Elk 02 The Joker (11 page)

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he broke in again. ‘Send the bill: I’ll settle it. Good morning.’

She hung up with a little smile, relieved of the necessity for another interview.

There were times when Aileen Rivers was extremely grateful that no drop of Arthur Ingle’s blood ran in her veins.

He had married her mother’s first cousin, and the avuncular relationship was largely a complimentary one. She felt the need of emphasizing this fact upon Jim Carlton when he called that night - a very welcome visit, though he made it clear to her that the pleasure of seeing her again was not his sole object.

He had come to make inquiries which were a little inconsequent, she thought, about Mrs Gibbins. He seemed particularly anxious to know something about her nature, her qualities as a worker, and her willingness to undertake tasks which are as a rule outside the duties of a charwoman.

She answered every question carefully and exactly, and when her examination had been completed: ‘I won’t ask you why you want to know all this,’ she said, because I am sure that you must have a very good reason for asking. But I thought the case was finished?’

He shook his head. ‘No murder is finished until the assassin is caught,’ he said simply.

‘It was murder?’

‘I think so - Elk doesn’t. Even the doctors at the inquest disagreed. There is just a remote possibility that it may have been an accident.’ And then blandly: ‘How is your attentive fellow-boarder?’

‘Oh, Mr Brown?’ she said with a smile. ‘I don’t know what has happened, but since I spoke to you I’ve hardly seen him. Yes, he is still staying at the house.’

His visit was disappointingly short, though in reality she should not have been disappointed, because she had brought home a lot of work from the office - Mr Stebbings was preparing his annual audit, and she had enough to keep her occupied till midnight. Yet she experienced a little twinge of unhappiness when Jim Carlton took an abrupt adieu.

Though in no mood for work, she sat at her table until one o’clock, then, putting down her pen, opened the window and leaned out, inhaling the cold night air. The sky was clear and frosty; there was not a suspicion of the fog which had been predicted by the evening newspapers; and Coram Street was singularly peaceful and soothing. From time to time there came a distant whirr of wheels as cars and taxis passed along Theobald’s Road, but this was the only jar in the harmony of silence. It was one of London’s quiet nights.

She looked up and down the street - the deserted pavement was very inviting. She was stiff and cramped through sitting too long in one position, and a quarter of an hour’s walk was not only desirable, but necessary, she decided. Putting on her coat, she opened the door other room and crept silently down the stairs, not wishing to disturb the other inmates of the house.

At the foot of the first flight of stairs she had a surprise.

The door of the attentive boarder was wide open, and when she came abreast of it she saw him sitting in an armchair, a pipe gripped between his teeth, his hands clasped unromantically across his front and he was nodding sleepily. But she made sufficient noise to rouse him, and suddenly he sat up.

‘Hullo!’ he croaked, in the manner of one awaking from slumber. ‘Are you going out?’

The impertinence of the man took her breath away.

‘I thought of going for a stroll too,’ he said, rising laboriously. ‘I’m not getting enough exercise.’

‘I’m going to post a letter, that is all,’ she said, and had the humiliation of making a pretence to drop an imaginary letter into the pillar-box under his watchful eye.

She brushed past him as he stood in the doorway, blowing great clouds of smoke from his pipe, and almost ran up the stairs, angry with herself that she could allow so insignificant a thing to irritate her.

She did not see the man at breakfast, but as she walked up the steps to the office, she happened to glance round and, to her annoyance, saw him lounging on the corner of the square, apparently interested in nothing but the architecture of the fine old Queen Anne mansion which formed the corner block.

This day was to prove for Aileen Rivers something of an emotional strain. She was clearing up her desk preparatory to leaving the office when Mr Stebbings’s bell rang. She went in with her notebook and pencil.

‘No, no, no letter; I just have a curious request,’ said Mr Stebbings, looking past her. ‘A very curious and yet a very natural request. An old client of mine…his secretary has a sore throat or something. He wanted to know if you’d go round after dinner and take a few letters.’

‘Why certainly, Mr Stebbings,’ she said, surprised that he should be so apologetic.

