Blindfold (6 page)

Flossie passed quickly to the next page.

“That's my mother,” she said. “D'you think I'm like her? I'm called after her, you know. I don't remember her hardly at all. I'm Florence after her, but they called her Flo, and me Flossie. I like Flossie best—don't you?”

The enamoured Ernie turned a deep puce in reply to this challenge. He squeezed the hand which he found conveniently near his own and said nothing. Neither of them noticed that Mrs Palmer had stopped knitting. Her lips were pressed together. She was frowning as if she had dropped a stitch. Presently the needles clicked again.

“My dad was killed in the war, you know,” pursued Flossie. “No, of course I don't remember him! Coo, Ernie—however old d'you think I am? That's my mother's photograph we've been looking at, not me! See that brooch she's got on? Ever so pretty it was—two hearts twined together, a white one and a blue one, pearl and turquoise. I had it stolen in my first place. Wasn't it a shame? So now I've only got these old beads that I've wore and wore till I'm sick of them.”

“I like them,” said the infatuated Ernie.

Flossie tossed her head and fingered the beads. Her bright pink dress was upstairs in a drawer. She wouldn't have dared to wear it under Aunt's eye. She had on a dark blue jumper suit in which she looked very pretty indeed. It threw up her fair, bright tints and the whiteness of her skin. She looked down at the beads with discontent.

“They'd be all right if they were white,” she said. “I'd like a nice white pearl string—it'd suit me. I'd have thrown these old grey things away long ago if they hadn't been my mother's. Dingy, I call them. Look here, this photo's slipped. I'll have to pull it out or it won't go in straight.”

The photo showed a buxom middle-aged woman in an outdoor coat and an excruciatingly unbecoming hat. The hat dominated the picture. It was trimmed with about a dozen yards of ribbon and a whole pheasant. Its forward tilt obscured the sitter's features and gave the impression that it had just fallen upon her head.

“Coo!” said Flossie, giggling. “Who's this Aunt?” She held the photo out, saw as she turned it that there was something written on the back, and read aloud: “‘Yours truly, Agnes Smith'. Who's that, Aunt?”

“Why, your Aunt Ag of course. You ought to know that, Flossie, I must say. Flo's own half-sister Ag.”

“Well, it says Agnes Smith. Ooh!” Flossie's finger tightened on the old
carte-de-visite
. She turned it over and stared at the high-sleeved coat, the plump featureless face, and the hat with its load of millinery. She had a funny giddy feeling as if she were in two places at once, because whilst she looked at the photograph here in Aunt's warm parlour, she had the cold taste of fog in her mouth and she could hear Mr Miles saying “‘Please send money for funeral expenses and my account and oblige yours truly Agnes Smith'.” It was really a very horrid sort of feeling.

“What's the matter?” said Ernie in what he intended for a whisper.

Flossie caught her breath.

“Nothing. Aunt Ag's name isn't Smith, Aunt? It's never been Smith since I heard tell of her.” She dragged her eyes away from the photograph and fixed them upon Aunt's unresponsive profile.

Without looking up from her knitting, Mrs Palmer said,

“Well then, you don't know everything, though I've no doubt you think you do.”

“Was her name Smith, Aunt?”

“For about twenty years it was—and a bad bargain she had. Had to leave him in the end and keep herself letting apartments. Then he died and she married again, and how she'd the courage, I don't know. You'd think one man would be enough for any woman, let alone one like Jacob Smith. But there—she'd not been a widow a twelve-month before she married again. Put the photograph back tidy, Flossie, and don't bend the corners.” Mrs Palmer's needles clicked vigorously. “Why any woman born wants a man tracking dirt into her house, coming in all hours with muddy feet, and as like as not smelling of drink and tobacco, passes me.”

Flossie turned the page. She didn't want to talk about yours truly Agnes Smith. She wanted to get away from her. She nudged Ernie with her elbow and said daringly,

“Ooh! What about Syd?”

