Walk with Care (5 page)

Rosalind's eyebrows rose.

“My dear Frank, it must be something pretty bad!”

Garrett grunted.

“It's something based on reason and logic. Women ain't reasonable, and they've got no use for logic, so you won't like it.”

Rosalind's smile lit up her face.

“What is it, Frank?”

“Take it this way,” said Garrett. “Lady X. has a butler. Someone goes off with her silver spoons. The butler goes on to Mrs Y. The same thing happens—Mrs Y's silver spoons are cleared out. Which of the servants would you suspect?”

“I don't know what you mean,” said Rosalind Denny.

“Well, you will in a minute, but you won't like it. Perhaps I'd better not go on.”

“I think you must go on.”

“Gilbert had a secretary called Jeremy Ware. Gilbert was driven out of public life. Jeremy Ware gets himself another job—I expect you know what it is. He's Mannister's secretary now, and Mannister comes to me and says there's a plot to drive him out of public life. That's the sort of coincidence that worries me.”

Rosalind had turned very pale. She said,

“How horrible!”

“I told you you wouldn't like it.”

Her colour came back with a rush. She was angry and beautiful.

“It's not true!” she said. “It's not true!”

CHAPTER VII

MR SMITH FINISHED HIS
coffee and began to eat the granulated sugar which remained at the bottom of the cup. It was a performance rather after the manner of the celebrated Amine as recounted by Scheherazade in the
Arabian Nights.
Mr Benbow Smith took up the saturated sugar a grain at a time and absorbed it in a delicate, abstracted manner.

Colonel Garrett, sitting opposite him, poured himself out a second cup, drank it at a gulp sugarless and black, and thumped the Worcester cup and saucer back upon the silver tray.

“Beastly stuff coffee! Don't know why we drink it!” He sat forward and put his chin in his hands. “I want to talk to you about Denny.”

Mr Smith went on eating sugar. The hour was a quarter to nine. In the window Ananias snored faintly, his cage shrouded in green baize.

“Denny has cropped up,” said Garrett with a prodigious frown.

“Yes?” said Mr Smith. “You know, I disagree with you about coffee. It is one of the blessings of civilization. To eat the sugar afterwards is undoubtedly a vice. But then I have so few vices. If I had none, I am afraid Ananias would not feel comfortable. To—er—judge by his language, his more impressionable years were passed in circles where vice was at a premium.”

“I want to talk about Denny,” said Garrett.

“So you—er—said.”

“He's cropped up. I want to tell you the whole thing.”

Mr Smith leaned back in his chair. Garrett went on speaking in his odd jerky way.

“You remember the Engelberg Note?”

“September the twentieth, 'twenty-nine—” Mr Smith's tone was dreamy.

“Gilbert Denny was Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs at the time. The Foreign Office got the Note. In the touchy state of the markets a good deal depended on what our answer was going to be. That answer was, let us say—forecast—so accurately in Paris that someone must have made a lot of money. Put that in a watertight compartment—” He broke off. Then he said, “I suppose you know Rosalind Denny's a cousin of mine? She's three-quarters American, but I'm cousin to the other quarter.”

“Er—yes—now you speak of it.”

Garrett grinned at the admission. In all their long association he had never known the absent-minded Mr Smith to be at a loss for a name, a date, or any other fact once heard. He was frowning again in a minute.

“Rosalind says Gilbert was worried from that time on. She thought the election. Later Denny talked in his sleep about blackmail. The whole thing was spread over several months, you understand. In May he walked in and told her a fortune-teller had said he was going round the world. On that, made arrangements to go. He had a sailing boat at Plymouth. On the eighteenth of June he went down there—his wife to an aunt of his in Somerset. On the twentieth he took his boat out of Plymouth to sail her round to Polperro on the way to Minehead, where he was handing her over. At eleven o'clock that night he went overboard. They were about three-quarters of a mile out and not far from Polperro. He wrote his wife a letter to say she'd be better free. No one knows that except you and me. The body wasn't found, so there wasn't an inquest. Well, that's chapter two. Then I come on.” He paused.

