Outrageous Fortune (15 page)

Mrs Rodgers nodded.

“You'd a pretty coaxing way, and you've got it yet. I'll tell you what I can. Now, my dear—whether the police have got wind of it or not, I can't say, but what that 'ussy keeps 'inting is just this, that her mistress, Mrs Van Berg, knows a sight more than she lets on. It's all 'ints and no plain speech, but that's what it comes to—that Mr Van Berg found out something that he wasn't meant to find out, and that's why he was shot. ‘The emeralds—' she says in her 'inting way, ‘can't they be 'idden? Can't they be a fine excuse?' she says. ‘Oh 'eavens!' she says. ‘You make me laugh, with your emeralds!' she says. ‘A gentleman quarrels with another gentleman about a lady and shoots him—what a good idea to hide the emeralds and say a thief has done it!' she says. And when Mrs Henry and me presses her, she says she is talking about a story she has been reading in a magazine—and how I kep' my hands off her, I don't know and I can't say. And she laughs and goes out of the room, and Mrs Henry says to me, ‘Mrs Rodgers,' she says, ‘if that's not an evil-speaking, lying, slandering 'ussy, then I never learned my catechism,' she says.”

Caroline got up a little uncertainly. She held to the cross-bar of the stile and leaned against it. She wanted to get away from Mrs Rodgers before she said anything more. Mrs Rodgers had said too much already. If she said any more, Caroline was afraid she might cry out—say Jim's name—say that it wasn't true—that it couldn't be true. Jim wasn't in love with Susie Van Berg—it couldn't be true that he was, or that he had quarrelled with Elmer Van Berg and shot him, and hidden away the emeralds to make it look like a burglary. It simply couldn't be true. She must get away quickly before she began most passionately to deny it.

She said, “There'll be another train—I must catch it.”

Mrs Rodgers got up too.

“To be sure! There's the eight fifty-seven—but you'll have to hurry.”

Caroline took her hand and squeezed it.

“You've been so kind! I do thank you so much. You'll give Nanna my love—won't you?”

Mrs Rodgers nodded. She watched Caroline turn away and begin to go down the hill. Then she took a step towards the stile, but almost in the act of taking it she swung about like a boat when the current catches it. She called,

“Miss Caroline! Miss Caroline!”

And Caroline came back. She didn't want to come back, but she came.

“I mustn't miss my train,” she said.

“There's time,” said Mrs Rodgers, and took her by the sleeve.

Caroline turned cold with dread of what she was going to hear.

“Miss Caroline—” said Mrs Rodgers.

Caroline's eyes besought her.

“My dear, you'd best know and ha' done with it. That torn out page—”

“Oh, no!” said Caroline. “
No
!”

“You'd best know it, my dear. Mrs Henry's no 'inter, and it's what she seen with her own eyes. She took pertickler notice, because there wasn't no name signed on that page.”

“No name?”

“No name, my dear—nothing but the finger-prints and two great big initials getting on for a couple of inches high. She took pertickler notice, and when the book was found pushed down behind the book-case like I told you, she took a look at it, and that there identical page was gone. I s'pose I didn't ought to tell you what the initials was, but what's the good of baking the bread if you don't take it out of the oven?”

Caroline tried to pull her sleeve away, but she couldn't. She tried to say, “Don't tell me,” but she couldn't speak. Mrs Rodgers' voice boomed in her ears.

“Mrs Henry won't talk unless she's asked, and it's not for me to say whether she'll be asked or no, but if so be she is, she's bound to tell the truth—not that she or anyone else around these parts 'ud want to get a young gentleman that was well liked, and his family respected, into trouble, but there's a name that ‘as been mentioned, and Mrs Henry's own nephew—Willie Bowman, that's been his caddy at golf many and many a time afore he went off to foreign parts—Willie seen him in the drive getting on for midnight, and hasn't told no one, only his aunt and me. ‘And what were you doing Willie?' she says, and of course he hadn't got a word to say, she knowing same as everyone else that he's carrying on with that flighty piece, Gladys Garrett, down at the Cricketer's Arms.”

