Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (5 page)

The girl coloured violently and for a moment seemed incapable of speaking. Her eyes blazed, she clinched her small fists by her sides and her dark head was flung back as if to meet an actual attack.

“If you’ve come here to insult me –” she choked out.

“But I haven’t!” said Anthony in considerable alarm at this unexpected result of his thrust. “I simply meant that I’ve come down here with a friend of mine who’s working for the
Daily Courier
and he said something about getting you to give him an interview. I thought you ought to know.”

As abruptly as it had arisen the girl’s anger disappeared and something very like fear took the place of the fire in her eyes. She stared at Anthony widely.

“A – a
reporter
?” she muttered. “Good Heavens, has it come to that now?”

Men are curious creatures. A moment ago Anthony was severely annoyed and wanted nothing better than to make this extremely crushing young lady severely annoyed too. The instant he had succeeded in doing so, he had been filled with alarm. Now that he had changed her mood once more, from anger to fear, he began to feel the worst kind of inhuman brute imaginable.

“No, but look here,” he said eagerly, “there’s nothing to be alarmed about. They always do it, you know. Interviews and all that. He’s an awfully nice chap too. Roger Sheringham, the novelist, you know. Cousin of mine, as a matter of fact. I dare say he won’t try to see you at all if you don’t want him to. Sure he won’t! I’ll tell him, shall I? Dash it all, there are crowds of other people he can interview if he must interview somebody. I was against it at the time, to tell you the truth, but he thought you might want to be interviewed for some reason or other. I’ll tell him, Miss Cross. Don’t you bother about that. I’ll see it’s all right.”

It was doubtful if the girl had understood a single word beyond the general drift of what Anthony was saying. She continued to stare at him; but mechanically, as if paying attention only to her own thoughts. When next she spoke her voice was under control again, though her words were a little halting.

“Then am I to understand that – that the London papers are taking an interest in – in my cousin’s death?” she asked.

“I’m afraid they are,” said Anthony humbly, apologising for the London paper
en
masse.

The girl shifted her gaze and contemplated the horizon with unseeing eyes, busy again with her thoughts. Anthony, judging he had received permission to exist a little longer, made advantageous use of his reprieve by contemplating her.

She really was extraordinarily pretty, he had no difficulty in deciding. He liked her slimness and grace, he liked the way her head was set on her neck, he liked the way her black hair curled over her ears, he liked her wrists and her small feet, he liked … But why reduce Margaret Cross to a catalogue? There was nothing about her Anthony did not like. When he got back to his lodgings he would probably think this over and the realisation would suddenly strike him that this was the one girl in the world for him – expressly designed and manufactured by a thoughtful Providence for the sole purpose of delighting, harassing, maddening and ultimately very greatly gratifying one Anthony Walton, bachelor. The realisation had already struck him exactly twenty-three times before and twenty-three times he had mistaken the intentions of Providence; but this time it was the
real
thing. It always was.

Anthony continued his contemplation, each second more raptly than before.

Suddenly the girl appeared to come to a decision. She turned to him with an impulsive movement, and to his relief Anthony saw that she was smiling.

“Will you come and sit down here a minute, Mr –?”

“Walton!” Anthony supplied hastily.

“Mr Walton. I owe you an enormous apology, I’m afraid. It was very kind indeed of you to think of coming along to give me warning. I was a pig to you.”

“Not a bit,” Anthony averred, scrambling eagerly down the little bank to join her on the little grassy ledge a dozen feet down from the cliff’s lip. “It was most natural. I ought to apologise if anyone should. Frightfully tactless.”

“Not at all!” said the girl warmly. “It was entirely my fault. But if you’ll forgive me, we’ll say no more about it. Now let’s sit down here and make ourselves comfortable, because I’m going to take you at your word.”

“Do, please,” Anthony said earnestly, as he seated himself on the warm, springy turf at her side. “I should be awfully proud.”

The girl clasped her arms round her knees and stared out to sea. Anthony, glancing at her covertly, noted with approval the firm and resolute lines of her profile. She could not be more than one- or two-and-twenty, he decided, but even he could read an experience beyond her years of the world, its trials and its anxieties in the tiny lines of care about her mouth and the faint markings on her white forehead.

