Fear by Night (4 page)

“Quite so,” said the man. “Mrs. Halliday, as you say—my mother. Now won't you sit down, Miss Vernon?”

Ann sat down on one of the gilded chairs. It was even more unyielding than it looked.

Mr. Halliday resumed his own seat. He put a hand on either knee and bent a business-like gaze upon her.

“What Mrs. Halliday wants is a companion—and when I say a companion, that's just exactly what I mean. She's got her maid who looks after her—gets her up and puts her to bed and all that kind of thing—and if she should be ill, which I hope she won't, there'd be no expense spared. But what she wants is a companion, someone that will keep her bright, and make a bit of a fuss of her, and listen to her when she wants to talk, and let her be when she doesn't want to be bothered.” He ran his hands suddenly through his hair and rumpled it. “I don't know if you take me?”

“Oh yes, I think so,” said Ann.

Mr. James Halliday smoothed his ruffled hair.

“You wouldn't believe the trouble it is to get her suited. She likes them bright, but she don't like them uppish.”

“I'd do my best to please her,” said Ann.

“Well, there it is,” said Mr. Halliday. “You see, it's this way—she's an old lady and she likes her own way. I suppose most of us do, but she's come to a time of life when she expects to get it, and if she doesn't get it there's trouble. I don't grudge a good salary to anyone who'll make her happy. There, you've got it in a nutshell, Miss Vernon. That's your job—to make Mrs. Halliday happy. When could you come?”

Ann was a little taken aback.

“I could come any time—I'm free now.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Halliday. “That's right! Now, I've been on to that reference you gave—that Lady Gillingham who said you'd been brought up with her daughter—and I don't mind saying she spoke very highly of you. Let's get this clear. You say you're free. Does that mean you'd be free to come today?”

With the most extraordinary distinctness Ann heard Charles' voice saying to her in the taxi, “Don't take this job.” She started a little, banged the door on Charles, and said,

“Oh yes, I could come to-day if Mrs. Halliday wants me to. May I see her now?”

Mr. Halliday rose with an air of relief and led the way back to the crimson-trellised cauliflowers. At a door on the right he knocked, and then preceded Ann into the room.

Mrs. Halliday was sitting bolt upright in a Victorian chair with a hard upholstered seat and back, and a frame of yellow walnut very uncomfortably carved. There was a crazy patchwork cushion on the floor as if it had just fallen. It was a relief to find that there was no gilding. The carpet was an old-fashioned one with a pattern of enormous pink and blue roses on a drab ground. There was a horsehair sofa, also with a walnut frame, and several odd little Victorian chairs covered in woolwork. The curtains were of crimson plush with an edging of ball fringe. There was a deep mantle-border of the same. A little round table with a maroon velvet top and a straight frill of hand-made crochet stood at Mrs. Halliday's elbow. Upon it reposed a large photograph album with gilt clasps and a massive workbox of Tonbridge ware.

Mrs. Halliday herself wore a little black silk apron over a full-skirted dress of black cashmere. She had a small black lace tippet about her shoulders, and an old-fashioned net cap upon her neatly brushed grey hair. The tippet was fastened by an enormous brooch which displayed a bunch of flowers worked in hair of different shades, the whole enclosed by a massive border of plaited gold. The cap was trimmed with bunches of narrow ribbon in two shades of magenta. Between the cap and the brooch there jutted out Mrs. Halliday's bristling eyebrows, her large bony nose, and her very determined chin. The eyebrows were grey and made a fierce slanting line above a pair of very shrewd grey eyes. The face was long and thin. She put out a bony hand with a handsome diamond ring and said,

“Howdydo?”

“It's Miss Vernon, Mother,” said Mr. Halliday. All at once he seemed nervous. He advanced a chair worked in pink and crimson cross-stitch, and was at once bidden to place it at a different angle.

“And then you can go, my lad. Her and me'll have our talk without you. Never knew two women yet as didn't get on better without a man between 'em.” She spoke with a strong country accent, and ended with a chuckle. She had a row of large and even teeth which seemed, most surprisingly, to be all her own.

When the door had closed upon Mr. Halliday, she turned a sharp look on Ann.

