Rolling Stone (10 page)

He said, “Why the day after tomorrow?” and Terry said firmly, “To give the picture time to come back.”

“I see. And suppose it doesn't come back?”

“Then I shall go to the police.”

“And tell them that you were looking out of your window in the night and you saw—well, what did you see?”

“I'm not telling.”

He smiled, dropped his voice, and said,

“Not even me?”

Terry shook her head.

“Not anybody at all. Why, I didn't even tell Emily.”

“So young and so secretive,” sighed Fabian. “I thought you were going to confide in me. Rather nice to have a secret together—what do you think?”

Terry shook her head again.

“Not till the day after tomorrow.”

“And then it won't be a secret at all. What's the good of a confidence which I shall have to share with the village policeman and the whole of Scotland Yard?”

“Perhaps it won't be quite the whole of Scotland Yard,” said Terry kindly.

She was rewarded by seeing Mr. Roxley assume a more or less upright position.

“I don't believe you saw anything at all.”

“Well then, I
did
,” said Terry with energy.

“Just as you like. But since, I gather, you didn't actually recognize anyone—” There was a slightest questioning inflection in the lazy voice.

“I didn't say so.”

Fabian Roxley laughed.

“If you had, you would have gone to that person and tackled him—or her. There would have been no need to go the round. No, if you did see someone, you were not sure who it was—that it quite clear. But I should like to know why you are so sure it was one of the Cresswells' guests. Why cut out the servants?”

Terry hesitated. Then she said,

“It couldn't have been any of the servants.”

“Why couldn't it?”

“There are only the Barnes who sleep in the house. The footman and the housemaid are brother and sister and they come up from the village, and the between maid comes and goes with them. Her mother is cook at the Vicarage and she sleeps there.”

“But the Barnes sleep in the house,” said Fabian Roxley.

“It wasn't the Barnes,” said Terry. “Mr. Applegarth said at once it couldn't be they, because they come from Yorkshire like he does, and he knows all about them and they're as honest as the day. But the police mightn't take any notice of that.”

Fabian Roxley smiled.

“For the matter of that, most of us have known each other for years, and if we're not all as honest as the day—rather an archaic expression, don't you think?—we have presumably paid our income tax, our rates, and our card debts up to date, and none of us has been in prison so far as I know.”

“But it couldn't have been the Barnes,” said Terry earnestly, “because—well, do you know Mrs. Barnes?”

“I'm afraid not.”

Terry spread out her arms to encircle an imaginary bulk.

“Vast,” she said—“immense. Honestly, she has to be seen to be believed. She's older than Barnes, you know, and a perfectly angel cook. And if I'd seen her, I couldn't possibly have thought it was anyone else. No, it wasn't Mrs. Barnes.”

“And why wasn't it Barnes?” said Fabian gently.

Terry leaned forward.

“Because he's left-handed. You couldn't have stayed in the house without noticing that.”

Fabian's eyes opened suddenly.

“You're not telling what you saw—but you saw quite a lot, didn't you? Enough to be sure it wasn't a fat woman or a left-handed man.” He dropped his voice to a low persuasive tone. “Terry, what
did
you see?”

There was a pause. She had an impulse to tell him—she had an impulse to tell no one. The two impulses pushed at her. It was like being caught between two doors—she couldn't go back, and she couldn't go on. She didn't know that she had turned very pale. She got to her feet and stood looking at him strangely.

He said “Terry!”

And she said, “No, no—I'm not going to tell anyone,” and turned and ran away from him as she had run away from Joseph Applegarth.

CHAPTER XV

“A Little quiet, Terry?” said Basil Ridgefield. It was Sunday evening, and they were driving back to London with Terry at the wheel.

She said, “Am I?” and hoped she hadn't blushed.

