‘About that trust, Uncle Bill.’
‘Yes, that’s what I wanted to see you about,’ said Willoughby, ‘I’m terminating it. You’ll get the money next week’
Jerry did not reel, but he certainly would have done so if he had not been sitting at the moment in a deep arm chair. His emotions were rather similar to those of Crispin when Willoughby had written the cheque for two hundred and three pounds six shillings and fourpence without a word of protest, joy at the happy ending competing with something that was almost disappointment that all the arguments and reasonings which he had so carefully rehearsed would now not be needed. Then, as in the case of Crispin, joy prevailed, and he expressed it with the quick sharp snort of ecstasy with which he was accustomed to greet the falling of his ball into the hole at the end of a thirty-foot putt. He found himself at a loss for words, and as he struggled to express his gratification Willoughby proceeded.
‘You have probably been wondering why your father ever started the trust. Why didn’t he let you have the stuff right away? Must have puzzled you, that.’
Jerry admitted that it had perplexed him.
‘How well up are you on his early history?’
‘I’ve heard that he didn’t amount to much till he was thirty.’
‘It’s what he did when he was twenty-two that concerns us. He married a cinema usherette with a taste for drink This was before he married your mother.’
‘Are you saying he was a bigamist?’
‘Certainly not. After making his life extremely unpleasant for a couple of years his bride handed in her dinner pail. And the experience gave him an obsession about early marriages. He took the view that all men under the age of thirty are halfwits and liable to charge into matrimony at the drop of a hat with the first tramp they come across, and he wasn’t going to have that happen to you. So he formed this trust, putting me in charge and giving me the power to slip you the cash if I saw fit. Knowing that I wouldn’t see fit if I saw you trying to head for the altar with somebody unsuitable, which of course is what happened. Vera Upshaw might be all right for a particularly well-to-do millionaire, but not for you. She wants a husband who will cover her with jewels and Rolls-Royces. Given those, she might make a good wife, though I would hesitate to bet on it. The engagement’s really off, is it?’
‘Yes, thank God.’
‘You feel as I do that it was a merciful release? Quite right. Always bear in mind that however beautiful a girl may be, and I willingly stipulate that Vera Upshaw is scenically in the top ten, it’s unwise to marry her if she has feet of clay. I became aware of such feet in Dame Flora Faye twenty-five years ago, and Vera is training on to be another Dame Flora Faye, and looks like making it. Did the betrothal end with a bang or a whimper?’
‘I’d call it more of a coo. Her mother rang me up and filled me in. What a lovely voice she has.’
‘Very musical. I remember it from the old days. What did she say?’
‘There was a whole lot of it, but what it amounted to was that Vera had changed her mind.’
‘Which, translated from the Flora Faye, means that she has met someone with a lot more money than you.
‘You think so?’
‘I am sure of it. It’s a repetition of what happened twenty-five years ago with her mother and me. She doesn’t mention it in her Theatre Memories as told to Reginald Tressilian, but at one time Flora and I were engaged. She chucked me for Charlie Upshaw, who had just come into the Upshaw’s Diet Bread millions — most of which she spent years ago.
A less perspicacious nephew might have murmured sympathetically, ‘I see, I see. So that is why you have never married’, and would probably have pressed his hand, but Jerry knew that his uncle’s reason for remaining a bachelor was that he thoroughly enjoyed being a bachelor, that if he ever found himself at the altar rails it would be because he had been dragged there by wild horses, and that every time he thought of Charlie Upshaw he felt profoundly grateful to him for his kindly intervention. He contented himself with a word to the effect that the guardian angels of twenty-five years ago seemed to have been as efficient as those of today: and when Willoughby asked him what the hell he was talking about he explained that the Willoughby guardian angel had saved him from a union with Dame Flora Faye by producing Charlie Upshaw in the nick of time.
‘While mine,’ he added, ‘arranged for Vera to meet this man you speak of who has a lot more money than me. And now that you have terminated the trust I am in a position to get some action with the girl I love.’
