Authors: Patricia Wentworth
Dark Threat
Patricia Wentworth
ONE
J
UDY
E
LLIOT STEPPED
off the moving staircase at Piccadilly Circus, and felt a hand under her elbow. As it was undoubtedly a male hand and she was not prepared to be picked up by something in the lonely soldier line, she first quickened her pace, and when that didn’t seem to be any good whisked round with a few refrigerated words upon her tongue.
They never got said. The keep-your-distance look melted into one of pleased recognition. She tilted her chin, gazed up at a tall young man in a dark blue suit and a discreetly chosen tie, and exclaimed, ‘Frank!’
Detective Sergeant Abbott gave a poor imitation of his usual rather cynical smile. He was in fact considerably handicapped by the behaviour of his heart, a perfectly sound organ but responding at the moment to a quite uncalled for access of emotion. When you haven’t seen a girl for a year, when she hasn’t answered your letters, and when you have convinced yourself that any slight interest you may have felt is now a thing of the past, it is extremely discomposing to find yourself behaving like a school-boy in love. He couldn’t even be sure that he had not changed colour, and, worst symptom of all, he was rapidly beginning to feel that, Judy being here, nothing else mattered.
He continued to smile, and she continued to tilt her chin, this being made necessary by the difference in their heights. The chin was a firm one, the face to which it belonged agreeable rather than pretty, the mouth wide and curving, the eyes indeterminate in colour but very expressive. They began at this moment to express surprise. What on earth Frank Abbott thought he was doing, standing looking at her like that ... She pulled him by the arm and said,
‘Wake up!’
He came to with a jerk. If anyone had told him he would make a public exhibition of himself like this, he would have laughed in the idiot’s face. He found a tongue very little accustomed to being out of action, and said,
‘It’s shock. You must make allowances. You were the last person on earth I expected to see.’
The gaze became severe.
‘Does that mean you thought you had hold of a perfectly strange girl’s elbow, and found it was me?’
‘No, it doesn’t. I should get the sack from the Yard if I went about doing that sort of thing. Besides, not very subtle, I can do better than that when I give my mind to it. Judy, where have you been?’
‘Oh, in the country—We’re blocking the traffic.’
He took her by the arm and steered for a backwater.
‘Well, here we are. Why didn’t you answer my letters?’ He didn’t mean to say that, but it came out.
‘Letters? I didn’t get any.’
He said, ‘I wrote. Where have you been?’
‘Oh, here and there—with Aunt Cathy till she died, and then rather on the trek.’
‘Called up?’
‘No. I’ve got Penny—she hasn’t got anyone else.’
‘Penny?’
‘My sister Nora’s baby. She and John went in an air raid just after the last time I saw you. All right for them, but rotten for Penny.’
He saw her face stiffen. She looked past him as he said, ‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry. What can one say?’
‘Nothing. I can talk about it all right—you needn’t mind. And I’ve got Penny. She isn’t quite four, and there isn’t a single other relation who can take her, so I’ve got exemption. What about you?’
‘They won’t let me go.’
‘What rotten luck! Look here, I’ve got to fly and feed the child. We’re staying with Isabel March, and she’s lunching out, so I simply daren’t be late. She said she’d have Penny whilst I shopped.’
He kept hold of her arm.
‘Wait a minute—don’t vanish till we’ve got something fixed. Will you dine with me?’
She shook her head.
‘No—Isabel’s out—there’d be no one in the flat. I can’t leave Penny. And if you say what you were going to say, I’ll never speak to you again.’
There was a rather sardonic gleam in the light eyes as he said, ‘Undoubtedly an angel child. I adore them!’
Judy burst out laughing.
‘Don’t they teach you to tell lies better than that at Scotland Yard?’
‘They don’t teach us to tell lies at all. We’re all very high-toned. My Chief is an esteemed Chapel member. If your Isabel March is out, what about my dropping in to help look after Penny?’
‘She’ll be asleep. I could do an omelette—reconstructed egg of course.’
‘What time?’
In spite of himself his voice was eager. Judy wondered why. They had been friendly, but no more. They had dined together, danced together. And then she had had to go back to poor old Aunt Cathy, and he hadn’t written or anything. Only now he said he had ... She wondered about that. She wondered if he was one of the out of sight out of mind kind, because if he was, she wasn’t the right person to try it on with. A year’s silence, and then that eager voice. And it wasn’t like him to be eager. She recalled an elegant young man with a rather blasé manner. He was still elegant—slim and tall, with very fair hair slicked back and mirror-smooth, and light blue eyes which had appeared to contemplate his fellow-beings with supercilious amusement, but which at the moment were fixed upon her in rather a disturbing manner.
