Walk with Care (4 page)

CHAPTER V

WHEN JEREMY HAD SAID
said good-night to Rosalind Denny at the door of her flat, he ran downstairs without waiting for the lift and walked back to his room.

Bernard Mannister's house was in Marsh Street. It stood at the corner where Tilt Street runs in. If you follow Tilt Street for a hundred yards or so, you come to a narrow turning on the left called Nym's Row, which is given over to what once were stables but have now developed into garages.

Jeremy had a room over the third garage. It suited his purse, his convenience, and his inclination. There were three rooms in all. The other two were occupied by Mr and Mrs Joseph Walker. Mr Walker drove a taxi-cab, and Mrs Walker, whose Christian name was Lizzie, had once been housemaid to Jeremy's mother. She remembered Jeremy in long clothes, treated him as if he had not very long outgrown them, and made him a good deal more comfortable than he might have been in rooms which were three or four times as expensive. She allowed him a key under protest and with the gloomiest anticipations, since it was her simple creed that a lost key was certain to be picked up by some bloodthirsty ruffian who would immediately repair to Nym's Row and murder her and Joseph in their beds. How he was to know what lock out of London's million locks the key would fit, or what motive even the most desperate criminal could possibly have for the massacre of Mr and Mrs Joseph Walker, she did not pretend to know. Jeremy had his key, and Lizzie Walker swore that she never slept a single blessed wink the nights he was out late. This being so, it was difficult to account for those blended snores which he could always hear as soon as the door swung in.

He came in now, passed the Walkers' door, and entered his own room. It was not a very large room, but it was large enough. It held a bed, and a wash-stand, and a chest of drawers, and a typewriter, and a horribly battered but very comfortable easy chair, and an almost equally battered trunk, and a strip of carpet, and Jeremy.

Jeremy took off his evening clothes, folded them quickly and neatly, and put them away in a drawer. He then got out and put on a suit which had been a trusty companion on country tramps for many years, and which was now reaching the stage of being unable to face the light of day. The elbows were almost through, and there was something which was not exactly a hole in the right knee. As he put it on, he sang in a sort of growling whisper,

“Day after day I'm on my way With my rags, bottles and bones”

He wondered what it would be like to run an old clothes business. All right if the old clothes were your own. Beastly if they were anyone else's. He wondered what it would feel like to be a tramp. Three months ago he wasn't so far off finding out. Once your clothes go, and your boots, especially your boots, jobs no longer exist and you begin to slide on an hourly steepening slope to those ultimate depths in which men struggle just to get a crust of bread, or a pint of beer, or enough warmth to keep the life in them—

“Bring out your rags, bottles and bones”

He put out the lights pulled up the blind, and opened the window. It was dark enough—thick, and a little rain in the air. The window looked into a small square yard, separated from the long strip behind Mannister's house by a brick wall, and from the yards on either side by lower walls.

Jeremy got out of the window and let himself down by the rainpipe. It was very dark indeed in the yard. The wall of the house and the other three walls gloomed over it and made it quite impossible to see anything at all. Jeremy had to negotiate a derelict wheelbarrow, half a dozen cracked flower-pots, a large tin bath with a hole in it, and a rickety pair of wooden steps. In theory, he knew the position of each of these things to a hair; in practice he barked his shins on the bath, narrowly escaped crashing over the flower-pots, and blundered into the steps, which when clutched shut up, catching his thumb in the hinge.

It was rather a breathless moment.

Then he fetched up against the wall and gave his mind to inducing the steps to stay put. He found consolation in murmuring,

“Put on your black gloves and play the fiddle, And smile, dam you, smile!”

There was bottle-glass on the top of the wall. He took off his coat and used it as a pad. The drop on the other side was no great matter.