‘He is not a client of mine now, as I think I’ve told you before,’ the stout Mr Stebbings went on, addressing the chandelier. ‘And I don’t know that I should wish for him to be a client either. Only - ’

‘Mr Harlow?’ she gasped, and he brought his gaze down to her level.

‘Yes, Mr Harlow, 704 Park Lane. Do you mind?’

She shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. She had a struggle before she could agree. ‘Why, of course I’ll go. At what time?’

‘He suggested nine. I said that was rather late, but he told me that he had a dinner engagement. He was most anxious,’ said Mr Stebbings, his eyes returning to the Adam ceiling, ‘that this matter should be kept as quiet as possible.’

‘What matter?’ she asked wonderingly.

‘I don’t know’ - Mr Stebbings could be exasperatingly vague - ‘I rather fancy it may have been the contents of the letter; or, on the other hand, it may have been that he did not wish anybody to know that he had a letter of such importance as would justify the calling in of a special stenographer to deal with it. Naturally I told him he might rely on your discretion…thank you, that is all.’

She went back to her little room with the disquieting thought that she was committed to spend an hour alone with a man who on his last appearance had filled her with terror. She wondered whether she ought to tell Jim Carlton, and then she saw the absurdity of notifying to him every petty circumstance of her life, every coming and going. She knew he did not like Harlow; that he even suspected that splendid man of being responsible for the attack which had been made upon him in Long Acre; and she was the last to feed his prejudices. There were times when she allowed herself the disloyalty of thinking that Jim leaned a little towards sensationalism.

So she sent him no message, and at nine o’clock was ringing at the door of Mr Harlow’s house.

She had not seen him since he came to the flat. Once he had passed her in his car, but only Jim had recognised him.

Aileen was curious to discover whether she would recover that impression of power he had conveyed on the night of his call; whether the same thrill of fear would set her pulses beating faster - or whether on second view he would shrink to the proportions of someone who was just removed from the commonplace.

She had not anticipated that it would be Harlow himself who would open the door to her. He wore a dinner jacket, a pleated silk shirt and round the waist of his well cut trousers a cummerbund of oriental brocade. He looked superb. But the old thrill?…

Without realising her action she shook her head slowly.

His was a tremendous personality, dominating, masterful, sublimely confident. But he was not god-like. Almost she felt disappointed. Yet if he had been the Harlow of her mind it is doubtful whether she would have entered the house.

‘Most good of you!’ He helped her to struggle other heavy coat. ‘And very good of Stebbings! The truth is that my secretary is down with ‘flu and I hate employing people from agencies.’

He opened the door of the library and, entering, stood waiting with the edge of the door in his hand. As she stepped into the library, her foot slipped from under her on the highly-polished floor, and she would have fallen, but he caught her in a grip that was surprisingly fierce. As she recovered, she was facing him, and she saw something like horror in his eyes - just a glimpse, swift to come and go.

‘This floor is dreadful,’ he said jerkily. ‘The men from Herrans should have been here to lay the carpet.’

She uttered an incoherent apology for her clumsiness, but he would not listen.

‘No, no - unless you are used to the trick of walking on it - ’

His concern was genuine, but he made a characteristic recovery.

‘I have a very important letter to write - a most important letter. And I am the worst of writers. Dictation is a cruel habit to acquire - the dictator becomes the slave of his typist!’

His attitude might be described as being generally off-handed. It struck Aileen that he was not at all anxious to impress her. She missed the smirk and the touch of ingratiating pomposity with which the middle-aged business man seeks to establish an impression upon a new and pretty stenographer. In a sense he was brusque, though he was always pleasant. She had the feeling of being put in her place - but it was an exact grading - she was in the place she belonged, no higher, no lower.

‘You have a notebook? Good! Will you sit at my table? I belong to the peripatetic school of dictators. Comfortable? Now - ’

He gave a name and an address, spelling them carefully.

The letter was to a Colonel Harry Mayburgh of 9003 Wall Street.

‘My dear Harry’, he began. The dictation went smoothly from hereon. Harlow’s diction was a little slow but distinct.

He was never once at a loss for a word, nor did he flounder in the morass of parentheses. Towards the end of the letter:

‘…the European situation remains settled and there is every promise of a revival in trade during the next few months. I, for one, will never believe that so unimportant a matter as the Bonn affair will cause the slightest friction between ourselves and the French.’

