Hole and Corner (21 page)

They came into Pattenham Mews, and stopped at the third door on the left. It was painted a screaming shade of blue, and looked as odd in that row of shabby doors with blistered paint, and peeling paint, and very little paint at all, as a peacock would have done among the noisy sparrows which thronged the place.

Jasper produced the key and they went in. It was the oddest place inside. A stair which was little more than a ladder ran up from a yard inside the door to a square hole in the floor above. The ground floor had been partitioned—kitchenette in front, bedroom and bathroom behind. The kitchen contained a stove, a sink, a frying-pan and two saucepans. The bedroom contained a bed, a chair, and a chest of drawers. The bathroom contained a geyser and a bath. All the wood-work had been painted I the same bright peacock-blue as the front door.

They went up the ladder, through the hole in the floor, and arrived in the studio. More blue paint, and a great many windows—a row of them looking out in front, and a row of them looking out at the back, and a skylight looking up at the sky. All round the walls stood the products of Miss Helena Pocklington's brush. They stood because there was no room for them to hang—large canvases, and middle-sized canvases, plastered with paint so vivid that Shirley gasped.

“Golly!” she said in tone of awe.

“Enough to put the canary off his feed—aren't they?”

“What are they meant for? What's that one?” She pointed at the canvas which faced them. It appeared to present a design of a vaguely geometrical character. Lopsided circles of viridian green were intertwined with blood-red pyramids and yellow hexagons.

“She calls it the Potato Field.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.”

Shirley made a malignant Woggy Doodle at it, and behind her back the canary burst into song. She swung round and saw a large cage hanging from the rafters. On the perch a handsome yellow canary stretched his throat and trilled. In the angle between the back row of windows and the main wall stood an anthracite stove which gave out a very pleasant heat.

“Lovely and warm!” said Shirley.

Jasper scowled.

“I have to keep it up for him.”

“For the canary—a whole stove?” She giggled appreciatively. “My poor Jas! The Canary's Friend, of Always Be Kind to Dumb Animals! Only he isn't dumb. Be quiet, you little wretch!”

Jasper produced a sudden schoolboy grin.

“He's nothing to Helena, and when they get going together—”

“Business,” said Shirley firmly. She reached up and shook the cage, which had a temporarily discouraging effect on the canary. “Be quiet, you little wretch! All right, chirrup, if you like, but you're not to sing. Now, Jas—the first thing is food. Here's ten shillings. There must be places that are open on a Sunday, and I've got to have food in case of your having to follow Anthony to Timbuctoo or something like that. You wouldn't like to get a wireless message when you were half way there to say I'd been found starved to death—would you? It would make a lovely headline—wouldn't it?
Mystery Girl In Mews!
But I expect you'd rather not, and so would Anthony, so get me some eggs, or sandwiches, or something. And is the gas turned on? Because if it was, I could have a geyser bath.”

Jasper looked panic-stricken.

“Oh, I say—you can't do that! She reads the meter. And it isn't on—at least—I mean—of course I could turn it on—but I don't think I'd better. She'd want to know why I had been using the gas.”

“You can say you were giving the canary a bath, darling,” said Shirley firmly. “Come and turn it on at once!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Anthony Leigh came back to town because it seemed the most sensible thing to do. Shirley had disappeared into the blue without leaving a message for him, and the only deduction he could make from that was that something had startled her and she had run away. No one seemed to have noticed her getting into any train, and he had therefore no clue to her probable whereabouts. He could have pushed his inquiries a little farther afield, but he did not want to attract attention, and if he disappeared into the blue after Shirley,
she
would then have no clue to
his
whereabouts. Whereas if he returned to town and sat within reach of a telephone, she could, and surely would, ring him up. He came back therefore, put the car away, and let himself into an empty flat. Manders wouldn't be back till ten o'clock. All the windows were shut. The place was cold and stuffy, and there wasn't a vestige of a fire.

He lit the gas fire in the dining-room, opened a window only to shut it again as the north-east wind came bounding in, threw himself into a comfortable shabby chair by the side of the hearth, and opened one of the Sunday papers which he had brought with him.