He had now to get into Mannister's house, and this was no great matter either. The catch of the scullery window was not the first that he had slipped back. He was, in fact, something of an expert, having acquired the art at the age of fifteen when putting in an interminable period of quarantine with an old cousin of his father's who insisted on treating him as if he were an invalid—“A light supper, and bed at half-past eight. Early to bed and early to rise, my dear Jeremy.” She practised what she preached. Her doors were locked at nine, and by ten o'clock the whole household was supposed to be asleep. It was then that Jeremy began to practise upon scullery windows. At first he merely opened the catch, slipped out, went for a tramp in the dark, and came back much exhilarated by having defied authority. Then one night there was the window latched against him. He was doubly exhilarated when he found that he could deal with the catch. He soon discovered that one of the maids was also in the habit of slipping out. It became a point of honour to take risks without being spotted. He acquired considerable proficiency, and went out of his way to attempt the more difficult windows. He had many hair breadth escapes, but was never caught. Old Cousin Emily never guessed.

As he slipped the catch of Mr Mannister's scullery window, it came to Jeremy cold and sharp that here was he, ages older than his fifteen-year-old self, and his father and mother gone, and that old Cousin Emily was still living up in Middleham in the same house. She had been living in it for an odd eighty years or so, and she probably still locked up at nine and believed that everyone in the house was asleep by ten. She was the only relation he had in the world. He wondered who got out of her scullery window nowadays, and with that he swung himself over the sink and shut the window behind him.

Mr Mannister's scullery was not so immaculate as Cousin Emily's had been. It smelt of grease and stale food.

The servants lived out, with the exception of old James the butler who slept at the top of the house. Jeremy's burglary was not, therefore, a very risky one. He had only to go up the kitchen stairs, cross the hall into the library, and collect his notes. He wondered whether he should take off his shoes, and then, quite fantastically, discovered that his pride jibbed. Whatever happened, or didn't happen, he wasn't going to be found walking about Mannister's house in his stocking feet. There wasn't an ounce of logic in it, but there it was.

He need not have troubled. The house was good sound eighteenth-century work, one of those solid Georgian houses which put modern building to shame. Its stair treads did not creak, and its doors opened and closed again as silently now as on the day they had first been hung.

Jeremy reached the library without event, ran through his notes, and turned to the book-shelves to verify those quotations with which Mr Mannister proposed to decorate his speech. There was one from
Timon of Athens
about giving to dogs what was denied to men. He turned the pages of a highly ornamental Shakespeare, one of an imposing row of prizes. Here it was: “Hate all, curse all: show charity to none … give to dogs what thou deniest to men.” Then, for a contrast, a jingle of Tommy Moore's: “Let Sympathy pledge us. …” Hang Mannister! He never forgot a line outright, and he never could finish one. Well, here was Moore:

“Let Sympathy pledge us, through pleasure, through pain, That, fast as a feeling but touches one link, Her magic shall send it direct through the chain!”

Mannister had worked up to a peroration on International Contacts, depicting them as so close that a drop of the virus of hate in the veins of one nation must surge in fever through the veins of all the rest, and impulses of fear and anger or of generosity and affection, were irresistibly communicated, devastating or ennobling millions who knew nothing of the causes which shattered or exalted them.

Jeremy pushed Moore back into his place, turned round, and was struck motionless. The door was opening. He was at the far end of the long room with a light just over his head. The switch was by the door. The door was opening. It made no noise and it opened very slowly. There was no light at that end of the room.

The door swung slowly in until it made a straight line with the jamb. On the dim threshold there stood a girl in her night dress. She had a lot of dark hair tumbling in curls about her shoulders. Her left hand hung down holding something. Her right hand was dropping slowly from the door. It was like a slow-motion picture. Her arm came back to her side. She stood there with her eyes wide open, staring at the light and at Jeremy.

Jeremy recovered himself. He had not the remotest notion who she might be, or what she could possibly want. He said,

“I'm Mr Mannister's secretary. I hope I didn't startle you.”

