Hole and Corner (8 page)

She didn't try to eat anything. She sat on the bed and looked in front of her. But in the back of her mind she knew that was all wrong, and she despised herself. She ought to think—think hard. It would be easier to think if she didn't feel so sick.

She didn't think. She sat where she was for twenty minutes, and then went back to Revelston Crescent. There was time to walk, so she didn't take a bus, and as she walked, some of the sick feeling wore off. It was colder—a bright frosty sunlight, and a pale blue sky. Miss Maltby and her fantastic accusation receded. Mrs Camber couldn't really believe a thing like that—nobody could. It was just silly—silly—silly—silly. She said the word out loud, and Miss Maltby shrivelled up and became of no account. It was tiresome to have to look for another room—landladies were such a chance. Anyhow it was no good making a song and dance about it.

Shirley frowned as she walked. That beastly stiff feeling was all gone. But why had she had it? She oughtn't to have been knocked over like that. She ought to have laughed in Mrs Camber's face. She ought to have raised Cain. She ought, bath or no bath, to have insisted on seeing Miss Maltby and telling her just what kind of crazy liar she was. She
had
waited on the landing as she went up and heard the rhythmic splashing which announced Miss Maltby's presence in the bathroom. But she oughtn't to have just let it go at that. She could have banged on the door and insisted—

A funny choky laugh came up in her throat, because in a minute she could see the whole thing like a scene in a perfectly lunatic play—Miss Maltby splashing in her bath, and Shirley Dale screaming through the keyhole, “I didn't take your sixpences, and I wouldn't go into your room if you paid me!” And then Jasper's head poking out of his room, and Mabel with a crowded tray singing “Father, dear Father, come home with me now,” while Mrs Camber looked round the turn of the stair and said “A week from to-day will suit me if you'll be looking for something else.” It was funny, but it was perfectly mad, and it was rather horrible.

She walked on quickly. There
was
something horrible about the whole thing. It was silly, and it was trivial, but somewhere behind the silliness there was something else. It was the something else that was horrible, and it was the something else that had made her behave like a spineless worm instead of—metaphorically—knocking Miss Maltby's teeth through the back of her head.

Somebody else's bag on her arm—somebody else's purse in her bag—somebody else's sixpences under the toilet-cover on her chest-of-drawers. Seven and elevenpence halfpenny and a paper of peppermints in the bag—the best part of five shillings in the purse—two marked sixpences under the toilet-cover.… Theft on the lowest and most sordid level. Furtive, trivial, magpie theft. And behind it something darkly horrible and menacing—something that wanted to get her into trouble, to crowd, and edge, and squeeze her up to the very brink of some horrid drop and then push her over. But why—why—
why
?… She hadn't any answer to that.

She began to wish that she hadn't gone without her lunch. She wasn't exactly hungry now, but she had that kind of thin, hollow feeling which doesn't help you to think along common-sense lines. Idiotic to go without your lunch.

An afternoon with Mrs Huddleston drove this home, because Mrs Huddleston talked about nothing but food—the kind of food she adored yet dared not touch; the kind of food she disliked and yet felt obliged to eat because it was so good for her; the diet prescribed by her medical advisers, or found beneficial by her friends, with a great many ramifications, illustrations, and examples—“Mrs Mallaby swears, simply swears, by raw salad before every meal, and much as I have always disliked uncooked vegetables, I should try it—one has a duty to oneself—if it were not for the fact that she
insists
on a tepid sponge all over at eight o'clock in the morning followed by breathing exercises at an open window—both naturally quite impossible in my case—and unless the treatment is adopted in its entirety she says it is no good at all. It seems extraordinary that anyone who knows me should imagine for one moment that I could attempt anything so—so—” Mrs Huddleston hesitated for a word, and Shirley dutifully offered her “drastic”, which was refused with a frown. “Inhuman,” said Mrs Huddleston—“and so I told Mrs Mallaby. ‘It is all very well,' I said, ‘for robust people like yourself, but for someone who has been as delicate as I have always been it is quite out of the question.' And do you know, Miss Dale, she looked as if I had insulted her. I am sure if I were robust I shouldn't be insulted at being called robust. It must be very pleasant to be one of those strong strapping women—what I call the cart-horse type—not, I think, very attractive. My dear husband always said that fragility was the essence of a woman's charm. But still it must be very nice to be so healthy and never to have any ailments, and I believe she puts it down entirely to the raw salads and the tepid sponge.” Mrs Huddleston shuddered in a fragile manner. “One of the plainest women I ever met, and entirely lacking in charm, but quite well-meaning.”

