The Blind Side: An Ernest Lamb Mystery Page 2

  She went back to her own flat and packed her little cane trunk, and then went trotting over to No. 8 in case Ross had returned, and to No. 9 to see if Peter had come back. She kept on doing this for hours. Sometimes she packed her things, and sometimes she unpacked them. At intervals she read the cruel letter again, and about once in every half hour she rang the bells of No. 8 and 9.

  “Like a cat on hot bricks!” Rush, the porter, told his bedridden wife in the basement. “What’s she want to go away for?”

  “Everyone wants to get away some time,” said Mrs. Rush mildly. She sat up against four pillows and knitted baby socks for her daughter Ellen’s youngest, who was expecting in a month’s time. She was pale, and plump, and clean, with very little thin white hair screwed up into a pigtail, and a white flannelette nightgown trimmed with tatting.

  “I don’t,” said Rush, “and no more do you. A lot of blasted nonsense I call it!”

  Mrs. Rush opened her mouth to speak and shut it again. She hadn’t been out of her basement room for fifteen years, but that wasn’t to say she wouldn’t have liked to go. Men were all the same—if they didn’t fancy a thing themselves, then no one else wasn’t to fancy it neither. She began to turn the heel of the little woolly sock.

  Ross Craddock came home just before three o’clock in the afternoon. He took himself up in the lift, and as soon as Miss Lucy heard the clang of the gate she opened her front door a crack and looked out. It was really Ross at last. Her heart bumped against her side and her breath caught in her throat. He looked as he always did, so very handsome and so masterful. It was ridiculous to feel afraid of someone she had seen christened, but there was something about Ross that made you feel as if you didn’t matter at all.

  She stood behind the door and gathered up her courage, a little roundabout woman with a straight grey bob and a full pale face. She wore a dyed black dress which had been navy blue and her best all the summer, and low-heeled strap shoes over thick grey stockings. When she heard Ross Craddock put his key into the lock she popped out of her door and ran after him. If he had seen her, she would not have caught him up. But Miss Lucy was not without cunning. She timed her trembling rush so that it took her through the half open door and into the little hall beyond.

  Ross Craddock, removing his key, was aware that he had been caught. He said suavely, “You want to see me, do you?” and opened the sitting-room door.

  Miss Lucy walked in and stood there trembling with his letter in her hand. She saw him come in after her, remove his hat, and sit down at the writing-table half turned away. When she said “Yes” in a loud, angry voice, he swung his chair round a little and surveyed her with a faint smile upon his face.

  Miss Lucy came a step nearer. She pushed the letter towards him as if it could speak for her. It was a hot August day and her skin was beaded with moisture. She said, her voice fallen to a whisper,

  “You didn’t mean it—you didn’t.”

  “And what makes you think that, Lucy?”

  He was smiling more broadly now. Such a good-looking man, so tall, and strong, and handsome. It didn’t seem possible that he could really mean to be so unkind. She said,

  “But, Ross—”

  “A month’s notice,” said Ross Craddock exactly as if she had been a kitchenmaid.

  Miss Lucy stopped trembling. She was too angry to tremble now.

  “Your father put us here—he gave us the flats—he said he would never turn us out!”

  “It isn’t my father who is turning you out, Lucy.”

  Miss Lucy looked at him. There was a big photograph of Mavis on the table at his elbow. Mavis was her own niece—Mavis Grey. It was a new photograph, one that she had never seen before, and she was ashamed to see it now. It looked like one of those shameless pictures sent in for beauty competitions, only instead of being an enlarged snapshot as most of them were, it was beautifully posed, beautifully taken—Mavis in what she supposed was some sort of fancy dress—tights, and a sort of feather frill, and a bodice cut so low that it wasn’t really a bodice at all. A dull, ugly red came into her face.

  Ross Craddock laughed.

  “Good photograph, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Did Mavis give it to you?”

  “Had it taken for me, Lucy.”

  “It’s a scandalous picture!” said Lucy Craddock. “She’s my niece—she’s my own niece. And she’s your cousin too, because my father and mother were cousins. And you ought to leave her alone—you know you ought. Why, what would anyone think who saw that picture?”

  “That Mavis has a very good figure,” said Ross Craddock. He fixed those dark eyes of his upon the photograph, and Miss Lucy’s colour deepened.

  “I asked you to leave her alone! I begged and prayed you to before Mary got so ill.”

  He said, “Exactly,” and turned his eyes upon the letter, which she still held clasped in her hand.

  “And that’s why you’re turning me out?”

  “My dear Lucy—what penetration!”

  She went back a step. Her colour faded.

  “How wicked!” she said.

  Ross Craddock got up. He took her lightly by the arm and led her to the door.

  “Old maid cousins should be seen and not heard,” he said, and put her out.

