A terrier shot like a rocket out of an open window, scuttling at me, barking as if I’d done him a personal injury: it was a pity to disappoint him, and he suddenly went off yelping. I found a lower place in the wall and got over. I ploughed up a steep incline, and then fell flat as a train came roaring along the rails.
As soon, as it had gone I ducked gingerly across the rails, picking my steps, slid down the other side. Then I began to run along the edge of the embankment.
They’d lost me. After about five minutes I stopped for breath, and the shouts were a long way off. I climbed a wire fence into a cul-de-sac street and walked up it. Two or three minutes later I caught a prowling taxi and directed it back to the hotel.
Chapter Twenty Three
I’d been a normal person for so long that there was a sense of shock about to-day. It was suddenly as if all the years of conforming had never been. When I got back to the hotel I was very relieved to see our car parked outside, and I went in and inquired for Sarah. They said she was having dinner. I tried to tidy myself a bit, pushed a hand through my hair and went straight in.
I must have still looked a sight because the head waiter raised his bald eyebrows and two or three other people forgot to be well bred. Sarah half got up when she saw me.
‘‘Oliver, what’s the matter?’’
‘‘I’m all right.” I slumped down in my seat, still in a lather like a horse.
‘‘You look frightful.” Her eyes searched mine. ‘‘And rather frightening.… What is it?’’
I ordered soup. ‘‘Where does Clive Fisher live?’’
‘‘In Kent. About five miles from Lowis. Why?’’
‘‘We’re going down to see him.”
In between the little I ate I told her. The only thing I didn’t say was the questions I’d asked Victor Moreton earlier. Listening, she forgot to eat.
‘‘So you were right,’’ she said.
‘‘Yes. I always felt Clive might have something to do with it being an artist himself and a close friend of Tracey’s. But you put me off.…”
‘‘It wasn’t because I didn’t think the same as you.”
I stared at her.
She looked upset. After a minute she said: ‘‘If you described Ambrosine Fisher, who would she sound like?’’
‘‘My God … I didn’t think of that. But why on earth did you scout the idea when I put it up to you?’’
Sarah stared at a corner of the table, straightened her brows. ‘‘Before all this trouble blew up—when you mentioned about Clive—it seemed better to head you off. We were married, that was all that mattered. There’d been a fraud, but it was over. Nobody’d benefited from it but me—and I was going to pay the money back. What was the use of making trouble between him and you?’’
‘‘Very considerate to him.”
‘‘It was meant to be considerate to you. Can’t you see that?’’
‘‘So that when Mr. Jerome came along, you let me find out about him the hard way.”
Her head came up. ‘‘Do you seriously think that?’’
After a minute I said: ‘‘No. No, of course not.”
‘‘Heavens, I’d no idea Clive would mix himself up in blackmail. I’ve always thought him a light-weight—not above earning a few dishonest pounds, perhaps—but this … It’s in another class. It’s out of character. Or it’s out of the character I gave him.”
‘‘And Ambrosine?’’
‘‘That was another reason: She’d always been in love with Tracey; and somehow, to her, selling the pictures couldn’t have been more than a—an act of friendship … particularly if it excluded me.” Sarah stirred. ‘‘At least that’s what I thought. Now I don’t know what to think.”
‘‘Well,’’ I said. ‘‘We’ll find out to-night.”
‘‘What are you going to do?’’
‘‘Call on him.”
‘‘What will you say?’’
‘‘Something lacking in culture. I haven’t yet learned to meet my troubles with a stiff upper lip.”
She said: ‘‘Oh, don’t, darling, please …”
The waiter came across, and we picked through the rest of the meal.
She said: ‘‘You make me feel that not only have I brought all this nastiness on you but that I’ve failed you in common loyalty.”
‘‘I didn’t mean that. It’s only that I’m a bit on edge. But things have somehow got out of hand to-day.”
‘‘I can’t help thinking about it. I swear I never connected Clive with Mr. Jerome. Even now I wonder if there’s someone behind Clive. It seems … You do believe me, don’t you?’’
