Ten Star Clues (33 page)

“A penny for your thoughts,” she said unexpectedly, as though she had guessed something of what was passing through his mind. He had the idea indeed that there was little those small, bright eyes of hers did not see, and little, too, of what they saw that when they saw they did not hate. In quite a different tone she said: “Well, when are you and Olive going to get married?”

“We haven't settled anything yet,” he answered.

“Money, I suppose,” she said. “It's all money in this world. Money. Are detectives well paid?”

“Not detective-sergeants in the Metropolitan police,” Bobby answered ruefully.

“Olive has a business of her own?”

“Her hat shop, you mean? I don't think it does much more than pay the rent. Bad debts, for one thing.”

“Collect 'em,” said Miss Kayne.

“Can't, sometimes, when there's no money. And Olive says it's often worse when there is money. Apparently when you've a five figure income ordinary bills are beneath your notice, and if you're asked to settle, then you take offence, and there may be a bill paid, but a customer lost.”

The old woman nodded, nodded at least as far as the folds of fat around her neck permitted her to move her head.

“Olive told me about that,” she said in her tiny, distant voice, that sounded almost as if she were speaking over a telephone. “She said you ought to be promoted soon, and then it would be all right.”

Bobby shook his head doubtfully.

“Goodness knows when that will be,” he said. “Things aren't too comfortable in the London police just now.”

Bobby hesitated. He knew very well that Olive had accepted Miss Kayne's invitation not only for old friendship's sake but also because she thought Miss Kayne, as a rich and influential woman, acquainted with many important people, might be able to help Bobby to that official recognition Olive felt it was so unfair he had not yet been granted. More likely to do harm than good, Bobby thought privately.

But Miss Kayne might as well know how things were. He went on.

“It's this business Lord Trenchard started of bringing in an officer class. Every policeman used to feel he had as good a chance as anyone else in the force. Now he feels that the first thing he'll be asked when he goes before a promotion board is what his father did. Just like a new boy at school. ‘What's your father do?' Then the kid's classed, for good. Like that with us, too, now. ‘What was your father?' is the first thing the Promotion Board wants to know. If you say your father was a doctor or a parson, well, they purr and you get through. If you say he was a navvy or a farm labourer, they look down their noses and the odds are you don't.”

“That doesn't affect you, does it?” Miss Kayne asked. “You're the officer class, too.”

“Oh, I fall between two stools,” Bobby explained. “I'm not one of the Hendon lot and I don't much want to be, so I'm out there. At the same time the old style policeman classes me with them, so I'm out there, too. Lord Trenchard thought the police only existed to protect society, and he only saw society as a society of the rich, so he thought he had to bring in chaps from the rich classes to keep the police loyal. They were loyal, but loyal to the community, not to a class. The Trenchard result is that for the first time the police are split with class feeling—some of them feel they are only there as servants of rich people, and the rest don't like it, and none of them know quite where they are.”

The door opened then and Bobby forgot everything else as Olive came in. She gave him a quick, smiling, hesitating glance, a little as though she were wondering still who it was to whom she had now trusted herself, and her future, and why she had done so, and whether it had been quite wise, and what would he do with her? For indeed a half of her gloried in the surrender she had made and a half of her was afraid. All very well to talk about sex equality, but the eternities remained, and what a woman gave, she gave, and could never have again. But what a man took, he took and could go on taking, so where was your equality? And then she was Bobby looking at her and at that no thought was left in her any more only a great wish that she had more to give and ever more. Neither of them noticed how the small hidden gaze of the old, fat woman, immobile in her huge arm-chair, went darkly from one of them to the other, and then back, nor, if they had, would it have been easy for them, or anyone, to guess what meaning lay hidden in those remote and secret eyes.

“Does Mr. Broast say it'll be all right?” she asked suddenly.

“Oh yes, he was quite nice about it,” Olive answered. “Miss Perkins says he's in a good temper today, in spite of its being Inspection.”

“You saw him yourself?” Miss Kayne insisted, a little uneasily, as though she were afraid of any misunderstanding—though, after all, Bobby reflected, the library was hers, and Mr. Broast only a salaried employee.

“Oh yes,” Olive answered. “Miss Perkins said he was in the cellar, and I had better go and ask him, and so I did.”

Was it then necessary, Bobby wondered, for Miss Kayne to ask her librarian's permission before she sent her guests to view her treasures?

“The cellars? What was he doing in the cellars? Was he alone?” Miss Kayne asked, her voice suddenly a note higher.

“Oh no, Sir William and Mr. Nat were there, too. They were looking at an old printing press. Mr. Broast was explaining something.”

Miss Kayne made no further comment. She seemed, as it were, to withdraw herself into the lethargy of her gross, enormous body. Olive touched Bobby on the arm and they went out together, Miss Kayne apparently hardly conscious of their withdrawal.