  Chapter Two

  She was still there on the landing when Peter Renshaw came running up the stairs about five minutes later. He was a tall young man—all the Craddock men ran to height—but he had none of his cousin’s claim to good looks. Rather jutting brows, rather prominent cheek bones, rather wide-set eyes, a skin tanned by the Indian sun, a small nondescript moustache, hair that had once been very fair and had never quite made up its mind to go brown—that was Peter Renshaw. He was thirty years of age, held His Majesty’s commission in the Westshire Regiment, and was at present on leave from India.

  He stopped on the top step and contemplated his Cousin Lucy with some astonishment. She had her back to him and her face to Ross Craddock’s front door, and she was shaking her fist at it, absolutely and literally shaking her fist. Peter couldn’t recall having ever seen anyone actually shake a fist before. A slight whistle escaped him. Lucy Craddock turned round and showed him a strangely unfamiliar face, tear-stained, heavily flushed, and quite distorted by anger.

  “Hullo, Lucinda—what’s up?”

  At the sound of his voice she burst out crying. She clung to his arm.

  “He’s wicked!” she said, and choked, and sobbed it out again.

  Peter unlocked the door of No. 9 and got her inside. If Lucy must have hysterics, let her have them in decent privacy. He put her on the couch which had been her sister’s, pulled up a chair, and said briskly,

  “What’s Ross been doing now?”

  She was in such a state of agitation that it took him some time to arrive at the facts. He had to disentangle the Mavis motif from the eviction motif, and in the end he wasn’t quite sure which was upsetting poor Lucinda most. Mavis was none of his business, and he certainly wasn’t going to have a row with Ross about her, but the eviction was a different matter. He was quite prepared to fight if there was the faintest chance of success. He patted Lucy’s heaving shoulder and said,

  “All right. Now take a breather. No, you’ve cried enough. Here’s my handkerchief. Blow the nose, brace the back, and listen to your Uncle Peter.”

  Miss Lucy sniffed against the cold clean linen, dabbed her eyes with a shaking hand, and gazed at him with touching confidence. Peter wouldn’t let her be turned out. Peter would speak to Ross.

  “Now,” said Peter, “what I want to know is just this. When Uncle John brought you and Mary here, did you have a lease or anything like that?”

  “It’s such a long time ago—I’m sure I never thought—”

  “Think now,” he said. “Think as hard as you can. Are you sure there wasn’t a lease?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—oh, I’m sure there wasn’t—but if there had been—Mary would have known—and she didn’t always tel
l me things—of course she ought to have—but she didn’t—”

  Peter patted her again.

  “Don’t bother. If Mary had anything, I’ll find it—it’ll be somewhere in the welter. But think. Did Uncle John ever write to you about your coming here?”

  “Oh, no—he was so kind—he came to see us. We were in very poor lodgings, you know—up in Birmingham—after Papa’s death. He failed, you know—and then he died—and dear John came and fetched us away and gave us these flats—”

  “He gave you the flats? What did he say?”

  “Oh, I don’t remember,” said Lucy Craddock, and burst into a fresh flood of tears.

  She really knew nothing. It took Peter another quarter of an hour to make quite sure of this. If there was any evidence as to John David’s intention with regard to the flats, it would be somewhere in the muddle of papers Mary Craddock had left for him to sort. He very much feared that there wasn’t going to be any evidence.

  “And I don’t know what to do,” said Lucy, sobbing—“because I’ve got my tickets—and I’m all packed up—and the train goes at half past seven—but I can’t go away now—can I?”

  “Of course you can! Now look here, Lucinda, you’ve got to pull yourself together and carry on. You promised Mary you’d go away for a change, and you’ve got to keep your promise. Don’t you see it’s the very best thing you can do? If you go away you tie Ross’s hands. He can’t very well put your furniture out in the street, and anyhow I’ll be here to see he doesn’t. And you’ll be giving me time to go through the rest of the papers. There may be something that’ll give you a case. So you see, you couldn’t do anything better than be out of the way for a bit. Now if you’ve still got anything to pack you’d better hop along and get on with it.”

  Lucy Craddock stopped crying. She had the relieved, exhausted feeling that comes after prolonged weeping. She wanted to go away and forget all about Ross Craddock. She said,

  “Oh, do you think I could? But there’s Mavis too. He’s got a dreadful picture of her in there. She oughtn’t to have let him have it. She ought not to go about with him. He’s a very wicked man. I don’t think I ought to go away and leave her.”

  “She is with her father’s people, isn’t she?”

  “Yes—the Ernest Greys. She’s very strict, but she hasn’t any influence over Mavis. Besides, she doesn’t know—” She broke off rather short and looked frightened.

  “What doesn’t she know?”

  Lucy Craddock shook her head in a distracted manner.

  “What is there to know?” said Peter.

  Lucy shook her head again. Then she burst out,

  “He can’t marry her—he doesn’t want to marry her—and he ought to leave her alone. She’s my niece and his own cousin, and it’s not right! And Mrs. Grey has no influence—Mavis doesn’t listen to her.”