‘Oh, my God. Are you in love again?’
‘Yes, but this time it’s the real thing.’
‘Somebody unsuitable, of course?’
‘On the contrary, she’s a millionairess. And that was the whole trouble, apart from being engaged to Vera. As long as I was poor I couldn’t make a move, because you know what people think of a man without any money who goes after a girl with between one and two million. They sneer their heads off at him, taking it for granted that he’s a contemptible fortune hunter who’s simply out for a chance of getting a snug billet on Easy Street and three square meals a day.’
Willoughby’s eyes widened. He was a man who could put two and two together, and the expression ‘between one and two million’, coupled with the recollection of Jerry’s telephone call asking for her name, seemed to point in the direction of the late Mr Donahue’s heiress.
‘Is it young Jane Hunnicut you’re in love with?’
Amazement at his uncle’s perspicacity held Jerry dumb for an instant, and Willoughby continued.
‘But you’ve only met her once.’
Twice actually, though once would have been enough.’
‘Yes, I can see how it might. She’s an attractive young prune.’
‘Must you call her that?’
‘Certainly I must. A girl is either an attractive young prune or she is not an attractive young prune. If she is an attractive young prune, why not say so? And she’s got all that money.
‘If you knew how I wish she hadn’t.’
‘Yes, I believe you really do. But have you considered that it means that you’re going to have a good deal of competition? Once the news of it gets around, contemptible fortune hunters with a taste for three square meals a day will start blooming like the flowers in spring.’
‘I know. That’s why I’ve got to see her immediately.’
‘But I’m afraid you can’t. You’re off this evening for Mellingham.’
“What!’
‘Yes, I forgot to mention that there is a small condition attached to the termination of the trust. Before I hand you the cash I have a little job I want you to do for me. Do you remember that miniature I was showing you at that lunch?’
The one of your great-great-grandmother?’
‘Or possibly great-great-great. Yes, that’s the one, The Girl in Blue. And do you remember a Mrs Clayborne who was at our lunch?’
‘Of course. You called her Barney.’
‘I’d hate to tell you what I’d like to call her now. She’s pinched The Girl in Blue and taken it with her to Mellingham.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I wish I were.’
‘But a woman like that can’t be a thief.’
That’s what I said to her brother when he was warning me against her, and he told me that in New York department stores tremble like aspens when they see her coming their way, and I have no doubt her circle of friends always count the spoons carefully after they have had her to dinner. And even then I refused to believe that she would rob me when she was my guest and bursting with my salt. Had I but known, as they say in the mystery novels.’
Jerry was profoundly shocked. His acquaintance with Bernadette Clayborne had been only a brief one, but he had taken an instantaneous liking to her and even when confronted with evidence like this he could not believe in her guilt.
‘But are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. Who else could have taken the thing? N
o, she’s got it all right, and you’re going to Mellingham to search her room.’
‘Good Lord, I can’t do that.’
‘You’ll have to if you want me to terminate the trust. I believe in reciprocity. Each helping each.’
‘But I’ve got a dinner date with Jane Hunnicut on Saturday.’
‘It’ll have to be postponed. Send the girl a wire saying you have been suddenly called away to the country.’
‘I don’t know her address.’
‘I’ve got it at the office. Write out the wire and I’ll send it off tomorrow morning.’
‘I don’t know how to search a room.’
‘You’ll pick it up as you go along. For heaven’s sake stop making all this heavy weather over an absurdly simple task well within the scope of a mentally retarded child of six. You’d think I was asking you to climb Mount Everest. You ought to be able to go through Barney Clayborne’s effects in twenty minutes.’
A strong suspicion presented itself to Jerry that this was an underestimate, and his flesh crept briskly at the thought of what awaited him at Mellingham Hall, Mellingham-in-the-Vale, telephone number Mellingham 631, but he could see that it was useless to oppose his uncle’s wishes.