He began to walk towards her, but as soon as he moved, her hands went up in a groping manner and she turned and went back into the darkness of the hall. There was a sound of something falling—something small. It was the only sound that she had made.

Jeremy stopped for a moment, and then went on to the door. There was a little dusky space just beyond it, and after that a quite impenetrable blackness. He could not see anything, and he could not hear anything. The house was as dead still as if no one had moved in it for hours.

He looked down and saw something small lying to his right and a little in front of him. It lay just on the carpet's edge. He picked it up, switched on a nearer light, and looked at it. It was a baby owl modelled in clay of a peculiar bluish green colour. The workmanship was extraordinarily good. The eyes blinked, the feathers had a look of downy softness. It was quite small, not more than two inches in height, but it was so life-like that he found himself half afraid to close his hand lest he should crush the feathers. The girl must have dropped it when he startled her.

All this passed through his mind in a flash. Then he put the owl in his pocket, switched off the light he had just put on, and crossed the hall.

He had the stairs in front of him now and, passing them on the right, the passage leading to the basement. Standing there, he thought he heard the baize door touch the jamb and come to a stop. When he opened it, there was the black passage beyond and the stairs going down. There were ten steps down, and then more passage, with the kitchen, pantry and store-room opening upon it.

Once past the baize door, he could make use of a pocket torch. Kitchen, pantry, scullery, and larder were all empty under the dark. He began to wonder strangely what he had seen. Then as he came back into the passage from the kitchen and flashed his light to and fro, he saw a door opposite him but a little to the left, and it stood a hand's breadth open.

Jeremy whistled between his teeth. He could swear that the door had been shut when he came in this way, for he had flashed his light across it and wondered what door it was, It was shut then, and it was open now. He pushed it wide, and saw a black stair go steeply down.

He turned the beam of his torch on the dark and went down. There were fifteen steps, and the last six turned at a sharp angle. They were of old worn stone, and they brought him into a stone chamber like a hall, very black and dark. He sent the beam of his torch travelling.

The place seemed very old, a very great deal older than the house. Doors opened from it here and there. Old cellars, as he guessed, here long and long before the Georgian house was built. He tried some of the doors and found them locked. The air was still and rather warm. The air was very still. His feet rang on the flagstones. The stone roof was groined and vaulted overhead. The least sound came echoing back. At the far end the passage went off at right angles.

He turned the corner and flashed his light ahead. It showed him four doors, three on the right, the other blocking the passage—four doors, three closed and the other closing. The doors on the right were shut, as all the other doors had been shut, but the door that spanned the passage moved in the beam of the torch.

As he swung the torch, the light caught the top corner of the moving door and, sweeping down, flashed over three fingers of a moving hand. The door moved. The hand moved. The light flashed past. When he focused it again, the door was closed and the hand was gone.

He was at a distance of perhaps five yards. For a moment he did not move, only kept the beam on the door. The hand had been there, and it was gone. It had been drawing the door to, and it was gone.

He walked down the passage and pulled at the door. It opened quite easily. The torch showed an empty cellar some eight feet square with a beautifully vaulted roof. There was no cover at all; there was only a most stark, bare emptiness. Jeremy stood in the midst of the emptiness and thought. He had seen a hand, or to be exact, three fingers of a hand—small, smooth fingers with oval nails. He thought they belonged to the girl who had stood between the dark hall and the half lit library looking at him. When the torch flashed across those three fingers, she must have been standing where he was standing now, just across the threshold, drawing the door towards her. What had happened after that? Perhaps half a minute had gone by. And she was gone, leaving this bare emptiness.

What had he seen?

The hand with the torch fell to his side. He stood there frowning, and felt a faint cold go pringling down his spine. He made an impatient movement and looked down at the bright ring of light cast by the hanging torch. There was a little dust in the beam, and there was thick dust on the stone slabs which formed the floor. And right in the middle of the ring of light there was the mark of a small naked foot.