“You said something about my needing help,” she said slowly, as if choosing her words with care. “Well, why should I be silly and pretend I don’t? I do need it. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you; but I feel I can trust you, and there’s nobody else to whom I can speak. Not a single soul. I suppose you know that - that –”

“Yes,” Anthony interrupted gently. “I think I know all the facts.”

“I supposed so, or you wouldn’t have said that.” She fixed her big, sorrowful brown eyes on Anthony’s face. “But what you don’t know, Mr Walton, is that a police inspector from Scotland Yard was with me for nearly two hours this morning, asking me the most
horrible
questions!”

A cold hand seemed to lay itself over Anthony’s heart. “I say, was he really?” he muttered. “No, I didn’t know that.”

The girl nodded. She opened her mouth to speak again, but her lips trembled and she turned her head quickly away. A little quiver shook her body. Then suddenly the control that had borne her up all this time, ever since that dreadful interview in the morning, gave way before Anthony’s silent sympathy. She buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

“He seems to think – oh, the most awful things!” she sobbed.

Anthony stared at her in dismay. It was bad enough that she should have burst into tears at all, without the terrible significance of her last words. He was certain that Margaret Cross was not the sort of person to give way to tears unless matters had reached an acute crisis; the fact that she had done so impressed him with the seriousness of the situation even more than had her decision to confide in himself, a complete stranger. She must be not only utterly alone in the world; she was very nearly at the end of her tether as well.

Masculine sympathy with distressed femininity is nearly always inarticulate (distrust it when it is not!), but fortunately it has resource at its command far superior to mere words. Anthony did not stop to think. He acted instinctively. Putting his arm about her he drew her toward him without a word and laid her head on his shoulder. Almost gratefully she buried her face in the hollow of it like a small child seeking consolation from its mother and continued to weep. Anthony had the wisdom to let her go on doing so without attempting a single word of clumsy consolation – though indeed it is doubtful whether he would have been able to do so had he wished, for he was vaguely feeling himself almost sanctified by contact with something rather holy and, for such an outwardly unemotional Briton, there was a most unusual lump in his throat as he looked down on the sleek dark head sheltering against his rough coat and felt the sobs shaking the slim body he held in his arms.

By degrees the girl’s weeping subsided. Her form ceased to quiver and she gently disengaged herself from Anthony’s encircling arm.

“I’m a fool,” she said, looking at him with rather a watery smile. “Is my nose disgustingly red?”

“Not a bit!” Anthony lied stoutly, considerably relieved by the smile. “It’s ripping.”

Margaret dived into her bag and produced a little mirror. Sounds of dismay issued from her, and a powder puff was hastily brought into action.

“That’s better,” she observed a minute or two later, scrutinising her image with close attention. She turned and faced Anthony with a frank smile that was a tacit acknowledgment of the bond between them. “Will you ever forgive me for making such an idiot of myself?”

“Look here,” Anthony said slowly, “I don’t want to butt in on anything you don’t want to tell me, but wouldn’t you like to tell me the whole story? You know I’m only too anxious to do anything I possibly can to help you, and matters seem to be a bit – well, a bit more serious even than I’d thought. If you would like to let me know the whole circumstances –?”

He paused, and the girl nodded understandingly. “You mean it’s no good asking you to help me unless you know what I’m up against?” she said thoughtfully. “Well, that stands to reason. Of course I’ll tell you. I was going to before as a matter of fact, only I –” She left the sentence unfinished and, hunching her knees, resumed her former pose and gazed out to sea.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Anthony asked, producing his pipe.

“Of course not. In fact I rather feel I need a cigarette myself. No, don’t you bother!” she added quickly, as Anthony felt in his pockets. “I’ve got some of my own particular brand here, and I hardly ever smoke anything else.”

She produced a cigarette-case from her bag, and Anthony held a match for her, lighting his own pipe from it afterward. She drew one or two deep inhalations and sighed contentedly.