Of all words in the language she thought that “quiet” least described her feelings. The sky overhead was quiet, a low grey sky drawing down into a dusk that might presently turn to fog, and all the country under this dusk was quiet too—very tame, and grey, and quiet, and dull; no colour, no life, no light and shade. But Terry's mind wasn't quiet. It was full of rushing thoughts, hopes, fears, and suppositions. It was full of things she had said to Emily, Pearla, Norah, Mr. Applegarth, and Fabian, and the things that they had said to her. And the things she might have said if she had thought of them in time, and the things they might have said if they had all been living in the Palace of Truth. None of these thoughts was quiet company. Some of them shouted at the tops of their voices, and then she had to try and shout them down. She kept her eyes on the long grey road under the dusk and said,

“Am I quiet?”

Mr. Ridgefield turned a little in his seat, surveyed her through his monocle, and said in solicitous tone,

“Yes, my dear. What is the matter—didn't you enjoy yourself?”

Terry looked round at him quickly, and then back again at the road. How extraordinarily like Uncle Basil to be surprised if you hadn't enjoyed yourself, when there had been a burglary, and policemen all over the place. That sort of thing didn't disturb anyone else. He would be sorry that the Cresswells should lose a picture they valued, and he had displayed a charming sympathy, but being sorry and sympathetic was just as much a part of his social manner as saying good-morning or how do you do, and it meant as little. Terry had a feeling that it wouldn't have meant much more if the Cresswells had lost a child instead of a picture. Uncle Basil had lovely manners for every occasion, but she had sometimes wondered what would happen if you could strip the lovely manners off. Was there anything underneath that could laugh, and cry, and feel, and love and hate as Terry herself could, or would there be only a little grey, dry, shrivelled thing like the withered kernel of a nut?

Terry wondered, and was smitten with compunction, because he was always so kind to her, and when people got over fifty perhaps you couldn't expect them to have real feelings any more. Perhaps when Terry Clive was fifty—(help!)—all the living, tumultuous feelings which were her would be withered away to something all grey and quiet—“And one might just as well be dead!” said Terry passionately to herself.

Her eyes sparkled, but she didn't look round again.

“Do you enjoy burglaries and policemen, Uncle Basil?”

Mr. Ridgefield laughed.

“Well, my dear, you will think it very shocking of me, but in a way I do—I should say I
did
. But I beg that you will not tell the Cresswells. You see, I was afraid that I was going to be bored. Norah Margesson bores me. She expects me to make love to her. You have probably noticed that she expects every man to make love to her, and a dozen years ago a good many of us were quite willing to oblige. Now—” he shrugged his shoulders—“I am quite determined to remain young, and I find that exceptionally boring. And as for the rest of the party, Pearla Yorke is a lovely creature, but James Cresswell really should not allow her to play bridge. She revoked three times when she was playing with me, and only once with James, which I consider unfair. It would bore me to play bridge with Helen of Troy if she revoked. And James Cresswell is in a frame of mind in which he would bore anyone. So, you see, I feared the worst. The burglary was really quite a god-send, but it seems to have disturbed you—rather unduly, I think. May I ask why?”

Terry said, “Yes”; and then, “I was going to tell you, Uncle Basil.”

Mr. Ridgefield said, “Dear me, this sounds very portentous.”

“Oh,” said Terry, “it's horrid. I didn't think anything could be so horrid.”

“My dear child—”

Terry looked round for a moment, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

“You see, I really do love Emily. I know she bores you, but I love her. I wouldn't mind if it was only Mr. Cresswell, because I don't think he treats her at all nicely, and he's got lots of money, so he could buy another picture.”

Basil Ridgefield gazed at her in mild horror.

“My dear Terry, you can't just go out and buy Turners.”

“Well, I don't care,” said Terry. “It's Emily I'm thinking about, and she'd hate to have a scandal and one of her guests dragged in—and having to go into a witness-box and swear things, and so should I. So we thought it was a beautiful plan, and I thought it would be quite easy. But it wasn't—it was quite frightfully horrid.”

Mr. Ridgefield took out his eyeglass, polished it carefully, and put it back again.

“Do you mind being a little more lucid? I don't really seem to know what you are talking about.”

