Who Pays the Piper? (6 page)

She had got as far as that, when the telephone bell rang. The fixture was in the dining-room. She had only to push the communicating door and she could lift the receiver without really leaving the kitchen at all, which was very convenient, because you can't always take your eye off the stove. Just now there was nothing to watch. She picked up the receiver, put it to her ear, and heard Lucas Dale say,

“Susan, is that you?” His voice hurried on the words.

She said, “Yes—what is it?”

“Something's happened. Can you come up here at once?”

“What is it? Cathy——”

“She's not well. Will you come?”

“What is it? Please tell me, Mr. Dale.”

“She is—upset. I can't tell you on the telephone. Will you come at once?”

She said “Yes”, and hung up the receiver. She felt cold and sick. Cathy.… No, it was stupid to feel like this. Cathy had had a bad night. Perhaps she had turned faint. Men always got frightened. It was nothing.

She ran upstairs and told Mrs. O'Hara that she was going out. The breakfast tray was done with, and she took it away. After which she had to fetch a book from the drawing-room—“and oh dear, my knitting!”—before she could snatch down an old tweed coat and make her way up the hill.

As she came up on to the terrace outside the house she saw Lucas Dale at the glass door which led to the study. He had it in his hand, half open, and beckoned her in. She thought she had mastered her foolish fears, but the urgency with which he beckoned her and the sight of his grave, dark face set them all free again.

He brought her in and shut the door. There was a big leather-covered chair on either side of the hearth. In the farther one Cathy crouched, her face hidden in her hands. Her body had a stiff and twisted look. She did not move or turn when Susan said her name and came to her.

Susan's arms were round her.

“Cathy—what is it?” she said, as she had said it in the night. “What is it, darling—what is the matter?”

She felt Cathy stiffen.

Lucas Dale spoke.

“Something very unpleasant has happened, Susan. Perhaps I had better tell you about it.”

She looked round, startled. He was over by the writing-table, looking down at it, moving some papers, not looking at her. That frightened her too. She got up and went over to him.

“What has happened, Mr. Dale?”

He did look at her then.

“I hate telling you, but there's no way out of it—you've got to know. It's those pearls, the ones I had out to show you all on Wednesday. You remember?”

“Yes.”

“Cathy fetched them, and Cathy put them away again. I went to look at them last night, and some of them are missing.”

The change from what she had been afraid of was so sudden, so direct, that it left her mind empty. She stared at Lucas Dale and said,

“I don't understand.”

“I wish you didn't have to, Susan, but there's no other way. I haven't done anything about sending for the police—I wanted to see you first. I'm afraid it's a perfectly clear case. Unfortunately there was a lot of talk about how seldom I looked at the pearls. And that's true. I hadn't had them out for six months before last Wednesday, and I mightn't have had them out for six months again, only last night I had a fancy to look at them because—because—oh, well, I'm a fool, Susan—I was thinking about you, and I got out the pearls because I wanted to make a picture to myself of what they'd look like on your neck. Then when I came to take them out I saw at once that some of the loose ones were gone. Do you remember, Mrs. Hammond asked me to count them? She was joking, but I did count them—I always do. And they were all right when Cathy took them away. You remember she had my keys. I never dreamed of not trusting her as if she had been myself, but—there are twenty of the loose pearls missing, and twenty-five very well matched ones which I got last year in case I wanted to have the big necklace lengthened. They were very good pearls, just loosely strung, and the ends knotted to keep them safe.”

Whilst he talked, understanding came to Susan, and a blinding anger. Everything in her flamed. She said,

“Stop! How dare you say a thing like that about Cathy!”

He looked at her, and looked away.

“Do you think I want to say it?”

“Mr. Dale, you can't mean that you think Cathy took your pearls—
Cathy!”

“What
can
I think? The pearls were all there on Wednesday evening—I can swear to that. Everyone in the room heard Mrs. Hammond tell me to count them. No one touched them after that except Cathy. She put them away and brought me back my keys. When I got them out last night there were forty-five pearls missing.”

Susan turned. Cathy had lifted her head. Her face was white and wet, her eyes wide with fright. Susan said,

“Cathy—you hear what he says. What did you do when you put the tray away? Try and think.”