Our eyes met. ‘‘Yes,’’ I said.
‘‘You see,’’ she said carefully, ‘‘ I feel if I did ever let you down it still wouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you. Or to part of you, the part we were talking about not very long ago. And I should hate that more than anything at all.”
She drove because she knew the way. I thought of that other time, years ago, when she had driven me through the dark. And the thought was comforting, because in the middle of all this mess she was beside me, and somehow we had come all this way together; and everything was changed from that other time and changed in a way I hadn’t thought possible. But I was annoyed with myself for having let a shadow of that time creep back to-day—and, more important, come between us for a minute to-night. It was the one thing it mustn’t ever do.
We didn’t talk much. What we might have to say seemed unimportant until after this interview with Clive. It wasnt half-past nine when she drew up near a biggish sort of cottage.
‘‘There’s no light in his studio. That’s at the back. But I think that’s some sort of light in the front, isn’t it?’’
‘‘You stay here. I’ll go along and have a chat.”
‘‘Oh, no.” She opened her door. ‘‘I’ll come with you.”
There was no doubting what she felt, so I didn’t argue. We walked through the drizzling rain up to the door and I lifted the knocker once or twice.
Sarah fidgeted with her gloves, and somewhere in the house a door banged. Then there were footsteps. The door came open and a woman with untidy grey hair looked out.
Sarah said: ‘‘Good evening, Mrs. Payne. Is Mr. Fisher in?’’ The woman stared at her. ‘‘ Oh, it’s young Mrs. Moreton, isn’t
it? Good evening, madam. I’m sorry, Mr. Fisher’s gone abroad.”
‘‘Abroad? When did be go?’’
‘‘About a week ago. I think it was Madeira, on one of those
cruises; but I couldn’t be sure. He didn’t leave an address.”
Sarah glanced at me. ‘‘And Miss Fisher?’’
‘‘She’s in Scotland, ma’am, staying with the Dundonalds. She’s
been up there since August.”
A black cat came round the door and rubbed itself against Sarah’s
legs.
I said: ‘‘Surely if Mr. Fisher was going away for some time he’d
leave you word where to find him.”
Mrs. Payne looked at me. ‘‘Mr. Fisher does what he pleases, I’m
only the housekeeper, and it isn’t for me to tell him what he should
do.”
‘‘Where do you forward his letters?’’
‘‘They’re all here.” She made a backward movement with her
hand. ‘‘ Sorry, I can’t help you.”
I said: ‘‘I happen to know Mr. Fisher’s in England.”
‘‘What you happen to know or don’t happen to know is no
concern of mine. I’m only telling you what he told me.”
The door was beginning to close. I stopped it. ‘‘May we come
in?’’
‘‘Here! … What’s the idea! Really.… Mrs. Moreton, I never
thought——’’
We went in.
Sarah said: ‘‘His studio’s at the back—up those stairs.”
‘‘Well, I’ve never been so insulted in my life!
If you don’t go at
once I shall phone the police!’’
On a brass tray on an antique chest was a pile of letters addressed
to him. Three-quarters of them looked like bills. The dates on the
stamps covered most of the last ten days.
The woman came up to me. ‘‘Get out of this house at once!
D’you hear me? Get out!’’
I looked over her head at Sarah. ‘‘Is there anywhere we can put
her?’’
‘‘There’s a cloakroom here,’’ Sarah said. ‘‘ It hasn’t got an outside window.”
‘‘Lay a finger on me and I’ll scream the place down,’’ Mrs. Payne said, backing away.
‘‘Open the door,’’ I said to Sarah, and went after the woman.
The minute I laid a hand on her arm she turned and slapped me hard in the face and let out the most piercing scream I’ve ever heard in my life. It just wasn’t human. I dragged her, kicking at my shins, to the cloakroom and pushed her in. Sarah, who had taken the key from the inside, shut the door quickly and locked it.
I said: ‘‘ Well done!’’
She said: ‘‘I don’t want to let you down again.”
