hot and stuffy, and fainting or trying to faint on Meg?
Meg went and fetched a glass of water with the most murderous feelings of irritation, but when she returned with it Miss Cannock was a good deal revived, and after taking two very small sips declared that she had been very foolish, but she was better now and a cup of hot tea would be much nicer than this cold water.
Over a pot of tea in the rather subfusc refreshment room she became more conversational than Meg had yet known her. She ordered scones and cakes as well as tea, and continually pressed Meg to eat.
“For after such a shock, Mrs O’Hara, you require sustenance—you really do. You have so much self-control—but it is not wise to tax yourself too far. That little round cake with the nuts is a specialty of Ashley’s and I can recommend it. No sugar in your tea? Now I always think that is such a pity. Everyone cannot afford expensive pleasures, but sugar in one’s tea, if you like it, is a great pleasure, and one within the reach of all.”
“She must be half-witted,” said Meg to herself. And then all at once she found something rather pathetic about the Cannock. If sugar in your tea had to do duty for a pleasure, her lines must indeed have been cast in stale, flat, and unprofitable regions. The stiff anger went out of her and she made polite conversation.
“It is really very pleasant here,” said Miss Cannock, stirring her tea. There were two lumps of sugar in it, and the bubbles rose in little clusters. “Very pleasant indeed. And I do hope, Mrs O’Hara, that I did not interrupt you at the telephone. It was unpardonable of me—really unpardonable, but I felt suddenly very ill, and you had been so kind. I do hope—”
“It doesn’t matter at all—I had just finished.”
Miss Cannock took one of the little round cakes she had recommended. She ate in small fussy bites, using her front teeth like a rabbit and making a great many crumbs.
“You are so kind, Mrs O’Hara, but I shouldn’t like Mr Postlethwaite to know that I had been so foolish. He might think I had been to blame—and indeed I feel—”
To her horror, Meg saw the little nutty cake, no longer round because of the rabbit bites, shake in the hand that clutched it. She said in a soft, distressed voice,
“Oh please, Miss Cannock, there’s nothing to tell, but we won’t tell him.”
“You’re so kind,” said Miss Cannock. She nibbled mournfully at a nut. “I am very happy in my present post. Mr Postlethwaite is always so kind and considerate, if sometimes rather immersed, and I should not like him to think that my foolish nervousness—” She choked, sniffed, and producing a very large and solid linen handkerchief, dabbed at the corners of the eyes behind the tinted glasses.
Meg’s soft heart was touched.
“Miss Cannock, please don’t. Nothing has happened, and I shouldn’t dream of saying anything to Uncle Henry. Have another cup of tea—and have three lumps.”
Miss Cannock put away her handkerchief, much to Meg’s relief.
They had a lingering tea. Miss Cannock had four cups, and, in all ten lumps of sugar. She told Meg the story of her life.
It sounded bleak and starved beyond belief. In some water-tight compartment she must keep a brain, because she seemed always to have passed examinations with ease—she had even taken scholarships. She had no relations, and she had never made any friends. “I don’t know how it was, but there never seemed to be time, if you know what I mean, Mrs O’Hara.”
At long last they drove back to Ledstow Place.
Chapter Eighteen
Bill Coverdale’s envelope was lying by Meg’s plate when she came down to breakfast next morning. She and Miss Cannock had their meals in the little back room that looked out upon the lake, the vault-like dining-room on the other side of the hall being the gloomiest and least inviting of apartments.
Miss Cannock poured out the tea, and Meg read her letter. It was very short, and that was disappointing, especially after she had practically asked Bill for a long letter. And there was really nothing in it, and that was disappointing too, because from the way Bill had asked if she had had his letter she had got the idea that there was something rather special about it. Instead of which it was a short letter, and a dull letter, and rather a cold letter.
At this point Meg’s colour rose, and she said to herself with as much severity as she could manage, “Be quiet! I’m ashamed of you. You don’t want him to make love to you, do you?” And at that frightful moment, and under the Cannock’s eye, she knew that she did.
She read the letter through again slowly:
“Dear Meg,
I’m having a very busy time, because I have taken the Hewletts’ flat and I want to get in as soon as possible. I have engaged a married couple. I hope you are getting on all right. Remember me to the Professor.
Yours
Bill.”
It was a beast of a letter—a horrible, cold, detached icicle of a letter—a limp dead fish of a letter. And Bill had had the nerve to ask in the most pressing way if she had got it! For all the friendship, or comfort, or warmth it contained it might just as well have gone to the dead letter office and stayed there.
She was rather fierce with her boiled egg, cutting off the top instead of peeling it as she usually did. Miss Cannock was, fortunately, quite engrossed with an account of the marriage of two film stars.
“It seems so—so persevering,” she said, with a little cough. “They have each had four previous experiences of the most unhappy nature. One cannot approve, but it seems to me it shows—courage. Do you not think so, Mrs O’Hara?”
Meg thought it showed great courage. If Robin was dead, and she was a widow, no power on earth would make her give any other man that power to hurt which marriage gives—never, and never, and never again. And at the back of her mind a small, cold voice said, “Bill hasn’t asked you to give him anything, has he?”
About this time, or perhaps a little later, Bill Coverdale opened a telegram. It was signed “Meg,” and it ran:
“Your letter received. Would like to stay on here and be quiet for a little. I know you will understand. Please don’t come down.”
The sharpness of his disappointment actually took him aback. It wasn’t reasonable to be disappointed in just this intense, undisciplined fashion. It was the most natural thing in the world that Meg, having at last received proof of Robin O’Hara’s death, should want a little time to adjust herself to her freedom.
