The Tiger in the Well (13 page)

Then lunch, and then all the good-byes. And the heaviness began to gather around Sally's heart, and she realized why she'd come. It was the same impulse that had led her

to tidy the breakfast room and put all her old things away: the old way of things was coming to an end.

She and Rosa embraced tightly at the station.

"You can always send her here," Rosa whispered. "You could stay yourself, if you liked."

Sally shook her head.

"It's too late for that," she said. "I can't hide from it. It's going to happen, and we've got to be there. I'm going to see the Q.C. on Wednesday. If he's as good as the solicitor says, we'll win the case anyway."

"I mean it," Rosa said. "We'll make her a ward of court. Adopt her. Anything to put a spoke in his wheel."

Sally smiled. "I'd better get in," she said. "The guard's looking impatient. If Nick can find out anything about Mr. Beech—"

"He's writing letters now. We'll find him. Go on, quick, get in."

Sally joined Sarah-Jane and Harriet, the guard blew the whistle, the train began to move. Sally waved to Rosa for a long time as they steamed away into the autumn sunshine.

Late on Monday, after Sally had spent a difficult afternoon with two demanding clients, and then visited a house in Islington, she arrived home to find Ellie alight with impatience.

"Miss—miss," she whispered, as Sally came in through the door. "He's here, miss! The knife man!"

"The knife man ..." Sally, tired, couldn't remember for a second. Then it came to her, and her eyes lit up. "Good," she said. "Where is he?"

"In the kitchen, miss—but he's nearly finished. He's just packing up. I'll go and see if I can keep him—"

"It's all right. I'm coming now."

She threw off her cloak and bonnet and strode quickly to the door at the back of the hall, in the darkness under the stairs, which led to the kitchen. She stopped, her hand on the handle, listening. She heard a man's voice indistinctly,

and whispered to Ellie, "Go straight in and stand by the back door. Is there a key in it?"

Ellie nodded. Her eyes shone wide in the gloom.

"Lock it, then."

She turned the handle and stepped in. Ellie followed at once and darted to the back door. Mrs. Perkins looked up from the pastry she was making, surprised, and Sally stood blocking the other way out.

The man was standing, case in hand, beside the kitchen table. A row of neatly cleaned and sharpened knives lay in front of him. He stopped in midsentence, startled, and then removed his cap.

"Evening, ma'am," he said.

He was mustached, dark-haired, slightly stout. His expression was amiable.

"What's your name.'"' Sally said.

"Cave, ma'am. George Cave. Anything wrong, ma'am.'*"

She hesitated. "Would you come with me, please.^" she said, standing aside. "I want to ask you some questions."

"If you like, ma'am, certainly," he said.

He put down the case he was holding and went ahead of her out into the hall. Mrs. Perkins and Ellie didn't move.

"In here," said Sally, indicating the breakfast room.

She sat down by the dining table while he stood peaceably by the door.

"Who sent you here.'"' she said.

"No one, ma'am. I'm in business for meself. I do a number of houses in the town—shops, too. I've taken over a lot of old Mr. Pratt's business. He couldn't manage it so well, being shaky on his legs, like."

"You don't go to Dr. Talbot's."

"Where's that, ma'am.'"'

"In Hartford Street."

"That's Mr. Pratt's patch. He still does Hartford Street and Nelson Square. Only a step away from where he lives, you see, ma'am, it's no trouble to him. And I don't mind.

Fm sure. There's plenty enough business to keep me going. The town's growing, you see. There's the new hotel, and—"

"Do you know a man called Mr. Parrish.?"

He considered.

"Would he live in Twickenham, ma'am.'' Because I can't recall the name."

"No."

She looked at him fixedly and found her heart beating fast. He looked honestly puzzled.

"Do you ask my servants about my affairs.'"' she said.

"Certainly not, ma'am. Have I been accused of—"

"I know you discuss matters affecting this household. My maidservant has told me."

"Then you'd better speak to her about it, ma'am. I'm sure I'm not so interested in other folks' affairs that I'd want to go prying, like you seem to be saying. I'm an honest man, ma'am, always have been. There's plenty of people in town as'd speak for me. Nor I don't have to come here, neither. I got more'n enough business to keep me going. If you got a complaint, let's have it out in the open. Otherwise, I'll be off, and if your cook wants her knives looking after, she'll have to get someone else."

