‘I heard you’d been ill, Lady Vosper; I heard only yesterday so I thought I’d call. Peter Werner told me. He said you had been in hospital.’
She screwed out the butt and drew deep at the new cigarette. ‘Well, if the old Clinic’s a hospital, he’s right. I must say they feather-bed you in there. Delude you into thinking you’re a film star while they do the usual ghastly things on the sly.’
Bulking large against the daylight, he put the roses on a table by the window. ‘I hope it’s nothing serious,’ he said, taking a seat, unbuttoning his coat, resting and spreading his considerable body, eyeing her while trying not to. It’s always difficult to tell with women: if they’re sallow it is hidden under layers of make-up, if they’re thinner they may have decided that week to go on a starvation diet.
‘What the hell,’ she said. ‘I got my guts crushed eighteen years ago in that Aston Martin. Now and then it plays me up. This was one of the times, and a rather foul one.’
‘Well, I hope you’re quite recovered now and feeling better.’
‘No, I feel as if I’ve been walked on. And I’m out of temper at missing two of the best weeks of hunting – and maybe two more yet, which’ll nearly see the season out.’
‘Is your daughter with you?’
Miriam McNaughton was a withdrawn mousy girl of twenty-five who was overshadowed by her ebullient mother and did things vaguely in the theatre.
‘She’s been around,’ said Lady Vosper tersely. ‘But her husband’s in work at the moment: the first time for six months, so she has to hold his hand. And you, my dear chap? I hope you’re not the bringer of bad news.’
‘Bad news? I come simply to inquire after—’
‘I’m joking, man. But my mother always used to say if a solicitor calls on you it means somebody has died or is going to die.’
Angell shifted uneasily: she was too near the bone. ‘ Your mother was a cynic. Lawyers happen to be human beings like other men, and when a friend of theirs is unwell it’s natural to be concerned. I was passing your door and thought I would call in and see how you were and if you could play bridge next week at my house. I have the Hones coming. That’s Thursday of next week, a week today …’
‘Well, that’s obliging of you, but my fool of a doctor says I’m to rest for a week, and the minute I’m better I shall rush down to Handley Merrick to get the last of the hunting. But ask me when I get back. I shall be in town all of May.’
They talked of bridge and then of the sale-rooms, while the cloudy March day drew in its daylight like the lips of an uncharitable woman and Lady Vosper switched on a table lamp and the office workers hurried past the windows on their way home. Angell was never really sure what money Lady Vosper had. He knew well that upper class habit of always declaring oneself poor no matter what one’s true circumstances were. Her last husband, the third viscount, had not left any large sum, but one never knew with what ingenuity money might have been salted away to avoid death duties. In January when Angell had called about Merrick House she had been properly downright. ‘My dear chap,’ she had said, ‘Vospers have lived in the damned place for two hundred and fifty years, and that’s where I lived with Julian for the best ten of mine. What Claude will do if he inherits, or Harry, is their business, but while I’m alive it stays in the family. I ain’t got much sentiment about things as a rule, but I’ve some over Merrick.’ This flat, too, he believed, had belonged to her husband: its contents were solid and worthy rather than distinguished; but there were a few nice pieces, some excellent silver.
He stayed for half an hour and then left. She clearly had no inkling of what Matthewson had told him. But the very lack of close friendship between them would make it extremely difficult for him to call again in this way, otherwise she would become suspicious of his attentions. All that could be done would be to try to meet her whenever possible, casually at the bridge table and elsewhere, to keep in touch and to observe from a distance. Certainly at the moment there was little to observe. She looked no different from when they had last met.
A reply from Vosper after a couple of weeks said he was interested in their formal proposal and was forwarding it to Messrs Hollis & Hollis for their consideration and advice. Angell rang Francis Hone with the news and Hone said: ‘ Come to dinner tonight and we can try to work out a time-table. There’ll only be Angela and myself and she knows all about it.’
It was the day of a sale at Christie’s, and there were three or four excellent things that Angell coveted, especially a John drawing which had captivated him from the moment he saw it. He didn’t think it would be too expensive, but he never really liked to leave a bid with the auctioneer. So he got Mumford to take over his two appointments for the morning – which Mumford grudgingly did – and spent it in the auction room. He came away with the John drawing, which annoyingly had been forced up by a dealer, and a delightful small Chinese painting on silk, unsigned but entitled ‘Crickets and Flowers’.
It was while he was bidding for this that the idea came to him that Lady Hone was responsive to the elegant gesture, and that to take her some small present tonight would be appropriate and polite. Crickets and flowers. But flowers were not enough, and chocolates ill-judged since she was waging the usual foolish war on weight. A piece of jewellery was far too expensive. But scent – perfume. What woman could resist perfume? It seemed likely that Messrs D. H. Evans would have a good selection.
It was just after five o’clock when he walked into the store and up to the board giving directions for finding the various departments. His was an important, solidly based walk, but with as yet scarcely any signs of the waddle that comes to so many stout men. Perfume was on the ground floor, and almost before he reached the department he saw her. She was not serving anyone so he went straight up to her.
‘Can you advise me on some good French perfume?’
