Anne Belinda (15 page)

Mrs. Jones was standing beside the table, leaning on it. Some of the rosy colour had left her face. John put a hand on her shoulder.

“Can you think of anyone she might go to?”

“No, sir, I can't. Her ladyship—”

“I tell you she sent her away—Anne went to her and she sent her away.” His brow darkened and a heavy flush rose to it. “She sent her away. She offered her money to stay away.”

His hand dropped heavily, and Mrs. Jones cried out:

“She wouldn't do that! Miss Jenny'd never do that!”

“I tell you she did. She offered to give her money if she'd go away and promise never to come back. She's gone away penniless. And Jenny needn't trouble about her coming back. I should think she'd die before she'd come—I should think she'd starve.”

“No, no, sir—it wouldn't never come to that!”

“Why wouldn't it? You're all the same—you don't really care what happens to her. But it's unpleasant to think of anyone starving, so you don't think about it. It's quite simple and easy. You say, ‘Oh no, it could never come to that;' and you just don't think about it.”

Mrs. Jones began to weep.

“No one's never brought it up against me that I didn't do my duty,” she said in a weak, confused voice.” No one's never said it, nor no one's never thought it, nor had any call to—and I've been in the nursery since I was thirteen—and only a year married when Jones was taken, and me with Mary Ann six weeks old, and her ladyship expecting Mr. Tom—and glad and proud I was to go back to her and take the baby.”

“Look here—” said John.

“Her ladyship never looked to a thing, she'd that confidence in me. And there's no one can ever say she thought different, or had any call to think different. Mr. Courtney, and Mr. Tom, and Miss Jenny, and Miss Anne—I took them all from the month. And I left my own child to strangers, and never grudged it. And there's no one can say I didn't love them all as well as if they'd been my own, and better—Mary Anne, she casts it up at me to this day that I loved them better.”

John put up his hand and stopped her.

“There, that's enough. Sit down!”

Mrs. Jones drew a long, surprised breath. Then she sat down.

CHAPTER XIX

If anyone had told Mrs. Jones that within half an hour of entering her daughter's parlour she would be meekly taking orders from “that there Sir John” and gazing at him with a submission hitherto reserved for Sir Anthony, she would certainly not have believed him. Nevertheless when John said “Sit down!” she hastened to obey, and, having obeyed, sat looking at him in reverential awe.

John did not speak for a moment; he glowered. Then he said:

“That's enough about all that. I want you to go back to the time before Lady Marr was married. She went to town to stay with Mrs. Courtney, and you and Miss Anne came up for a couple of days. Is that so?”

Mrs. Jones nodded. Then she sniffed, and nodded again.

“Everything was so 'appy,” she said. “Who'd ha' thought it?”

John had pulled his chair up to the table. He tapped impatiently upon it now.

“I want to hear just what happened.”

“It was all so '
appy.
Oh, deary me! Who'd ha' thought the way things was going to turn?”

“Just tell me from the beginning and go right on You came up to town with Anne—”

“We came up on the Tuesday, and we went with Miss Jenny to see 'er wedding-dress tried on. Miss Jenny, she knew as I was dying to see it, and she fixed it so as I could come to the fitting. And there she was, looking as beautiful as a queen, and me and Miss Anne and the dressmaker—a foolish French piece with the shamelessest red lips as ever I saw in all my days—all with our breath fair taken away at how lovely she looked. The dress wasn't nothing to the lovely way she looked, though it was a very 'andsome dress and made beautiful.”

John tapped again, and Mrs. Jones went on hurriedly:

“There we was, and Miss Jenny the loveliest thing I ever saw, and all of a sudden something come to me, and I said, ‘Why, Miss Jenny, my dear, where's your pearls?' And Miss Jenny she colours up quick, and she says, ‘I don't want any pearls on my wedding day, Nanna. Pearls are tears, you know, and we're all going to be much too happy to cry.' I looked round at Miss Anne, and I saw she looked anxious like. And it's come over me many times since that that was the first time that trouble and pearls came into my mind together—but, dear knows, there were tears enough before we'd done!”

