Grave Mistake (5 page)

“What?”

“Love you,” she mumbled in a hurry. “There. I’ve said it.”

“
God
!” said Gideon with some violence. “It’s not fair. Look here, Prue. Let’s be engaged. Just nicely and chastely and frustratingly engaged to be married and you can break it off whenever you want to. And I’ll swear, if you like, not to pester you with my ungentlemanly attentions. No. Don’t answer. Think it over and in the meantime, like Donne says, ‘for God’s sake hold your tongue and let me love.’ ”

“He didn’t say it to the lady. He said it to some irritating acquaintance.”

“Come here.”

The sun-baked landscape moved into late afternoon. Over at Quintern Place Bruce, having dug a further and deeper asparagus bed, caused the wee lad, whose name was Daft Artie, to fill it up with compost, fertilizer and soil while he himself set to work again with his long-handled shovel. Comprehensive drainage and nutrition were needed if his and his employer’s plans were to be realized.

Twenty miles away at Greengages in the Weald of Kent, Dr. Basil Schramm completed yet another examination of Sybil Foster. She had introduced into her room a sort of overflow of her own surplus femininity: be-ribboned pillows, cushions, a negligée and a bed-cover, both rose-coloured. Photographs, Slippers trimmed with marabou, a large box of petits-fours au massepain from the Marquise de Sevigné in Paris, which she had made but a feeble attempt to hide from the dietetic notice of her doctor. Above all, there was the pervasive scent of almond oil enclosed in a thin glass container that fitted over the light bulb of her table-lamp. Altogether the room, like Sybil herself, went much too far but, again like Sybil, contrived to get away with it.

“Splendid,” said Dr. Schramm, withdrawing his stethoscope. He turned away and gazed out of the window with professional tact while she rearranged herself.

“There!” she said presently.

He returned and gazed down at her with the bossy, possessive air that she found so satisfactory.

“I begin to be pleased with you,” he said.

“Truly?”

“Truly. You’ve quite a long way to go, of course, but your general condition is improving. You’re responding.”

“I feel better.”

“Because you’re not allowed to take it out of yourself. You’re a highly strung instrument, you know, and mustn’t be at the beck and call of people who impose upon you.”

Sybil gave a deep sigh of concealed satisfaction.

“You do so understand,” she said.

“Of course I do. It’s what I’m here for. Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Sybil, luxuriating in it. “Yes, indeed.”

He slid her bracelet up her arm and then laid his fingers on her pulse. She felt sure it was going like a train. When, after a final pressure, he released her she said as airily as she could manage: “I’ve just written a card to an old friend of yours.”

“Really?”

“To ask her to lunch on Saturday. Verity Preston.”

“Oh yes?”

“It must have been fun for you, meeting again after so long.”

“Well, yes. It was,” said Dr. Schramm, “
very
long ago. We used to run up against each other sometimes in my student days.” He looked at his watch. “Time for your rest,” he said.

“You must come and talk to her on Saturday.”

“That would have been very pleasant.”

But it turned out that he was obliged to go up to London on Saturday to see a fellow medico who had arrived unexpectedly from New York.

Verity, too, was genuinely unable to come to Greengages, having been engaged for luncheon elsewhere. She rang Sybil up and said she hadn’t seen Prue but Mrs. Jim reported she was staying with friends in London.

“Does that mean Gideon Markos?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“I’ll bet it does. What about ghastly C.C.?”

“Not a sign of him as far as I know. I see by the shipping news that the
Poseidon
came into Southampton the day before yesterday.”

“Keep your fingers crossed. Perhaps we’ll escape after all.”

“I think not,” said Verity.

She was looking through her open window. An unmistakable figure shambled toward her up the avenue of limes.

“Your stepson,” she said, “has arrived.”

iii

Claude Carter was one of those beings whose appearance accurately reflects their character. He looked, and in fact was, damp. He seemed unable to face anything or anybody. He was almost forty but maintained a rich crop of post-adolescent pimples. He had very little chin, furtive eyes behind heavy spectacles, a vestigial beard and mouse-coloured hair that hung damply, of course, halfway down his neck.