Mr Smith said nothing. He was looking at the fire. The log which lay uppermost had burned to a shell. It was the glowing wraith of a log. Fire pulsed at its heart. It quivered in the wind of its own burning.

“Gilbert made me sole executor,” said Garrett. “When I went into his affairs, I came on these isolated facts. On the eighth of October 'twenty-nine he was considerably overdrawn. Someone paid in a thousand pounds to his account. It was paid in over the counter in one-pound Treasury notes. I'm not asking you to connect that with the Engelberg Note, but there it is. Rosalind didn't know anything about it. The blackmail started some time after that. In February Gilbert sold out two thousand pounds of War Loan. He drew two hundred pounds in one-pound Treasury notes. In March he drew another two hundred. In April he drew five hundred. In May six hundred. On the fifteenth of June another five hundred. All in one-pound Treasury notes.”

He got up, walked over to the hearth and pitched a log upon the fire. The burning shell fell in with an upward rush of spark and flame.

“Well, that's that,” said Garrett. “I don't mind saying it knocked me endways. I'd have bet my boots Gilbert was straight. Absent-minded beggar—careless about money—but dead straight.”

For just a moment Mr Smith's dreamy gaze became less dreamy. It dwelt on Garrett, and then appeared to go back to seeing pictures in the fire.

“Careless—” said Mr Smith. He paused. “And his wife says he was murdered—”

“Who told you that?”

“I think it must have been you.”

Garrett grunted.

“She don't mean that literally. She means they turned the screw too far and he went out. But what I want to know is, where does Mr Jeremy Ware come in? I tell you that young man gives me a pricking of the thumbs. Have you seen yesterday's
Echo Internationale?”

Mr Smith made a faintly affirmative sign.

“Mannister's seen it too,” said Garrett. “I had him on the telephone this morning. Says the
Inconnu
article is based on his missing letter. Says his face is blackened. Says he dunno where 'e are, and wot abaht it?”

“And what did you say?”

“What
was
I to say? If I was his personal adviser, which thank the Lord I'm not, I'd tell him to boot young Ware, and the sooner the better. I don't know why he wants telling, but he's just the kind of high-falutin ass that can't see a brick wall until he breaks his nose against it. It's not my business to nurse-maid him. If he sacks Ware, we're no forrader. If he keeps him, it may be the worse for him, but it might be a lot the better for us. I don't want Ware—I want the people who are behind Ware.” He laid an arm along the mantelshelf and said quite slowly and quietly, “I want the people who got Denny.”

“I see—” said Mr Smith.

Garrett continued to use that quiet voice.

“Ware's small fry—I can call him in any time.”

“You're very sure about Ware,” said Mr Smith in a meditative tone.

Garrett stared, kicked back at the log, and reverted to his loudest manner.

“Sure? Of course I'm sure! I've taken steps to be sure.”

“As?” said Mr Smith to the ceiling.

“As be blowed! Listen to this. A fortnight ago Master Jeremy hadn't got a banking account—perhaps he hadn't any money, perhaps he kept it in the post office, perhaps he tied it up in an old stocking and hid it under his mattress—but ten days ago he opened an account with the Southern Counties and paid in twenty pounds.”

“A most heinous proceeding,” said Mr Smith in a drowsy murmur.

“Wait!” said Garrett violently. “That was on a Monday. On the Thursday Mannister's damn letter goes missing and Mannister goes to Birmingham for the week-end. On the Monday someone pays another fifty pounds into Mr Jeremy Ware's newly opened account—pays it across the counter in Treasury notes. On Tuesday Mannister finally makes up his mind that the letter isn't in his safe and comes bleating to me. Now how's that?”

“Very interesting,” said Mr Smith—“very interesting indeed.”

CHAPTER VIII

“MY DEAR—TOO MARVELLOUS
!” said Mimosa Vane.

