Wicked Uncle (8 page)

Mr. and Mrs. Tote and Moira Lane arrived in time for tea, Miss Lane very tall and elegant, with brilliant eyes, a flashing smile, and considerable charm.

Mrs. Tote presented as great a contrast as it was possible to imagine. A very expensive fur coat having been shed, there appeared a wispy little woman rather like a mouse, with scant grey hair twisted up into a straggly knot behind. Do her hair any other way than she had done it ever since she grew up, Mrs. Tote would not. She brushed it neatly, and she put in plenty of pins. It wasn’t her fault if the fur turban which went with the coat was so heavy that it dragged the hair down. She hadn’t wanted the fur turban. She would have liked a nice neat matron’s hat in one of those light felts like she used to get when they had their business in Clapham, before Albert made all that money. The turban made her head ache, like a lot of the things that had happened since they got rich. She would have been glad to take it off like that Miss Lane had done with hers, pulling it off careless, and her hair all shining waves underneath. She liked to see a girl with a nice head of hair, and fair hair paid for dressing. Nice to be able just to pull off your hat like that and feel sure that you were all right underneath. But of course not suitable at her age, and the hairpins dropping out like they always did all the way down in the car.

Moira Lane’s clear, light voice broke into Mrs. Tote’s reflections. Gregory Porlock had just said, “Where’s your young man?” and Moira was saying, “He won’t be a moment—he’s just putting the car away. Really angel of you to let me bring him, Greg, because if you hadn’t, I’d have had to come by train, and if there’s one thing that brings my sordid stony-broke state home to me more than another, it is having to travel third-class on this revolting line and grapple with my luggage at the change, whereas if I can float from door to door in somebody’s car I get the heavenly illusion of being not only solvent but more or less in the class of the idle rich. So when I ran into Justin last night and found he was positively dying to meet you—well, it all did seem too good to be wasted, didn’t it?”

Gregory Porlock put a friendly hand on her shoulder.

“That’s all right, my dear. But—dying to meet me—why?”

Moira laughed.

“Well, to be quite accurate, it’s the Martin Oakleys he’s dying to meet. Sorry if it’s a disappointment, but it’s all the same thing, isn’t it—Martin and you being the world’s buddies and all that.”

“Why does he want to meet Martin Oakley?”

She gave a slight impatient frown.

“Oh, some schoolgirl cousin umpteen times removed has just taken a job there—secretary to his wife or something. Justin says he’s practically her guardian, so he wants to meet them. Amusing when you know Justin. I’m just wondering how ravishingly pretty she would have to be to make him come over responsible.”

Gregory Porlock laughed.

“Well, you’ll be able to see for yourself in an hour or two, because the Oakleys are dining here and I told them to bring her along.”

He moved away from her to make himself charming to Mrs. Tote.

Miss Masterman poured out tea with an exhausted air. There were very good scones and home-made cakes, but the only one who did any justice to them was Mrs. Tote. One of the things she didn’t like about being fashionable was the miserable sort of tea people gave you in London—little wafery curls of bread and butter, and the sort of sandwich that wouldn’t keep a butterfly alive. She didn’t care whether she ever had another late dinner, but she did like a good sit-down tea. And here was Mr. Porlock giving her a little table to herself and helping her to honey with her buttered scone.

When Justin Leigh came in he kept her company. Having missed lunch, he was hungry enough to deal appreciatively with the excellent tea provided by his host.

“Your cousin’s coming to dinner,” said Moira Lane. “No—I don’t eat tea. It’s no use waving buns at me as if I was something in a zoo. What’s her name?”

“Dorinda Brown.”

Moira’s elegant eyebrows rose.

“Bread-and-butter miss?”

Justin looked vague.

“I don’t know that you would call her that.”

She laughed.

“Why haven’t I ever met her? You’ve been keeping her up your sleeve. I’m no good at shocks. You’d better break it to me— what is she really like?”

Justin smiled suddenly.

“Nice,” he said, and reached for another bun.