Because he was physically so hopeless, Verity entertained a kind of horrified pity for him. This arose from a feeling that he couldn’t be as awful as he looked and that anyway he had been treated unfairly: by his Maker in the first instance and probably in the second, by his masters (he had been sacked from three schools), his peers (he had been bullied at all of them) and life in general. His mother had died in childbirth and he was still a baby when Sybil married his father, who was killed in the blitz six months later and of whom Verity knew little beyond the fact that he collected stamps. Claude was brought up by his grandparents, who didn’t care for him. These circumstances, when she thought of them, induced in Verity a muddled sense of guilt for which she could advance no justification and which was certainly not shared by Claude’s stepmother.

When he became aware of Verity at her window he pretended, ineffectually, that he hadn’t seen her and approached the front door with his head down. She went out to him. He did not speak but seemed to offer himself feebly for her inspection.

“Claude,” said Verity.

“That’s right.”

She asked him in and he sat in her sunny drawing-room as if, she thought, he had been left till called for. He wore a T-shirt that had been made out of a self-raising-flour bag and bore the picture of a lady who thrust out a vast bosom garnished with the legend “Sure To Rise.” His jeans so far exceeded in fashionable shrinkage as to cause him obvious discomfort.

He said he’d been up to Quintern Place where he’d found Mrs. Jim Jobbin, who told him Mrs. Foster was away and she couldn’t say when she would return.

“Not much of a welcome,” he said. “She made out she didn’t know Prue’s address, either. I asked who forwarded their letters.” He blew three times down his nose which was his manner of laughing and gave Verity a knowing glance. “That made Mrs. Jim look pretty silly,” he said.

“Sybil’s taking a cure,” Verity explained. “She’s not seeing anybody.”

“What, again! What is it this time?”

“She was run down and needs a complete rest.”

“I thought you’d tell me where she was. That’s why I came.”

“I’m afraid not, Claude.”

“That’s awkward,” he said fretfully. “I was counting on it.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Oh, up there for the time being. At Quintern.”

“Did you come by train?”

“I hitched.”

Verity felt obliged to ask him if he’d had any lunch and he said: not really. He followed her into the kitchen where she gave him cold meat, chutney, bread, butter, cheese and beer. He ate a great deal and had a cigarette with his coffee. She asked him about Australia and he said it was no good, really, not unless you had capital. It was all right if you had capital.

He trailed back after her to the drawing-room and she began to feel desperate.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I was depending on Syb. I happen to be in a bit of a patch. Nothing to worry about, really, but, you know.”

“What sort of patch?” she asked against her will.

“I’m short.”

“Of money?”

“What else is there to be short of?” he asked and gave his three inverted sniffs.

“How about the hundred pounds she sent to Teneriffe?”

He didn’t hesitate or look any more hang-dog than he was already.

“Did she
send
it!” he said. “Typical of the bloody Classic Line, that is. Typical inefficiency.”

“Didn’t it reach you?”

“Would I be cleaned out if it had?”

“Are you sure you haven’t spent it?”

“I resent that, Miss Preston,” he said, feebly bridling.

“I’m sorry if it was unfair. I can let you have twenty pounds. That should tide you over. And I’ll let Sybil know about you.”

“It’s a bit off not telling where she is. But thanks, anyway, for helping out. I’ll pay it back, of course, don’t worry.”

She went to her study to fetch it and again he trailed after her. Horrid to feel that it was not a good idea for him to see where she kept her housekeeping money.

In the hall she said: “I’ve a telephone call to make. I’ll join you in the garden. And then I’m afraid we’ll have to part: I’ve got work on hand.”

“I quite understand,” he said with an attempt at dignity.

When she rejoined him he was hanging about outside the front door. She gave him the money. “It’s twenty-three pounds,” she said. “Apart from loose change, it’s all I’ve got in the house at the moment.”

“I quite understand,” he repeated grandly, and after giving her one of his furtive glances said: “Of course, if I had my own I wouldn’t have to do this. Do you know that?”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“If I had The Stamp.”

“The Stamp?”

“The one my father left me. The famous one.”

“I’d forgotten about it.”

“You wouldn’t have if you were in my boots. The Black Alexander.”

