“What have we here, then?”
Crockett studied the bag and its contents carefully, before at last slitting the envelope open. Inside was nothing but a single sheet of cheap paper, seemingly torn from an exercise book, on which was written in a cramped, odd-looking writing, the name and address of a Mr & Mrs Alfred Crowther, Bridge End House, at Bridge End, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
“We'll telegraph the police up there, ask them to see these Crowthers and find out if they can throw any light on it,” he announced at last. He did not relish the prospect of a journey up to Yorkshire, having been there once before and having no desire to repeat the experience. He hadn't been warm from the moment he'd stepped from the train. Those damned winds, whistling down the Pennines! Siberia could be no worse. Admittedly, it had been winter then, but still the prospect of a visit did not fill him with joy.
Enquiries conducted by the electric telegraph, however, elicited no more useful information from the West Riding Constabulary than the fact that Alderman Alfred Crowther of Bridge End House was a respected and well-to-do woollen manufacturer of that town, and that neither he nor his wife, when questioned, could conceive of any reason why their address should be in the possession of a woman apparently quite unknown to them. At this, Meredith suggested sending on to them by post the pencil sketch Sergeant Palmer (who fancied himself as an artist) had made of the dead woman. He had produced a very creditable effort that gave a good impression of what she might have looked like in life, and the idea bolstered Crockett's hope that he might yet avoid a visit to that benighted part of the world. All the same, he hesitated â¦a dead face was a dead face; it wasn't possible to convey a typical glance, to know whether her features had usually been animated by laughter, frowns, fears or hopes. Miss X had not been possessed of any distinguishing or outstanding features. Just an ordinary woman, with brown hair and dark eyes â but if you had known a person
when they were alive, you would surely recognise the contours of their face, the shape of their nose, the way the mouth was set.
“Capital idea, Meredith,” he said. “Ask Sergeant Palmer to copy it, and we'll have it posted immediately.”
He did not feel hopeful of success. And indeed, word came by return of post that the Crowthers had carefully examined the sketch, had shown it to the rest of their family, but all of them were prepared to swear she was a woman they had never seen before in their lives. No arguing with that, the answer was unequivocal. Nor could the Crowthers, though intrigued and slightly alarmed, put forward any suggestion as to why a stranger to them should be in possession of their name and their address.
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It was raining again in London, as Sylvia Eustace-Bragge emerged from the black-painted door with the shining brass plate in Harley Street and hurried down the steps to where a motor-cab was waiting. Her heels tapped smartly and her voice, which she did not normally allow to betray her, was sharp as she rapped out a peremptory order for the driver to take her straight home. Once inside the cab, she threw back her veil over the confection of tulle and feathers which surmounted the huge, fashionable hat perched on her hair, and sat rigidly straight-backed on the cushioned seat, her thin, heavily-ringed hands, white to the knuckles, clenched on her small kid pochette.
She had long ago decided she did not like Dr Mortimer; now, after this last humiliating examination, she knew she detested him â personally, and for the contribution he made to her general misery. The thread of her life felt to be unspooling from the bobbin on which had been tightly wound, there was nothing she could do to stop it, and Dr Mortimer's unequivocal remarks had emphasised this. Nothing physically wrong, he had told her, yet again, eyeing her as she extracted the necessary twenty-pound banknote from her purse to pay what she considered the exorbitant fee. (She dare not write a cheque, for Algy would find the stub when he went through her cheque-book, and demand an explanation) When the doctor took the note from her, he patted her hand. His own hand was large and white, revoltingly freckled, like the first signs of mould on a piece of cheese. No reason why you shouldn't yet have half a dozen babies. Nothing wrong
with you, m'dear.
M'dear. How dare he take such a liberty!
Besides, anyone who really knew the fashionable, much-admired, ironic, amusingly malicious Sylvia Eustace-Bragge knew that, whatever else, she wasn't anyone's dear.