When tea was over the party melted. The Mastermans disappeared. Moira took Justin off to play snooker. Mrs. Tote went up to her room.

It was perhaps half an hour later that her husband joined her there, and the first minute she set eyes on him she knew that there was something wrong. A regular state—that’s what he had put himself into, and now she would have to soothe him down, and as likely as not he’d be upset the whole evening and not get his sleep at night. He was getting stouter, Albert was, and it didn’t do him any good getting worked up, not with his short neck and getting so red in the face. He quite banged the door behind him as he came in, and began right away, saying he wouldn’t stand it, not for nobody nor nothing.

“Now, Albert—”

“Don’t you ‘Now, Albert’ me, Mother, for I’m not in the mood to stand it! I’ve had all I’m going to stand from anyone, and don’t you forget it! And there’s others that had better not forget it neither!”

Dear, dear, Albert was put about and no mistake! Mrs. Tote really couldn’t remember to have seen him so upset about anything since Allie ran off to marry Jimmy Wilson whose father had the next-door shop to theirs in the old Clapham days. And of course Allie could have looked a good deal higher, with all the money Albert had made in the war. But there it was—you’re only young once, and when you’re young money doesn’t seem to matter the way it does when you haven’t got anything else. She remembered Allie standing up and saying all that to her father.

“Jimmy’s good and he’s steady. He’s got a job, and I’m going to marry him. We don’t want your money—we can make enough to keep ourselves. We’d like to be friends, but if you won’t you won’t, and we’re getting married anyhow.”

Well, of course, Albert was terribly put about. And obstinate —more like a mule than a man. Allie and Jimmy thought he’d come round, but she never really thought so herself. Not even when the baby was born—though how he could go on calling her Mother the way he did and never think that if it hadn’t been for Allie he’d never have had any call to start doing it.

She came back to Albert fairly shouting out that he wouldn’t stand it, and prepared to be firm.

“Now then, what’s it all about?”

She didn’t say “Father,” because she never said it now—not since Allie went and he wouldn’t have her name mentioned. You can’t be a father if you haven’t got a child. She said,

“You’d better tell me what’s the matter, and not go walking up and down like that—there’s no sense in it.”

Red in the face and breathing short, Albert began to use language. He was still walking up and down, with an angry flounce when he had to turn where the washstand brought him up on one side of the room and the wardrobe on the other. Mrs. Tote put up with it for as long as she felt she could. She didn’t approve of language, but if you didn’t let a man swear when he was angry he might do worse. So she waited until she thought he must have got rid of the worst of it before she said with surprising firmness,

“Now, Albert, that’s quite enough. You come here and tell me what it’s all about. Carrying on like that—you ought to be ashamed.”

He came, angry and glaring, to drop down on the couch beside her. The rage wasn’t out of him, but he had a foreboding of what he would feel like when it had gone—cold—empty— afraid. He had to talk to someone. Emily was his wife. A good wife, but too fond of her own way. Obstinate. But she didn’t talk—not about his affairs. It wasn’t every man that could say that about his wife. He stared at her and said in a choked sort of way,

“It’s blackmail. That’s what it is—blackmail—”

Mrs. Tote came straight to the point.

“Who’s blackmailing you?”

“That damned fellow Porlock.”

“And what have you been doing to get yourself blackmailed?”

His eyes avoided her—looked at the pink and purple flowers on the chintz cover of the couch.

“Women don’t understand business—it’s a business matter.”

Emily Tote went on looking at him. He’d got himself into a mess—that’s what he’d done. You can’t get rich all that quick and keep honest—she’d known that all along. Terribly easy to go over the edge in business when your mind was taken up with getting rich. She looked steadily at Albert, and thanked God that Allie was out of it. She said,

“You’d better tell me.”

“He’s blackmailing me. Oh, it’s all wrapped up as clever as you please, but it doesn’t take me in. Come to him by a side wind—that’s what he says. Him saying he’ll fix it up for me— as if I didn’t know what that meant! I may have been a fool, but I’m not such a fool as not to be able to see right through Mr. Gregory Porlock. General agent, my foot! Blackmail—that’s his business, I tell you—blackmail! But I’ll be even with him!” Mr. Tote had recourse to language again. “I’ll show him whether he can blackmail me! If he gets a knife in him some dark night he’ll only have himself to blame!”