John sat in a frowning silence for what seemed a long time. Curiously irrelevant this story of Jenny, and her wedding-dress, and her “pearls are tears”—irrelevant and haunting.

“What were these pearls of Jenny's?” he said at last.

“Sir Nicholas give them to her when they were engaged, and I don't know that I ever saw her leave them off before.”

“She doesn't wear them now,” said John slowly.

“No, sir, I've noticed she don't.”

“Has she still got them to wear?” John did not know that he was going to say this until he heard himself saying it.

“Oh yes, sir, she's
got
them,” said Mrs. Jones in rather a surprised voice. “Last time I was down there she'd her jewel-case open, and I took 'em out and let 'em slip through my fingers—they've a wonderful smooth feeling—and I said, ‘Don't you never wear 'em, my dear?' And she said, ever so sad, ‘Oh no, Nanna, I
can't
.'”

“Why?” John shot the word at her rather sharply.

“Because of Miss Anne. Oh, sir, you don't know how cruel she took it to heart, or you wouldn't ask. Night after night there'd be her pillow soaking wet, and in the morning she'd put rooge on her cheeks so as no one should know as she'd been crying the best part of the night.”

“All right—go on. Tell me what happened next day.”

“We was going home, back to Waveney, Miss Jenny and all, and Miss Jenny came to fetch Miss Anne to have her bridesmaid's dress fitted.”

“Wait a moment,” said John. “Jenny came to the hotel? How did she come?”

“She came in a taxi, and she ran in all of a hurry, and she said, ‘Come on, Anne, I've got a taxi waiting.' And she kissed me and said, ‘We'll meet you at the station, Nanna,' and she went off with Miss Anne. And many's the time since I've wished Miss Anne 'ad kissed me. But there, it was always Miss Jenny that had the loving ways.”

Jenny's loving ways left John singularly cold.

“And then?” he said.

“I went to the station, and I waited there. And just on the tick of the time Miss Jenny runs up and pulls me into a carriage and bangs the door. I put my head out and called to the porter as I'd engaged—a nice, curly-headed young man, he was, and put me in mind of my brother Joseph's youngest—and I caught his eye and saw the luggage safe. Then I turned round, and there was Miss Jenny, all of a tremble. ‘You shouldn't run so 'ard,' I said; and with that she began to cry like a broken-'earted thing. ‘Where's Miss Anne?' I said, and she went on crying till she frightened me, so presently I took her by the shoulder pretty 'ard, and I said, ‘Where's Miss Anne?' And she sort of come to herself and stopped crying.”

“What did she tell you about Anne?”

“First of all she told me that Miss Anne had met a friend and was coming down later. But I hadn't had her in the nursery for nothing, and I knew well enough it wasn't true. So I kept my hand pretty 'ard on her, and I said, ‘You'll tell me the truth, Miss Jenny, or you don't stir from this seat.' So then she told me.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She told me Miss Anne was in a scrape, and she didn't know how bad it was. She cried dreadful. She said Miss Anne might come out of it clear. And she squeezed my arm till it was black and blue, and she said, ‘Oh, Nanna, pray hard,
pray hard,
that she'll come out of it all right.'”

“Is that all she told you?”

“She told me Miss Anne 'ud come down by the next train if so be as she got away. I don't mind saying that frightened me, and when Miss Anne didn't come, I went on dreadful. And at last Miss Jenny told me that it was trouble with the police, and that I must help her to keep it from Sir Anthony, because it would kill him. And I did my best; but it come out in spite of me, and it killed him sure enough.”

“How did Jenny know what the trouble was? She was driving with Anne, and Anne stopped the taxi and got out. How did Jenny know—” He stopped, and Mrs. Jones broke in:

“Miss Anne must ha' told her.”

“There wasn't much time.”

“Miss Anne saw the man that accused her, and he saw her, and she told Miss Jenny quick what she'd done, and slipped out, thinking as he'd follow the taxi. And that's what I've found it 'ard to get over, for if he'd followed after Miss Jenny and she'd got mixed up in it, it might ha' come to her marriage being broke off.”

John moved impatiently.