“I think your brooch is undone,” said Shirley. It sounded most awfully bald, and probably Mrs Huddleston would take offence, but when she shuddered in that silly affected way the big diamond in her brooch winked sharply and the brooch fell crooked.

Mrs Huddleston put her hand to her breast, pricked her finger on the unguarded pin, and pitied herself profusely.

“Oh—my finger! Such a deep prick! Miss Dale—my handkerchief! It's bleeding! Such a deep prick!… Yes, yes of course I want it tied up. No, not so tight. Really, Miss Dale, you're very stupid this afternoon! And take care of the brooch—don't let it fall on any account—it is extremely valuable. The pin has always been perfectly safe—I can't think how it came undone.”

Shirley had the brooch in her hand. She turned it over.

“The catch is bent, Mrs Huddleston. Shall I see if can straighten it?”

“No, certainly not—on no account—the brooch is much too valuable to be played with. Let me see—I can't think how it can have happened—I can't imagine. No, don't touch it, Miss Dale! It must go to a competent jeweller. It is the most valuable thing I have except my emeralds. Put it on the mantelpiece. Now I wonder how the catch can have become damaged like that.”

She continued to wonder at considerable length, and then announced that she would like a rest.

“I am feeling completely exhausted. No sleep at all last night—hour after hour, just waiting for the dawn. If I could drop off for half an hour before tea, it would be something.”

Shirley pulled down the blinds and withdrew to the Study. She wondered how long she would have to go on enduring Mrs Huddleston. Commonsense said, “Until you can get another job,” but something else, something unruly and wild and young, said in a very loud, dear voice of defiance, “Well, some day I shall throw something at her, and I expect it will be some day soon.”

She sat down on the hearth-rug and considered what she would throw. One of the Dresden figures on the mantelpiece would make the most row, and a flower-vase full of cold water the most satisfying mess. “And golly—how she would yell!” She made a really good Woggy Doodle face and relaxed.

The warmth of the fire soaked pleasantly into her back. With any luck Mrs Huddleston would sleep till tea-time. It would be nice if Anthony were to walk in. He wouldn't, because he was week-ending at Emshot, but it would be nice. She could tell him about Miss Maltby. No, she couldn't. It—it was too beastly. It made her feel hot all over to think of telling Anthony that she had practically been accused of stealing two six-pences and hiding them up in her room. She was glad that Anthony was out of town, glad that there wasn't any chance of his coming here, because she didn't want to tell him, or even to see him until she had got the taste of this beastly thing out of her mouth.

She got up resolutely, found herself a book, and curled up in the easy chair under the light.

CHAPTER NINE

Bessie Wood came softly up the kitchen stairs. She came very softly indeed. The quickest ear in the world could not have caught the sound of her feet on the treads. She opened the door into the hall and stood there looking and listening. There was nothing to see but the solid Victorian furnishings—table, chairs, hat-and-coat rack, and umbrella stand, and the grandfather clock which was a survival from an earlier century. There was nothing to hear except the ticking of this same clock. The hands stood at half-past three.

Bessie stayed there for quite a long time. Then she took a note out of her pocket and went across the hall to the table. She picked up a salver and went on to the drawing-room door, where she stopped again to listen. No sound came from the room beyond. Mrs Huddleston was certainly asleep, because her tongue never stopped so long as she was awake. Bessie's thin bitten-in lips took on an ironic twist. Extraordinary what a lot of sleep some people managed to put in. Swore she never slept a wink all night, but Possett, the maid, said that was all my eye. Well, Possett was safely out of the way, gone down to see her mother in Ealing, and Cook was having forty winks in the kitchen, a thing she'd never admit to, so she could be reckoned on to declare that Bessie hadn't left the room. With Mrs Huddleston asleep in here, and Miss Shirley Dale in the study, she could go in and have a look around and no one a penny the wiser. And if Mrs Huddleston did wake up, she'd got a note on her salver and every right to bring it in, and no one but herself to know it had come before lunch and she'd kept it back on purpose.