Then Verity remembered. The story had always sounded like something out of a boy’s annual. Claude’s father had inherited the stamp, which was one of an issue that had been withdrawn on the day of appearance because of an ominous fault: a black spot in the centre of the Czar Alexander’s brow. It was reputed to be the only specimen known to be extant and worth a fabulous amount. Maurice Carter had been killed in the blitz while on leave. When his stamp collection was uplifted from his bank the Black Alexander was missing. It was never recovered.

“It was a strange business, that,” Verity said.

“From what they’ve told me it was a very strange business indeed,” he said, with his laugh.

She didn’t answer. He shuffled his feet in the gravel and said he supposed he’d better take himself off.

“Goodbye, then,” said Verity..

He gave her a damp and boneless handshake and had turned away when a thought seemed to strike him.

“By the way,” he said. “If anyone asks for me I’d be grateful if you didn’t know anything. Where I am and that. I don’t suppose they will but, you know, if they do.”

“Who would they be?”

“Oh — boring people. You wouldn’t know them.” He smiled and for a moment looked fully at her. “You’re so good at not knowing where Syb is,” he said. “The exercise ought to come easy to you, Miss Preston.”

She knew her face was red. He had made her feel shabby.

“Look here. Are you in trouble?” she asked.

“Me? Trouble?”

“With the police?”

“Well, I must say! Thank you very much! What on earth could have given you that idea!” She didn’t answer. He said, “Oh well, thanks for the loan anyway,” and walked off. When he had got halfway to the gate he began, feebly, to whistle.

Verity went indoors meaning to settle down to work. She tried to concentrate for an hour, failed, started to write to Sybil, thought better of it, thought of taking a walk in the garden and was called back by the telephone.

It was Mrs. Jim, speaking from Quintern Place. She sounded unlike herself and said she was sure she begged pardon for giving the trouble but she was that worried. After a certain amount of preliminary explanation it emerged that it was about “that Mr. Claude Carter.”

Sybil had told the staff it was remotely possible that he might appear and that if he did and wanted to stay they were to allow it. And then earlier this afternoon someone had rung up asking if he was there and Mrs. Jim had replied truthfully that he wasn’t and wasn’t expected and that she didn’t know where he could be found. About half an hour later he arrived and said he wanted to stay.

“So I put him in the green bedroom, according,” said Mrs. Jim, “and I told him about the person who’d rang and he says he don’t want to take calls and I’m to say he’s not there and I don’t know nothing about him. Well, Miss Preston, I don’t like it. I won’t take the responsibility. There’s something funny going on and I won’t be mixed up. And I was wondering if you’d be kind enough to give me a word of advice.”

“Poor Mrs. Jim,” Verity said. “What a bore for you. But Mrs. Foster said you were to put him up and difficult as it may be, that’s what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t know then what I know now, Miss Preston.”

“What do you know now?”

“I didn’t like to mention it before. It’s not a nice thing to have to bring up. It’s about the person who rang earlier. It was — somehow I knew it was, before he said — it was the police.”

“O Lor’, Mrs. Jim.”

“Yes, Miss. And there’s more. Bruce Gardener come in for his beer when he finished at five and he says he’d run into a gentleman in the garden, only he never realized it was Mr. Claude. On his way back from you, it must of been, and Mr. Claude told him he was a relation of Mrs. Foster’s and they got talking and—”

“Bruce doesn’t know—? Does he know? — Mrs. Jim, Bruce didn’t tell him where Mrs. Foster can be found?”

“That’s what I was coming to. She won’t half be annoyed, will she? Yes, Miss Preston, that’s just what he did.”

“Oh
damn
,” said Verity after a pause. “Well, it’s not your fault, Mrs. Jim. Not Bruce’s if it comes to that. Don’t worry about it.”

“But what’ll I say if the police rings again?”

Verity thought hard but any solution that occurred to her seemed to be unendurably shabby. At last she said: “Honestly, Mrs. Jim, I don’t know. Speak the truth, I suppose I ought to say, and tell Mr. Claude about the call. Beastly though it sounds, at least it would probably get rid of him.”

There was no answer. “Are you there, Mrs. Jim?” Verity asked. “Are you still there?”

Mrs. Jim had begun to whisper, “Excuse me, I’d better hang up.” And in loud artificial tones added: “That will be all, then, for today, thank you.” And did hang up. Charmless Claude, thought Verity, was in the offing.