Sally was blushing hotly. She stood up.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Cave. I apologize. There's been some trouble here, that's all, and someone seems to know what's going on in my house. I'm just trying to find out—"

"Enough said, ma'am. I don't care to come to a house where I'm suspected of spying. There's plenty of calls on my time."

And ignoring her repeated apology, he turned and left. After a minute or so, she heard the back door slam.

She sank into her chair again. Everything about this business was hateful; and she was so tired.

Ellie's young man Sidney, Dr. Talbot's groom, had made an appointment with her for eight o'clock that night. They

no The Tiger in the "Well

both liked the music hall, and there was a new bill at the Britannia in the High Street. Monday wasn't the best night to go—the house was always a bit thin—but they could sit and hold hands in the warmth, and have a little drink. He was a liberal man. Dr. Talbot—like Miss Lockhart; nothing strict or harsh about him, very free with granting an evening off, not like some employers.

In the interval between the two halves of the bill, Ellie told him all about the knife man. He'd heard about the intruder the other night and been seriously concerned; he said they ought to have a man in the house and offered to sleep there himself. Ellie told him to give over; she wasn't falling for that one. But he was in no doubt about the knife man.

"He's a wrong 'un," he said. "Stands out a mile. Them smooth-talking ones, they're the blokes to watch. Got an answer for everything, I'll be bound."

"If he was innocent, though, he would, wouldn't he.'*" said Ellie.

"No. That's where you're wrong. I made a study of police court cases, I have, and it's a proven fact that your average innocent party doesn't have his story all pat. People don't, do they.'* They forget things. It's only natural. Where were you on the night of the fourteenth of August.^ See, you can't remember. But your crook, now, he'd tell you straight out, look you right in the eye, butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Worked it out beforehand, see. You can always tell. This stuff about Mr. Pratt—it's a lot of old blarney. Who's this Tremble geezer you was talking about.'"'

"Oh, Mr. Molloy. They calls him Trembler. Just in fun, really. He used to work for Mr. Garland in the old days. He runs a lodging house now, in Islington. Miss Lockhart went up there today. ..."

It was nice, talking to Sidney. He knew a lot, and he was always willing to listen, not like some young men she knew, all mouth and trousers. Course, he was a bit saucy, but she liked that in a man—showed he wasn't just a stuffed shirt.

And he had a serious side. He'd been sympatheric about Miss Lockhart from the beginning, followed all the doings.

As the band filed back in (wiping the beer off their whiskers, Sidney said, and a couple of them were, too) he gave her hand a squeeze.

"You can depend on it," he said. "It's that knife man what's behind all this. You're well rid of him, if you want my opinion. It's them smooth Johnnies every time. It's us awkward, shy, forgetful blokes as is the honest ones. ..."

He slid his arm behind her, and she smiled.

"You're forgetting yourself now, Sidney," she said.

"What did I tell you.'' Proves I'm honest, doesn't it.'"'

She let him keep his arm there. They watched the second half companionably.

Q

The Eminent Q. C.

Wednesday morning dawned cold and blustery. By the time Sally left for the City, the rain was teeming down and the wind was tearing twigs from the bare treetops. She got to the office chilly and wet, with red-rimmed eyes from an anxiety-haunted night.

The day didn't get much better. During the morning she discovered that she'd made a mistake in a letter she'd sent to her stockbrokers, which had resulted in a client's money being wrongly invested. Luckily no great sum was involved, and as things turned out the investment hadn't lost money, but it was a kind of carelessness she'd thought herself above. And it was exactly the sort of thing the firm could not afford. She had a partner now to be responsible to, after all.

She ate a hurried lunch—sandwiches made by Mrs. Perkins, an apple from the orchard, coffee from the recalcitrant fire— while poring over the financial columns of The Times and the weekly Financial Chronicle. There a name caught her eye in a leading article urging the government to take a strong line and expel foreign agitators who abused the traditional hospitality of Britain in order to stir up hatred and dissent. The name was that of Daniel Goldberg, and it seemed that Goldberg was a well-known figure in continental socialist circles, and that he'd been exiled from Prussia and then again from Brussels. In calling for his expulsion from Britain, the journal was concerned to emphasize that, of course, it upheld all the traditional liberties of speech and thought for

which this country had long been a beacon to others, but that . . .

