Blindfold (11 page)

But he hadn't laughed because he felt like laughing. He was thinking that Flossie Palmer hadn't invented the mirror. And Flossie Palmer said that she had seen a gaping hole within the wide gilt frame—a gaping hole with a frame round it—and something else so frightening that she had then and there run out of the house into the fog.… The thought of Kay in the house from which Flossie had fled filled him with disquiet. It also filled him with an unreasonable resentment against the very pleasant and agreeable Captain Grey who had married his sister Kitty and taken her out to India. If Kitty had been available, he could have insisted on Kay leaving 16 Varley Street immediately. Kitty being some thousands of miles away and no longer of the least use, he racked his brains in vain for a substitute. He had two aunts and a sprinkling of cousins, but as far as Kay was concerned they were a wash-out. The aunts were his father's sisters, and they had always deplored what they called “dear Eleanor's vagaries”. He blenched at the thought of explaining Kay to them. The cousins he remembered as pretty, conventional girls entirely taken up with their own affairs. His thought glanced at Lila Gilmore, only to provoke him to rueful laughter at his own expense. Besides, Kay and Flossie under the same roof—He thought not.

He found Kay looking at him as if she would like to know what he was thinking about. He would have liked to tell her too, but he restrained himself. Instead he asked her,

“Who was the fellow you wouldn't go out with?”

Kay flushed.

“I don't know.”

“But he called you Kay.”

“I know he did—but I don't know him all the same.”

“Do you mean you've never seen him before, or just that you don't want to know him?”

“I've never seen him before—at least—I don't think so—” Her voice faltered a little on the last words.

“Well?” said Miles. “What about it?”

He saw a distressed look come into her eyes. She said,

“Miles—he said he knew Aunt Rhoda. You know, she did have some horrid friends. I
might
have seen him—long ago—because just in the middle of saying I didn't know him a horrid sort of feeling came over me as if I was just going to remember something. I think it was his eyes—he had such horrid eyes.”

Miles was thinking that Aunt Rhoda's friends seemed to be rather too much in evidence. Here was Kay newly come to London, and Nurse Long, who had known Aunt Rhoda, came visiting at the house of Kay's employers and offered to find her a place. And after taking that place another of Aunt Rhoda's friends turns up on her first afternoon out and makes a nuisance of himself. Strange ubiquity of Aunt Rhoda's friends. Why on earth couldn't Kitty have stayed in England? He frowned, and asked,

“What was the fellow's name? Did he say?”

“He said it was Harris,” said Kay doubtfully. Then she laughed. “Oh, Miles, do you know what that reminds me of? Kitty and me reading
Martin Chuzzlewit
out loud, and your mother telling us what to skip, and Mrs Gamp always talking about Mrs Harris.”

Miles laughed too.

“‘I don't believe there's no such person,'” he quoted.

Kay nodded earnestly.

“That's just what I think about
him
,” she said.

CHAPTER XIV

When Mr Harris walked away he went on walking until he reached the Square. Varley Street runs into it at the right-hand corner. Mr Harris turned to the right, which took him out of the Square into Little Banham Street. Almost at once he turned to the right again, and entered Barnabas Row, which runs parallel with Varley Street.

Barnabas Row is one of those odd streets which are to be found here and there in London. They contain a little of everything, like a village street, and are in fact survivals from an earlier day when a great deal of what is now London clustered about the city as village or hamlet.

Barnabas Row begins with a modern house or two, dwindles into a line of old mews, part of which has been turned into a garage, and continues by way of some small shops, a rickety warehouse, and a row of very archaic cottages to its lower end, where it breaks into shops again. The garage is on the right, backing upon Varley Street. Mr Harris entered it.

A little later he was in conversation with Nurse Long in that L-shaped drawing-room with the wine-coloured velvet curtains, the Victorian furniture, and the handsomely framed mirror so faithfully described by Flossie Palmer. Mr Harris was leaning against the mantelpiece, and Nurse Long was sitting in a very unprofessional attitude on the arm of one of the rather uncomfortable easy chairs. Her cap was pushed back to show a line of reddish hair. Her rather pale and indeterminate features wore a decidedly unamiable expression. She was smoking a cigarette in a series of short angry puffs, and between each puff and the next she had something to say.