‘All right,’ he said tonelessly.
‘Splendid,’ said Willoughby. ‘There’s an excellent train at about seven. I’ll tell Crispin to expect you.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1
Jerry caught the excellent train without any difficulty, and on the following afternoon Vera Upshaw returned from Brussels, her lips tightly set and a frown on her lovely forehead.
It was only on very rare occasions that Vera frowned, for her mother had warned her that it led to wrinkles, but as she entered the flat in Eaton Square her brow was definitely knitted, and the discovery that Dame Flora Faye was out deepened her displeasure. Problems arise in a girl’s life which only a heart-to-heart talk with an understanding parent can solve, and one of these had been vexing her for some days.
Fortunately before any great progress had been made by the wrinkles a latch key clicked in the door and Dame Flora came in, and having greeted her child sank into a chair with the announcement that her little body was a-weary of this great world.
‘One of those ghastly literary lunches,’ she explained. ‘I don’t know why I go to them. It isn’t as if I were like Jimmy Fothergill, fighting for a knighthood and not wanting to miss a trick. This one was to honour Emma Lucille Agee, who wrote that dirty novel that’s been selling in millions in America. Her publishers got up the lunch as part of the campaign for inflicting it on England. Chicken vol-au-vents, fruit salad and about fifteen of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required, and Jimmy replied for the visitors, which alone would have been enough to give the show a black eye, and eventually we were allowed to totter out into the sunshine. But why am I telling you all this, as I have so often said to subhuman leading men somewhere in the second act? It’s the story of your life I want to hear. What have you to report?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Well, I saw Brussels and lots of delegates from the Balkans, and there was a charabanc expedition to Malines and a carillon concert and an inspection of Antwerp harbour by motor launch and a state banquet —’
‘Don’t be an ass, my chickabiddy. You know what I mean. You got my cable saying that I had given your house painter his two weeks’ notice: go on from there. Get to what I may loosely call the love interest. Am I about to lose a daughter but gain a son? By the way, I met a man at the reception at the American Embassy the other night who knows all about Homer Pyle, and he said that any time Homer makes less than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year he clicks his tongue and mutters “Why this strange weakness?”. You could be very happy on a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.
Vera laughed the bitter little laugh with which she had greeted the statement that the Flannery and Martin book shop had not got a copy of Daffodil Days.
‘I could,’ she agreed, ‘but it doesn’t look as if I were going to be given the opportunity.’
Dame Flora uttered what in a less musical voice than hers would have been a blend of snort and squeak. Even when registering it on the stage she had never given a more convincing exhibition of incredulity.
‘Are you telling me that I was all wrong about Homer Pyle, that those melting looks he was giving you meant nothing?’
‘Apparently.’
‘It isn’t possible. I know what the trouble was. There were too many people around. How can you expect a man to turn the conversation to bridesmaids and wedding cake when he’s up to his knees in Balkan delegates all the time? I can see what happened. Just as he was about to pour out his heart there would be a cheery “Hullo there” and another Balkan delegate would come muscling in. He might as well have tried to propose to you in Piccadilly Circus.’
Vera was not to be comforted. The pep talk was good, but it left her cold.
‘We were alone and uninterrupted plenty of times. We dined together every night.’
‘And nothing happened?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well, you could knock me down with a lipstick,’ said Dame Flora. ‘I just don’t understand it.’
And yet the explanation was quite simple. What neither had taken into consideration was the fact that Homer all his adult life had suffered from a marked inferiority complex where women were concerned. He was a modest man. He had no illusions regarding himself. He knew all about his horn-rimmed spectacles, his globular face and his dullness, and it seemed to him that he had no qualities to compensate for these. He had no doubts whatsoever of his wish to share his life with Vera Upshaw, but he lacked the audacity to ask her views. Swineherds in fairy stories probably had the same misgivings when they fell in love with princesses.