She remembered now reading of the incident. A quarrel between a sous-officier of the French army and a peppery British colonel who had gone to Bonn.

So unimportant was the incident that when a question had been raised in the House of Commons by an inquisitive member, he had been greeted by jeering laughter. It seemed surprising that a man of Harlow’s standing should think it worth while to make any reference to the incident.

He stopped here, pinching his chin and gazing down at her abstractedly. She met the pale eyes - was conscious that in some ineffable manner his appearance had undergone a change. The pale eyes were deeper set; they seemed to have receded, leaving two little wrinkles of flesh to spoil the unmarked smoothness of skin. Perhaps she was mistaken and was seeing now, in a leisurely survey, characteristics which had been overlooked in the shock of meeting him at Fotheringay Mansions…

‘Yes,’ he said slowly, answering, as it were, a question he had put to himself. ‘I think I might say that. Will you read back?’

She read the letter from her shorthand and when she had finished he smiled.

‘Splendid!’ he said quietly. ‘I envy Mr Stebbings so efficient a young lady.’

He walked to the side-table, lifted a typewriter and carried it to the desk.

‘You will find paper and carbons in the top right hand drawer,’ he said. ‘Would you mind waiting for me after you have finished? I shall not be more than twenty minutes.’

She had made the required copies of the letter within a few minutes of his departure. There were certain matters to be considered; she sat back, her hands folded lightly on her lap, her eyes roving the room.

Mr Harlow’s splendour showed inoffensively in the decorations of the room. The furniture, even the bookcases which covered the walls, were in Empire style. There was a pervading sense of richness in the room and yet it might not in truth be called over-ornate, despite the gold and crystal of the candelabras, the luxury of heavy carpets and silken damask.

So roving her eyes came to the fire-place where the red coals were dying. On the white-tiled hearth immediately before the fire a little screw of paper had been thrown which, under the influence of the heat, had opened into a crumpled ball. She saw a pencilled scrawl.

‘Marling.’

She spelt the word - thought at first it was ‘making.’ And then she did something which shocked her even in the act - she stooped and picked up the paper, smoothed it out and read quickly, as though she must satisfy her curiosity before S, her outraged sense of propriety intervened.

The handle of the door turned; she slipped the creased paper into her bag, which was open on the table, and closed it as the stony-faced Mrs Edwins came into the room.

She came to the desk where the girl sat, her big, gaunt hands folded, her disparagement conveyed rather than expressed.

‘You’re the young woman,’ she stated.

‘I’m the young woman,’ smiled Aileen, who had a soft spot for age. She grew a little uncomfortable under the silent scrutiny that followed.

‘You’re a typewriter?’

‘A typist - yes. I am Mr Stebbings’s secretary.’

‘Stebbings!’

Mrs Edwins’ voice was surprisingly harsh and loud. The sudden change which came to her face was remarkable.

Eyes and thin lips opened together in startled surprise.

‘Stebbings? The lawyer? You’ve come here from him?’

For a second the girl was too startled to reply. ‘Yes…Mr Harlow asked that I be sent; his secretary was ill - ’

‘Oh - that’s it!’ Relief unmistakable.

And here it flashed on the girl that this must be Mrs Edwins - that L. Edwins to whom reference had been made in the will of the late Miss Mercy Harlow. Perhaps, her nerves on edge, the woman received the thought, for she said quickly:

‘I am Mrs Lucy Edwins - Mr Harlow’s housekeeper.’

Aileen murmured some polite commonplace and wondered what was coming next. Nothing apparently, for, with a quick glance round the room, the woman sailed out, her hands still clasped before her, leaving the girl to her penitence and self-reproach. And these distresses were inevitable. A prying maid (she told herself) who read her mistress’s letters and poked into the mysteries of locked drawers was a pattern of decorum compared with a secretary who yet must inspect the waste-paper of a chance employer. She was of a mind to throw the paper into the fire, but it was natural that she should find excuses for her conduct. And her excuse (stoutly offered and defended to herself) was Jim Carlton and the vague familiarity of ‘Marling’.