“How could she have got mixed up in it? You say the man recognized Anne. Well, Anne was gone. If he followed Jenny, he'd only have thought he'd made a mistake.” He spoke harshly; it enraged him to think of Anne's nurse bearing Anne a grudge, a senseless grudge like this.

An obstinate look came over Mrs. Jones's face.

“It might ha' come to the breaking off of Miss Jenny's marriage, if that there man had a-followed her and thought as she was Miss Anne.”

“Rubbish! How could he have thought she was Anne?”

The obstinate look deepened.

“Anyone might ha' took one for the other, let alone a man with a heathenish name that had never seen neither of them before.”

“Nonsense!” said John. “They're not a bit alike—and everything else apart, Jenny's hair is fair, and Anne's is dark.”

“And how much 'air has anyone got to see these days? Flying flat in the face of Scripture, I call it. And you mayn't think as how they're alike, but they used to be took for one another constant. And that day I might ha' had to look twice myself, for they was dressed alike, which they'd always done till Miss Jenny got engaged.”

“They were dressed alike?”

“They'd their new spring coats and skirts on, both of them—grey—and little black hats, more like caps than hats, the way they was being worn just then, and as like as two peas.”

John pushed his chair back suddenly. He went over to the window and stood there. He looked out, but he saw nothing; his heart was racing, and his thoughts raced too. When he turned at last, it was to meet Mrs. Jones's eyes fixed upon him in a stare of respectful curiosity. She looked away at once in some confusion.

John asked her two questions, and took the answers away with him.

CHAPTER XX

From a public telephone-box John called up Mr. Lewis Smith:

“Look here, I want a private detective—inquiry agent—you know the sort of thing.”

Mr. Lewis Smith sounded rather surprised.

“What on earth for?”

“I want one.”

The surprise turned to mild amusement.

“All right—have one. But why ask me? We don't keep 'em on tap.”

“Don't be an ass! Can't you put me on to one?”

“Well—let me see—you might try Messing. Here's the address. But, I say, if you're still on the same tack, for the Lord's sake go easy.”

John rang off. He was sick to death of warnings and discretion. He meant to find Anne Belinda, whatever happened or whoever stood in the way. As a preliminary, he found Mr. Messing, and didn't very much like the look of him.

Mr. Messing sat at a writing-table with everything very businesslike about him, and a clerk in the outer office. John did not like Mr. Messing's fingernails, or his tie, or his beady eyes, or his sharply pointed nose; he did not like the way he did his hair. He frowned as he said:

“I—er—I want to trace someone. That's the sort of thing you undertake, isn't it?”

Mr. Messing opened a most impressive ledger and discreetly covered all the entries with blotting paper.

“You'd be surprised,” he said affably, “if I were to tell you some of the people we have traced. But that's the drawback to confidential work like ours—one can't talk about it, can't advertise oneself. Of course one's work gets known. Now”—he poised a ready pen—“you want to trace someone, you said?”

Mr. Messing had no accent; he had only the sort of voice which is so associated with an accent that there is something startling about its absence.

“I want to trace a girl called Annie Jones,” said John rather gruffly. (“Beastly place! Perfectly revolting sort of fellow! Absolutely damnable to have him ferreting about after Anne. But must find her. Tell him as little as possible. How little can one tell him?”)

“Annie Jones—” Mr. Messing poised his pen.

“Yes. She came out of Holloway yesterday.”

“Have you been to the police?”

“No—certainly not. She came out yesterday, and she went to see some friends in the country, and got back to Waterloo at about half-past six—and her friends are anxious because they don't know where she is, and they're afraid she hasn't got much money.”

“'M—the friends' address?”

“I can't give you that. It doesn't matter in the least. All that matters is to find out where she went when she got back to London.”

“Has she any friends in London?”

“She hasn't communicated with them—they don't know anything. They're anxious.”

“'M—description?”

Beastly—unutterably beastly to have to describe Anne Belinda to a fellow like this. All the same she'd got to be found.

“Dark hair, cut short.” (He remembered her long, dark plaits with a curious pang.) “Pale face.” (She couldn't go on being so dreadfully pale as she was when she held his arm and looked at him with blind blue eyes.)