She opened the door as silently as she had done everything else. The room was very dark. Those green blinds fitted better than any blinds she had ever seen—no cracks round the edges. She waited for a moment to get her eyes accustomed to the green dusk, and as she waited, the steady rhythmic snoring of the Blessed Damozel Struck pleasantly upon her ear. She came into the room with the salver in her hand. The old grampus—she'd be cross if she waked, and she'd never own up to having been asleep, any more than Cook would.

The head of the sofa was towards her. She came up to it and looked over. Mrs Huddleston was lying on her back with her mouth wide open. The embroidered coverlet only came up to her waist. The laces of the blue silk tea-gown gaped above it unfastened. Bessie caught her lip between her teeth in her excitement. The diamond brooch had been fastening those laces at lunch-time, and it wasn't fastening them now. That meant that the damaged catch had done what she meant it to do when she damaged it. “Good work—good work, Bessie, my girll” She bit her lip again, harder this time. What did she want to go and say that for—reminding herself about Ted? Ted was in jug, and she'd got to do this job for him. She wanted all her nerve for it, because she hated working alone, so what was the sense of thinking about Ted like this?

She looked about her with quick, prying eyes. She hadn't really expected to get a chance to-day, and so she'd told Al Phillips. It might be a day or two, she'd told him—“But with the catch damaged, the brooch'll lie about a bit before she sends it off to be mended. Never does nothing on the nail, so Possett says, and when things lie about there's always chances—only of course we've got to fit it in with Miss Dale being there.” That's what she'd said, and now it looked like getting a chance right away. If she could only put her hand on the brooch—

She came round the couch, still holding the salver. The fire was burning brightly, and her eyes had got accustomed to the light. She looked along the mantelpiece and saw the brooch. It lay tilted forward against the spreading skirt of the Dresden shepherdess with the powdered hair and the silly fly-away hat with roses all round the crown. The skirt was a very pale blue. The diamonds leaned against it and winked in the firelight.

Bessie took two steps forward, picked up the brooch, and went straight on past the head of the couch and out of the room. She shut the door behind her carefully. Mrs Huddleston had never moved except to snore, and she had never stopped snoring. Nothing could have been easier.

She crossed over to the coat-stand. Only one coat hung there—Miss Shirley Dale's dark grey coat with the black astrakhan collar. As she passed the hall table, she got rid of the salver, and dived into her apron pocket for a pair of nail scissors. It doesn't take a moment to rip a hole in a pocket lining. She chose the left-hand pocket because Miss Dale wasn't so likely to slip her hand into it. She probably wouldn't notice the hole if she did, but there was no sense in taking risks. It was a good coat, and the lining was the very best quality silk. The fur was good too—none of your cheap imitations. Miss Dale couldn't have afforded to buy a coat like that. She must have had it given to her.

Bessie's mind was like that. It went sniffing round like a terrier after rats even in the midst of a job. It would mean jug if she was caught, and a hundred pounds from Al if she pulled it off, but she couldn't keep herself from wondering about Shirley's coat.

She pushed the brooch through the slit in the pocket, and then worked it along the hem until she got it right sound at the back where the coat was slit up and lapped over. It wouldn't show there at all. “A very neat job, Bessie, my girl.” Stupid, stupid, stupid to go thinking of Ted again.

She turned round quickly and ran upstairs. So far, so good. But that was only half the job. It was she who had suggested piling up the evidence against Shirley Dale by taking the emeralds too. Al Phillips hadn't been so sure about the emeralds. He thought the diamond brooch would be enough. But then all he wanted was to get the girl into trouble, whereas Bessie had views of her own. It wasn't her first inside job, not by a long chalk. She had worked with Ted for five years, and if she'd started with forged references, she'd got genuine ones now, and never been so much as suspected. Al Phillips wouldn't have known anything about her if it hadn't been for Ted's sister that was married to a cousin of his. Funny how you came across people.