Death and the Joyful Woman gfaf-2 Page 17

  Old Charlcote, the pensioner who manned the janitor’s desk in the hall, had come out of his cage and had his coat on already. Miss Hamilton was usually the last of the staff to leave, he often had occasion to curse her inflexible sense of duty, though never above his breath, she being the force she was in the affairs of the firm. He was just pulling on his home-knitted navy-blue mittens, the tail of one eye on the clock, the other on the stairs, and only a very small part of his attention indeed on the person who was doing his best to engage it. What on earth did a boy from the grammar school want here at this hour, or, for the matter of that, at any hour?

  “What is it, Charlcote?” asked Miss Hamilton, sailing authoritatively across the polished floor from the foot of the stairs. “Is anything the matter?”

  Why couldn’t she have been just one minute later? The kid would have been safely off the premises, and they all could have gone home. Now that conscience of hers would probably insist on probing into the last recesses of whatever the little pest wanted, and he’d have to hang about for an hour or more before he’d be able to lock up and get out.

  “Nothing we can do anything about, miss. This young fellow was asking for Mr. Shelley, but he’s left about ten minutes ago. I don’t suppose it’s anything very urgent.”

  The boy, gripping his school-bag very tightly under his arm, said vehemently: “It is urgent. I did want awfully to talk to him tonight. But I suppose if he’s gone, , , ” The constrained voice faded out rather miserably. The eyes, large and anxious and very bright, dwelt questioningly upon Miss Hamilton’s face, and hoped for a sign of encouragement. She thought she saw his lips quiver. “It’s difficult,” he said. “I don’t know what I ought to do.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Shelley left a little early tonight. He has a lot of work on his hands just now.” She didn’t go into details; what could this child know about the case that was preoccupying Ray Shelley’s time and thought? “I’m afraid you won’t be able to contact him tonight, I know he has an appointment, and they’re liable to be at work most of the evening.” The appointment was with counsel, and would include an interview with Kitty. “Won’t tomorrow do? He’ll be in tomorrow.”

  “I shan’t be able to skip school,” explained the boy with self-conscious dignity. “I should have been earlier, tonight, only I had to stay for rugger practice. I did hurry, I hoped I might be in time.” He had certainly hurried his shower, there were still traces of playing-fields mud beneath his left ear and just along the hairline beneath the thick chestnut thatch at his left temple. Miss Hamilton’s shrewd eyes had not missed them; she knew quite a lot about boys. There was something decidedly wrong with this one, behind that composed, strained front of his; it showed no less clearly than the tide-marks.

  “Haven’t I see you before somewhere? I’m sure I ought to know you.”

  A pale smile relaxed the fixed lines of his face for a moment. “We played your club a couple of times this summer, I expect you saw me at tea. I bowl a bit, spins, not awfully good. My name’s Dominic Felse.”

  “Felse? Not the same Felse, isn’t that right, the detective-sergeant?”

  “He’s my father,” said the boy, and clutched his bag even more tightly, with a sudden contortion of nervous muscles, as though he had shuddered. “It’s something about the case that I wanted to talk to Mr. Shelley about.”

  “But your father surely wouldn’t, , , “

  “He doesn’t know,” said Dominic with a gulp. “It’s just an idea of my own that I thought I ought to put to Mr. Shelley.”

  There was no doubt about it, some intense agitation was shaking him, and if he received the slightest encouragement he would let go the tight hold he had on himself and pour out whatever was on his mind. She was used to receiving and respecting the confidences of boys, some of them a great deal tougher propositions than this well-brought-up child. She cast a glance at the clock. Charlcote was looking significantly at it too. His time was his time, he had no intention of seeing anything pathetic in this nuisance of a boy, and he had been careful to block his ears against every word of this unnecessary conversation.

  “Will I do?” she asked gently, and catching the eloquent roll of Charlcote’s eyes heavenward in mute but profane appeal, suppressed a grim smile. “If I can help you, you’re welcome to come in and talk to me.”