The trouble with making a steady hundred and fifty thousand dollars year after year — as a matter of fact with Homer it was nearer two hundred thousand — is that a man tends to take it for granted and not look on it as an asset. Homer was vaguely aware that there were women to whom his wealth would be an attraction, but he knew that it would carry no weight with one as spiritual as the author of Daffodil Days and Morning’s At Seven. That was why he did not speak his love but let concealment like a worm in the bud feed on his damask cheek, with the result that Vera Upshaw was getting wrinkles in her forehead and Dame Flora Faye was liable at any moment to be knocked down with a lipstick.
‘I am dining with him tonight,’ said Vera despondently, ‘and I have no doubt he will continue to talk of the value to international understanding of these P.E.N. outings and what interesting people one meets on them. He won’t get more personal than that. And tomorrow he leaves for the country to see his sister. She’s staying at a place called Mellingham Hall in Hampshire or Sussex or somewhere.’
She broke off Her mother had uttered a sudden cry which rang through the room like a war whoop.
‘What was that name again?’
‘Mellingham Hall.’
Then there’s still hope.’
“What do you mean?’
Dame Flora’s eyes were sparkling as they had so often sparkled when she won an argument at rehearsals with a director.
‘Listen, baby. Everything’s going to be fine. I know Mellingham Hall. Bill Scrope took me there for the week-end twenty-five years ago. It belongs to his brother. It’s the romantic spot to end all romantic spots, one of those old-world places full of shady nooks and secluded walks which were in operation when knights were bowled over by the local damsels. Well, when I tell you that it was there I met your father and we hadn’t strolled together in a couple of shady nooks before he was asking me to be his, you’ll understand what I mean. It was a bit awkward,’ said Dame Flora meditatively, ‘because I was engaged to Bill Scrope at the time and your father was engaged to somebody whose
name I’ve forgotten, but these things can always be adjusted with a little tact. Believe me, honeybunch, you won’t have any trouble with Homer Pyle once the Mellingham Hall atmosphere starts to work on him.’ She paused, a look of disappointment on her face. ‘You don’t seem very exhilarated,’ she said. ‘Why aren’t you clapping your little hands and dancing spring dances all over the room?’
Vera’s reaction had indeed lacked the animation a mother had the right to expect.
‘It’s a wonderful idea,’ she said unemotionally. ‘I was only thinking that you had overlooked one small point. How am I to get into this Mellingham Hall? I can’t just walk in and say “Hullo there” like a Balkan delegate.’
Dame Flora would have none of this defeatism.
‘Certainly you can if you pay the entrance fee. Didn’t I mention that? Bill Scrope’s brother, once opulent, is now hard up and takes in paying guests. He’ll lay down the red carpet for you.
Vera’s despondency vanished as speedily as her mother’s had done. There was no reason now to complain of any lack of enthusiasm on her part. It was in a very different tone that she repeated her remark that the idea was a wonderful one.
‘But I can’t go for a few days. I must buy dresses and things.’
‘Buy all you want, my dream girl,’ said Dame Flora cordially. ‘Let there be no stint. Our aim is to knock Homer Pyle’s eye out.’
2
While Homer with his failure to co-operate was giving Vera and her mother such cause for concern, the eccentric behaviour of G. G. F. West was proving an equal source of annoyance to Jane Hunnicut. His telegram cancelling the dinner to which she had been looking forward so eagerly, without a word of explanation except that he was going to the country, had left her, as the expression is, fuming. She was a sweet-tempered girl — you have to be to keep smiling at the Mr Donahues who travel by air — but she was conscious of a well-defined urge to hit him on his ginger head with a brick.
Why the country? What did he want to go to the country for? Whereabouts in the country? How long was he going to be in the country? It occurred to her that there was an authority who could probably give the answer to these questions, his uncle ‘Willoughby. Telephoning his office, she was told that he had left, presumably to go home. She took a taxi to 31 Chelsea Square, still fuming.