Four Strange Women (16 page)

This was in a large and expensive block of flats overlooking Hyde Park, on the fourth floor, and so commanding a very pleasant and extensive view. Bobby was a little surprised to find two large leather bags standing in the corridor outside the open door of the flat. He wondered if Lord Henry were on the point of departure and then noticed that the bags bore the initials ‘A.B.C.' He knocked at the open door and at once there appeared a thin, elderly, grey-haired man, neatly and quietly dressed. His whole manner and appearance was that prim, respectful, alert, of the manservant, and yet that he had been drinking was also perfectly plain. Unusual, to say the least, since butlers and valets who drink too much do not keep their places for long. Then, looking again, Bobby felt that there was more than that, something at once angry, pathetic, outraged, something oddly reminiscent of the look in the eyes of the dog that, expecting a caress, has received a kick instead.

“No one in,” he said thickly to Bobby, and tried to push past him, past a Bobby puzzled and interested and therefore determined to find out what it was all about, since in this queer, unusual business, a clue might lie in anything that was also unusual and queer.

“Are you Lord Henry Darmoor?” he asked, and the other stopped and stared, very much surprised, as Bobby had hoped he would be, and also a little flattered, as Bobby had also hoped.

“My name's Clements,” he said. “Been with the family since that high”—he indicated a height of about twelve inches—“and now turned off like—like, like a lost dog.”

“Nonsense,” Bobby said sharply, and for the moment indeed he felt it was nonsense, for Lord Henry Darmoor had not struck him as a man likely to behave brutally or unreasonably, nor indeed had Lord Henry in general that kind of reputation.

There are still families who keep up the old feudal tradition that between master and man there is a mutual obligation as strong on one side as on the other, and Bobby knew that in the Darmoor clan that idea was still believed in and acted upon.

“Unless,” Bobby said deliberately, “there was a jolly good reason.”

Clements, who had made a dive for his bags and succeeded in clutching only one of them, straightened himself and glared indignantly at Bobby.

“Call it a good reason,” he demanded, “that I wouldn't believe he wanted to do the dirty, even if it was only a bookmaker, and no references, neither, only for Miss Barton, what's as sweet and kind a young lady as ever was, and told him straight out he had got to.”

“Let me help you with those,” Bobby said, securing one of the bags. “But look here, you know, I know Lord Henry well enough to be sure—”

“Oh, you do, do you?” Clements said, supporting himself against the wall, for he was not finding it altogether easy to stand upright. “Well, let me tell you, he's changed, he's not the same man, he's different. A gentleman as was a gentleman, and so I've often said when others were telling at the ‘George and Dragon' about their gentlemen and the way they carried on what would have brought a poor man up before the beaks. That's as may be, I used to say, but my gentleman is a gentleman what is a gentleman, and now turned off like—like—”

This time Clements could find no suitable simile and showed some inclination to weep on Bobby's shoulder.

“Wouldn't have been no reference either,” he said, recovering himself slightly, “if it hadn't been for Miss Barton, God bless her, and too good for him, she is.”

“What was it all about?” Bobby asked as they made their way towards the lift, Clements carrying one bag and he the other, his help being apparently now accepted as quite natural.

“That I ain't telling,” Clements declared firmly. “ I know my place and I know my duty even if turned off like a mongrel dog, and I didn't even think he meant it, for it was a dirty trick, and one no gentleman ought to have thought of, nor no one else neither, even if only a bookmaker.” He put down the bag he was carrying. “Trustworthy and honest as the day he knows I am, or would he have gone off Lord knows where and left me to pack my own bags and get out, same as he said, and not a thing in them, not so much as a pocket handkerchief as isn't mine and isn't his'n.”

He seemed to feel this last sentence wasn't quite right, and then appeared inclined to open the bags on the spot so that Bobby could see the contents for himself. Bobby checked this design, however, for it was neither the bags nor their contents that interested him.

“Changed!” he said. “You say Lord Henry has changed? How do you mean? in what way?”