Sally read it without feeling anything on one side or the other. And that was worrying; she didn't like this neutrality of feeling that colored the world gray. She ought to feel something about socialism, because it raised some vital questions. She even knew what it was she ought to feel, but while she was hating and fearing what Arthur Parrish was doing to her, she had no energy left to dislike an economic theory.

She put the paper aside, made some notes on share movements, paced up and down, made some more coffee. Finally Cicely Corrigan, the gentlest of souls, lost her patience.

"For goodness' sake, Miss Lockhart, why don't you go out and go for a walk or something.-^ There's nothing else to do here, and you're only fretting yourself. Go and get good and wet and cold and worn out and then when you go home you can have a hot bath and feel a lot better. I'll clear away and lock up."

"All right," said Sally. "Perhaps I will."

She put her cloak and hat on, took her boots from where they'd been drying on the hearth, and without a backward glance at the papers on her desk, left.

It was still drizzling, with a thin, mean, half-misty chill in it, but she took no notice and marched briskly past St. Paul's, down Ludgate Hill, and then along the embankment all the way to the houses of Parliament. The tide was going out, exposing the far bank of the river, muddy and gray and littered with fragments of rubbish. Wharves, timber yards, sawmills, foundries, lead works stretched out dismally under the low sky; the steam cranes opposite Whitehall Stairs rose and fell meaninglessly. Westminster Bridge, now that the tide was low, looked awkward on its long, narrow piers. Everything was wrong. The world was crazy.

Sally shook her head as Big Ben struck three, and set out across the bridge at a smart pace. On the south bank, she turned right toward Lambeth, and for the next two hours she

just walked hard. She didn't know this side of the river, and before long she was lost. That suited her; if she didn't know where she was, no one else would either. Long terraces of mean little dwellings, railway bridges, a prison, a hospital, chapels, a grand square of elegant eighteenth-century houses, an engineering works, a market, a workhouse, a theater, houses, houses, houses; a cricket ground, a gas works, a brewery, a stable, a builder's yard, a railway station, a school; grim blocks of artisans' dwellings, more houses, an asylum for the blind, a printing works . . .

She'd had no idea of the vastness of London, despite having lived in the city for so long. After all, she usually passed through it on a train while reading a newspaper or making notes; she knew London as an idea, not as a reality. In each of those houses there were real people. In each of those businesses there were decisions being made. Behind that door people were falling in love, or dying, or giving birth, or freezing into years of married hatred. That little boy limping: why was he limping.'* He didn't look well, he was poorly dressed; had someone beaten him.^ Or had he been bom lame.? Or had he suffered from rickets.? That old woman with her tray of matches . . . that old Jew in the bazaar there, turning over the books at a secondhand stall . . . that woman who might be Sally's own age, who had lost all her teeth, whose face was marked all down one side with a burn scar . . . Sally felt something stirring in her heart for these poor, anonymous people. They were only anonymous because of her own ignorance; they each had a life inside them, just as she did.

So she wandered, looking and absorbing and feeling, until a church clock somewhere near St. George's Circus told her it was five o'clock. There was a cab rank nearby. She found a hansom waiting and told the driver to go to the Temple.

Blackfriars Bridge was crowded, and it was after twenty past five when Sally paid off the cabdriver at the bottom of Middle Temple Lane and hurried up toward Pump Court, where Mr. Coleman, Q.C., had his chambers. It was dark,

and the windows overlooking the little court glowed yellow in the heavy mist. She hesitated, wondering which door to enter, and a figure detached itself from the darkness on her right and hastened toward her.

"Miss Lockhart! I was becoming distinctly anxious."

It was the solicitor, Mr. Adcock. He was bareheaded, so he'd left his hat inside, and he was clearly agitated.

"I am on time, aren't I.^* Wasn't our appointment for half past five.'*"

"It is nearly that now. It would be extremely unfortunate if we were late. Mr. Coleman is so very busy—"