Hole and Corner (27 page)

“No—oh no, I'm sure she's not. Darling, how horrid! What made you think of that?”

“Well, it just occurred to me. I thought they might be keeping the affair in the family so to speak. If they employ someone like Bessie, they take a big risk and expose themselves to blackmail afterwards—unless they've got some kind of hold on her, which is quite possible. All the same I'd like to know why you're so certain that she isn't Pierrette.”

Shirley frowned.

“She isn't—I'm sure she isn't.”

“But why?”

She said, “Oh!” in a breathless, startled way, and then, “Anthony—how queer! I was going to say ‘I don't know', and all of a sudden something popped out of a door in my mind like a jack-in-the-box, and I know—I do know—I know quite well—because I believe I know who Pierrette is. She's the glittering woman. You just see if she isn't. You know—the one with the gingery man at the Luxe. And it would explain how her purse got into my bag, because of course she put it there to make me look like a thief.”

“But why do you think she's Pierrette?”

“I don't think—I
know
. That's what Aunt Emily's cook used to say. She was a tremendously determined person, and that's what I am about the glittering woman—I
know
she's Pierrette.”

“But why? You must have a reason.”

Shirley stamped her foot.

“Yes, I have—and it's a horrid one—I hate it! She's Pierrette because of the way she looked that's like my mother. And I didn't see it at the time, because, you know, I don't remember my mother very well. I suppose I don't really remember her at all, only from photographs. But when I got down to Acacia Cottage there was her picture hanging in the drawing-room—the one that was painted when she married Augustus Rigg, so Jane had it, and that was quite all right because she was the eldest daughter and I suppose Augustus paid for it. But I do think it's abominable for it to be left to the Maltby—don't you?”

Anthony put his arm round her, half laughing, half serious.

“You'd make a most awful witness,” he said. “You started out to tell me something about a likeness—”

“Well, I am telling you,” said Shirley indignantly. She twisted herself free. “When I was looking at the picture something kept teasing me—in the back of my mind.
You
know, like a dog scratching at a door, and you're not quite sure whether you're hearing it or not. But just now it got the door open and popped right out, and I saw the glittering woman's face quite plain, and my mother's face in the picture, and there was just the sort of look that makes you say, ‘Those two people belong to the same family.'”

“You don't think you're imagining it?” said Anthony.

Shirley stamped again.

“You don't suppose I
want
that horrible woman to be like my mother! But she
is
. Because she's her granddaughter—she's Pierrette Meunier. And I expect she's Miss Maltby's Ettie too. It all fits in.”

Anthony nodded.

“It'll bear looking into anyhow. The devil of it is that here we are at—what is it?—just about four o'clock on Sunday afternoon, and we've got till ten o'clock tomorrow morning and no more.”

Jasper looked over his shoulder again.

“Why ten o'clock to-morrow morning?”

“That's the time Shirley's due at my aunt's. It is ten, isn't it? Anyhow it's nobody's business what she did with her week-end. It can't really be brought up against her that she went down to Emshot on the spur of the moment after her work was over on Saturday, but if she doesn't turn up at her usual time on Monday morning, it's going to look very bad indeed. We've got to keep her from being arrested to-day and clear things up so that she can walk in on Monday with what William calls ‘a shining morning face'.” He grinned at Shirley and added, “So you've got just about eighteen hours to work up the polish.”

Shirley sketched a Woggy Doodle at him.

“When my face shines I powder it,” she said. “Only I haven't been able to since yesterday because of leaving my bag at Acacia Cottage and Jas forgetting to pack my powder though I told him most specially about it.”

She missed an awful glance of reproach because she was trying to look sideways at her nose to see how shiny it really was.

“Well, that being that,” said Anthony, “we'd better get on with it. I'll get back to Revelston Crescent and have a heart-to-heart with Aunt Agnes. I've got a card or two up my sleeve, and I think I can make it all right as far as she is concerned. You'd better stay here, and I'll come back and report progress as soon as I can.”

