“Twenty-five shillings!” Deirdre looked at her in astonishment. “But that’s impossible.”
“It’s what Ingrid told me,” Stella said.
“But Sam isn’t a fool, and he could easily get three or four guineas for it.”
“Ingrid said it’s the pre-war rent,” Stella explained. “If a place has been let at a certain rent before, you can’t just put it up nowadays. It isn’t legal.”
“But it hasn’t been let before.”
“Not let?”
“No, it belonged to Miss Seymour, that old lady who’d had it built and who lived in it till she died last year,” Deirdre said. “Then Sam bought it and let it to Verinder.”
“Well, what does it matter anyway,” Stella said. “All it means is that Sam isn’t a profiteer.”
“But twenty-five shillings is absurd.” Deirdre sounded as if she were annoyed by the absurdity. She sat staring in front of her with a frown hardening the lines of her face.
“Perhaps,” David said, “Verinder has a hold over Sam Fortis.” He said it cheerfully, and it was plain that he did not mean it. All the time, during this conversation, Stella was amazed by David’s cheerfulness, as if talking of Verinder in this way was doing him good. “A slight touch of blackmail,” he added.
“Ah, you’re probably quite right,” Deirdre said. “I’ve always thought Verinder was a crook of some sort. For one thing, how does he get enough money to go abroad so often and for so long? I’ve often wondered about that. He’s going to France again in a few weeks’ time, you know. And he was there only last month.”
“Doesn’t some Council of Something or Other send him to conferences of one sort and another?” David suggested.
Deirdre laughed. “I’m very much afraid you’re probably right about that,” she said, “only it would be nicer to think he was mixed up with some underground racket. Not necessarily blackmail, because I don’t see how that would help him with currency difficulties, but blackmail might come into it somewhere—it strikes me as quite in character. By the way, Mr. Obeney, are you interested in books?”
The abrupt and obvious change of subject irritated Stella. Unable to stay still, she fidgeted about the room. She heard David say, “Books? People here are always asking me sudden questions about books. What is it about the place?” She heard Deirdre answer, “I meant their bindings. I bind books, you know. I wondered if you were interested.” All at once Stella thought of Winnfrieda Fortis. She would talk to Winnfrieda.
It was only a few minutes later that Deirdre rose to go. To Stella’s surprise, David suggested that he should go with her and look at some of her work. Stella felt that she ought to be delighted that at last David had shown a desire for company other than his own, but she was not; she was worried and distraught. She went with them as far as the hall door. Deirdre suddenly turned, half-way down the path, and came back to Stella.
“I want to talk to you sometime,” she said in a low voice. “When can I see you alone?”
Stella moved back a step. She said evasively, “Any time, of course. I’ve got to go into the shops this morning, and this
afternoon I’ve to go and see Mrs. Potter—I promised I would. I’ll ring you up later, shall I?”
Deirdre looked at her thoughtfully. “Do,” she said after a moment. Then she turned and rejoined David.
The moment they were out of the garden Stella was upstairs in David’s bedroom. Mrs. Scales had left it. She was in the bathroom, talking aloud to herself as she polished the bath. Stella closed the door and went quickly to the dressing-table. One after the other, she opened the drawers. The revolver was not in any of them.
• • • • •
Feeling that she did not want to be observed, Stella pushed open the door of S. & W. Fortis, Ltd., and stepped into the long tunnel of books. After a moment Winnfrieda Fortis, sleekly precise in her dark red suit with the garnet brooch on the lapel, walked forward out of the shadows and greeted her. “Oh, hallo, Stella. Sam and I are just having a cup of tea. Come along in and join us.” Without waiting for an answer, she led the way back to the office, a low, square room with a dusty window overlooking a small yard, enclosed by a high wall. A large dustbin, some empty packing-cases and a sad looking lilac bush filled the yard. On one of the packing-cases a large tabby cat was sitting, luxuriously licking its sides.
Sam Fortis sat in a swivel-chair at a desk, nursing a cup of milkless tea in both hands. He had a big, pale triangle of a face, deeply lined, and a thin fringe of sandy hair, peppered with grey, covering the back of his head. When he raised his prominent grey eyebrows, wrinkles ran up to his forehead and faded out half-way across the bald top of his head, like ripples on a pond, raised by a stone. His eyes had a bright, hard stare. He was a short man but long in the body, so that as he sat at the desk he seemed to be tall. He wore a suit of greenish tweed, a navy blue woollen shirt, a yellow tie and sandals.