She looked at him with disinterested eyes, and then she recognized him and a wide, quite brilliant smile broke over her face.
‘Why, Mr – er … Good afternoon. So you’re back, then!’
‘As I see you are.’
It was too warm in here after the cold day outside.
‘Oh, yes. Only last Saturday! I had a fabulous time. Did you?’
‘I came back to London the following evening. It was a brief business visit. One can see you have been in the sun. Very brown.’
‘Thanks, yes.’ She caught her lip under her teeth and glanced at a girl further along the counter. ‘Only two cloudy days, and one with snow. I’ve never skied in snow before. It’s super. Do you ski?’
‘No, I do not seem to have had time for it.’
There was a pause, and two or three women drifted past with shopping baskets and lizard bags. He noticed that the bruise or stain on her neck had gone.
‘Did you say you wanted some perfume, sir?’
‘Yes. For a present. D’you know. I thought of Dior, probably.’
‘Oh, yes, certainly. As it happens we have a special Dior consultant here this week. Miss Porter, over there. She’ll be glad to advise you.’
Stare over her head at the rows of boxes and bottles. ‘What difference does it make whether she advises me or you do?’
He thought she flushed slightly. ‘It doesn’t really, but she’s the expert. She just happens to be here this week and I thought …’
‘Mme Rochas,’ he said, still staring at the bottles. ‘ I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have Mme Rochas instead. Can you advise me on that?’
She smiled widely, that very nice generous smile. ‘Is it for your wife, sir?’
‘I haven’t a wife. It’s for the wife of a business friend.’
There was really very little choice – one either bought Mme Rochas or one did not: it was simply a matter of size, but he contrived, sweating, to take some time over this. Would contrived be the word? Perhaps it implied something more deliberate than anything he had in mind at the time. While other assistants in the store began discreetly to get ready for closing
, he eventually came to say:
‘My name is Angell – Wilfred Angell. I have no account here, but I suppose I may pay by cheque?’
‘Of course, sir. Yes, of course.’ Even then she did not volunteer her name – which he thought showed good taste – so he asked it.
‘Friedel,’ she said. ‘Pearl Friedel.’
‘Is that an English name?’
‘My father’s Austrian. My mother was English. They say I take after her.’
‘I knew someone many years ago whom you resemble. Her name was Anna Tyrell. She had some Danish blood, though she looked as English as you.’
Her head was bent as she put gift wrapping round the box, but he felt that she was pleased with his attentions as she had every reason to be. Certainly he was pleased with her manner and her manners, and with her looks. There was a dignity about her. Or was he imagining this because of her height and her composure? The statuesque quality. But she was not a statue; her breast rose and fell.
Presently he took the packet and dabbed his forehead again and said good-bye and left the store, a little depressed. This was the end of the incident, of the meeting. Just as when the plane touched down in Geneva it had been the end of another meeting. One said good-bye and left; one simply went no further, because ‘further’ implied a step with incalculable ramifications, an incalculable future. He shrank away from that, all his legal experience stood in the way of committing himself so far. Like a man within a self-built wall, he could peer over it, but to break it down needed some impulse that his nature did not possess.
Angela Hone was delighted with the perfume. (He had spent more than he had intended, which was the only niggling regret.) But it did seem to him that such a gift might well be acceptable here and there in the future when the wives of influential business friends were concerned.
That week he discharged Alex. Suddenly the situation had become quite unacceptable – it was as if overnight the brink of toleration had been passed. In Alex’s place he took a married couple but he did not think they would last long. When people were inefficient he was not good at hiding his contempt.
A successful solicitor has many contacts. One of a long and involved nature was Angell’s acquaintanceship with Vincent Birman. They had been at Sherborne together where Birman, the elder by a term, had first tormented Angell, then dominated him, and finally had befriended him by protecting him from worse tyrannies. After the war they had taken their Intermediates and their Finals together and had qualified in the same year. Angell had gone at once into his father’s firm. Birman had come into a legacy of £16,000, had spent it in a year, had then joined a distinguished firm of solicitors in Gray’s Inn but after five years had got himself struck off the rolls by contriving somehow to become co-respondent in a divorce case in which he had been representing the injured husband. After that he had been a journalist, a travel-agent, and a P.R.O. before starting his own agency. The Vincent Birman agency was small but it was efficient, and its range was wide. Divorce inquiry work was its staple, but it would take on almost anything that Birman happened to fancy, from sending men to report for half a dozen newspapers at the Olympic Games in Mexico, to bringing over a giraffe from Africa to supply the needs of a film company. Because he spent his money freely, was well connected and a good mixer, he always knew somebody who knew somebody else; he was one of the world’s great arrangers.
Angell employed him from time to time on occasions when confidential inquiries were needed or perhaps unusual contacts had to be made. In spite of his peculiar record Birman always kept his mouth shut; and it was far pleasanter to deal with a gentleman and a trained solicitor. Angell also had a long memory for favours as well as injuries, and although he had long since rationalized the terrors of thirty years ago, it pleased him to think of Birman as a school friend, and one to whom he could now be the giver of small employments.