“That's because it's so horrid,” said Terry in a drooping voice. “It's easy enough to say things when they're nice, but the horrid ones seem to get all tangled up.”

“I've noticed that. You had better try and disentangle them.”

“I am trying. The trouble is that there's a bit at the beginning I don't want to tell anyone ever—” she saw a small, vivid picture in her own mind of Norah Margesson under the hall lamp with Emily's pearls in her hands—“and there's a bit at the end that I don't want to tell anyone till Tuesday, so I have to begin right in the middle, and that's what makes it difficult.”

“I can see that. Well, suppose you begin wherever you want to and tell me as much as you can.”

Terry nodded.

“Yes. I woke up in the night—”

“Last night?”

“Yes. I woke up and I couldn't go to sleep again, so I went and looked out of the window. It must have been somewhere round about two, because a clock struck afterwards. And I looked out of the window, and I saw something.”

Mr. Ridgefield looked at her curiously.

“What did you see?”

Terry flashed him a glance.

“That's what I'm not telling—not to anyone—not till Tuesday.”

“Dear me,” said Mr. Ridgefield. “Not very lucid—are you? I suppose you couldn't make it all a little clearer?”

Terry blinked fiercely. You can't drive a car and cry at the same time. Anyhow, what was there to cry about? She didn't know, but it would have been very comforting to weep on a kind shoulder. She said despising things to herself and blinked again.

“That was the plan,” she said. “You see, I saw something—out of the window—and I thought if I told everyone, then the person who had taken the picture would know that I knew, and if the picture came back, I wouldn't say anything ever, but if it didn't come back, then I should have to go to the police on Tuesday.”

“Tuesday?”

“Tuesday.”

“Day after tomorrow?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Really—my dear child! May one ask why day after tomorrow?”

“To give the person who took the picture the chance of sending it back.”

Mr. Ridgefield gazed with astonishment.

“Terry—are you serious?”

“Oh
yes
,” said Terry, in a tone of heartfelt unhappiness.

“You really saw something?”

“I really saw something.”

Mr. Ridgefield assumed a brisk matter-of-fact tone.

“Well, my dear, what did you see?”

Terry shook her head.

“I can't tell anyone—not till Tuesday. You see, it wouldn't be fair, because I've told them all I wouldn't.”

“You have told them all?”

“Yes—Emily, Norah, Mrs. Yorke, Fabian, and Mr. Applegarth.”

“But, my dear child, this is monstrous! It amounts to saying that one of these people took the picture.”

“Someone did.”

“A burglar, my dear. The police said at once it was an outside job.”

Terry shook her head.

“No.”

Mr. Ridgefield leaned back in his corner. He said coldly,

“I find all this a little fantastic—a little, shall we say, hysterical. If you really think you saw something you should make a statement to the police. They might, or might not, attach importance to it. If you would honour me with your confidence, I should feel better able to advise you.”

Terry choked down a sob.

“Oh, Uncle Basil, I can't!”

CHAPTER XVI

At half past twelve on Sunday night Colonel Garrett switched out his bedside light, put his head on his pillow, and prepared to plunge into the deep, unbroken slumber which would last until seven o'clock on Monday morning. But scarcely had he closed his eyes, when the telephone bell rang.

Garrett looked forward to a period of retirement in which the telephone would ring itself black in the face and he could tell it to go to blazes. That time had not yet arrived. He flung back the bed-clothes, snapped on the light, and padded barefoot across the hall into the glorified cupboard which he called his study. It had a loud-patterned linoleum on the floor, and contained an office chair, an office table, and the telephone.

The bell rang again as he came in and slammed the door. Garrett scowled at it, jammed the receiver against his ear, and barked “Hullo!”

A voice from the grave answered him. It said,

“Needless to ask if it is you,
cher maître
.”

Garrett stared. Both voice and language belonged to Peter Talbot who had been buried three days ago in Brussels. Fanny Talbot had sent a wreath, Garrett himself had sent a wreath. Fanny Talbot had with difficulty been dissuaded from going to the funeral. Her solicitor had attended instead.