When he saw Stella he exclaimed in a loud, harsh voice, “Why, how nice, how very nice! Why doesn’t this happen more often? What can we do for you, Stella, my dear?”
“Pour out a cup of tea,” Winnfrieda answered, and pushed forward a battered basket-chair for Stella. “As a matter of fact, we were just talking about you, Stella.”
“About me?” Stella sat down.
“There’s no milk,” Sam Fortis said. “We don’t take milk, Winnfrieda and I. Can you drink tea without milk?”
“Oh yes, thanks,” Stella said. “What were you saying?”
“Sugar?”
“No, thank you.”
“A biscuit?”
“Please—I——”
“It’s a hot day, isn’t it? Where should we be without our tea?” Sam handed her a dainty blue and white cup. “Is tea one of your vices, Stella, my dear?”
“I don’t think so,” Stella said. “Not particularly. But what——”
“Winnfrieda and I drink it all day long. In fact we only keep a book-shop so that we can sit in the office drinking tea.”
“Why do you need a book-shop to do that?” Stella asked.
“Why? Well——” An eddy of wrinkles moved up Sam’s forehead. “I haven’t thought about why. I’ve always assumed it was one of those obvious things. One has to have a reason for things, but one needn’t ask why the reason’s a reason. One’s foolish to ask why about a thing like that.”
“You always talk a good deal of nonsense,” Stella said absently, nibbling the biscuit he had given her.
“You hear that?” Sam said to Winnfrieda. “That’s hard at my time of life, when I’ve just begun to pride myself on my restraint and sobriety.” All the time he was talking Stella was aware that his bright, hard eyes were steadily on her face. “When I was younger,” he said, “I did occasionally get into trouble for talking so-called nonsense, but now I limit all my remarks to the level of the indisputable and the everyday. The weather, food …”
“Is that cat out there yours?” Stella asked. She had meant to say something about the fire and Mark Verinder, but the sentence seemed to give a wrench at her thoughts as she began to speak, and to her own relief came out as something different.
“No,” Sam answered, “but it likes us.”
“It likes me,” Winnfrieda said. “All cats like me.” She leant towards the window, holding out an inviting hand to the cat. “Here, puss—come here.”
“Leave it alone,” Sam said. “It’ll get tired of you.”
“Come here, puss,” Winnfrieda repeated.
There was a moment of uncertainty. With surprise, Stella realised that Winnfrieda had become acutely anxious, that it mattered to her very much that she should be able to make the cat come to her. At last it rose. It stretched and came nearer to the window, and in triumph Winnfrieda pounced and pulled it inside.
“Cats always come to me,” she said, holding it to her bosom.
“Don’t you like cats, Stella?” Sam asked.
Stella started slightly. Sam’s eyes were still examining her face.
“I imagine you like dogs better, or babies,” he said. He spoke with a kind of malice.
“Cats have such a lot more sense than either,” Winnfrieda said, sleeking herself against the cat.
“I don’t know,” Stella said. She drank some tea. She was extremely nervous, thinking about the revolver. “Sam—Winnfrieda—d’you mind if I talk to you?”
As soon as she had spoken, Stella felt a suspicion that Sam and Winnfrieda restrained themselves from exchanging glances. Neither replied at once.
She began again, “It’s just that——”
Almost as if he knew what was coming, Sam interrupted, “Talk as much as you like, my dear, if you’re sure that you want to. But are you sure that you want to?”
Winnfrieda added, “It isn’t always a wise thing to talk, even to friends.”
“I know. I want to talk to someone who’s quite outside the circumstances,” Stella said, “and see if it sounds as if I’m just being a fool.”
“But are you sure,” Sam asked, “that we
are
quite outside the circumstances?”
“Oh yes—of course,” Stella said. “It’s about my brother——”
“Oh, your brother. Oh, I see.” There was an immediate change in Sam’s tone, and this time he did exchange a glance with Winnfrieda. “Well, what about him?”
“A nice young man, I thought,” Winnfrieda said, rubbing the cat under her chin. The sound of its purring filled the room.
“You know he had a sort of breakdown, don’t you?” Stella said.
They both nodded.