In appearance Birman was a small, bald, cruel man with blandly innocent twinkling eyes and a candid smile. He had always been physically very strong and physically very brave, characteristics which in themselves fascinated Angell who lacked them but did so well, he considered, without them.
During these weeks Birman had occasion to call at the offices of Carey, Angell & Kingston several times. As a firm they avoided divorce when they could, but if you had a substantial client who got himself involved with an ambassador’s wife, you couldn’t suddenly tell him to take his business elsewhere. So Birman called and Birman saw Angell, and one day, just after he had discharged the married servants, and quite on the impulse of the moment, Angell gave Birman another little job to do. Almost as soon as he had spoken he was sorry, yet he allowed the conversation to proceed.
‘Yes?’ Birman said. ‘But don’t you know where she lives? That will take a bit longer won’t it, old chap?’
‘My client,’ said Angell, uneasily resting his bulk against the desk, ‘says that she lives a ten minute bus ride from East Croydon station. And of course her name’s not a common one.’
‘Have you looked her up in the telephone directory?’
‘I gathered from what I was told that she was not on the telephone.’
Birman’s hard smooth small shiny face showed only a cold innocence, like a child pulling a spider’s legs off. ‘What exactly do you want to know?’
‘Our client was not specific. I think he means he would like a general sketch of her background: what her age is, where she went to school, her father’s position in the accountancy world, what relatives she has, her hobbies and recreations, how she spends her spare time.’
‘A sort of private Who’s Who, in fact.’
‘Possibly. One need not confine oneself to the facts she would fill in on the form herself.’
‘I get the message, old chap.’
‘Don’t over-read it,’ Angell said. ‘As you’ll see, the inquiry has nothing to do with divorce. So far as I can gather from our client’s instructions, there is no question of litigation of any sort. Normally it would perhaps have been better if we’d referred him direct to you, but we’ve known him twenty years and sometimes one undertakes these things. I’m quite satisfied as to his bona fides.’
‘That’s your concern,’ said Vincent Birman. ‘I just do what I’m told.’
‘The one thing that was emphasized to me was that every discretion must be used. It was put to me that it was better not to have information than to let her or her family suspect they were the object of an inquiry. I suppose it wouldn’t be possible to do this yourself?’
Birman’s bright eyes had been ranging round the office; now they settled on Angell for a moment in surprise. ‘Of course. It’ll cost you a bit more.’
‘I’d be glad if you would.’
‘Give me a week, old chap. I’ll drop in a week today.’
After he had gone Angell abused himself for wasting money on an idle fancy. But for once in his life the expenditure of money was a secondary regret beside the apprehension that he had taken another step into the unknown. He comforted himself with the reassurance that he need never take another.
Chapter Three
Looking back over events as she did sometimes in a vague and unanalytical way, Pearl supposed that it had all really begun with the date she made with Ned McCrea. Perhaps the queerest part was that she’d never much cared for Ned; he was red-faced and he sweated; but he’d been on at her some time, and eventually it became easier to say yes than no.
It was the first week in March, and they made up a foursome with her friend Hazel and her fiancé Chris, and it was at Pearl’s own suggestion that they went to the Trad Hall in Redgate because Geoff Houseman and his band were there, and she loved his clarinet playing.
The evening didn’t start off too well because Hazel and Chris were in the middle of a row to begin with, and when they got there they found the hall only supplied coffee and soft drinks, which didn’t please Ned, who loved his beer. He thought Pearl had done it on purpose because the only other time she’d gone out with him h
e’d got tight and this was another reason why she’d said no to him since. Hazel always told Pearl that she was too choosey about her men but in fact it was a pure accident about there being no licence; it had just never occurred to her to think. You didn’t go to a dance hall to drink.
The Trad Hall was fairly crowded when they got there because Houseman was quite a draw. Pearl had a dance early on with Chris because Hazel had whispered to her would she because dancing with her always put Chris in a good humour and she said he certainly needed it. Chris Coke was heavy going both on the floor and off; Pearl always thought he took himself too seriously, and when he was dancing he twisted his elbows and scowled and moved his tongue against his teeth like a small boy learning to draw. Tonight she did her best with him, but obviously his row with Hazel was still simmering and he hadn’t much thought for anything else.
After that one dance Pearl danced pretty solidly with Ned till about nine-thirty and then the band took a breather. Chris said: ‘I can’t think why we came to a morgue like this. Come out for a quick one with me, Ned, while the girls powder their noses.’ Ned grinned and said: ‘O.K. by me, Chris.’ It was just what he wanted.
As soon as they’d gone Hazel launched into a whole history of the row. ‘Sometimes it’s like walking a tightrope. I can’t put a foot right. I hope he comes back sober.’
‘If it’s like this now, what’s it going to be like after you’re married?’
‘I don’t know, honest I don’t,’ Hazel said, but with a flicker of dislike at the question. ‘Oh, he’ll be all right in a couple of days. He always is.’
‘Maybe it would be better if you stood up to him,’ Pearl said.
‘It’s all very well for you to talk, you can take your pick of half a dozen.’
‘But what a half dozen!’
‘They’re all right, Pearl. Or all right as men go. You’re romantic! You’re a snob! You want a film star or something.’