She Fell Among Thieves (21 page)

As I closed the door upon her –

‘Do all you can for her, Carson. But on no account leave the thicket until I come. Tell her I’m bringing some breakfast.’

‘Very good, sir.’ He put out his hand. ‘This is Bell’s, sir. I think you ought to be armed.’

‘Very well.’

I took the pistol and slid it into my coat.

I entered Mansel’s Rolls and took my seat at the wheel.

‘Are you all right for petrol, Carson?’

‘Yes, sir. The tank’s half full.’

‘Then you get off now. I want to see you go.’

When Carson, with Jenny behind him, had taken the road to Gobbo, I, with Bell behind me, drove up to the bridle-path.

Some moments before she saw me, I saw Vanity Fair.

The hag was consumed with impatience, for now it was six o’clock.

The car was very silent, and she neither saw nor heard it until it was very close. But, as I say, I saw her. And I saw how she twisted her hands, and savaged her underlip.

And then she looked round – and a hideous light of triumph leaped into her eyes, for though the car was Mansel’s, it might have been mine.

So for a long moment…

And then the light faded, and the eyes rounded into a stare.

As I left the car, she stepped back, with a hand to her breast.

With my eyes upon hers –

‘Good morning,’ I said. I inhaled. ‘What beautiful air. You know, I think it’s purer than that of Jezreel.’

I could see that her lips were moving, but no sound came.

I leaned against the door of the car and folded my arms.

‘Yesterday evening,’ I said, ‘you were good enough to give me some news. Now I have some to give you. I trust – but without much hope – that it will be as useful to you as yours was to me.
That Marc is not here is my fault. But for me he would have been here forty minutes ago
.’

Somehow she found her voice.

‘Who let you out? Acorn?’

I laughed in her face.

‘Lafone,’ said I.

‘
Lafone?
’

‘Yes,’ said I. ‘She left a broom-stick behind, and I flew out of the window and over the Col de Fer.’

The jest seemed to do her good. The strength returned to her face, and the steel to her eyes.

‘And my…pretty…spoons?’

‘
Will not be melted this morning. The treasure you meant to bury
…
is not available
.’

By my words I might have unveiled the Gorgon’s head. The woman seemed to turn into stone. I saw the flesh freeze upon her face: her eyes took on the sightless look of a statue’s: and for more than a minute I swear that she never drew breath.

Then a tremor ran through her, and she shivered back into life.

‘I liked you,’ she said. ‘And because I liked you, Chandos, I let you live.’

‘Do you suggest,’ said I, ‘that I’m in your debt?’

‘I never suggest. Because I liked you, I spared you.’

‘Did you send Jean – to spare me?’

The woman moistened her lips.

‘Because I liked you, I sent him to – warn you off.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘Was Julie another of your favourites?’

She started ever so slightly, and after a moment a hand went up to her mouth. Both hand and mouth were unsteady, and I knew that at last I had shaken her iron control.

At length –

‘Are you a policeman?’ she said.

I shook my head.

‘Then who are you to judge me?’

‘I do not judge you,’ I said.

‘If I break the law, that is the law’s affair.’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘It amused me to make it mine.’

The contemptuous phrase stung her. I saw her eyes burn in her head.

‘By what authority, Chandos?’

I looked her full in the face.

‘By one you should recognise, madam. That of my will.’

There was a little silence.

Then –

‘I hope Marc suffered,’ she said, ‘before he died.’

‘When last I saw him,’ I said, ‘he was still alive.’

She frowned.

‘And Jean?’ she said. ‘And Luis?’

‘Have left your service,’ I said.

She sighed. Then she lowered her hand and regarded its palm.

‘You could have been my grandson, and yet you have brought me down. It’s written here, of course – in the lines of my hand. But I would not have it so. I could not believe that Fate would mock me like that – and I twisted another meaning out of the lines. Do you believe in palmistry, Chandos?’

‘No more than you do,’ I said. ‘If you did, you would be afraid to look at the palm of your hand.’

She looked up at that.

‘Only a fool,’ she said, ‘would have spoken like that. And there lies your strength. You not only seem a fool, but you are a fool. That’s why I couldn’t believe that you were the Jack that was going to kill the giant.’