“In every way,” answered Clements gloomily, “and if you want to know what I think, there's some woman got hold of him, and what's more I believe Miss Barton knows it and that's what's troubling her. Crying she was and not my place to ask, but there was a photo she had and it wasn't her.”

“Know who it was?” Bobby asked.

“I didn't see it proper, she hid it quick, poor young lady, but what I say is, there's a woman got hold of him and that's what done it, and Miss Barton knows. For,” said Clements with dignity, as the lift appeared, “there's nothing sends a man to the devil so quick as when the wrong woman gets hold of him.”

Bobby found a taxi for the tearfully grateful Clements, made a mental note of the address Clements gave in case it might be advisable to get in touch with him later on, and then went back into the block of flats to see if he could pick up any further information.

He found the porters suspicious and uncommunicative. They knew nothing about Lord Henry or his movements. They also made it plain that they were not in the habit of retailing gossip to strangers. Bobby did not think it well at this stage to explain his official position or use it to get his questions answered, so he accepted meekly the rebuffs he received from the uniformed giants he spoke to and went back to his rooms, and all the way there seemed to echo and re-echo in his mind those words:—

‘There's nothing sends a man to the devil so quick as when the wrong woman gets hold of him.'

Only who was the wrong woman? Plenty of women to choose from certainly. Mrs. Jane Jones, for instance, who certainly was not Mrs. Jane Jones; and Gwen herself; and Hazel Hannay, whose father was afraid; and Becky Glynne, bitter and disillusioned; and Lady May, whose photograph had so odd a habit of turning up near dead men; and perhaps even the vanished wife of the little journalist so interested in the forest where the latest tragedy had taken place; and for that matter all the rest of the feminine population of the country. Clements had no idea of her identity, apparently, and even if Gwen herself knew or suspected anything, it was hardly a matter on which as yet Bobby had any right or ground for inquiry.

In the morning he rang up Lord Henry's flat but got no reply. He took his way there and again there was no reply when he rang. Apparently the flat was unoccupied and a passing porter, one he had not seen before, told him he thought Lord Henry was away in the country somewhere. Bobby had Gwen's telephone number, so he rang her up next, and though she seemed surprised to hear from him and not quite sure of his identity at first, she promised to wait in for him if he would come round at once. Her address was in one of those huge blocks of flats for people of moderate means that recently have sprung up all over London like mushrooms in a field after heavy rain. This particular building, in north London, was, Bobby noticed, of unusual size, and occupied an island site between three busy roads, possessing therefore the advantage that nearly all its windows faced outwards and got a fair share of such light as the dim London skies afford. There was a swimming bath in the basement, a squash court on the roof, shops on the street level, a cinema, a restaurant, so that the management's boast that a resident could obtain amusement, supplies, exercise, all the needs of life indeed, under the one roof, was fully justified.

A maze of a place, Bobby thought it, and managed to get lost once or twice before arriving at number seven hundred and two, Block C, on the second floor, which was his destination. Depressing, too, he found this enormous wilderness of small habitations all piled one on top of another, with its general air of totalitarianism and mass production, of suppression of all individuality, of a heightening of that monotony of life that modern civilization seems to induce. He had the idea that all its inhabitants must necessarily be as much cut to pattern as were the flats themselves, that here every individual must be as utterly lost among the others, as indistinguishable from them, as one bee in the hive, as one ant in the ant heap. He wondered, too, how a dweller in this quintessence of humdrum middle, middle class acceptance of an existence of pattern, regularity and established rule, could ever have come in contact with Lord Henry Darmoor, who moved in such different circles, who in his polo and sporting activities had followed his own line, who even physically stood out from among others by an ugliness of form and feature so excessive that many found it fascinating.

Probably, Bobby supposed, through a common interest in sport, since he remembered now that Gwen, though not even in the second rank of players, played a good deal of tennis, attended a good many tournaments, and so would no doubt meet many leading personalities in the world of sport where there exists a common freemasonry among its devotees.