“Vernon?” she said. “And what's your Christian name?”

“Ann.”

“Just plain Ann?”

“Just plain Ann.”

“And a good name too,” said Mrs. Halliday heartily. “My grandmother called three of her fourteen Ann afore she could get one of 'em to live. She was a terrible persevering woman. That's a piece of her 'air in my brooch. The sprig of white heather, that's 'ers. Her 'air went a beautiful white afore she died. Seems like mine's going to 'ang on grey to the end.”

Ann gazed enchanted at the brooch with its bunch of flowers.

“Are they all relations?” she asked. “I mean relations' hair. How thrilling!”

“Some of 'ems in-laws,” said Mrs. Halliday. She unpinned the brooch and leaned forward with it. “That there buttercup, that was a bit of my mother's 'air when she was a young girl. So bright's a marigold—isn't it? Prettiest girl anywhere within fifty mile, so they did say. I don't remember 'er. And the little tiddy flower aside of 'er's, that's my sister Annie Jane what she died with. My father's sister, what had a turn for poetry, wrote an 'ymn about it:

‘The lovely h'infant and the mother

Are gone,

And we 'ave left no other.'

Which it stands to reason we 'adn't, my father not being a bigamist. But that's the way with poetry. I can't say as it did my Aunt Maria any good. A kind of a mousey woman, she was. That's her 'air in the stalks—and about all it was fit for. A proper old maid, she was.”

She replaced the brooch, fastened it with a snap, and said briskly,

“Well, that's not business. 'Ow old are you?”

“Twenty-two,” said Ann.

Mrs. Halliday nodded.

“Sixty years since I was twenty-two—sixty and a bit. Lemme see …” The bushy grey eyebrows drew together. “I'd been ten years in the same service. Between-maid first—they don't send 'em out at twelve nowadays, but they did then, and we were a long family, five of me own mother's not a-counting Annie Jane, and four that my father's second wife brought with 'er from 'er first marriage, and another six that they went and 'ad to finish off with. Well, as I was telling you, when I was two-and-twenty, I was second 'ousemaid up at the 'All, and rare and pleased to be getting twenty-six pounds a year. As I says to the 'ussy as we've got now, ‘You don't know when you're well off,' I says, ‘And if I'd left dust in my corners same as what you leave in yours, I'd 'ave got a rare old telling-off.' There've been a lot of changes since I was twenty-two. Are you 'oping to be married?”

“Oh no,” said Ann, and heard Charles' voice say “
Ann!
” in the back of her mind.

Mrs. Halliday nodded.

“Time enough,” she said. “If girls knew what was in front of 'em, they wouldn't be in a nurry. When I was twenty-two I was walking out with the under groom, a very 'andsome young man and made the rottenest bad 'usband as you'd meet in a month of Sundays—but not to me, thank the Lord, though I cried me eyes out when he jilted me and took Dorcas Rudd for 'er pretty face, pore thing.” She became brisk again. “What wages are you asking?”

“Mrs. Twisledon gave me a hundred,” said Ann.

Mrs. Halliday clicked with her tongue.

“That's a terrible lot of money! But you'll 'ave to settle it with Jimmy.” She chuckled. “Thinks 'e's made of money these days, Jimmy does! And I won't say 'e isn't a clever lad, and a good son too. 'E don't grudge me anything, I'll say that for 'im.”

“Then you'd like me to come, Mrs. Halliday?” said Ann. “You think I'd suit you?”

Mrs. Halliday nodded with decision.

“I know a lady when I see one,” she said.

CHAPTER V

Ann rang Charles Anstruther up from a telephone box in the nearest post office. The roar of traffic from the great thoroughfare outside was suddenly dead as she pulled the door to behind her. A light flashed on in the ceiling, and after that Charles was saying,

“Ann, is that you?”

Ann said, “Yes,” a little faintly, because there had leapt into her mind the realization of what it might be to shut the door on the world and let it go by. The world shut out, and she and Charles shut in. An impossible dream, but unbearably sweet, as only a dream can be.

There was nothing dreamlike about Charles' voice as he said,

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing's the matter.”

“Why did you speak like that?”