  The sharp jingle of the keys was like an expletive. “It’s all right, Charlcote,” she said, relenting. “You can just leave the outside door and go. I’ll lock up when we come out, you needn’t wait.”

  The old man had his coat buttoned and his cap in his hand before he could finish saying smugly: “It’s my duty to lock up in person, miss, but of course if you care to give orders to the contrary, , , “

  She wanted to say: “Get out, you silly old fool, before I call your bluff,” but she didn’t; he had ways of manipulating the heating system when he was aggrieved, or mismanaging the tea round, it was never worth while taking him on in a long-term engagement. “Consider it an order by all means,” she said briskly, “and run off home to Mrs. Charlcote at once. I’ll make sure we leave everything in order.” And she took Dominic firmly by the arm and marched him towards the stairs. “Now, come along up to my room, we may as well be comfortable.”

  “May I really? You don’t mind?” He let himself be led away gratefully; she felt him trembling a little with relief and hope, though the trouble didn’t leave his face. It was something that couldn’t be so easily removed, but at least it could be investigated and possibly shared. She brought him to her own office and put him into the visitor’s chair, and pulled up a straight chair to the same side of the desk with him, where she could watch his face and he wouldn’t be able to evade her eyes. Not that he seemed to want to; he looked back at her earnestly and unhappily, and when she helped herself to a cigarette to give him time to assemble himself he leaped to take the matches from the stand and light it for her. Very mannish; except that his fingers were shaking so that she had to steady his hand with her own, and if the touch had been just a shadeless impersonal she thought he would have burst into tears there and then.

  “Sit down, child,” she said firmly, “and tell me what’s the matter. What is all this about? What is it you want with Mr. Shelley?”

  “Well, you see, he’s Miss Norris’s solicitor, and I thought the best thing I could do was come to him. Something’s happened,” said Dominic, the words beginning to tumble over one another on his tongue, “something awful. I’ve just got to tell somebody, I don’t know what to do. They’ve been looking everywhere, did you know?, for the gloves. The police, I mean. They’ve been looking for them ever since it happened. And now, , , “

  “Gloves?” said Miss Hamilton blankly. “What gloves?”

  “The murderer’s gloves. They say whoever killed Mr. Armiger was wearing gloves, and they must have been badly stained, and they think they must have been hidden or thrown away immediately after the murder. They’ve been looking all over for them, to clinch their case. And I’ve been looking for them, too, because,” he said, raising desperate eyes to her face, “I was absolutely sure they wouldn’t be Miss Norris’s at all, if only I could find them. I was sure she was innocent, I wanted to prove it. And I have found them,” he ended, his voice trailing away into a dry whisper.

  “Then that’s all right, surely,” she said in carefully reasonable tones. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? I suppose you’ve turned them over to your father, and now everything will be all right. So what are you worrying about?”

  He had put down his school-bag beside him on the floor. His hands, deprived of this anchor, gripped each other tightly on his knees. He looked down at the locked and rigid fingers, and his face worked.

  “No, I haven’t turned them in. I haven’t said a word to a soul. I don’t want to, I can’t bear to, and I don’t know what to do. I was so sure they’d be a man’s gloves. But they’re not! They’re a woman’s, , , They’re Kitty’s!”

  The knotted hands came ap
art with a frantic jerk, because he wanted them to hide his face, which was no longer under control. He lost his voice and his head, and began to cry, in shamed little gulps and hiccups he tried in vain to swallow. Miss Hamilton put down her cigarette carefully in the ashtray and took him by the shoulders, shaking him first gently and then peremptorily.

  “Now, this is silly. Come along, tell me about it. Where did you find them? How did it happen that you found them, if the police couldn’t?”

  “I shouldn’t tell you,” he got out between gulps, “I oughtn’t to tell anyone. It just happened. If I told you, you’d have to tell lies, too.”

  “Oh, now, look, I’m trying to help you. If you don’t tell me everything how can I judge the importance of these gloves? You may be quite mistaken about them, they may not be the ones at all. You may be fretting quite needlessly.”