I stopped at the foot of the stairs and came back to her. ‘‘Look, darling: you’ve never let me down. I know that.”
I kissed her but she didn’t smile.
The studio was a big new room with a glass roof and an Egyptian fresco scene on the walls more sharp-elbowed than anything at the Pyramids. A half-finished painting on the main easel wasn’t recognizable. There were two or three steel chairs, an Indian circular table, canvases in a corner and a few modellings of sub-human life in bronze. I put my finger on the table and it came away dusty.
I said: ‘‘Will anybody hear her? It sounds as if we’re killing pigs.”
‘‘There’s another cottage down the road. We’d better not be long.”
There didn’t seem to be anything in the room that was going to help, but I went across to the stacked canvases and looked through them. I suppose it was expecting too much that he should have left any sort of ready-made proof lying about. The only thing of any significance was a folder of photographs of paintings, presumably taken by himself or some other amateur, and among them was a photograph, exact size, of the small Watteau that had hung in the living-room at Lowis. I detached it from the rest.
‘‘There’s this,’’ said Sarah, as I straightened up.
She’d been looking among a pile of books on a chair and the book she held out was titled: ‘‘Art and the Cubists’’ by Valentine Roget. I didn’t see the point until she showed me the name on the fly leaf. Vere Litchen.
Outside, the woman had gone quiet for a minute. I said: ‘‘Where’s his bedroom?’’
‘‘Round the corner. I’ll show you. I’m afraid we’ve drawn a blank.”
She went to the door, and I was following her when I caught sight of something in an ashtray on the table. I glanced up quickly at Sarah, but she was already going out. I slipped the thing into my pocket and followed her.
His bedroom had striped yellow wallpaper and maroon silk curtains. It didn’t look as if it had been used for a week or so, and it’s hard to fake that feel of unoocupancy. There was a desk, and I fingered through some cheque stubs, but for me the zest had gone completely out of the search.
I said: ‘‘Did he ever speak to you of going abroad?’’
‘‘No. But he has done this before, when he’s been short of money—left his house and gone where his creditors couldn’t find him.”
The woman began again. I said: ‘‘We’d better cut it and go. I don’t want another brush with the police.”
We went back into the hall. ‘‘You’re not going to leave her locked in?’’
‘‘No. You go to the car and start it. When I hear the engine I’ll turn the key and come.”
‘‘Right,’’ she said, and went.
Mrs. Payne stopped as suddenly as she’d begun. It was queer standing there in the hall in the sudden silence. I thought of talking to her, trying to ask her about this thing that I’d found, but somehow I knew it was no use. She’d never open her mouth to me except to scream. I was glad when the hum of the car came and I could unlock the door and go.
The thing I’d found made me feel rather sick. It was a half-smoked herbal cigarette.
Chapter Twenty Four
I felt ill that week-end. I felt as if I’d got an incurable disease. Sarah tried to persuade me out of it, but she thought I was only worrying about the row with McDonald and the visit of Detective Sergeant Barnes and the fact that we couldn’t trace Clive. It was enough, but it wasn’t what was upsetting me.
I didn’t go down to the office on the Saturday morning. I helped Sarah move our belongings from the hotel and I brought my things along from the flat in George Street. In the ordinary way this would have been an exciting week-end; our first move into a place of our own. But now it all seemed perfunctory, as if it had no meaning at all. I went through it in a sort of bad dream.
All the troubles that had come on Sarah and me since our return from Paris had been outside us; except possibly for a minute or two on Friday evening, the danger of them, the worry of them had brought us closer together. But this was something quite different.
Sunday we spent mostly calling at people’s houses, people Sarah knew who might know where Clive had gone; but we got no proof that he was not on his way to Madeira. One man said that he had definitely left on the last Tuesday in October. The first house we called at, of course, was Vere Litchen’s, but the place was locked up and the curtains drawn. I wondered if she had gone with him. Sarah said she wasn’t giving up but would carry on all through the week while I was at the office.
On the Monday there was a bit of an atmosphere at Abercrombies, and in the afternoon the Old Man sent for me.