He had been shouting. Mrs. Tote leaned forward and tapped him on the knee.

“Be quiet,” she said. “That’s foolish talk. Do you want everyone in the house to hear you? You get a hold of yourself, Albert, and tell me what it’s all about. What have you done?”

He said in a sullen voice,

“No more than hundreds of others.”

“What was it?”

He threw her a fleeting look, sitting up there in the sofa corner with her skinny hands held together in her lap and her eyes looking at him. A little bit of a thing, Emily, but set in her ways. You could put her into a fur coat that cost a thousand, but you couldn’t make her look like a rich man’s wife. But she wouldn’t talk—Emily wouldn’t talk. He’d got to tell someone. He said,

“It wasn’t anything to start with, only the use of the yard so a lorry could be run in and be handy when it was wanted.”

“Wanted for what?”

“What had that got to do with me? Then they wanted the hire of my lorry as well, and I said I wasn’t letting it out for any Tom, Dick or Harry to drive. And they said I’d be paid for what it was worth three or four times over.”

Emily Tote said, “Who is they?”

“Sam Black, if you want to know. Well, by that time I was in it enough to get into trouble, but not enough for it to be worth while. I said to Sam, ‘I’m not playing about with this any more. It’s not worth my while.’ And he said, ‘It might be.’ And to cut a long story short, it was.”

“Black market?” said Emily Tote.

He threw himself back in his corner.

“Money going begging—that’s what it was.”

She sat up very straight in the blue flannel dressing-gown which it was no use trying to make her change for a silk one. That was Emily all over. She sat there, and she said as cool as a cucumber.

“Five pounds to a lorry-driver to get out and have a cup of cocoa or a glass of beer, and a dozen barrels of sugar, or it may be butter, gone before he comes back. Was that the game?”

His jaw dropped.

“Why, Mother!”

“Do you think I don’t read the papers? It’s all been there in black and white for anyone to see. And some of the ones they caught got stiff sentences, didn’t they?”

Mr. Tote’s ruddy colour had faded.

“That was in the war,” he said.

“And what you did—wasn’t that in the war?”

“Don’t talk like that! It isn’t going to come out, I tell you. Who’s going to bother about what happened three or four years ago? If I pay up, it will be only because I don’t want any unpleasantness.”

Mrs. Tote was still looking at him.

“You didn’t make all that money out of a few odd barrels.”

He actually laughed.

“Of course I didn’t! That was only the beginning. I got into it in a big way. Why, if I was to tell you some of the hauls we made, you wouldn’t believe me. Organizing ability—that’s what they said I had. One of the planners—that was me. There’s a funny thing about money, you know—once you start making it, it fair runs away with you and makes itself. When we started with that twopenny-halfpenny business in Clapham, I lay you never thought you’d be a rich man’s wife.”

Deep inside herself Emily Tote answered with the words which she would never allow to pass her lips—“I never thought I’d be married to a thief.”

She said aloud, “I wouldn’t say too much about that. You’ve only told me half. What does Mr. Porlock know, and what is he going to do?”

The blood rushed back into his face, swelling the veins, purpling the skin.

“He’s got dates and places, curse him! There was a lot of petrol from an aerodrome—he’s got that. And a biggish haul of butter from the docks. Two or three other big jobs. Says there are witnesses that can swear to me. But I don’t believe him. It’s three years ago—who’s going to take any notice of people swearing to where you were, and to what you said and did as long ago as that? If I pay, it will be because it doesn’t do you any good in business to have things said. And if I pay, I know damn well whose pocket the money’ll go into! Mr. Blackmailer Porlock— that’s who! And when I think about it, I tell you straight it makes me feel I’d rather swing for him!”

He was shouting again. Emily Tote said,

“Don’t talk so foolish, Albert.”