  “They are the ones, I know they are. And they’ll say, they’ll say she, , , ” He was trying to master the hiccups that were convulsing him, and to all her patient questions he could make no better answers than a few grotesque, incoherent sounds. It was quite useless to persist, he was half hysterical already. She released him and went into the small cloakroom which adjoined her office, and came back with a glass of water. She presented it to his lips with an authority there was no gainsaying, and he drank docilely, scarlet and tearful, still heaving with convulsions of subsiding frequency and violence. “There’s blood on them,” he gasped between spasms. “What am I going to do?

  She stood back and looked at him thoughtfully, while he knuckled angrily at his eyes and muffled his hiccups in a crumpled handkerchief.

  “Is that what you were going to ask Mr. Shelley?”

  He nodded miserably. “He’s her solicitor, and, and I thought maybe I, I could just give them to him. I thought maybe he’d take the responsibility, because I, I, , , “

  “You could destroy them,” said Miss Hamilton deliberately, “if that’s how you feel. Destroy them and forget all about it.”

  “No, I couldn’t!. How could I? Don’t you see how I’m placed? My father, , , I feel awful! He trusts me!” He struggled momentarily with an all too evident inclination to relapse into tears again. “But it’s Kitty!”

  Sixteen-year-olds miserably in love are a pathetic sight, and his situation, she saw, was indeed pitiable. Whatever his resolution the issue was certain; he’d never be able to bear the burden for long, sooner or later out it would all come tumbling to his father. Meantime, someone had to lift the immediate load from him.

  “Listen to me, Dominic,” she said firmly. “You’re quite sure in your own mind, aren’t you, that Kitty didn’t kill Mr. Armiger?”

  Where, she was wondering, did Kitty manage to pick up this improbable adorer, and how on earth did they get on to Christian name terms? But Kitty had always been incalculable in her attachments.

  “Then have the courage of your convictions. Don’t say a word to Mr. Shelley. He’s a legal man, it would be cruel to pass the buck to him of all people. You can give the gloves to me. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not afraid to back my own judgment.”

  Dominic’s long lashes rolled back from large eyes gleaming with bewilderment and hope; he stared at her and was still.

  “Law or no law,” she said with determination, “I’m not prepared to help to send Kitty to prison for life, even if she did kill an unscrupulous old man in self-defence. And like you, I’m very far from convinced that she did. I’ll take the responsibility. Let’s consider that it was I who found them.”

  “Oh, would you?” he said eagerly. “If only you would, I should be so relieved.”

  “You needn’t even know what I do with them. Give them to me and forget them. Forget you ever found them.”

  “Oh, I’d be so grateful! I haven’t got them here, because I’ve just come straight from school, you see, and I couldn’t risk carrying them about with me all day. The fellows can be awfully nosy, without meaning any harm, you know, and suppose somebody got hold of those? But I’ve got to come into Comerbourne again for my music lesson tonight, may I bring them to you then?”

  “Yes, of course. I have to go to the club for part of the evening, though. Where does your music teacher live?”

  He told her, brightening every moment now, his voice steady and mannish again. It was in Hedington Grove, a little cul-de-sac off Brook Street, near the edge of town. “I leave there at nine. I usually catch the twenty past nine bus home to Comerford.”

  “You needn’t worry about the bus tonight,” she said good-humouredly. “I shall be finished at the club by then, I’ll pick you up at the corner of your teacher’s road, on Brook Street, and drive you home. I’ll be there at nine. Is that all right?”

  “Fine, of course, if it isn’t troubling you too much. You’ve been most awfully kind.” He scrubbed once more at his eyes, quickly and shamefacedly, and smoothed nervous fingers through his hair. “I’m awfully sorry I was such an ass. But honestly I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Feel better now?”

  “Much better. Thanks awfully!”

  “Well, now suppose you trot in there and wash your face. And then run off home and try not to worry. But don’t say a word to anyone else,” she warned, “or we should both be in the soup.”