CHAPTER VI

“COLONEL GARRETT—” ANNOUNCED MRS
Denny's maid.

Rosalind put down her book and came to meet him.

“How nice of you, Frank!” she said.

Garrett grunted.

“Hope you'll say as much when I've got through!”

She laughed.

“That sounds—are you trying to frighten me? I thought this was going to be a nice cousinly visit.”

“I haven't time for cousinly visits,” said Garrett. He jerked a crooked tie crookeder and frowned horribly at the pleasant room.

Rosalind Denny had been fortunate. Furnished flats and furnished houses are usually crowded, and seldom take kindly to one's own belongings. This was an exception. It had plain walls and a plain neutral-coloured carpet. There were comfortable chairs. There was a walnut tallboy, and an old knee-hole writing-table. There had been very little else. Rosalind's Rockingham candlesticks and her apple-green Bristol glass fitted in very happily. One of the Bristol bowls held anemones—violet, white, rose, and dusky crimson. Their stamens were all sooty like little chimney-sweeps' brushes. Rosalind wore a soft grey jumper and skirt, and a row of violet and crystal beads.

Garrett frowned impartially at her and at the room.

“Frank dear—how alarming! You're very mysterious. Don't you think we might sit?”

She took a sofa corner herself, the one nearest the brightly burning fire, and pointed him to the other.

“And now—” she said.

He threw himself back against the green and silver cushions, an incongruous figure in a baggy suit of violent check. His maltreated tie was of a horrid shade of brick. He wore green socks and new yellow shoes.

“The fact is, I don't like my job.”

“Always—or just to-day?”

Garrett grinned suddenly.

“You've got there! I hate stupid people. Most women are stupid—they think too much about themselves.” He relapsed into gloom again. “Fact is, I've come here to ask you a lot of questions.”

“Why should you mind that?” said Rosalind gently. She picked up a bright green hand-screen and held it between her and the fire.

“I've got to rake up all that business about Gilbert,” said Garrett at his jerkiest.

Rosalind turned a little paler. She said,

“Why?”

“I can't tell you why—at least not in detail. I can tell you as much as this—there's a question of someone else being involved in the same way.”

Rosalind moved the green screen slowly to and fro.

“You can ask me anything you like,” she said. Then suddenly the colour came into her face. “You say someone else may be ‘involved.' What do you mean? I told you Gilbert was murdered, and you wouldn't believe me. Now you say someone else may be ‘involved' in the same way. Do you mean murdered?”

Garrett came bolt upright.

“No, I don't. For the Lord's sake don't get off on to that tack! Now look here—I don't like this, but I've got to do it. Let's get on with it. I want to ask my questions, and I want you to answer them and keep to the point.”

Rosalind's left hand clenched on itself. The colour left her face. She said,

“Very well.”

If her words agreed, her voice protested. She looked away from him and down. Her lids and the lashes which were so much darker than her hair hid her eyes. If there were tears in them, Garrett was none the wiser. He said,

“I want you to go right back. When did you first notice that Gilbert was worried?”

“I don't know. He was working very hard—there was the election—I thought it was that.”

“You noticed that he was worried about the time of the nineteen twenty-nine election?”

“I didn't really think he was worried. I thought—he was—overdoing it—frightfully.”

“And after the election was over? Did he still seem worried?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“No.”

The question and her own answer cut like knives. If she had asked him, he might have told her—he might be here now.

“Why?” said Garrett sharply.

“I thought he was tired—I thought he wanted to be let alone.” Her voice had become almost inaudible.

“When did you begin to think there was something more in it than that?”

“He got a telephone call one day. I came into the room as he was hanging up the receiver.”

“He looked disturbed—agitated?”

“Yes.”

How put into words what had been in Gilbert's face? She woke sometimes in the night and saw that look. It stopped her heart to think of it.

Garrett was speaking again.

“Didn't you ask him anything then?”

She shook her head very slightly.