She was having tea with Rosalind Denny. That is to say, Rosalind was having tea, whilst Mimosa sipped hot lemon and water and took away the characters of all their mutual friends in a light, high voice. She spoke from a cloud of the pale scented smoke which always hung about her, rising like incense at the altar of Scandal. Mimosa only smoked her own cigarettes. She smoked a great many of them. After twenty minutes Rosalind had begun to feel rather limp. All Mimosa's worst stories were introduced by fulsome eulogies of the victims. Rosalind wondered who was for it now, and cut herself a piece of cake.

For a moment Mimosa was diverted.

“How reckless!” she murmured. “My dear—too fatmaking! You should try Sibylla's new treatment.
Too
extraordinary! Marcia Levine lost a pound a day!”

“But, my dear Mimosa, I don't want to lose a pound a day.”

Mimosa shook a little mournful head. Her platinum-coloured hair was braided over one ear. The other was covered by a tiny tilted hat of emerald-green. Her eye-sockets were so hollow and her face so thin as to give the impression of a skull with some skin stretched over it.

“Darling, it's never safe to stop slimming.
Nothing
but orange juice every other day, and Sibylla's crawling exercise. So spiritualizing to thought, and so marvellous for the figure! There is something
gross
about food, don't you think?”

“I'm afraid I'm gross,” said Rosalind. “This is a very good cake, Mimosa. Be gross too for once.”

“Darling, I couldn't! I should put on at least two ounces! I'm too
terribly
over weight as it is. If I can get down to five stone, I shall be really happy—but even then one must be always on guard. Wasn't it George Washington who said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty? Or was it President Hoover? Anyhow, it's too
utterly
true.” She paused, sighed, sipped her lemon-water, and set down the cup. “But I was going to tell you about Asphodel.”

Rosalind gave her that slight surface attention which was all one ever did give to Mimosa.

She said, “What is Asphodel?” and with nine-tenths of her mind she was wondering how there came to be any tie of kinship between Gilbert and Mimosa Vane. She was like a Rackham wraith made ghastly by being brought up to date and dressed in the latest extreme of fashion. She became aware of Mimosa looking shocked.

“Dearest—not
what!
Even if you've been buried, you must have heard of Asphodel!”

“It sounds like a disinfectant.”

Mimosa looked more than shocked.

“Darling! How too country cousin! But you simply
must
have heard of Asphodel! Why, Gilbert went to her.”

Rosalind's surface attention was pierced. A cold tremor passed over her consciousness. She said quite quietly,

“But who
is
Asphodel?”

“My dear—the most marvellous clairvoyante! But that's not the word—too terribly banal, I always think. And medium isn't right either, because it always makes one think about frauds—too utterly sordid! Asphodel prefers to be called a Seer.”

Rosalind said nothing. She was hearing Gilbert say, “A fortune-teller told me I should go round the world. “A fortune-teller. … And Asphodel called herself a Seer. …

Mimosa looked at her through long tinted lashes. Behind them her eyes were as bright and hard as a lizard's.

“Did Gilbert tell you he'd been to her? I thought he told you everything.”

“How do you know he went to her, Mimosa?”

The lashes flicked up and down again.

“Darling, I met him on the steps. I was going in, and he was coming out. My dear, you should have seen him—too taken aback!”

Rosalind roused herself to a counter-attack.

“But that must have been nearly two years ago. You can't mean you're still doing anything you were doing as long ago as that! How
d
émodé
of you! I should as soon expect to see you with last year's hair.”

“Darling, you're too witty, but just a tiny bit
unkind.
I do feel the world would be a better place if we were all kinder to each other. Asphodel says so. And what you said just now was really a
little
bit unkind, because though we change the
expression,
we needn't change in our devotion to the ideal. Such a beautiful thought, don't you think?”

“Asphodel's?” said Rosalind.

“Too sweet—isn't it?”