She began to regret the omelette. Because what was the good of being disturbed? She wasn’t going to have any time for young men, what with Penny and getting a job as a housemaid. She had a moment of wanting to back out—she had a moment when she would have liked to run away. And then the voice of common sense chipped in with one of its most insidious and fallacious remarks—‘After all, it’s only one evening—what does it matter?’
She gave Frank a smile of pure relief, said, ‘Half past seven—3 Raynes Court Buildings, Cheriton Street’, and walked rapidly away.
W
HEN ONE IS
four years old going to bed is a very important ceremony. Miss Penny Fossett exacted the full rites. Any attempt at hurry, any scamping, merely resulted in a mellifluous ‘Do it again.’ Judy’s attempts to maintain the upper hand were conscientious, but they didn’t always come off. The way of the transgressor was, unfortunately, so very beguiling. At the very moment of screwing herself up to be severe the infant sinner would remark with a heart-piercing smile, ‘It loves its Judy’, and fling damp throttling arms about her neck.
On this particular evening the bath had been a very lingering one. Isabel had unearthed an aged rubber duck from an attic in her mother’s country house. It should, of course, have gone to salvage long ago, but had been overlooked, much to Penny’s delight. When she could be torn away from it, there was not as much time left as Judy could have wished. Even if you are completely indifferent to a young man, you do like to have time to do the hair and give nature a helping hand with the face before he comes to supper. It is difficult to bathe the very young without becoming dishevelled. The old-fashioned Nanny could do it, but it is a rapidly dying art. Judy was hot and damp as she sat on the edge of her bed and held out her arms.
‘Now Penny—prayers.’
Miss Penelope Fossett was wearing pale blue pyjamas. Her dark hair curled artlessly about her enchanting head. She had little pink ears and rather a heart-shaped face. Her eyes were unbelievably blue, her lashes unbelievably long and black. The colour in her cheeks was pure and deep. She diffused warmth, moisture, and a smell of lavender soap as she kneeled up beside Judy, bowed her head upon her folded hands, and emitted a long penetrating ‘Moo!’ If you laughed you were lost. Judy bit the inside of her lip, which sometimes helped.
‘Penny! I said prayers!’
One blue eye opened, gazed at her with reproach, and shut again.
‘It is saying its prayers. It’s a moo-cow. That’s the way they say them.’
It took about a quarter of an hour to persuade Penny to be human again. Even then a last faint contumacious ‘Moo!’ followed the final amen.
Judy turned a deaf ear, forbade further conversation, and went to tidy herself up in the bathroom. She had just come to the conclusion that she had never looked plainer in her life, when the front door bell rang and she had to go and let Frank Abbott in.
They made the omelette together in Isabel’s minute kitchen. There is nothing like a homely, domestic job for breaking the ice. By the time he had laid the table, and she had called him an idiot for dropping the butter-dish, they might have been married for years. Over the omelette, which was very good and had all sorts of exciting scraps in it, Frank told her so. His naturally impudent tongue was his own again, but if he expected to raise a blush he was disappointed. Miss Elliot agreed with perfect calm.
‘Yes, we might—only not so dull.’
‘It mightn’t be dull with the right person.’
Judy proffered tomato sauce.
‘You mightn’t think it was going to be until it was too late. I mean, we both like this sauce, but if we had to eat it at every meal for the next forty or fifty years we’d be bored stiff.’
‘My child, you make me shudder! I can assure you that I have at least thirty distinct flavours—like all the soup and jelly makers used to advertise, and you could always try mixing them if thirty wasn’t enough. Besides, the brain is not completely stagnant—I can invent new ones. You’ve got it all wrong. People are dull because of something in themselves—a tendency to stew over old tea-leaves—keeping the windows tight shut to prevent any new ideas getting in—all that sort of thing. You have been warned!’
‘Thank you.’ Words and tone were meek. Her eyes mocked him.
When she saw he was going to speak, she said with her best smile,
‘How many girls have you said that to?’
‘I’ve only just thought of it. It’s their loss.’
Something made her say a little more quickly than she meant to,
‘We’re going away tomorrow.’
‘We?’
‘Penny and I.’
‘Where?’
With the feeling of having reached nice firm, safe ground, Judy could relax. The smile came out again, bringing with it a rather pleasant dimple.
‘We’re going to be a housemaid.’
‘What!’
‘A housemaid. In a nice safe village because of Penny. Their total casualties up to date are one goat in an outlying field.’
‘Did you say a housemaid?’
‘I did. And if you’re going to say I can do better than that—which is what everybody does say—you haven’t tried, and I have. If I hadn’t got Penny I could get dozens of jobs—but if I hadn’t got Penny I should be called up. And I have got Penny, so that’s that. And I’m going to keep her, so that’s another that. And when you’ve got all that straightened out you’ll find like I did that the only job you can get with a child is a domestic one—and you can only get that because people are so desperate they’ll do anything. Think how nice and appropriate it is, the policeman and the housemaid having supper together!’