Gregory Porlock came into the billiard-room shepherding the Mastermans.

“Well, now, here we are. And I’m going to carry Moira off. Just finished a game? Who won?”

Moira Lane laughed.

“Oh, I’m not in Justin’s class—he’s way up, practically out of sight.”

“Ah, then he can take Masterman on, and Miss Masterman can see fair play. We’ll come back presently.”

He took her off to the study, a comfortable country room with book-lined walls, warmly coloured rugs, and deep brown leather chairs—a room that had been used and lived in. Granted that Gregory Porlock had taken the house furnished, he might be given the credit for his choice. He fitted the room too—fresh healthy skin, clear eyes, good country tweeds which had been worn in country weather. There was a tray of cocktails on the table, and he handed Moira one.

He said, “I’ve brought you here to ask you a question, you know.”

“Have you?” Nothing could have been more friendly than her voice. She sipped from her glass. “Sounds intriguing. What is it?”

He met her laughing eyes and said quite gravely,

“What do you make of me, Moira? What sort of man would you say I was?”

She didn’t look away, but she looked different. The smile was still in her eyes, but there was something else there too—something a little wary, a little on guard. She said in her pretty, light voice,

“A good fellow—a good friend—a charming host. Why?”

He nodded.

“Thank you, my dear. I think you meant that.”

She was sitting on the arm of one of the big chairs, leaning against the back, every line of the long figure graceful and easy. She took another sip from her glass and said,

“Of course I did.”

He went over to the fire and put a log of wood on it. When he turned round he had his charming smile again.

“Well, that being that, I can go on.”

“Go on?”

“Oh, yes—that was just a preliminary. The fact is—let me take your glass—well, the fact is, I’ve got something for you, and I wanted to feel sure of my ground before I gave it to you.”

“Something for me?” She laughed suddenly. “Greg, my sweet, how marvellous! Is it a present? Because I warn you I shall consider I’ve been lured here under false pretences if it isn’t. It will be a sort of breach of promise, because you’ve quite definitely raised my hopes.”

He laughed too.

“Have I? Then I shall have to do something about it. Or perhaps you will. We’ll see. Meanwhile, here it is.”

He took a small parcel wrapped in tissue paper from his pocket, laid it upon her knee, and went back to the hearth again. From a couple of yards away he watched her sit up straight and undo the wrappings. She had a laughing look, but at the first touch of the paper and what it held there was a faint instant check. Her hands stayed just as they were, measuring the weight of the parcel, feeling the shape of it through the thin paper. Something moved under her fingers like the links of a chain, and she knew.

Gregory Porlock saw her colour go, quite suddenly, as the flame goes when you blow a candle out. One moment it was there, bright and vivid. The next it wasn’t there any more. The bright, living thing had gone. Only her eyes stayed on him in a long searching look before she turned them to what the paper held.

She was unwrapping the paper now, letting it drop into the seat of the chair. What emerged was a bracelet—a band about an inch and a half wide, diamond trellis-work between two rows of fine brilliants, and, interrupting the trellis at distances of about three quarters of an inch, light panels of larger stones with a ruby at the centre of each. The rubies were very fine and of the true pigeon’s blood colour. The workmanship was exquisite.

Moira Lane held the bracelet out on the palm of her hand. Her blood might have betrayed her, but her hand was steady.

“What is this?”

Those dancing eyes met hers. He might have been enjoying himself. Perhaps he was.

“Don’t you know?” As there was no answer, he supplied one. “I think you do. But you know, you really ought to have been more careful. Of course there are so many ignorant people that one gets into the habit of expecting everyone to be ignorant. But you can’t really count on it. Anyone in the trade might happen to know something about historic jewels. Even outside the trade there are people like myself to whom the subject is of interest.”

“I don’t know what you mean. In fact I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She really did look blank. He said in an incredulous voice,

“My dear girl, you don’t mean to say you didn’t know what you were taking!”

A frown crept across the blankness.

“It’s a bracelet. The stones are very good. I suppose it’s worth a lot of money. Is there anything else to know about it?”