At this point they both cast a fleeting glance at Jasper. His hands were in his pockets, and with a sulky back towards them he still brooded over the Potato Field. Anthony's eyebrows took an upward quirk. He came a step nearer, tipped up Shirley's chin, dallied for a pleasant moment over the ensuing kiss, and then went whistling down the stair. From half way he stopped and called back over one shoulder, “Better bolt the door again,” and then was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

When the door banged Jasper went down, bolted it, and returned moodily to the studio. He walked past Shirley as if he did not see her, turned at the end of the room with a jerk, and came back.

“Are you going to marry him?” he said in a choked sort of voice.

Shirley nodded.

The choke merged into a sob. He said,

“Do you care for him—a lot?”

She nodded again. If she tried to speak she would cry, and if they both cried—help!

“Why?” said Jasper with a despairing break in his voice. “He doesn't love you like I do—he can't—nobody could.”

She said, “It's no use, Jas.” And then, “I'm so fond of you—I'm so sorry—”

“If you say you'll be a sister to me, I think I shall kill you!” He felt a sudden raw passion which frightened him.

He stood there for a moment, his hands clenching and unclenching, his face working. Then he jerked round and went to the row of curtained windows which looked out at the back of the Mews, kicking over two of Helena Pocklington's canvases as he went. He tugged at the curtains, pushed a window open roughly, and leaned out.

Shirley drew a long shaky breath. Poor darling Jas! But what a frightful moment to have a scene like this—it really
was
. And perhaps she'd better not say anything for fear of making it worse. Perhaps it would be better if he went away. She didn't
want
to be left all by herself in this beastly Mew and perhaps have the police or Miss Maltby come hammering at the door, and no one to look out of the window and say, ‘Fly for your life!', or, ‘It's all right—stay where you are,' in case of its being Anthony, but it was going to be too awful if Jas was going to go on like this all the time that Mrs Huddleston was being brought to see reason. Because, knowing Mrs Huddleston, she thought it was likely to take a good
long
time. Anthony might be hours.

She went to the window on the opposite side, pulled back a little bit of the curtain, and looked out. This was the window from which she had seen Miss Maltby's skirt whisk round the corner. It had been light then, but it was very nearly dark now—the deep dusk of a January day, with a rather bright lamp shining down from the garage opposite. Shirley watched the glow thrown by the lamp, and then suddenly she dropped her corner of the curtain, ran across to the switch, and turned out both the studio lights. Then she went back to the window again. If she looked out now she wouldn't be seen.

She looked out. Two people were crossing the lighted space over the way, a man and a woman. Shirley looked at them very hard and then shrank back because they had turned and were staring up at this very window. They couldn't see her of course. The light fell on the man and the woman, and the minute she saw them she knew where she had seen them before. They were the people who had had the next table at the Luxe—the sandy man, and the large glittering woman. And all in a flash she knew why they were there, and she was sure, quite sure, that the man was Mr Phillips, and that the woman was the Ettie of Miss Maltby's rambling talk. Mr Phillips and Ettie—Mr Phillips and Ettie.… And Ettie was Pierrette—Pierrette Meunier.…

She hadn't the slightest doubt that she was looking at Pierrette Meunier, her mother's grand-daughter by that second, French, marriage. Her—own—niece. It was outrageous, and comic, and—yes, rather horrible, to be the aunt of a large, glittering female who was much older and much, much heavier than yourself. But the likeness was there—in the arch of the brow, in the setting of the eyes, and in something more elusive and more convincing.… She couldn't get it into words, or even into coherent thought, but it made her catch her breath and say, “It's Pierrette.”

Well, what about it? She didn't know. Why had they come here? She thought she knew the answer to that. To spy, to find out if she was here—to set the police on her. But if they suspected she was here, it meant that they had seen Miss Maltby, and it meant that Miss Maltby had suspected something after all.

A hand touched her shoulder, and she very nearly screamed. Then Jasper's voice said in her ear,

“What's the matter? Why have you put the light out?”