Mrs Palmer's face relaxed. She did not actually smile, but she came within measurable distance of it. The locket which reposed upon her cream lace front contained two photographs of Syd, one taken at the age of four, and the other on his twenty-first birthday a couple of months ago. In the former he had long curling fair hair and a white muslin frock. In the latter he had rather the air of a girl dressed up in her brother's clothes. Mrs Palmer had brought him up as much like a girl as possible. He had studious tastes, which he was able to gratify, as he worked in a bookshop. She certainly never thought of him as a man. He was her Syd, and the core of her heart.

“Syd's different,” she said, and with that the door opened and Syd came in.

He was not much taller than Flossie, and his complexion was almost as pink and white as hers. He came in now more quickly than usual and shut the door.

Mrs Palmer put down her knitting and looked anxiously at him.

“What's the matter, Syd?”

“Haven't you heard—about Ivy Hodge? Haven't you heard anything?”

“Coo!” said Flossie. “She hasn't broke it off with Billy again, has she? Anyhow, Syd, if she has, she won't take you, so you don't need to get all worked up about it.”

Mrs Palmer frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but Syd got in first.

“Haven't you
heard?”
he said again in his rather high voice.

Flossie pushed back her chair and got up.

“Ooh, Syd—what's happened?” she said. “Don't say anything dreadful's happened—not to Ivy!”

Syd nodded. He was still standing by the door, his face working and his colour coming and going.

“They found her in the river,” he whispered.

Flossie caught hold of Ernie, not because he was Ernie, but because he was there. She hadn't ever fainted, but she felt as if she were going to faint. She heard Aunt say, “She isn't dead!” And then Syd had tumbled into a chair and was sitting with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands and saying,

“They don't know whether she'll get over it. Mrs Hodge doesn't think she will.” He began to cry in a gentle girlish way. “She's got a knock on the head and she was nearly drowned. And the police have been asking where Billy was. Isn't it dreadful? Poor Ivy, I always liked her. Mrs Hodge says she won't ever get over it.”

Mrs Palmer bent over him, patting a heaving shoulder.

“Now, Syd, don't you take on so. And don't you talk to me about Mrs Hodge. Makes up her mind to the worst before anything's happened—that's Mrs Hodge. I haven't patience! Where's Ivy? In hospital? Then you'll see she'll be all right. Flossie, don't you stand there holding on to Mr Bowden like that! It's what I call right down forward. Now, Syd, Mother will make you a nice cup of tea and you'll be quite all right.”

She went out to fill the kettle.

Syd pushed back his long fair hair and looked tearfully at Flossie.

“Isn't it dreadful, Floss?” he said with a catch in his voice.

“Suppose it had been me,”
said Flossie in a sort of horrified whisper.

CHAPTER VIII

Miles Clayton put two advertisements in the papers and sat down to wait for possible answers.

Mrs Agnes Smith, formerly of Laburnum Vale, Hampstead, believed to have married again, and Ada—, formerly in service with the above, were requested to communicate with M. C. Box 150.

The advertisements came out on Tuesday. On Wednesday Gilmore took him to dine with his brother Freddy and his brother Freddy's pretty new wife. Miles and the two Gilmores had been at school together. He found Mrs Freddy an engaging child of nature with a rolling blue eye and an amazing collection of other people's confidences. She retailed them with extreme candour and a wealth of sympathy. Miles liked her, but couldn't help wondering how long it would be before she landed Freddy head over ears in a libel action.

They had a pleasant little dinner, perfectly cooked and deftly served by two very decorative maids in scarlet. The table and chairs were of glass, semi-opaque and icy looking, with a concession to the climate in the shape of scarlet velvet cushions to the backless chairs. Floor, ceiling, and walls were a dull, lustreless black against which Mrs Freddy's lacquered gold hair and alabaster skin, her scarlet mouth and finger-nails, were all most flatteringly relieved. She looked like a poet's dream of a poster, and talked like the gossip page of a Society paper. It was quite entertaining.

The prettier of the scarlet maids was filling his glass, when Mrs Freddy, with both elbows on the table and a cigarette lightly diffusing smoke over an already sufficiently flavoured omelette, addressed him in a low pulsing voice as “Darling Miles.”

Flossie Palmer so nearly said “Coo!” that she turned hot and cold and her knees shook under her. With great self-control she kept her hand steady and filled the glass without spilling a drop.