‘For all that, you took certain precautions.’

‘I didn’t put you to death,’ said Vanity Fair.

I had still one card to play: but I did not know how to play it, and so I turned to the car.

As I opened the door –

‘Just now,’ she said, ‘I told you that the lines in my hand declared that a man less than half my age would bring me down. And I told you that I would not believe them – but that was less than the truth. I did not want to believe them: but their declaration made me uneasy, and so –
I had Gaston watched
.’

I looked at the woman sharply, but her eyes were fast on her palm.

‘Why Gaston?’

‘Because the lines insisted that the man who brought me to ruin would be my son-in-law.’

I shall always believe that she was speaking the truth. There is, I think, no doubt that prophecy is to be found in the lines of the hand: and though it does not follow that she was not making believe, yet
it was in fact to watch Gaston that Mansel had been engaged
.

I regarded her curiously.

True or false, Vanity Fair had some object in making such a statement to me. Yet she was not seeking information. If she had sought information, her eyes would have been upon mine.

‘I can’t understand it,’ she murmured, knitting her brows…

And then an idea seemed to strike her – a happy idea.

In an instant she was transfigured, and all the gifts she had lost or cast or trampled came back for one fleeting moment to take up their shining roles.

Small wonder I stared upon her. Before my eyes she had put on incorruption –
an incorruption I knew
.

The eager lift of her head, the stars in her eyes, the light of her countenance, the way of her parted lips – there was Jenny, standing before me, with her charm welling out like a fountain – to overwhelm all my hate.

Her voice was sweet and breathless.

‘Will you…let me look at your hand?… I know what’s there – now… But I would just like to see it…before you go out of my life.’

I took my hand from the door and inspected its palm. I knew what was there – now, too. Somewhere there it was written that I was to marry the daughter of Vanity Fair.

The secret, in that strange cipher, had lain there for thirty years. It had lain in her hand far longer. Yet of all the hours of her life, this was the hour appointed for her to read it aright.

Revolving this last and most fantastic trick of Fortune, I almost forgot her request. But when I had thought for a moment, I made up my mind to grant it – because it was Jenny that had made it – not Vanity Fair.

I looked up suddenly.

‘Madam,’ I said – and stopped dead.

She seemed to be adjusting her sleeve.

In a blinding flash I saw the pit she had digged – and my foot on the edge. Once my hand was before her, a flick of her wrist and I should be dead within two minutes of time.

If her hope was black, the way she had sought to fulfil it was blacker still. She had called back the soul she had lost, to lure me into the shambles: she had called up the spirit of Jenny, to make me lay my head on the block.

White to the lips with fury, I played my last card.

‘Your request is refused.’

I saw her stiffen. All her grace fell away. Treachery twisted her lips and the hungry spirit of Murder leaned out of her eyes.

I continued deliberately.

‘I extracted a drop from that syringe on the night that you lent it to Jean. I had a wire from the analyst three days ago.’ I looked her up and down. ‘Just now you had the impertinence to call me a fool. Maybe I am, but those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw bricks. And I’d rather be a fool that can smile than a bloody-minded butcher that’s short of a sheep.’

‘Billingsgate!’ spat Vanity Fair.

‘Good enough for Smithfield,’ said I, and entered the Rolls.

I went about and drove off.

That I had worn borrowed plumes I most frankly admit. What glory there was was Mansel’s. But that I dared not tell her, in case he was still in the field.

Nearly four hours had gone by.

The heat of the day had come in, but the meadow at the back of the thicket was sweet and cool, for the trees, which were tall and thick-leaved, were laying an apron of shadow upon the grass. Now and again I could hear the low of a cow or the drone of a distant car, but the silence was mostly stippled by the pipe and the flutter of birds and the speech of the running water that hemmed the edge of the sward.

Bell, who had come to his senses, was sleeping a natural sleep by the side of the track which came to an end in the thicket some thirty yards off. Carson was ten miles off, sitting up in the mouth of a loft, with Mansel’s Rolls beneath him and field-glasses up to his eyes. From where he sat he could watch his master’s window – the window of Mansel’s room in the Château Jezreel. And Jenny was sitting beside me, remembering Amaryllis and smiling upon a grasshopper who was plainly content with the landing which he had made on her knee.