The carriage rolled on. Autumn would be early this year; the rain had already brought down leaves from the plane trees and glued them on to the damply glistening pavements. A fitful sun, struggling against an overcast sky for several hours, had now given up the attempt, and it was dark and miserable as only a drizzly, late summer afternoon in London could be. Much too early for the gas-lamps to be lit yet. Not wet enough for an umbrella, which was nothing but an encumbrance in the busy streets, anyway, but damp enough to be thoroughly unpleasant. Motor traffic â that ever increasing problem in the already overcrowded and noisy thoroughfares of the city â was as usual fighting for position with horse-drawn carts and vans; a packed motor omnibus dangerously overtook them, and her driver swerved, throwing her to one side. Sylvia righted herself and placed her small, elegantly-shod feet more firmly together; but she did allow herself to press into the corner of the cab to find more purchase â at least as far as the sweeping brim of her hat would allow.
Perhaps there was something wrong with Algy.
Well, hardly. Not if the rumours of the little love nest in St John's Wood which had reached her were true. The love nest with the fledgling sparrow in it. But that was something she did not intend to dwell upon.
Sylvia had inherited from her mother that facility of closing her mind to whatever she didn't wish to think about, and rarely dwelt on the dissatisfactions of her marriage, though sometimes, in moments of despair, she owned that it had been a mistake to marry Algy; occasionally, she even admitted that the fault had been entirely hers. She could acknowledge that now, when it was too late, when she was saddled with him. It had never been exactly a love match, at least on her part, and Harry had warned her against it, though it was he who had teased her into considering Algy in the first place, because of his money, and then been appalled when she had not only considered but accepted him.
But Algy, although he appeared to be such an ass, had not seemed such a bad proposition. His family had been in trade, admittedly, but this could be disregarded since a great deal of new money had come to him through his terrible old father. Old Enoch Bragg had been one of the Chetwynds' Shropshire neighbours with whom Sir Henry had sat on the bench and who was now thankfully deceased; who had left his son tens of thousands a year, made from the manufacture of decorative iron railings in his native Birmingham. But although Algy might be a lightweight in the opinion of many, the truth was that his rather vacuous, good-looking face concealed the fact that he was more intelligent than he was given credit for, at least in one respect, for it was certainly true that he had inherited his father's astuteness where money was concerned. After passing uneventfully through Eton, where it was not expected, after all, that one should necessarily distinguish oneself, and having come into his inheritance, he had removed himself as far as possible from the scene of the family business, selling it at a respectable profit but retaining shares in it, while investing the rest of his fortune shrewdly. He had left behind the great pile his father had built in Shropshire on his retirement and come to live in London, inserted a hyphen between his middle and his surnames, added an âe' to elevate the plebeian Bragg, and become a gentleman of leisure.
To be fair, Algy was not parsimonious, in fact rather the opposite. He bought her expensive presents and jewellery, and the household was lavishly run; he liked to see his wife well-dressed, her clothes to be in the forefront of sophistication, and he paid her extravagant dressmaker's and milliner's bills without the flicker of an eyelid. However, he kept a close eye on expenses and â apart from her pin money that she could spend as she wished â insisted that she must account for every penny; having been subjected to this regime himself with his father, he saw no reason why the same situation shouldn't exist between himself and his wife. Original ideas did not come easily to Algy. He couldn't â or didn't â see that being beholden to him in this way was anathema to Sylvia. Too utterly humiliating.
So she had been forced to resort to a hundred small deceptions
and subterfuges each quarter to put together the money she so desperately needed, that money he must never know about. So far, she had managed it by pinching and scraping a few pounds here and there, by selling off discarded trifles she might otherwise have given to her maid, and by being mean about tips, but all of it was as a drop in the ocean.
Her natural inclination had been to try and boost her finances at cards, an idea which she might have known was doomed to failure from the start. The set she moved in were notorious gamblers, and the stakes high â¦she was an inveterate loser, yet she could not stop, nor forego the excitement the gamble engendered. Algy had several times been forced to pay off her debts, but with that quiver of his rather long nose which told her she had better be wary. It was soon obvious she was not going to make the money she needed in the card room. In despair, last quarter, she had daringly sold a sapphire ring Algy had given her in the early years of their marriage, and had since been in a fever of anxiety lest he should find out, for he kept a sharp eye on her possessions, and though she hadn't worn the ring for years, he might at any time notice its absence.