“You would do it.… I told you it wouldn't come off.… She's not that sort of girl … I told you she wasn't.”

Mr Harris spoke in a cold, displeased voice.

“That'll be enough about that! You make me tired!”

Nurse Long laughed.

“And what about me? I told you you were going to muff it. I didn't want her here, but you would have it. It's dangerous—I've said so all along. If anyone's looking for her, you don't want them coming here, do you?”

“They won't come here,” said Mr Harris.

“Says you!” said Nurse Long.

“Why should they?” said Mr Harris. “That trail's lost—years ago.”

She finished her cigarette and lit another.

“Lost trails can be found again,” she said. “Besides, how do you know that it's lost? If we could keep track of her, so could other people. I never did trust Rhoda Moore.”

Mr Harris looked as if this amused him.

“Do you know, I seem to have heard that before.”

A little colour came into her pale face.

“And you'll hear it again if I feel like it. Rhoda'd got her own game, and she'd only play yours as long as it suited her. I've always said so, and I've never come across anything to make me change my mind. What did she go dodging about all over the map for if it wasn't to cover her tracks? You told me yourself there were years when she'd given you the slip and you didn't know where she was.”

Mr Harris laughed. It was not an attractive laugh.

“You needn't get excited. I knew all I wanted to know. If I'd wanted Rhoda or the girl, I could have found them—but I didn't happen to want them—then.”

“Well, whether you wanted her or not, for all you know, Rhoda was double-crossing you. That's my point—she didn't go hiding like that for nothing.”

“She wanted to keep the girl. She was crazy about her. Queer how it gets people. Of course she's a taking little thing—always was. But that's neither here nor there. She's a good business proposition, and that's what interests me.”

Her voice was sharp with sudden anger.

“What's the good of talking to me like that? If you think it takes me in, it doesn't—so there! The beginning and end of it is that you've taken one of your fancies, and I'm telling you straight out that you're asking for trouble. Go after any girl in London you like, but leave this one alone! Don't try and mix business and pleasure, or you'll come a most almighty smash. I don't care who you take up with, but we don't want any more girls running out of the house in a fright.”

“Chuck it!” said Mr Harris. “We've had all this out before! I'm not doing anything in the house, am I? No, my next move will be to write her a charming little note. Apologies for having startled her, reminiscences of dear Rhoda—and what do you think of a reference to her mother?—a hint perhaps of an old romance. That always goes down with a good girl—and you say she's a good girl.”

Nurse Long nodded.

“Then she ought to be easy,” said Mr Harris. “As a matter of fact, Addie, you're wrong about my fancy. She's all right, and I'd sooner she was pretty than plain, but I've not gone off the deep end about her.” He laughed a little. “Is it likely? No, this is business—big business, Addie. In certain circumstances, my dear, my intentions will be strictly honourable. Meanwhile, I'm not committing myself. But I want her here, and I'm going to get friendly.”

Nurse Long laughed, a short disagreeable laugh. Then quite suddenly she shivered, knocked the ash off her cigarette, and jumped up.

“I wish you wouldn't look at me like that!” she said.

Mr Harris did not remove his pale stare.

“You know, Addie,” he said, “some day you'll vex me. I shouldn't wonder if it wasn't some day soon.” He shrugged his shoulders very slightly. “I shouldn't if I were you. No, I shouldn't.”

CHAPTER XV

Miles Clayton found a batch of letters waiting for him when he got back to his hotel. They were mostly from people who wanted him to dine with them or lunch with them. There was one from each of his aunts. There was one from the girl who had refused him three years before because, as she said, you really can't live on six hundred a year. She was now married to something a good deal nearer six thousand. Her name was Angela, and she doesn't come into this story.

Miles laughed and frowned a little. He would certainly dine with Angela. For the last two years and nine months approximately he had thought of her with relief and gratitude. She might have accepted him.