It was but three days since I had seen her, and yet in that time she had aged. At least, so it seemed to me. When I had left Anise, she might have been seventeen. But today she seemed full-grown and twenty years old.

‘I wish,’ said Jenny, ‘you’d say why you sent for me.’

‘I’ll tell you one day,’ said I.

‘Tell me now.’

I shook my head.

‘One day, I promise, Jenny.’

My lady tilted her chin.

‘I shan’t come next time,’ she said.

I smiled at her perfect profile – at a nostril no chisel could have rendered and half the bow of a mouth which Shakespeare alone could have sung.

She turned to see me smiling, and looked away.

‘Jill doesn’t treat me so. She tells me everything.’

‘What does Jill tell you?’ I said.

Jenny spread out her arms.

‘Oh, heaps of things.’ She shot me a sudden glance. ‘I know I’m grown up, you know.’

‘Twenty or twenty-one is not very old.’

‘You’re only thirty,’ said Jenny. ‘And Jill says a man of thirty is no more grown up than a girl is at twenty-one.’

‘I wish it was true,’ said I, and put a hand to my head.

‘It
is
true, William.’ She hesitated. ‘Jill says I haven’t missed much by being shut out of the world.’

‘That’s true all right,’ said I. ‘It’s been the world’s loss – but not yours.’

‘What d’you mean – it’s been the world’s loss?’

I looked up to meet her wide eyes.

‘You’re very sweet and pretty,’ said I. ‘And all the world feels better when a sweet pretty maid goes by.’

Jenny’s eyes fell, and her beautiful visage mantled and a hand went up to her heart.

‘Why, Jenny’s blushing,’ said I.

‘Don’t tease me. You made me blush.’

‘You’ve learned a lot,’ said I, ‘since I saw you last.’

‘I told you I had. Jill’s told me everything.’

I lay back and looked at the sky.

When all was said and done, now that she knew she was adult and that her dreams were no dreams, but worldly memories, Jenny’s case was much the same as that of a man who has lain in jail for ten years. Only she had gone in as a child, to come out as a maid: and so she had to be taught that the way of Nature is not always the way of the world – a highly delicate instruction, which had already begun. Of this there could be no doubt, for when I had found her that morning, she had greeted me very shyly, and my lips had but brushed her fingers before she whipped them away.

‘What are you thinking of, William?’

‘I was thinking how glad I am that you know you’re grown up. This time a week ago I was telling you fairy-tales.’

Jenny nodded thoughtfully.

‘I’ll always like fairy-tales, though. Jill loves them. She says her life is like one – and that my life’s more like one than hers.’

‘Sleeping Beauty,’ said I, sitting up.

‘I’m not like her,’ said Jenny, ‘but I did sort of go to sleep: and then – Jonathan came and woke me… I wish he’d come,’ she added, and glanced at the coppice behind.

‘So do I,’ said I, frowning.

I found her words disquieting.

God knows I wished Mansel would come. God knows I wanted to see him safe and sound. But why did Jenny wish that Mansel would come? That he was in danger she had not the faintest idea. And yet – she wished he would come.

Jonathan came and woke me
– like the prince in the fairy-tale…

I considered the revelation which Mansel had made to me some twelve hours ago.

I’m not in love with Jenny, nor she with me.

I was sure that the first half was true. Mansel never pretended. If he said he was not in love, then he was not in love. More. His manner was not the manner of a man who is standing aside. But what of the second half? How could he answer for Jenny? And almost all the evidence pointed the other way. When I said as much to Mansel, he only laughed and compared me to ‘the idols of the heathen, the work of men’s hands’: by which, of course, he meant that I could not see. And though I had taken his word, as that of a wiser man, now Jenny had made me uncertain whether I had not been right, and Mansel wrong.

I determined to try to find out…

‘If you watch,’ I said, ‘he won’t come. That’s always the way. But if we don’t watch, and talk about something else, all of a sudden we shall look up to see him beside us – you know how quietly he moves… What will you do when you see him?’