For the moment, however, her appointment with Dr Mortimer was obscuring even her money worries. Life was unfair, so grossly unfair! It was no thwarted maternal instinct which was the driving force behind Sylvia's frantic desire to have a child, however. She had not been blessed with a particularly maternal streak â in fact, she rather disliked the idea of children and, if the truth be told, had never been very interested in the means of getting them. It was simply that she could not countenance the possibility that the day might come when the Chetwynd line might die out, leaving Belmonde with no heir to carry on its traditions.
For Sylvia had a strong suspicion that Sebastian, like Monty, might very well never marry, and for the same reasons. There was an unexpected streak of romanticism running through the Chetwynd family; Monty had subdued his desires with politics, and it was not be to supposed that, having reached the age of forty-eight, he would suddenly decide to marry â and it was obvious to Sylvia, who had a quick instinct for these things, that
Sebastian was head over heels in love with Louisa Fox, whether he knew it yet or not, when of course it was absolutely out of the question that he should make a fool of himself and marry her. (Though Louisa herself might well be a stumbling block to that, one of these new women who wanted nothing more out of life than to set themselves up as equals with men, with careers of their own. The functions of a career as a doctor and that of a future Lady Chetwynd Sylvia saw as wholly incompatible.) It was obvious to her that her brother must marry someone who would in every way be more suitable as a wife and mother to the future heir of Belmonde, but Sebastian was so odd, so difficult about things like that. It was more than likely he would decide never to marry at all, to remain single, like his uncle, through simple cussedness, rather than not marry Louisa. He laughed off the idea that his only importance in life was simply to look after Belmonde, find money through marriage, and produce an heir for it; he had always been half American, not only by birth but in his attitude towards family.
But if â she had drawn in her breath when she thought about it â if she herself should have a son, there was a chance, and quite possibly one that was not all that remote, that this son might come into an inheritance which, but for an accident of birth â (if she had been the son and Harry the daughter) â might have been hers anyway. All her life, Belmonde had meant more to her than anyone could ever know. She loved it deeply, uncritically, without reservation. As for the name of Chetwynd, Algy, she was perfectly certain, would not be averse to changing his name if it was put to him in the right way.
But â¦here she was, thirty years old and no sign. She had tried everything: quack medicines, the most expensive doctors, old wives' tales â¦even her flirtation with Mrs Besant and her quirky religion, only to find that Mrs Besant was more concerned with preventing, rather than encouraging, children being born. Nothing had availed.
Dr Mortimer, that detestable man, had dared to suggest that she might try to entice her husband more often into her bed as a means of getting a child. She thought of the love-nest in St John's Wood, and was repelled. Perhaps she too, then, should
take a lover in the hope that she might be more successful with him â¦but where was she to find one who would excite her any more than Algy did in their statutory once-a-week lovemaking? All the same, what Sylvia wanted was invariably what she got. She had been outrageously spoiled by her father, aiding a nature that could not bear to be thwarted. This need for a child was fast becoming an obsession; her whole life revolved round schemes and plans whereby it might become fact â no, not might â must.
The world outside passed like the blurred images of a magic lantern as the cab bumped round the corner into Knightsbridge and passed Harvey Nichols' department store, light blazing from its windows on to the damply greasy pavements. She might just have time, before they closed at four, to order the taxicab round to Harrods, that great shrine of fashion where anything could be bought, and slip in to buy something â even if it were only a lace collar or a pair of gloves, to cheer herself up. But she decided the experience she had just undergone had been too exhausting, too shaming to be dismissed like that. She would go home, get her maid to make her a hot cup of tea, unpin and unlace her, let down her hair and rest until it was time to get ready for the ballet, where she and Algy were to join the Cranstons in their box to see Nijinsky and afterwards to make up a supper party at the Ritz. I shall wear my new velvet, thought Sylvia, and instantly felt better. She was absolutely in love with it, it was simply divine, and so becoming, with an elegance of line that accentuated her tiny waist. Deep rose colour, warming her pale skin, its soft lustre adding a sparkle to her eyes. And my pearls, she thought, already feeling their heavy, milky opalescence trickling sensuously through her fingers. Perhaps Algy might again find her as beautiful as he once had, and perhaps there was a chance she might feel more warmly towards him, too.