“I couldn't.”

He shot another “Why?” at her, and she turned on him.

“You're not married, Frank. There are places everyone keeps to themselves. Gilbert had his locked doors. We were happy because I respected them. If I had pushed my way in, he wouldn't have forgotten it. I thought—I thought—he would open the door when he wanted me.”

Garrett scowled at the fire. Married? Thank the Lord, no! Emotion was the very devil.

“And after that?” he said.

“I thought him ill and—very troubled. I thought—he was being blackmailed.”

“Why?”

“He talked in his sleep.”

Her voice was almost gone. Gilbert—defenceless in his sleep—defenceless against her—the barriers down! She heard his rapid muttering voice tumbling and hurrying over the words:
“I'll see you damned first!”
He said that over and over again; and,
“Blackmail
—
blackmail
—
blackmailing swine!”

“What did he say?”

She told him, and with the spoken words the past was there in her mind like a picture on a screen—faint moonlight outside, and their curtains drawn back; a light air moving in the room; herself between sleeping and waking, propped on an elbow; and Gilbert, one arm flung out, and that rapid mutter breaking upon the stillness.

“He never told you who was blackmailing him?” Garrett's voice shattered the picture.

“No.”

“What happened next?”

She laid the hand-screen across her knees. The flame had dropped in the fire. A shiver went over her. She did not look at Garrett; she looked down at a point between them.

“He told me he was going to take a holiday. I was pleased—but he didn't seem to be pleased. He told me in a strange way—”

“Yes?” The word came short and sharp.

Rosalind's hand moved on the pale grey stuff of her skirt.

“He came into my room and stood in front of the fire, and just as I was wondering why he had come, he said, ‘I saw a fortune-teller yesterday. She told me I was going on a long journey. Would you like to go round the world?'”

Garrett banged on the seat of the sofa.

“A fortune-teller? You're sure of that?”

She nodded.

“Was he in the habit of going to fortune-tellers?”

“Of course he wasn't! He thought it was all rubbish.”

“Go on,” said Garrett—“go on! Tell me exactly what he said!”

Rosalind looked up at him and down again. Her look questioned him, but got no answer.

“I can't remember,” she said. “Everything happened so quickly. We were to go round the world—India first, and then Japan. Our tickets were taken. We got rid of our house and stored the furniture. Gilbert sold his boat—you know he had a passion for sailing. It was when he was taking her round to Minehead to hand her over that it happened.”

“You weren't there?”

She said in a dull voice,

“No—I don't like sailing.”

During how many sleepless nights had she lain in the aching dark and wondered whether Gilbert would be alive now if she had liked sailing. Would he have gone overboard if she had been there?

“What crew did the boat carry?” said Garrett briskly.

“Three.”

“Can you give me the names and addresses?”

She shook her head.

“I can show you their statements.”

He nodded, and she went out of the room, coming back presently with a handful of cuttings.

“It's all there,” she said, and sat down again, leaning her head on her hand and looking away into the sunk fire.

The room was very silent whilst Garrett read.

It was a plain tragic tale. Gilbert Denny had sailed the
Zest
from Plymouth, and was making for Polperro. At sundown they had still a couple of hours' run before them. The day had been fine with a fresh breeze, but when the sun went down the wind went too, and the sky clouded. Denny left the wheel to the skipper and went below. It was dark when he came on deck again. They were then passing Talland, and about three quarters of a mile out. Denny said, “You'll take her in.” He went over to the starboard side and leaned on the rail. No one noticed him after that, but about five minutes later there was a splash and he was gone. They threw a buoy over and got the dinghy out. They never found a trace of him. When they had done all they could, they put into Polperro. They were all much distressed. It seemed, on the face of it, a clear enough case of suicide. The body was never recovered, though the loose jacket which Denny had been wearing was washed up between Talland and Polperro calm, deep sea. How many times had she died with him, and yet could never reach him? Garrett's voice had brought her back too quickly. Her eyes had a darkened faraway look. She said in a stumbling voice, “Why do you want to know?”