Cathy opened her lips to speak. She had to try twice before any sound came. She said at last,

“I put—it away——”

“Think, Cathy—
think
! Did you put it down anywhere, or go out of the room? Did you put the keys down?”

Cathy shook her head. Words came a little more easily.

“No—I put it away.”

“At once?”

“Yes.”

Susan turned to Dale. He said,

“She didn't give me back the keys till everyone had gone. There was time enough and to spare.”

There was a gasp from Cathy. Her face went back into her hands again. Lucas Dale said,

“There it is.”

“What are you going to do?” said Susan in an icy voice.

She saw him frown.

“I've been thinking it out since last night. If she took those pearls—and I can't see how anyone else can have taken them—well, they won't have gone very far. She hasn't been out of the place since Wednesday, and she wouldn't risk posting them in the village—if she did, they'll be easily traced. But this afternoon she was going into Ledlington by the two o'clock bus—she might have reckoned on getting them away then. Now look here, Cathy, I've got a name for being a hard man, but I don't want to be hard on you. I don't know what you wanted money for, but I'd have given you anything in reason if you'd come and asked me to help you. You took my pearls instead. Well, I want them back. Make a clean breast of it and give them up, and I won't prosecute.”

Cathy lifted her head again. She had a lost look.

“I—can't——”

Susan had a stab of fear.

“Why can't you?” said Lucas Dale.

Cathy began to shake. Between chattering teeth she stammered,

“I—don't—know——I didn't take them—oh, I
didn't!”

Dale shrugged his shoulders.

“You see—that's all she says. I did my best before you came, but she won't speak. Well, she's had her chance. I asked you to come here because I think it's most likely she's got the pearls on her. Either that or they're in her room at the Little House. If she's got them here, they'll be on her or in her bag. Will you turn out her bag first, and if they're not there, will you take her up into one of the bedrooms and search her? I want to be quite sure before I ring up the police. You see, I'm trusting you.”

Susan walked over to the chair with her head very high.

“Where's your bag, Cathy?”

It was Lucas Dale who answered.

“It's over there on her table. Perhaps you wouldn't mind getting it. I don't want to have it in my hands.”

Susan fetched the bag—Cathy's old brown bag which went everywhere with her. It was when she was coming back with it that Cathy started up and ran to meet her.

“Give it to me!”

“Cathy——”

“You mustn't open it——” The words were in a stuttering whisper. They chilled Susan's anger. They chilled her to her bones.

“Cathy——”

“You mustn't, you mustn't, you
mustn't!”

“Go and sit down!”

Cathy had never heard this voice from Susan before. She went back to the big chair and cowered down in it as if for shelter.

Susan went up to the writing-table. She faced Lucas Dale across it and opened Cathy's bag. It had an inner compartment which shut with a clasp. The two sides of it were stuffed quite full of odds and ends. Susan took them out one by one—an almost empty purse, two handkerchiefs, three pencils, a pencil sharpener, two bills and a receipt from shops in Ledlington, a letter in a bright blue envelope, a shopping list, a yard of brown ribbon, a powder compact, lipstick and a little round box of rouge, some acid drops in a paper bag, a small square pincushion stuffed full of pins, a ring of safety pins. There seemed to be no end.

Susan came at last to the inner compartment. With her fingers on the clasp, she heard Cathy take a hard-drawn breath. Her fingers were like ice as they opened the clasp. There were two little pockets, one of silk, the other lined with white leather. In the silk pocket there was a hair-net and hair-pins, in the other a snapshot of Roger Vere. It had been stuck on a piece of card, and at the bottom there was fastened on one side a spray of white heather, and on the other a snippet of curly black hair. Oh, poor Cathy! Susan glanced round with a jab of pity and relief. Cathy's face was hidden again.

Susan held the card up with its back to Lucas Dale.

“It's only a photograph. There's nothing else.” She turned out the two little pockets as she spoke, and some dust with them. There was nothing else.

Dale looked impassively.

“Will you do the same with the rest of it?”

It was when she took hold of the lining and pulled that the slit became visible. It ran down the side of the lining. She hadn't noticed anything until she pulled the silk. It tore now with a small, sharp sound. She put her hand into the hole and felt the pearls.