“I didn't speak like anything.”

“Yes, you did. Ann, are you going to dine with me to-night?”

“No, I can't. Oh, Charles, I've got the job! Isn't it marvellous? What did you say?”

“I said damn,” said Charles.

“Beast!” said Ann. “And when I told you I'd been living on dry bread!”

“Ann!”

“To-night,” said Ann in a gloating voice, “I shall be dining with Mr. James Halliday. I should think we'd have hot-house peaches, and turtle soup, and asparagus, and strawberries.”

“Out of season,” said Charles morosely.

“Darling Charles, that's
why
. It's that sort of house—all plush, and gilding, and lincrustaed halls.”

“Who is this man?” said Charles in a voice that jarred the telephone.

“Darling Charles, you'll bust the wire if you roar like that, and then I shan't be able to tell you about my nice job. But perhaps you don't want to hear.”

“Who is this man?” said Charles, still with a good deal of vigour.

“It's all quite proper and respectable,” said Ann. “He's old Mrs. Halliday's son, and I've been hired at the princely salary of a hundred and twenty pounds a year to listen whilst old Mrs. Halliday talks.”

“Then why are you dining with Mr. Halliday?”

“Because Mrs. Halliday doesn't dine. She has what she calls 'a bite of supper and bed'.”

Charles said, “Dine with me.” Then after a pause he said her name—just “Ann”; but his voice made it sound like “Ann
darling
.”

Ann took a step back as if he were there and visibly trying to hold her.

“Charles, I can't.”

“Where have you gone? I can't hear you.”

Ann stopped forward again.

“I said, ‘I can't.' I'm taking over the job at once—just going home to pack, and moving right in.”

“When am I going to see you?” said Charles tempestuously.

“I don't know,” said Ann. And then she said “Good-bye,” and pushed the receiver back upon its hook. She couldn't hear Charles' voice any more.

It was perfectly idiotic for her heart to be beating so hard. She stood there until it quieted, and then she opened the heavy glass door and the roar of the traffic rushed in.

In the house in Westley Gardens Mr. James Halliday was also using the telephone. He said,

“That you, Gale?… It's all right—she's coming in to-night. How is he? About the same?”

Rather an abrupt voice answered.

“Of course he's about the same. He won't be any different till he's dead.”

“Well, well, well,” said Mr. Halliday, “there's no hurry about that, you know. If he can be kept going for a month, why, so much the better.”

“A month? What's the good of saying a month? He might be gone to-morrow, or he might hang on for half a year. You've got to get her away. The minute the breath's out of his body there'll be a swarm of reporters nosing round, and it won't be twenty-four hours before someone gets hold of the terms of the will, and the next thing you'll know, she'll be seeing her name in the headlines with ‘Rich Man's Heiress' underneath. You've got to get a move on or we're done.”

“All right, all right!” said Mr. Halliday. “You know, Gale, you talk too much. I rang you up to tell you something, and you talk so much that you've pretty near put it out of my mind.”

“Well, what is it?”

“And you're a lot too impatient too. It's a job that's got to be done carefully. I was going to tell you that the old lady asked her what we weren't sure about—whether she was thinking of getting married or anything of that sort—and she said no as cool as a cucumber.”

A sound that was almost too angry for a laugh came to him along the wire.

“You make me tired! Do you suppose she'd give herself away at a first interview, and a business interview at that?”

Mr. Halliday assumed a tone of offence.

“Well, I'm sure Mrs. Halliday put it very nicely, and I don't see why the girl wouldn't have told her if she was engaged.”

There was the angry sound again.

“Nice respectable middle-class mind you've got! Haven't you, Jimmy?”

The offence in Mr. Halliday's tone deepened.

“What's wrong with being respectable?” he said. “And what's wrong with a girl saying she's got a boy, even if she isn't right down engaged to him? The way I look at it is, she'd say so because she'd want time off to see him, and the old lady says she was very decided that there wasn't anyone.” There was a pause. Mr. Halliday said, “You there, Gale?” and was barked at.

“Of course I'm there! When are you getting off?”

“Well—I thought about Monday,” said Mr. Halliday rather dubiously.