“Why? Because I do—because it's important—because. … Why can't you answer a plain question?”

Rosalind had come back now. Talland was in Cornwall, and Gilbert was dead, and someone else was sailing the
Zest
on other seas. She looked at the bluegreen snail on Garrett's palm and said
,

“It's a wonderful bit of work. I don't know where Gilbert got it.”

“Gilbert got it, did he?”

“I think he must have meant it for my birthday. It came just after he left for Plymouth. He was there two days before he sailed.”

“It came in a parcel?”

“Yes. I opened it—afterwards.”

“And you don't know where it came from?”

“No. Do you?”

Garrett took no notice of her question.

“Never seen anything like it before?”

“No. Why?”

“Oh, I have—that's all.”

“Where?”

“Ellinger's got one—a toad swallowing a worm.”

“Ellinger?”

“Ellinger wasn't drowned,” said Garrett—“he only had a nervous breakdown. Same thing as far as his career was concerned. He grows roses in Kent, and he's got a green toad swallowing a worm on his smoking-room mantelpiece. You don't know the Ellingers, but I think you knew Tip Reddington. He had a nervous breakdown too. He's gone to see a daughter in Australia. I wonder whether he's got one of these beasts in his baggage. And then there's Lemare, and Masterson—”

He stopped speaking with a singular abruptness, flung round, and went over to the writing-table, where he put the snail back between the left-hand candlestick and the bowl of anemones. Then he came over to the hearth with his hands in his pockets, jingling the oddments which he always carried there. His small grey eyes fixed Rosalind sharply.

“I've let my tongue run away. Can you hold yours?”

“Women always can.”

He stuck out his chin.

“I'm damned serious.”

“So am I, Frank.” She was looking up at him, elbow on knee and chin in hand, her dark blue eyes fixed steadily on his. After a moment she said, “I'm safe.”

“Well, you'd better be.” He went on jingling. “You can help—” He paused, frowning horribly. “I take it you believe Gilbert cut loose because he was being blackmailed?”

“Yes.” She steadied her voice and said, “He told me so.”

“What?”

“I had a letter. Don't tell anyone. From Plymouth—that morning. I got it next day. He said—he couldn't stand it—and that I—should be better—free—”

Garrett walked away across the room and stood looking out of the window. What a mess! What was behind it? Who was behind it?

He came back again to the fire.

“What's your opinion of young Ware?” He was jingling horribly.

Rosalind leaned back into the sofa corner. She felt drained and exhausted.

“He's a friend of mine. Gilbert was very fond of him.”

“Is he in love with you?” said Garrett, and kicked the fire.

Rosalind broke into rather a shaky laugh.

“My dear Frank—what do you expect me to say?”

“Lies aren't going to be much use.”

She laughed again.

“Let's play at telling the truth. What was it you wanted to know?”

“Whether Ware is in love with you—or rather whether he was in love with you two years ago.”

Rosalind's expression changed. It became serious. She said in a gentle, serious voice,

“No, Frank—not in the way you mean.”

“Are you splitting hairs?”

She shook her head.

“Jeremy adored Gilbert—he'd have done anything for him. He loves me, but he's not in love with me. It would never occur to him to be in love with Gilbert's wife.”

“Hair-splitting!” said Garrett with contempt. “Damn highfalutin hair-splitting!”

Rosalind Denny's colour rose.

“You really are a little bit uncivilized, Frank,” she said.

“I say what I think!”

“A very savage thing to do.” Her tone was gentle, but her eyes were not. They held a bright spark of anger.

“Tchah!” said Garrett with a grimace. “I'm serious!” He took his hands out of his pockets and brought one down upon the other with a clapping sound. “Fact is, I'm too civilized. I want to put something to you, and I don't like doing it.”