A headline about disarmament, a headline about road accidents, a headline about a film star, and—
“Millionaire's Amazing Will.
”

Always something interesting about a will. Mortmain—the dead hand trying to pull strings, to go on pulling them, to go on having a finger in the pie. Extraordinary sidelights on human nature to be got out of wills.

He settled down to find out what William Ambrose Merewether had done about his millions.

Everything to his cousin Jane Lorimer if still alive.…

Well, she'd be fairly old by now. William Ambrose wasn't any chicken.…

Anthony looked away from the print to the photograph half way down the column. A good-looking old boy. Might have been a judge. Thick white hair standing up in a crest. More hair like that in America than over on this side—must have something to do with the climate. Keen features, bright malicious eyes. Looked as if he'd been a bad man to cross.…

He went back to the print again.

“Jane Lorimer … provided she has not, up to the time of this will being proved, been in prison on a criminal charge.…”

Anthony laughed to himself. Something behind that. Interesting to know what. Pleasant for Jane Lorimer if still alive.…

He read on to find out what happened to Mr Merewether's millions if his cousin Jane Lorimer were dead or had done time.

“Any children of the said Jane Lorimer … equal shares … same condition to apply … survivor takes everything … if no survivor, or condition not complied with, grandchild or grandchildren of said Jane Lorimer to inherit—still under the condition.…”

Vindictive old boy. He must have had it in for Jane all right. Wonder what she did to him. How pleased the family must be. But I daresay the millions will sweeten the insult.

He had got as far as that, half interested, half trying to be interested—because what was the good of wondering all the time where Shirley was?—when suddenly the half interest became a whole interest and he was staring at the concluding paragraph with all his eyes. A name stood out, stared back—the name of Augustus Rigg.

Anthony's eyes looked at the name. He wondered why it should hold them like that. His brain made nothing of it yet—not consciously. He just looked at the name and couldn't let it go. Jane Lorimer had married Augustus Rigg, Esq. of Emerton House near Harrogate in the county of Yorkshire—Augustus Rigg, J.P. She had married him in 1883, and he died in 1884, leaving issue John and Jane, twins, born 1884.

John and Jane … Augustus Rigg … Jane Rigg … Shirley giving her funny little gurgling laugh in the study at Revelston Crescent and saying, “I've got a half-sister called Jane Rigg. Sounds grim—doesn't it?”.…

Light broke in violently upon his waiting brain. Mr William Ambrose Merewether's cousin Jane Lorimer was Shirley's mother. She had married Augustus Rigg and had twin children, John and Jane. And then she had married a French artist—what was his name?—Le-something or other—and he left her with a baby called Perrine … The odd name stuck in his mind.… And then she married Dale and went off with him to New Zealand, and had two boys and, as an after-thought, Shirley.…

Shirley—Shirley and William Ambrose Merewether's millions. Out of that mixed bag of Jane Lorimer's three marriages who was there left, and how did they all stand?

Jane Lorimer was dead, years and years ago as Jane Dale in New Zealand. That put her out of it. She and William Ambrose must settle their quarrel somewhere else—a little more than kin and less than kind.

The children came next—children of her three marriages—share and share alike unless any of them should have been in prison.

First the Rigg twins, John and Jane.…

They were out of it too—both dead, John in the war (Shirley's voice again, very clear: “The John twin was killed in the war like my two real brothers”) and Jane six months ago. The Riggs were off the map as far as the millions were concerned.…

Next Perrine—the French child Perrine Levaux. (Shirley again, “Perrine's dead too, a long time ago.”)