Caroline's head swam. Through a jumbled whirl of irrelevant anecdote something horrible advanced upon her. She wanted to run away, but she couldn't.

Mrs Rodgers dropped her voice to a penetrating whisper.

“It was Jim Randal as Willie seen—and the initials on the tore out page was J.R.”

Caroline's mouth made a soundless “Oh!” There was no sound, because she did not seem to have any breath. She pulled away from Mrs Rodgers and ran down the hill, as if by running she could get away from Jim's name.

XVII

The clock of St Mary Magdalene's church struck half past twelve as Caroline turned into Grove Road. The things that Mrs Rodgers had told her were all locked away in a dark secret cupboard at the back of her mind. She wasn't going to let herself look at them or think about them until she and Jim could look at them together. What she had got to do now was to be sensible and practical and businesslike. She had to prove from the entry in the register that it wasn't Jim who had married that horrible Nesta woman on July 25th. It stood to reason that it wasn't Jim, but she had got to prove it. Well, one glance at the register would do that, because she would know Jim's writing anywhere, and she was quite sure that the entry wouldn't be in Jim's writing.

She found the office quite easily. Why did anyone ever get married in a registry office? It was the most depressing place, with linoleum on the floor, a bench against the wall, and an air of gloom. A faint but distinct smell of disinfectant was the last depressing touch.

An elderly clerk inquired Caroline's business. He had a pale plump face, and reminded her of one of those fish which slap slowly to and fro behind the plate glass of an aquarium. The light in the office was almost as opaque as water, and he had the pale unwinking stare of a fish. Caroline thought that if a fish had hair, it would have just such thin, smarmed hair, breaking into little colourless tufts over the ears. She was so fascinated by this thought that he had to repeat his question. He had a voice that matched the hair, high and weak.

Caroline remembered why she had come. The burden had lifted for a moment; now she remembered again.

“Please may I see an entry in the register? It's a marriage—on the twenty-fifth of July.”

“Last?”

Caroline did not take his meaning. She looked at him with bewildered eyes.

“The twenty-fifth ultimo?”

Caroline remembered to have seen
ult
and
prox
occurring in conjunction with dates in business communications from Robert Arbuthnot. They conveyed nothing to her. She said,

“Please may I see the register of marriages for the twenty-fifth of July?”

“Last July?”

“Yes—oh yes.”

She stood and waited. She wasn't afraid; she kept insisting on that. There was nothing to be afraid about—there couldn't be. She was going to see Jim Riddell's signature, and it would be the signature of a stranger. There wasn't the very slightest possible doubt about that.

She saw the clerk turn the pages of the register—big, stiff pages thick with the names of men and women who had gone adventuring into marriage through this drab back door. Perhaps if you loved someone very much, you wouldn't notice the linoleum and the smell of disinfectant.

The clerk turned another page, and a window flew open in Caroline's mind. A very bright clear light shone in, and she knew that if she had come here to marry Jim, this ugly room would be a happy, holy place all golden with romance. The light shone in her mind and went out. The window closed.

“Here you are,” said the clerk in his high weak voice. He stood aside and pointed at the left-hand page of the open book.

Caroline, a little dazed with the light that had come and gone, looked down at the names. She saw Nesta's name first—“Nesta Williams, spinster.” And then—“James Riddell, bachelor.” It wasn't Jim's writing—
of course it wasn't.
What odd writing it was—like a child's. No, it wasn't. A child wrote round hand. This was more like shaky print.

She looked up with a puzzled frown.

“What funny writing!”

“What?” said the clerk. “Oh, that? Written with his left hand, that was, on account of having his right arm in a sling—motor-bicycle accident, I think he said.”

Caroline's heart jumped; she didn't quite know why. Jim hadn't got his arm in a sling. Jim hadn't had an accident. Jim hadn't written that signature. Why didn't she feel all happy and triumphant? Why didn't she even feel relief? Why did she feel as if there was something horrid just round the next corner?

The clerk was speaking, and she tried to give him her attention.