“Well, about myself; there’s really very little to tell you. Four months ago I was in London, broke to the wide – as I had been off and on for the last seven years. My father was an officer in the regular army; he was killed in France in 1917, when I was fifteen years old. I inherited about two hundred pounds from him and, of course, a pension; the pension was just enough to keep body and soul together if one lived on rice and cold water, but not much more.” She paused for a moment as if in thought.

“Unfortunately,” she went on with a touch of cynicism, “it appears that my father had ‘married beneath him’. I don’t remember my mother at all (she died when I was a baby), but I believe that she was the daughter of a fraudulent bucket-shop proprietor in Liverpool who had served two terms of imprisonment and my father was more or less entrapped into marriage with her when he was a young subaltern. He never hinted a word of all this to me, by the way; don’t think that. He was a dear. But it’s been rubbed into me pretty thoroughly since by other charming people.”

“I say,” Anthony put in in acute distres, “please don’t tell me anything you’d rather not. I mean –!”

“Why not?” asked the girl in a hard voice. “Why shouldn’t I tell you everything? That police inspector seems to know all about it. Probably it will be in all the papers tomorrow.”

“But –” Anthony shifted his position and relapsed into uncomfortable silence.

“Well, the consequence was that my father had been cut off by his family. They wouldn’t have anything more to do with him. Nor would they with me. One of his brothers sent five hundred pounds to daddy’s solicitors to provide for my education and keep me till I was old enough to earn my own living, but that was as far as any of them would go. I’m not complaining; in the circumstances it was remarkably generous of him. That money, with my own two hundred, kept me till I was eighteen, after that I had to earn my own living. You’ve probably heard that girls had some difficulity in getting jobs after the war. It’s perfectly true. I was trained as a shorthand typist, but unfortunately nobody seemed to want a shorthand typist. But I got work all right. I had to. During the last three years I’ve been a governess, a shop assistant, a waitress and a parlourmaid.”

“Good God!” Anthony breathed.

The girl laughed suddenly with genuine amusement. “Oh, you needn’t pity me for the last. That was the best of the lot. I can’t think why I didn’t try it sooner. Governessing was the worst I think; but they do work waitresses rather hard, I must admit. Well, that sort of thing went on for three years, as I told you; and then I was dismissed from my proud position of parlourmaid by an irate lady because her husband wanted to kiss me and was tactless enough to try with the door open. I boxed his ears for her, but apparently that wasn’t enough, so I was turned out, with a month’s wages in my bag. I’d just come to an end of them and was beginning to wonder rather desperately where the next was to come from, when I got a letter from Elsie – Mrs Vane, you know.”

Anthony nodded. “Your cousin?”

“Yes; her mother was my mother’s sister. I’d never seen her in my life – hardly even heard of her, in fact – but to my astonishment she said that she’d heard I was having rather a rough time and, as she had plenty of money of her own, would like to extend a helping hand, so to speak. Anyhow, the upshot was that she invited me to come and live here, nominally as her companion and with a quite generous salary.”

“Jolly decent of her,” Anthony commented.

The girl glanced at him rather queerly. “Yes, wasn’t it? And very extraordinary too. But there was something more extraordinary to come. A day or two after I had arrived she broke the news to me quite casually that she had made a new will that morning leaving all her money and everything else unconditionally to me – ten thousand pounds or more, to say nothing of her jewellery. As you can imagine, I was absolutely astounded.”

“I should think so. But how topping of her!”

“Very,” said the girl drily. “But you see the position it puts me in – combined with my excellent grandfather. Rather – difficult, to say the least, isn’t it? And the trouble is that I’ve simply nobody to advise me. The solicitor who managed my affairs is dead; George – Dr Vane – is – well, he’s not the sort of person one could talk to about this sort of thing; nor is Miss Williamson, his secretary. I’m absolutely alone.” She tossed her cigarette out over the sea and laughed a little bitterly. “So now perhaps you can understand why I’m ready to take into my confidence the very first person who comes along – though even that doesn’t excuse my howling on his shoulder, I’m afraid.”

“It’s a perfectly damnable position,” growled Anthony. “I’d like to wring that inspector’s neck. But one thing’s perfectly clear. You must talk all this over with my cousin. He’ll help you if anyone can, and I’m sure he won’t use anything you tell him for the
Courier
without your consent.”