“Darling Miles,”
said Mrs Freddy—“you've been too utterly exiled, but I thought
everyone
must have heard about Moldavia and the Grand Duke. He's one of my very
greatest
friends, and he told me he had practically ruined himself buying her the Ethnovinsky pearls. Fancy being able to feel you were going about with a man's
whole
fortune round your neck! Too
marvellous!
Freddy, my sweet,
won't
you ruin yourself—just to give me the thrill of feeling you
cared
enough to do it?”

Freddy, a cheerful thick-set young man with steady good-natured eyes, kissed his hand to her across the table.

“Nothing doing, darling.”

The blue eyes rolled mournfully.

“He hasn't got any soul,” she said. She puffed at her cigarette and the ash fell into her plate. “If anyone
does
want to ruin themselves for me, let it be black pearls—that's all I ask. Too marvellous on my skin, wouldn't they be? A long rope, you know, hanging down over something very filmy—not quite white—something like what I've got on.”

“Miles is looking for a string of black pearls,” said the elder Gilmore with a sardonic gleam in his eye. “If he gets them, you can vamp him for them, or steal them and put up Freddy to take the blame. I daresay he'd go to prison for you at a pinch. Lila.”

The blue eyes rolled again.

“Would you, my sweet?”

“No, I wouldn't,” said Freddy. “So you'd better not try it on, darling.”

Lila Gilmore turned her attention to Miles.

“You know, when Narina Littlecote sold her sister-in-law's rubies, there was a most terrible fuss. Narina told me
all
about it afterwards. She said no one had any idea
how
unkind Victoria had been. She said if it had been her, she'd have been only too glad to think the wretched things were being some use instead of just lying in a safe. Because you know, my dear,
really
they were
too
archaic—an absolutely pre-Edwardian necklace, with great vulgar lumps of stones plastered on with diamonds. And to think of Victoria ever wearing it
positively
made one blush. Well, as Narina said, it really was doing her a kindness—and Victoria was downright disagreeable about it. Why are you looking for a string of black pearls? What are you going to do with them when you've found them? You know, if you haven't got the right skin for pearls, they make you look too,
too
repellent.”

“I wasn't thinking of wearing them myself,” said Miles, laughing.

“Darling Miles, you'd look
sweet!
Perhaps just a shade too bronzed, but I expect you had a quite too marvellous complexion when you were a baby. Tell me all about the pearls. Ian and Freddy can talk to each other. Is it a real string? Has it been stolen? Are you being Miles Clayton, the marvellous sleuth? Pearls are the hardest things to trace of all. Do you know how many there are?”

As it happened Miles did know. Both Marion Macintyre's women friends had been able to tell him the number of pearls in that envied rope. He ignored the other questions and said,

“Three hundred.”

Lila drew an ecstatic breath.

“Casilda only has two hundred in hers! Three hundred would go at least twice round and hang right down! Wouldn't I look
marvellous
in them? Darling Miles, if I were to be frightfully nice to you, would you
give
them to me?”

“I haven't found them yet,” said Miles. “And as they were stolen twenty years ago, I don't suppose I ever shall—and if I do, they won't be mine.”

Lila sighed.

“And most likely some frightful old hag with a yellow neck is wearing them, and looking
too
foul for words.” She took another little puff at her cigarette and some more ash fell.

Freddy burst out laughing.

“Did you ever see anyone smoke like Lila?” he said. “You know, darling, I don't know why you do it. You hate the taste, you make silly little puffs, and you cover everything with ash.”

Lila nodded mournfully.

“But Fitz gave me such a pet of a holder for Christmas—I've just got to use it, my sweet. Fitz would be most
awfully
hurt if I didn't.”

They played bridge after dinner. Flossie Palmer, looking across at Miles as she helped the parlour-maid to set out drinks, thought him “ever so nice.” She was now quite certain that he was the Mr Miles whom she had snuggled up to in the fog on the Embankment. It gave her a most romantic secret thrill to think she had leaned her head upon his shoulder. She'd pinched his arm too, good and hard. A shiver went over her. She let two glasses touch one another with a sharp ringing sound. The parlour-maid nudged her, and her colour rose.