Rosalind began to feel a good deal of curiosity. There must be something remarkable about a woman who could keep Mimosa Vane on a lead for nearly two years. Six months as a rule saw the rise and fall of an idol, or the ebb and flow of a craze. And Gilbert—what had taken Gilbert to the woman who was neither a fortuneteller nor a clairvoyante? But Gilbert had said, “I've been to a fortune-teller.” Why had Asphodel told him that he would go round the world? She began to have a strong desire to see the woman who had told Gilbert that he would go round the world. She said quickly,

“Where does she live?”

“Asphodel? In Tilt Street—Number One Tilt Street. My dear, if you want to see her, I'll take you. She needn't know who you are or anything like that.”

Rosalind felt a sharp revulsion.

“Oh no,” she said. “I don't know why I asked. I don't want to see her in the least—I hate that sort of thing.”

“Well, darling, that's just as you like. But she's too marvellous really.” She produced a mirror and a lipstick and brightened the carmine of her lips. “Mouse Hammond went to her, and she told her not to set foot in a car for at least three months, or she'd have an accident. And of course Mouse didn't listen, and only a week later she had the most nerve-racking smash.”

Rosalind laughed. She was pleased to find that she could laugh.

“If Mouse's driving is anything like it used to be!” she said, and laughed again. “She took me down to Hurlingham once, and it was like the man with the Channel crossing—the first ten minutes I thought I was going to die, and after that I only wanted to get it over and be dead.”

“Dear
Mouse!” said Mimosa. “She's quite well again, and the scar doesn't really make her any plainer than she was before. She's a darling thing, but you wouldn't think a man would go off the deep end about her like Emery Stevens has.”

Rosalind wrinkled her brow.

“Emery Stevens!”

“Darling, how too back number! He's it. Everybody's on their knees to him to paint them. He'll
have
to get rid of his wife—too impossibly domestic. But
why
poor darling Mouse with three stitches in her nose? Why, Vinnie Hambleton is quite off her head about him—and she'll have well over a million when her grandfather dies.”

She put away lipstick and mirror, rose, and swayed across the table to touch cheek-bones with Rosalind.

“Darling, it's been divine to see you, but I must go on—cocktails at Vinnie's—a sherry party with Len and Cruffles—dinner with the Monties—some sort of show—and dancing at the Green Faggot to wind up with. I just love Cruffles. Don't you? And I never believe that he really cheats at cards—too scandalous, though of course he does hold the
most
marvellous hands. You know the Monties are getting a divorce. His temper! My dear, too fiendish! When he saw her last bill from Marthe he shook her—she had a bruise for days. Her maid, Paterson, told my Louise. If you hear they've patched it up, don't believe a word. People will say anything, as you
know.
My dear, too gossip-loving! I make it a rule not to believe anything I hear. Darling, good-bye! And remember about Asphodel—Number One Tilt Street.” She blew a kiss from the door and went out, still talking.

Rosalind opened both the windows. The scent of Mimosa's powder, and Mimosa's lipstick, and Mimosa's special cigarettes was suddenly more than she could bear. She let a cold buffeting wind blow into the room.

Mrs Vane did not go at once to her cocktail party. She first entered a telephone box and dialled a number which she did not have to look up in the directory. When a voice which seemed very far away said “Hullo!” she glanced over her shoulder as if to make sure that no one was listening and then said,

“It is Mimosa.”

The answer came, still in those faint tones:

“Asphodel speaking.”

Mimosa became quite animated.

“My dear, I've done it! I've just been having tea with her. … No. Too gross—isn't it? … Oh yes, she'll come. But I
had
to say Gilbert had been to you. … Yes, I know, my dear, but I just had to. … She wouldn't have come. … Yes, I think she's sure to now. If she doesn't, I can always have another try. I can say Gilbert keeps sending her a message, or something like that—but it won't be necessary. … My dear, too intrigued really, but pretending not to be. … You've got the photographs I sent you? They're quite good—you'll recognize her at once. And I thought the others would come in useful for local colour. And, my dear, I'd be glad of that cheque. Anything like my card luck at the moment! My dear, simply too heart-shaking!”

She rang off and went on her way to Vinnie Hambleton's.