She dropped the curtain, stepped back until she stood level with him, and whispered,

“Ssh! They're outside.”

“Who?”

“The Phillips man, and Pierrette—she
is
Pierrette.”

“Where?”

She was just going to say “Over the way,” when the knocker fell against the door with a hard rat-tat. She said “Oh!” instead, and after her usual way when startled clutched at the nearest arm and pinched it hard.

In some odd way Jasper found this consoling. She was pinching him, not Anthony. He began to feel better.

Still pinching, she whispered quite unnecessarily,

“They're knocking at the door.”

They continued to knock.

“If we don't do anything they'll go away. They can't get in.”

Shirley shook the arm she had been pinching.

“I don't want them to go away—not yet. Listen—I've got a plan.”

“Well?”

“A lovely plan. You give me two seconds to get out at the back, and then you go down and open the door. They'll ask questions. You've got to keep them long enough to give me time to get round from the back. There's a footpath, isn't there? Well, there's my plan. When they're sure I'm not here they'll go away, and when they go away I'm going to follow them.”

“And what do I do?”

“You stay here and wait for Anthony. I must fly. You can take them all over the Mew and let them see I'm not hiding in the gas oven.” She snatched up her coat, slipped it on, and felt her way down the stairs.

The knocking on the door went on. She could hear it as she picked her way through the small back yard and found the footpath. She came out upon the street, and saw the Mews entrance on her right. She had only to lurk until Pierrette and Mr Phillips came away from the Mews and then follow them.

She lurked, and the time seemed long. Jasper must have opened the door by now. They must be talking. She wondered what excuse she would make if she were Pierrette. She thought she would ask for Miss Pocklington and then pretend to recognize Jas and say, “Aren't you her nephew?” and, “We should so love to see over the Mews, because if we could persuade her to let—” Yes, something on those lines. She began to feel that she would do it very well, and that Pierrette was probably not making nearly such a good job of it.

And then with horrifying suddenness she remembered her suit-case. Not Anthony's suit-case—that didn't matter, because Jas could go on saying he had borrowed it—but her own—the one which Jas had packed and brought here, the one she had shoved behind a picture just before her dive for the Potato Field. She had only just got herself and the suit-case hidden before Miss Maltby came up through the hole in the studio floor, and from that minute to this she had forgotten all about the suit-case. But suppose
they
started moving the pictures and found it. That Phillips man had a frightfully gimlet eye. She had noticed it at the Luxe—one of those pale, sharp, persistent eyes. She felt it would be quite capable of seeing tight through Helena Pocklington's revolting picture of a girl with a dislocated neck and two badly broken arms to the initials on the suit-case. What a ghastly thought.

Well, if that was what was happening, it just
was
happening. Even if they did find her suit-case, it didn't really matter. She needn't go back there, she could just go on lurking till Anthony came. Only first of all she meant to find out where Pierrette was staying. Because that was the important thing. They had got
to
find out about Pierrette and the Phillips man, and they had got to find out quickly.

Yes, it didn't matter about the suit-case. But she did wish they would come. It was growing darker every minute, and she felt quite sure of being able to follow them without being seen. There was a lamp at the entrance to the Mews. She watched the lighted space about it, and waited for Ettie and Mr Phillips to come out.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Anthony sat by his aunt's sofa and listened.

He had had one stroke of luck, because he had arrived to find the drawing-room empty, and had therefore been able to retrieve the diamond brooch. It was still where he had pushed it down between the back and seat of the sofa. He put it in the same pocket as the emeralds, rammed a handkerchief down on top to keep them from tattling, and had time to assume the right expression of sympathetic melancholy before Mrs Huddleston came in supported by Possett with the usual array of shawls, coverlets, pillows, and smelling-salts. She embraced him—“My dear boy,” sank down upon the sofa, and whilst Possett ministered informed him that she had been so agitated, so terribly agitated, that after consulting Dr Monsell on the telephone she had by his advice gone to bed, really to bed, for the afternoon.