“Well, well,” said Gregory Porlock—“the True History of the Ruby Bracelet. Instruction for you. Opportunity to show off for me. You may have noticed that I do like showing off.”

“Yes. What have you got to show?”

He laughed good-humouredly.

“Just a little specialized knowledge. That’s another thing you may have noticed about me—I’m fond of odd bits of information—little blind-alley bits and pieces. And you know, sometimes—sometimes they come in useful.”

“Do they?” Her voice was as steady as her hand had been, but the ring had gone out of it.

“Well, you shall judge for yourself. Anything about jewels— that has always fascinated me. Years ago—why it must be quite twenty—I picked up a shabby little book on an Edinburgh bookstall. It was called Famous Jewels and their History, with a Particular Account of the Families of the Nobility and Gentry in whose Possession they are to be Found. Not a well-written book, I am afraid, but containing some interesting facts. Do you know, for instance, that a good many of the French crown jewels were brought over to England during the Revolution and entrusted for safe keeping to the Marquess of Queensberry —the one who was known as Old Q? He is said to have buried them in the cellar of his town house, and all trace of them appears to have been lost. He kept the secret too well, and died with it undisclosed. A couple of London clubs now occupy the site, and somewhere under their foundations there may still be lying the jewels of the Queens of France—” He paused, and added briskly, “Or perhaps not. You never know, do you? Jewels are like riches—sometimes they take to themselves wings. But this is a digression. I mustn’t let myself be carried away. It is Josephine’s ruby bracelets with which we are concerned. You did know, I suppose, that this is one of a pair?”

She glanced down at the trellised diamonds and said,

“How should I know?”

If it was meant for a question, there was no direct answer.

“Then I can continue to show off. My little book mentions these bracelets. Napoleon gave them to Josephine on rather a special occasion. Just turn to the inside of the clasp and you will see the N surmounted by the imperial crown.”

There was no interest in face or manner as she turned the clasp. The crowned N looked at her from the pale gold.

Gregory Porlock had come over to stand beside her.

“Now turn it and you’ll see the date at the other end of the clasp, rather faint but legible—Fri. 10. 1804.”

She said, “What does it mean?”

“The tenth of Frimaire, eighteen hundred and four. That is, December the first, the date on which Josephine at last induced Napoleon to go through the religious ceremony of marriage with her. He cheated, because by deliberately omitting the presence of the parish priest he left a loophole of which he availed himself later on when he applied for a declaration of nullity. The bracelets were a wedding present. The imperial N is there because December the first was the eve of their coronation. Didn’t you really know the story?”

She looked up with a startling anger in her eyes.

“What has it got to do with me?”

He went back to the fire.

“I can tell you that too. Josephine died in eighteen-fourteen. The bracelets are not specifically mentioned in her will. In fact they disappear for about forty years, when the second Earl of Pemberley bought them in Paris as a wedding present for his bride. Where they had been in the interval does not transpire, but Lord Pemberley was, apparently, satisfied as to their history, and they have been handed down in the family ever since. The title is now extinct, but the widow of the last Earl survives. You are connected with her, I think, through your mother.”

“So that is why I am supposed to know about the bracelets!”

He nodded.

“We are getting to the point. About ten years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Lady Pemberley at a charity ball—she was one of the patronesses. Imagine my interest when I saw that she was wearing the Josephine bracelets. I ventured to remark on them, and when she found that I knew their history she was kind enough to take them off and show me the initial and the date—the same on each. So you see, when I encountered the bracelet which you have in your hand—”

She broke in with a raised voice, “What has this got to do with me?”

“I’m boring you? I’ve really almost done. A friend of mine who knows my hobby told me he had come across a bracelet of very beautiful workmanship. I went to see it, and of course recognized it at once. I needn’t tell you the name of the shop, because of course you know it. What you probably didn’t know was that the proprietor knew perfectly well from whom he was buying the bracelet. You see, you figure quite a lot in the Society papers, and he recognized you. In point of fact, he would not have bought so valuable a piece of jewellery, from an unknown client. Knowing your family connections, he did not hesitate.”