He looked at the telegram and saw that it had been sent off from Ledstow at eight-forty-five. That meant that she had got his letter by the first post and had managed to send this wire off immediately. Perhaps the village post-office had an arrangement for telephoning telegrams to Ledlington. Eight-forty-five was pretty early to have got a telegram off in any other way.
He went on frowning at the flimsy sheet of paper. Meg had been in a great hurry to tell him that she wanted to be alone. She could hardly have got his letter before she was making arrangements to get this telegram sent off. Why, she wouldn’t be out of bed at eight o’clock. Being very deeply in love, and having for the first time for at least three years begun to hope, it hurt him sharply to feel how quickly Meg had decided that he must stay away. Beneath the hurt there was something else, deep down, unformulated, a kind of dark uneasiness of which he himself was scarcely aware. If the hurt had been less sharp, this vague uneasiness would perhaps have come in for more of his attention.
He wrote to Meg before he went out, a short, careful letter, in which he tried very hard not to show that he had been hurt at all. Of course he understood, and of course he wouldn’t come till she wanted him, but he didn’t like to feel that she was all alone in rather a mouldy place, and she must please remember that she had only to wire at any time and he would come at once, but he didn’t want to worry her, so he would wait until he heard from her. All of which gave great satisfaction to the person who had sent the telegram after reading and destroying the letter which had been intended to convince Meg of Robin’s death. Meg was never to see either of the two letters, and she had certainly no idea that any telegram had been sent in her name.
When Meg had finished her breakfast, which took quite a long time because Miss Cannock kept on reading her chatty excerpts from the Daily Mail, she went for a walk in the dreary park. She then wound the wool which she had bought at Ashley’s and began her jumper. Miss Cannock had vanished, Uncle Henry was permanently “immersed,” and the house gave her the creeps. The familiar furniture made it a great deal worse. Like herself, it was in exile in a gloomy, unfamiliar place. What was the good of having enough to eat? It would be much better to be starving in London. What was the good of making a jumper? What was the good of anything? She was marooned.
Bill Coverdale, on the other hand, was extremely busy. Some of the savour had gone out of his flat-taking, but he had got to get on with it all the same, and as the day wore on, the reasonableness of Meg’s attitude and the unreasonableness of his own became progressively more apparent, with the result that he cheered up a good deal and was able once more to picture Meg choosing curtains for the drawing-room. He wondered if she would like them flowery or plain. He inclined to plain himself because of framing the view. He felt quite sure that Meg was going to like the view. The Hewletts had already left, and he was moving in in two days’ time. The Evanses were all fixed up, and Mrs Evans was arranging with a woman to come in and do the cleaning, so everything was well in train.
He thought he would walk back to the hotel. It was quite extraordinary what a lot of building seemed to be going on in every direction—blocks of flats springing up and altering once familiar streets. In another generation, he supposed, everyone would be living in a flat, in the towns at any rate. Quite a good plan—sensible, economical, labour-saving. He looked at all the blocks with interest, comparing the flats with his own. In the last twenty-four hours it had ceased to be the Hewletts’ flat and become his flat. The proprietary feeling grew as he compared it with others, mostly to their disadvantage. He had taken it in a hurry, but he hadn’t made any mistake. Quite definitely it was a good flat. Now this block that he was just passing—he wouldn’t have liked to bring Meg here. Nothing really wrong with the locality, but not attractive—rather on the grubby side.
And then he noticed the name over the entrance—Oleander Mansions. If he hadn’t been taking that special interest in flats, he wouldn’t have seen it. As it was, the name did not at first mean anything to him. It wasn’t until he had walked some dozen steps past it that it came back into his mind, linked with Garrett’s voice, and he remembered that Oleander Mansions was where Della Delorne lived.
He turned round to have another look at the entrance, as if it would tell him something. But only Della Delorne could say whether Robin O’Hara had passed through that entrance with her on the night when Bill had seen them together—what was it—four days after Robin had disappeared. They were together in a taxi at midnight. Where were they bound for? He considered the position of the flat. They might easily have been coming here—yes, they might very easily have been coming here.
He stood there, frowning at the en
trance, and became aware of a stout middle-aged woman who was descending the steps. She wore her hair in a bun, with a flat, discouraged-looking black hat affixed to it by a bright blue hat-pin. Her contours were draped in a Burberry which hitched up in front and dipped at the back. Her hands, gloveless and red, advertised her calling. She was a scrubber of steps, a charlady, a daily help. And what had Garrett said about the woman at Oleander Mansions? She’d been away—they hadn’t been able to get hold of her.… Yes, that was it—she’d been away. Perhaps she was still away. Perhaps this was her deputy—
Perhaps it wasn’t—
Bill was never quite able to decide why he should have felt such an imperative urge to settle this question. He was not very much given to acting on impulse, but he did its bidding now, and that without stopping to think. If he had stopped to think, he might well have blenched, for the lady looked as if she might be formidable. But he did not stop. He merely found himself politely lifting his hat and saying,
“I beg your pardon, but I wonder if I might speak to you for a moment?”
The woman stopped. She had a string bag in one hand and an umbrella in the other. She tipped her head back and stared at Bill in very much the same way that a cow disturbed at grass lifts its head to regard a stranger. She looked, and just as he was going to speak again she said in a deep, hoarse voice,
“I beg your pardon?”
It was like a belated echo, and the horrible part of it was that he had been on the point of repeating the words himself. He said instead,
“I’m afraid I don’t know your name, but I think you are employed at Oleander Mansions, are you not?”
Her bovine expression yielded a little, and she said,
“Certingly.”
It was really horribly awkward plunging into conversation with a respectable middle-aged worker who was obviously wondering what on earth he wanted with her. He thanked heaven for her middle age and her solid size. He would not at any rate be suspected of a design upon her virtue. In desperation he plunged.
Dead or Alive: A Frank Garrett Mystery Page 14