  “I won’t breathe a word to a soul,” he promised fervently.

  She shepherded him down the stairs again into the silent hallway, and out into the darkness, and switching off the last lights after them, locked the door. The boy was beginning to feel his feet again now, and to want to assert his precarious masculinity all the more because she had seen it so sadly shaken. He hurried ahead to open doors for her, and accompanied her punctiliously across the forecourt to the parking ground where the big old Riley waited.

  “Can I drop you somewhere now? I could take you to the bus stop, if you’re going home?”

  “Thanks a lot, it’s awfully kind of you, but I’ve got my bike here. I put it in the stand near the gate.”

  All the same, he came right to the car with her, opened the door with a flourish and closed it upon her carefully when she had settled herself on the driving-seat; and he didn’t move away until she had fished her black kid gloves out of the dashboard compartment, pulled them on and started the car. Then he stepped back to give her room to turn, and lifted a hand to her with a self-conscious smile as she drove away.

  When she was gone he awoke suddenly to the chill of the wind and ran like a greyhound for his bike. He rode back into the centre of the town as fast as he could go. Some of the shops were already closing, and the dapple of reflected lights in the wet surface of the pavements blurred into a long, hazy ribbon of orange-yellow, the colour of autumn.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  IT WAS ON Thursday evening that Professor Brandon Lucas, on his way to a weekend art school which did not particularly interest him but at which he had rashly consented to put in an appearance, made a sudden detour in his most capricious manner and called on Jean and Leslie Armiger. The visit could have been regarded as planned, since he had with him the notes and sketches relating to the sign of The Joyful Woman, but he had not admitted his intention even to himself until the miles between him and his boredom were shortening alarmingly, and his reluctance to arrive had become too marked to be ignored. Why get there in time for dinner? His previous experiences at Ellanswood College had led him to write off the food as both dull and insufficient, whereas there was a very decent little hotel in Comerbourne; and if the slight ground mist didn’t provide a plausible excuse for lateness his errand to the Armigers could be pleaded as important, and even turned into a topic of conversation which might save him the trouble of listening to fatuities about art from others.

  Being too short-sighted without his glasses to read the lettering on Leslie’s bell, and too self-confident in any case to bother about such details, he startled the silent evening street with a tattoo on Mrs. Harkness’s knocker, and brought out the lady herself; but he was equal even to Mrs. Harkness, and made s
o profound an impression upon her that Leslie’s status with her went up several notches on the strength of the call.

  The professor climbed the stairs unannounced, to find Leslie in his shirt-sleeves washing up at the little landing sink, and the smell of coffee bubbling merrily from the hot plate, and demonstrated his finesse by exclaiming in delight that he’d come just in time, that the cooking at The Flying Horse was splendid, but their coffee hadn’t come up to the rest. And having thus intimated that they need not attempt to feed him, he sat down comfortably and reassured them with equal dexterity that they were not expected to try to entertain him.

  “I’m on my way to a weekend course, as a mater of fact. I mustn’t stay long, but I thought I’d look in on you with a progress report. That’s a very interesting job you’ve found me, my boy, very interesting indeed.”

  Leslie came in rolling down his sleeves, and produced liqueur glasses and the carefully nursed end of the half-bottle of cognac Barney Wilson had brought back from his summer holiday in France. Jean had conjured up a glass dish he hadn’t known they possessed, and filled it with extravagant chocolate biscuits which Leslie felt certain would be the wrong thing to offer this unexpectedly Corinthian old buck of a professor, until he saw how deftly and frequently they were being palmed. She had also shed her old blue smock and appeared in a honey-yellow blouse that made her hair look blue-black and her skin as clear and cool as dew. Half an hour ago they had been talking to each other with the cautious forbearance of strangers in order not to quarrel, but whenever events demanded from her a gesture in support of her husband Jean would be there, ready and invincible.

  “Is it going to turn out to be anything? I was afraid to touch it myself, but I could hardly keep my hands off it, all the same.”