He was quite cordial, and we talked over the Collandi case to begin. Then after one or two throat clearings he said:
‘‘By the way, I believe there was some sort of fracas between yourself and Fred McDonald on Friday.”
‘‘Yes.… I knocked him down.”
‘‘It’s all more than unfortunate, of course. McDonald’s one of my oldest business friends.”
‘‘I’m very sorry. He made a damned unpleasant remark to me, and I lost my temper.”
The Old Man got up and went to the window and polished his spectacles, but he didn’t speak.
I said: ‘‘ I suppose you’ll have heard this rumour that’s going around.”
‘‘I’ve heard something, yes. The implications naturally distressed me—as they would you. But unless there is something very much more concrete——’’
‘‘I hold McDonald responsible for starting it. That was why I cut up rough so quickly.”
‘‘Have you any reason to be certain that he did start it?’’
‘‘Not certain. I’m pretty sure.”
The telephone rang, and Mr. Abercrombie got side-tracked for a minute or two. When he put the thing down he picked up a pencil and twisted it round and round in his fingers.
I said: ‘‘I’ve been thinking seriously this week-end whether you’d like me to resign from the firm.”
He didn’t look up. ‘‘Don’t be absurd, Oliver. We must keep this thing in its proper proportions. A malicious rumour—a hasty quarrel, they can’t be allowed to ruin a man’s career.”
I thought he spoke just a bit too quickly, as if perhaps he’d used the arguments already, to himself. I said: ‘‘It won’t exactly attract business if you employ a man who’s under suspicion for fraud and then uses a thick-ear technique to defend himself.”
‘‘The thing will blow over. It must blow over. I’m going to see McDonald to-morrow morning to discuss it in a friendly way. The first thing is to get him to withdraw this absurd charge. If we——’’
‘‘Charge?’’
‘‘Yes.… Haven’t you seen Michael? Oh, dear. I thought that was what you w
ere talking about.… McDonald has complained of your conduct to the council of the Fire Loss Adjusters.”
In the main office a typewriter was clacking.
‘‘What does that amount to? What’s the complaint?’’
‘‘That you used insulting language to him and knocked him down. As I expect you know, a sub-committee exists to consider any breaches of the rules by members of the association; but of course its purpose isn’t really to consider this sort of complaint at all, and he ought to have known it.”
I said: ‘‘ Probably he did; but he reasoned if an inquiry got started, all the rest of the dirty linen would come out too.”
‘‘I hoped there was no dirty linen to come out,’’ Mr. Abercrombie said dryly. ‘‘Anyway we must put a stop to this business before it gets out of hand. I shall see McDonald and if necessary his general manager and make him see sense.”
I got up to go. At the door I turned and said: ‘‘One thing I’d like to make clear. I’m not going to let Abercrombies take the rap on my account. Any headaches that may be about are mine alone and I don’t intend that any of my friends should share them.”
The Old Man frowned. ‘‘That’s all right, Oliver. I know how you feel. But I’m quite sure that you’ve done nothing to lower the standards of our profession, so we shall be behind you whether you want it or not.”
‘‘Thank you,’’ I said, feeling about as uncomfortable as I’d ever done in my life, and went out.
I didn’t do any more work that afternoon, I sat at my desk and drew squares and cubes on the blotter with my pencil. I broke the point and sharpened it, but it broke again so I chucked it in the waste-paper basket. About five I went home and found Sarah in, and looking rather troubled.
‘‘Any luck?’’
‘‘No,’’ she said. ‘‘I went to his bank but they couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me anything. Then I went to the shop in Grafton Street where sometimes he has a picture on show, but they hadn’t seen him for two months. After that I called at the London agents of the Venus—you know, that motor ship the goes to Madeira—but he hadn’t been on either of the last voyages, at least, not under his own name. The same at the Union Castle office. I’ll try the air lines to-morrow. On the way home I called at Vere Litchen’s again, but there was no sign of life. I made one or two inquiries; nobody seems to know much about her.… Since I got home I’ve been looking for Trixie.”