He knocked at the door of flat No. 702. Block G. Gwen opened it at once. She had apparently been waiting for him. She invited him to enter with one of her easy, rapid gestures. He followed her across a miniature lobby into a small room so ordinary in appearance with its waxed oak furniture, conventionally ‘modern' in design, its framed engravings without interest on the wall, its china vases on the mantelpiece, as to resemble almost comically one of those ‘model' furnished rooms the big shops display to tempt and instruct prospective purchasers with no ideas of their own. Almost the only sign of any personal existence the room showed was a basket of needlework with a half- mended stocking put down close by. Otherwise it was almost difficult to believe that any one really lived here. One almost expected to see a notice on the wall that the total cost was so and so and that the furnishings shown could be delivered the same day.

Yet somehow, through the very conventionality of these surroundings, Gwen's vivid personality seemed to shine the more strongly. Insignificant as she seemed at first with her small, slight figure, her mouse-coloured hair, and small, dull eyes that heavy lids half concealed, the deathly pale complexion and commonplace features lightened only by the vivid lip stick she affected, yet gradually one became aware of a kind of controlled and hidden eagerness in her, such a sort of suppressed desire as might, if it could find expression, change her entirely. Odd, Bobby thought, that this hidden intensity of hers, of which so gradually one grew conscious, should find expression in a room so entirely resembling that of any other of the thousands of young women who live alone in great cities. Yet all of these have their own possessions to themselves, however limiting their circumstances. Not one but will show in framed photographs, in knicknacks and books and trifles of one sort or another, some clue to private tastes and pursuits. But here was nothing like that, except indeed the basket of needlework and the half-mended stocking that probably spoke more of private necessity than of private taste. Utterly characterless did the place seem, uninhabited almost, even though the actual occupant was there in this small slip of a girl of the pale, undistinguished appearance, the swift and sudden movements, the dull, lifeless eyes that yet made Bobby wonder how they would look if ever it did happen that they lighted up. She was saying now:—

“It's about Henry's friend you've come. I saw it in the paper.”

“I was hoping,” Bobby explained, “that possibly you or Lord Henry might be able to give me some help. I tried to see Lord Henry last night but it seems he's in the country somewhere.”

“Not the country, Paris,” she answered, and he thought he caught a low sigh that escaped her after the last word.

“Could you tell me where he is staying?” Bobby asked.

With one of those quick, silent, slightly disconcerting movements of hers, she was at the window, her back to him. He could see her shoulders move, she seemed to be struggling to control herself. Slightly embarrassed, Bobby waited. She turned, moving back to the centre of the room, and he could see that there were tears in her eyes, nor was her voice quite steady as she said:—

“I'm so sorry. I—I forgot for a moment. I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly where he is staying, he only said an hotel. He went in rather a hurry, it was a little unexpected. Of course, he will ring up and let me know or write or something.”

Her voice was hesitant. Her long, white fingers with the sharp, tinted nails were twisting together. Evidently she was trying to conceal what she really felt, to put, so to say, a favourable gloss on her words. Bobby felt more and more awkward, and he looked away round the little room so oddly inexpressive of its occupier's personality. She began to talk again, somewhat hurriedly now.

“I'm afraid there's very little I can tell you,” she said. “I didn't know Mr. Baird very well. He seemed very nice. Henry seemed worried about him, troubled, I don't know how to put it, almost as if he was angry. He has been a little —oh, I can't explain. Henry, I mean. Different. I think he was really worried, but he would never say why, except that it was about Mr. Baird. He told me about you, only of course I knew already because of going to darling Olive's little shop. I get my hats there and the girls talk, so I thought Henry was right in thinking it would be a good idea to see if you could do anything, and it all does seem so dreadful, doesn't it?”

Bobby asked a few more questions but without getting much more information. She repeated that she had felt just recently that Lord Henry was worried—‘changed', was a word she used, and Bobby remembered that Clements also had used the same expression. He made a reference to Clements and his distress at his dismissal, and Gwen looked very sympathetic.