There was a long pause during which he watched an averted face—brows drawn together, lips pressed into a rigid line.

When he thought the silence had lasted long enough he broke it.

“I’m your friend, you know. There’s no need to look like that.”

The colour rushed back into her face. She swung round on him, eyes wide and glowing.

“Greg—”

His smile had never been more charming.

“That’s better!”

“Greg—she gave it to me. I don’t know what you’ve been thinking—”

He laughed.

“Well, I bought it. I won’t tell you what I paid, because there’s always a revolting difference between the buying and the selling price, and I don’t want to rub it in. Anyhow, now it’s my property there’s nothing to stop my making a gesture and sending it back to Lady Pemberley, is there?”

“You can’t do that! I naturally don’t want her to know I sold it.”

“Oh, naturally! Have you got the other one—or did you sell that too?”

“She only gave me one.”

He shook his head.

“My dear girl, it won’t do. You know, and I know. And you know that I know. What’s the good of keeping up this farce? If I were to go to Lady Pemberley and say that I had recognized her bracelet in a sale room, what do you suppose would happen? There would be a bit of a crash, wouldn’t there? She wouldn’t run you in—oh, no! We don’t wash our dirty linen in public. But I think Miss Lane’s name would come out of Lady Pemberley’s will, and I shouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t get round the family that dear Moira had spilt rather a lot of ink on her copybook. In fact, in the language of melodrama, ‘Social Ruin Looms.’ ”

Moira Lane got to her feet. She put the bracelet down on the corner of the writing-table and said rather quietly,

“What good would that do you?”

He could admire her, and he did. Courage appealed to him, and the breeding which set him at a distance. She wouldn’t cry or make any appeal, she wouldn’t break. He looked at her approvingly.

“That’s where we really get down to brass tacks. And the answer is, it wouldn’t do me any good at all. There’s nothing in the world I want less than to hurt you. All I want is for us to stop playing comedies and get to business.”

“What business?”

He came up to the table and gave her another cocktail.

“Better have a drink. You look played out. Now, Moira, listen! I could ruin you. But why should I want to? I don’t. I admire you very much, and I like to think that we are friends. I’ll go farther and tell you I’d like to have you as a partner.”

Standing there, glass in hand, she looked at him with a little scorn. She finished her cocktail, put the glass back on the tray, and waited, her eyebrows delicately raised.

He stood perhaps a yard away, easy and smiling.

“I told you I was a collector of odd bits of information. When people know you like them they come your way, sometimes in a very surprising manner. But that sort of thing has to be very carefully checked. It doesn’t do to slip up. Some of it—rather an important part—comes from the circles of which you are a privileged member. Exclusive circles, very intimately linked. It would be a great advantage to me to have what I might call a consultant who was in and out of those very exclusive circles.”

The eyebrows rose a little higher still.

“You used the word partner just now. You are asking me to be your partner in a blackmailing business?”

He put up a deprecatory hand.

“Now, Moira—what’s the good of talking like that? It may relieve your feelings, but I assure you it doesn’t do anything at all to mine. They have acquired a complete resistance to sarcasm, so you are wasting your time. If, on the other hand, you did by any chance succeed in making me angry, the results might be unfortunate—” He paused and added, “For you. I think that my use of the word partner was not a very happy one. It implies responsibility, and you would have none. Consultant is a much more accurate description. All I should ever ask you to do would be to keep me straight as to facts, and to assist me with your personal specialized knowledge of the people concerned. To give you a simple illustration. Certain things admitted to be facts might in one case be extremely compromising, whereas in another no one would attach the slightest importance to them. That is where your personal contacts would come in. I needn’t say that the whole thing would be completely confidential and sufficiently remunerative. As far as Josephine’s bracelet is concerned, it is yours to do what you like with. If I might make a suggestion, it would be that you should find some opportunity of restoring it to Lady Pemberley. It would be better not to run any further risk. It is the future that matters now.”