Cross off Perrine and come to the Dale family.… Three of them—two boys and Shirley. Two boys … What were their names?—Hugh and Ambrose …
Ambrose
.… There must have been something between Jane and old William Ambrose for her to have given his name to one of her boys so long afterwards—on the other side of the world.…

Hugh, and Ambrose, and Shirley Dale.…

But the Dale brothers had been killed in the war, both of them. He remembered Shirley saying, “Hugh was twenty-three and Ambrose was twenty-two”.…

Cross out Hugh and Ambrose, and there was only Shirley left. Out of Jane Lorimer's six children there was only Shirley left. And Shirley came in for the Merewether millions unless—

Unless—

Unless—

Unless the very thing happened that was in imminent danger of happening.…

He went back to William Ambrose Merewether's condition. If Shirley was arrested on a charge of theft, what would happen to the Merewether millions?… Something clicked in Anthony's brain. What
would
happen to the money if Shirley was disqualified?

He wanted to know that very badly.

Sharply on that the telephone bell rang.

He had crowded a writing-table in between fireplace and window. The telephone stood to his hand. He had only to lean sideways to reach it. A voice that was strange to him asked him if he was Mr Anthony Leigh—a male voice, young and not too pleased about it.

He said, “Anthony Leigh speaking. Who is it?” Whereupon the line did something odd and the voice from a very long way off said something which sounded like “Hens”—or it might have been pens—or one (singular) hen or pen. He raised his voice, said that he had neither a hen nor a pen, and what about it?

“Don't speak so loud,” said the remote voice. And then all of a sudden there it was, blaring into his ear, “My name is Jasper Wrenn.”

Anthony removed the receiver to a distance less jarring to the ear, and said,

“All right—what about it?”

And then in a flash he was remembering the exact tone of his own voice teasing Shirley—“You absolutely can't go about with a fellow called Jasper. It's asking to get into a melodrama.” If Jasper was calling him up, it must mean—

He said quickly, “All right, Wrenn—there was something the matter with the line, but it's got going again. What is it?”

“Shirley asked me to ring you up.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Shirley surveyed the provisions which Jasper had brought back from his foraging expedition. Two lumpy sandwiches, made without mustard, but the ham looked all right and the bread not too bad. Two currant scones, rather pale and undecided-looking, the sort that need lots of butter and are better toasted. Half a bag of biscuits, the frightfully dull kind that you don't take even with cheese
and
butter unless they're the only ones left in the box. Regarded as food, without so much as a cup of tea to wash them down, they were discouraging in the extreme. Jas had probably done his best, and that was all you could say about it.

Shirley had a bright thought. The word toast was, so to speak, the germ from which it sprang. Why not toast the scones? Lightly browned and crisp, they might be quite attractive. Even the biscuits would probably be edible if they were toasted. Also it would be amusing to play about with the gas stove, and it would help to pass the time till Anthony came.

She took everything down to the kitchenette, applauding her own cleverness in having made Jasper turn on the gas, and embarked on a fascinating game of make-believe in which she and Anthony were married, and this was
their
Mew, and she was expecting him to come home for tea—“Only it wouldn't run to ham sandwiches every day. Or would it? I haven't the slightest idea how much money he's got. But anyhow I should think he'd hate them—and so should I if I hadn't been running away all day.”

She ate the sandwiches while she was toasting the scones. There was a toasting-fork, rather bent and rusty, but usable. She washed it well before she stuck it into the scones. It seemed to have been used for other than culinary purposes, because it was up in the studio amongst the canvases, and it smelt suspiciously of turpentine.

The scones toasted very well. Shirley felt a good deal better when she had eaten them. If she could have made herself a cup of tea she would have been quite happy. Cold water does not go at all well with scones. She left the biscuits alone. After the sandwiches and the scones, she wasn't hungry enough to embark on them.

She took the bag and wandered upstairs again with the idea that Chippy might like one. She would have to crumble it up of course. Chippy watched her with interest. She took a biscuit out of the bag, and he cocked his head, edged along the perch to the side of the cage and said “Tweet” on a piercingly hopeful note.

She was just going to break the biscuit in half, when a key clicked in the lock at the foot of the stair and the door was pushed open.

Shirley stood still with the biscuit in her hand. She doesn't know to this day why she didn't call out, or what stopped her. If it was one thing more than another, it was the slowness of that opening door—the key fumbling in the lock—a lot of little scratchy noises like a hen picking at something. And then the door opening with a slow push. And no one coming in—