Dale had his eyes on her face. He had not meant to watch her, but he found himself unable to look away. Anger gave her a brilliance which fairly took his breath. Her colour glowed, her eyes shone. And then all at once everything hardened, sharpened. Her hand stayed where she had thrust it, and slowly all the colour drained away, the brightness left her eyes. It was like watching her die. There seemed to be nothing left. He leaned across the table and said in an agitated voice,

“Susan—what is it? Don't look like that!”

She looked at him. Her hand came slowly back, holding a string of pearls knotted at either end, each pearl the size of a pea, smooth and iridescent. She moved her hand with the pearls a little towards him and dropped them down. She did not look at them. She groped for the bag and pushed it towards him.

Lucas Dale took it up and turned it inside out. The loose pearls that were in the lining came pattering down. He swept them together, picked up a straggler here and there, and counted them.

“Twenty—and twenty-five in the string. They're all here.”

Susan turned and went to Cathy. She felt as if she was bleeding to death. Her body was slow and stiff. Her mind had come to a standstill. Cathy and Lucas Dale's pearls.… Lucas Dale's pearls in Cathy's bag.… Cathy saying, “You mustn't open it—you
mustn't!” …
But that was because of Roger's photograph.… Was it? … The pearls were in the lining of Cathy's bag.… These thoughts had been in her mind when it stopped. They stayed there without her having any power to change them.

She came to Cathy and pulled her hands away from her face.

“The pearls were in your bag.”

Cathy stared up at her. A look of blind terror crossed her face. She put out a groping hand and slipped sideways to the floor.

CHAPTER IX

“Are you better, Cathy?”

The brown eyes opened blankly and closed again. Susan felt a rush of pity and terror. Four years ago, when Cathy had been so ill, she had looked like that day after day for all those horrible weeks—just there, just on the edge of death, just living and no more. Her heart broke in her. She said softly,

“Won't you tell me about it—won't you?”

The eyelids lifted again. The eyes looked blankly. The eyelids fell. Susan said in an urgent voice,

“I must talk to him. You'll be all right, won't you? Just lie still.”

There was a sighing breath. She did not dare to wait. If he were to ring up the police, it would be out of his hands.

They had carried Cathy into the recess where her writing-table stood and laid her down on the padded window-seat. She had come out of her faint almost at once, but she had not uttered a word. Susan dared not stay. She got to her feet, pulled back the curtain which screened the recess, and saw with relief that Dale had not left the study. He was standing by the hearth, his elbow on the chimney ledge, looking down into the fire. As the curtain slid back he turned, waiting for her. She came slowly to stand beside him and say in a faltering voice,

“What are you going to do?”

“That's for you to say, Susan.”

She looked at the burning logs.

“That is very kind—very generous. I—I don't know what to say. She's ill. There must be some dreadful mistake, or else she didn't know what she was doing. Cathy couldn't do anything like that if she was herself—you must know that.”

Lucas Dale said, choosing his words,

“That would be taken into consideration in preparing her defence.”

Her head came up. She said,

“What are you saying? What are you going to do?”

He was looking at her gravely and sternly.

“Do you really expect me not to prosecute?”

“Mr. Dale!”

“You must forgive me if I don't look at it quite as you do. It's a pretty bad case, you know. She was in a position of trust, and I did trust her implicitly. She has abused that trust in the most flagrant way. The whole thing seems to me to have been quite cleverly calculated. Don't look like that, Susan—I am bound to let you see my point of view. It's not only the loss of the pearls, but it was just an outside chance my looking at them again like that. It might have been six months before I had them out—or longer. And who would have fallen under suspicion then? Monty Phipson, or Raby, or one of the servants. I'm not a suspicious man. After months had passed I couldn't say or swear that my keys had never been left about, or that I hadn't let Monty have them to fetch something from the safe. The last person on earth to be suspected would be Miss Cathleen O'Hara, and that's what she was counting on. How can you expect me just to pass it over and let her go to play the same kind of trick on someone else? If you're kind to a criminal you may be letting a lot of other people down, and the way the law looks at it, you would be compounding a felony.”