He took up the next letter, which was pale blue and of a heady fragrance. He was about ten years too old to be getting a letter like that, he reflected. He wondered who on earth. As he tore open the envelope, a golden forget-me-not winked at him from the top right-hand corner of the sheet inside. He unfolded it and read: “Dear Mr Miles.” It was Flossie.

“Dear Mr Miles,

When we were talking I quite forgot there was something I was going to tell you. It is about yours sincerely Agnes Smith, and I would of told you only for being all upset about Ivy which put it out of my head. No more now and hoping you are well.”

From

Flossie Palmer.

P.S. I've got my evening out to-day Thursday and if you get this in time Ernie will be bringing me back p.m. half past nine and if I explain he won't mind waiting by the pillar-box down at the church end of the street.”

“Flossie.”

This was Thursday. Miles looked at his watch. He and Kay had had tea and done a cinema together. She had refused to dine with him and he had just taken her back to Varley Street. It was half past eight. He could do it all right.

Then he burst out laughing. Life was becoming one giddy whirl of assignations with house-parlour-maids. But behold the rigid propriety of Flossie. A chaperone was to be provided. Ernie the boy friend would be there.

He went off to get something to eat, humming under his breath

“Then, just when I least expected it,

I met you.”

The church end of Merriton Street was easily found, because the church clock was striking the half hour as Miles approached. A street-lamp marked the corner, and under the lamp stood Flossie Palmer with her hands linked about the arm of a very large young man in a dark overcoat. She displayed complete self-possession, introduced Mr Bowden, and got down at once to business.

“I've told Ernie how you're looking for a young lady, Mr Miles, and of course he says anything we can do to help he's only too willing—aren't you, Ernie?”

Mr Ernest Bowden did not convey the impression that he was bursting with a desire to be helpful. Flossie went on without waiting for him to speak.

“I've told Ernie about the letter from the lady that signed herself ‘Yours truly Agnes Smith', and it's being her rooms that the baby was born in, so he knows all that. And only last Saturday Aunt let me have him to tea, and there we sat looking at her old photograph album, and coo—if some of the people weren't a scream! However they could have worn the things they did! Well, there was one I'd forgotten who it was, so I took it out and turned it round, because most of them are wrote on, and sure enough this one was. And when I saw what was wrote on it I remembered what you said, because there it was, just the same, ‘Yours truly Agnes Smith.'”

“What?”
said Miles.

Flossie was enjoying herself very much indeed. Two young men were hanging on her words, Ernie just about as jealous as he could be, and Mr Miles regular worked up.

“‘Yours truly Agnes Smith,'” she repeated. “Wasn't it, Ernie?” She pinched Mr Bowden suddenly and hard on the inside of the arm. The monosyllabic grunt which he emitted
might
have been taken as corroboration, but the only thing it really conveyed was that Mr Bowden was in a very bad temper.

“You're sure?” said Miles. “What an extraordinary thing!”

“Ooh! Isn't it?” said Flossie. “And I said to Aunt at once—she was there all the time, never left us a minute, did she, Ernie?—I said at once, ‘Aunt, who's this?' And she said, ‘Why, that's your Aunt Ag.' Didn't she, Ernie?” She pinched his arm again and he withdrew it, this time in sulky silence.

“Your aunt?” said Miles.

“Aunt Ag,” said Flossie. “And Smith was her first husband's name, and I s'pose I must of heard it, but it had gone clean out of my head. And she's my mother's own sister and a nearer relation than Aunt, who was only a sister-in-law, her and my mother being married to brothers, and my father killed in the war so Aunt brought me up.”

Palmer—Palmer.… Light broke in on Miles. Miss Collins, the little dressmaker, had mentioned a sister of Mrs Smith's called Flo Palmer. He said the name out loud.

“Flo Palmer—Is that your mother's name, Flossie?”

“Ooh—yes, Mr Miles! I'm Flossie after her. Short for Florence, you know, same as Flo. Only I think Flossie's prettier—don't you?”

If Ernie was going to make a show of himself and forget his manners, she'd give him something to be jealous for. She giggled a little consciously and raised her large blue eyes to Miles' face. It was perhaps fortunate that he was at the moment much more interested in a previous generation. He asked quickly,