“If you want a certified copy, it will be five shillings.”

Caroline flamed. A copy of this abominable lie! She made her voice gentle and polite with a terrible effort.

“No, thank you.”

“You don't want a copy?”

“No, thank you.”

The flame died down. she felt businesslike and rather tired. Jim Riddell's address was given as 14 Saracen Row. Nesta Williams' as 3 Grove Road. His father's name was James Riddell too; her father's name was Thomas Williams. She wrote down both the addresses and asked to be directed to Saracen Row.

“Third to the left, second to the right, and third to the left again,” said the clerk.

Caroline turned back at the door.

“Do you remember this Mr Riddell—could you describe him?”

The clerk's pale, prominent eyes looked at her without intelligence.

“He had his arm in a sling.”

“Oh, can't you tell me what he looked like?”

“Why,” said the clerk, “we get them coming in all day. I shouldn't remember about his arm if it wasn't for the writing—said he'd never signed his name with his left hand before, and you can see what an awkward job he made of it. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't remember him.”

“You can't remember at all? Not whether he was dark or fair, or short or tall?”

“No, miss, I can't—and you might take that to mean that there wasn't anything very much to remember. You take my meaning? I might have remembered red hair, or a squint, or bandy legs, or anything over six foot or under five, so you may take it he was just one of the average lot—and, as I said before, they keep on coming in. What with births, marriages, and deaths, they keep coming in all day, and after a bit you stop taking notice.”

Caroline went out feeling very much discouraged.

She turned to the left, and she turned to the right; then she turned to the left again and arrived at Saracen Row. It was a narrow street of prim, decent houses. No 14 was about half way down on the right-hand side.

She rang the bell, and presently the door was opened by a thin middle-aged woman in a lilac overall. Her drab hair was curled across her forehead under a net. She looked as if she had been interrupted in the middle of her cooking, for her face was flushed and damp, and there was a dab of flour on her sleeve.

“I'm so sorry to trouble you,” said Caroline, “but was a Mr James Riddell living here in July?”

“You've made a mistake,” said the thin woman, and moved to shut the door. The smell of cabbage came up behind her.

Caroline took a quick step forward. With one part of her mind she wondered why people who lived in small houses nearly always had cabbage for lunch; with another part she was thinking, “I mustn't let her shut the door.”

“Oh
please,”
she said—“won't you try and help me?”

“I don't take gentlemen lodgers.” She had a tight voice and a polite accent.

“He gave this address,” said Caroline. “You don't know the name at all?”

“Sorry I don't,” said the thin woman, and made such a decided movement to shut the door that Caroline stepped back and next moment found herself looking at the shabby letter-box. The cabbage was shut in, and she was shut out.

Whoever Jim Riddell might be, it seemed pretty clear that he had given a false address. She wondered what had made him pitch on this one. Perhaps the name had stuck in his mind. Saracen Row—it was the sort of name that might stick. And as for the number, 14 was as good as any other.

She went back to Grove Road and rang the bell of No 3.

Here was quite a different type of landlady—a stout rolling person with a bibulous eye and an easy, jolly tongue. Of course she remembered Miss Williams—“Why, she was married from here—and a pity she couldn't have a proper wedding with white satin and orange blossom, and a good heartening glass of champagne to make things go, same as I had meself. After all, you can't get married that way only once, with a wreath and a veil, and white satin slippers. A small four was what I took, though you wouldn't think it now—but that's being on me feet all day, and once you've given in to elastic-sided shoes you're done as far as looks is concerned. But a four it was, and a small one at that, and me waist a bare eighteen inches. Stays were stays in those days, and when I'd got mine laced, I'd as good a bust and as smart a waist as any of your society beauties.”

“Oh,
yes,”
said Caroline. “And about Miss Williams?”

“Ah! She's in the handsome, haughty style. I was more clinging—a way with me, if you understand what I mean—a bit on the playful side. It goes down with the gentlemen—especially if they're in the strong silent way themselves. It's the little fellows that fall for the big upstanding girls.”