“Well, he’s been perfectly normal for a long time now,” Stella went on, “only ill and tired, and that’s been getting noticeably better even during the short time he’s been here. He’s been getting friendlier with people, and I’m sure that’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
“I can’t say I’m well informed on the subject,” Sam said, “but I should think it is.”
“Well, the trouble is,” Stella said, “that when he first came here, when he was still pretty low, he ran into Mark Verinder——”
Winnfrieda raised her head. “Let’s not talk about him,” she said decidedly.
“But I wanted to explain——”
“Nothing about Mark Verinder, please.” Winnfrieda pushed the cat off her knees and thrust it towards the window.
“But, Winnfrieda, please.” Stella felt her cheeks burning. “It’s something about David——”
“Have some more tea,” Sam said, “and let’s talk about something else, my dear. It really might be better.”
Looking dumbly from one to the other, Stella let Sam take her cup away from her, refill it and give it to her again. Her mind had gone blank in bewilderment and anger. Then she found herself wondering why on earth she had ever thought of coming here. As that occurred to her, she began to think with horror of what she had been about to say.
But she said, “I don’t understand you. I think you’re both being very queer.”
“We are, a little. But aren’t we all?” Sam said.
“It’s just that we think it’s better not to talk about Mark Verinder,” Winnfrieda said. “As for your brother, Stella, if you’ll take my advice about him, I’d get him away from here as soon as you can.”
Stella looked down. “Why d’you say that?” she asked.
“I saw him in here with Verinder, yesterday,” Winnfrieda said. “I saw his face, and if looks could kill——”
“How absurd!” Stella put down her cup abruptly. Yet she had begun to tremble. “I was going to tell you that he doesn’t like Verinder—there’s an old quarrel at the back of it—but if you’re going to suggest he had anything to do with the fire——”
“Fire?”
Sam jerked forward in his chair, spilling some tea. “Did you say a fire?”
“Don’t you know about it?” Stella said. “I should have thought the story would be all over the place by now—but I suppose, if you won’t let people talk to you about Mark Verinder, you couldn’t hear about it.” She smiled a little revengefully.
“Stella, what’s all this?” Sam’s voice had become shrill. He stood up. “What fire are you talking about?”
“The fire at the Verinders’.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“What was burnt?”
“Don’t try to sound like a policeman, Sam,” Stella said, standing up too and gathering up her bag and her shopping-basket. “It’s not your business.”
“What was burnt?” he asked.
“The summer-house.”
“What was in it?”
“How should I know?”
“What was in it, Stella? You do know something about it.”
“I don’t.”
She heard Winnfrieda’s breath catch.
Sam went on, “Didn’t Verinder say anything about it?”
“He said there was nothing in it that mattered.”
“Ah——” He turned away. Stella saw his hand take hold of the back of a chair and slide backwards and forwards along it, as if he were trying to steady himself. Then he sat down again. He gave a loud, self-conscious laugh. “I’m sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to blow up, but you scared me quite a lot. Verinder happens to have some of my property up at his cottage. I didn’t like the idea that it might have gone up in flames. You’re sure he said there was nothing of any value in the summer-house?”
“He said so,” Stella said.
“How did the fire happen?” Winnfrieda asked.
“I haven’t any idea.”
“But you were just saying something about your brother——”
“No,” Stella said, “you misunderstood me.”
Giving her a probing look, then almost indifferently, turning to Sam, Winnfrieda said, “I told Verinder I didn’t approve of your having let him take those books away. I said I thought it was too much of a risk. Things like that should stay in a safe. If there should be trouble with the insurance——”
“It’s all right, don’t worry,” Sam said, also trying to sound indifferent. “Stella’s just said there was nothing of value in the summer-house. Now, my dear”—he smiled at Stella with an effort at friendliness—“I know you’re annoyed with us because we didn’t encourage you to talk, but I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if you’re feeling quite glad about it in an hour’s time. For a long time now I’ve gone on the principle of dissuading people from confiding in me. It isn’t because I’m unsympathetic, or unconcerned, do believe that, but rather because I want to keep their friendship. I found out myself long ago that there’s no one whom one dislikes so much as the person in whom one’s confided too much.”
“Quite,” Winnfrieda said. “Friendship can only survive on a sound basis of ignorance.”
“You aren’t angry, are you, my dear?” Sam said.