  “Does she listen to you, Lucinda?” said Peter.

  “Oh, no, she doesn’t. I don’t know what girls are coming to. She doesn’t listen to anyone.”

  “Then what’s the use of your staying?”

  Lucy Craddock jumped up.

  “Oh!” she said, “I wish Ross was dead!” She ran out of the room and out of the flat, as if the sound of her own words frightened her.

  Chapter Three

  “Oh, dear!” said Lucy Craddock.

  She was all ready to start, her umbrella on her left wrist and the handle of her bag slipped over the umbrella handle in the special twist which she hoped would make it very difficult for a thief to snatch the bag whilst she was counting her luggage or tipping a porter. In her left hand she had the taxi fare all ready, and in her right she carried the little suitcase which contained everything she would need until she reached Marseilles.

  And now there was the telephone bell ringing, and she would have to put everything down and keep the taxi waiting and—Her pale eyes looked distressfully out of her round pale face.

  “Oh dear!” she said.

  She took up the receiver, and heard Lee Fenton say,

  “Is that you, Cousin Lucy?”

  But it couldn’t be Lee, because Lee must be on her way to South America by now. Quite against everyone’s advice, but then young people never took advice.

  She said in a small distracted voice, “Oh dear—who are you? I can’t stay—I’m just starting.”

  Lee Fenton, in the station call-box, giggled and frowned. No need to ask if it was Cousin Lucy at the other end of the line. And what a fuss she was in. Anyhow thank goodness she hadn’t started. She said firmly,

  “Cousin Lucy, it’s Lee. Please don’t start till I’ve told you what I want.”

  Miss Lucy Craddock looked anxiously over her shoulder. The telephone was in the hall of the flat, a wall fixture, and if the kitchen door was open behind her she ought to be able to see the kitchen clock, and then she would know how much time she had to spare. But of course it wasn’t open. She had shut all the doors herself, the kitchen door and the bathroom door behind her, and the bedroom door and the sitting-room door on her left. Only the front door stood open, just as Rush had left it when he carried down her trunk, and her hat-box, and the big suitcase which had poor Mary’s initials on it but she hoped that wouldn’t matter because there was an extra large label with her own name in full—Lucy Craddock.

  She said in an agitated voice, “But, my dear—where are you? And I’m just starting—I really am.”

  “Darling, you always start half an hour too soon—you know you do. I’ll be as quick as lightning, but you must listen. Are you listening?”

  “Yes—yes—But haven’t you sailed? I thought you were at sea—”

  “Well, thank goodness I’m not. Darling, it was a wash-out.”

  “A wash-out?”

  “Absolutely. And I shall put it across Madeleine Deshenka next time I see her—only I don’t suppose I shall now, because from the way she talked you’d have thought she knew these Merville people in their cradles, and I only found out by accident two days before we were due to start that she’d picked them up in the Casino at Monte Carlo a couple of months ago, and all she really knew about them was that they’d made a packet.”

  Miss Lucy gave a horrified gasp.

  “Oh, my dear—how dreadful! I always said—”

  Lee made a face at her end of the line.

  “Darling, I know you did. But this isn’t the moment to trample—it really isn’t.”

  “Oh, Lee, you can’t go with people like that—not to South America—you really can’t!”

  “I’m not going. Anyhow it wasn’t them any longer—it was him. They had a row—darling, I can’t begin to tell you what a really first-class row it was—and then she walked out and took the little girl with her. And he seemed to think I was going to stay and just sail away with him into the blue, so I walked out too, and here I am.”

  “Where?”

  “Victoria Station. Don’t get rattled, darling—nothing has happened, and nothing is going to happen. But listen. Can I have the key of Cousin Mary’s flat and stay there for a bit while I look round for something to bring in the shekels, because this has just about cleaned me out and it won’t run to digs.”

  Miss Lucy felt, and sounded, completely distracted.

  “Oh, my dear! How very, very unfortunate! And I’ve paid for my tickets, or I might have been able—Oh dear, I wish I weren’t going away, but Mary made me promise—you know how unselfish she was, and she thought it would take my mind off. She’d been an invalid so long, and of course that is always a strain, and she made me promise that as soon as I could after the funeral I would go right away—and when Peter told me about this cruise—”

  “I know. Dear Cousin Lucy, do listen. I should hate you not to go for your cruise.”

  “She made me promise,” said Miss Lucy with a sob. “But I don’t really feel I ought to go, because—oh, my dear, you know Ross is turning me out.”

  It was Lee’s turn to gasp. She said, “No!” and Miss Lucy said, “Oh, he is
!” and gave another and a much louder sob.

  “Ross Craddock is turning you out? Cousin Lucy, he can’t!”

  “He says he can. He says there was nothing in the will. He says he wouldn’t turn Mary out, but now she’s gone he wants to throw the three flats into one, and he says I’m quite able-bodied. He says I’ve got to go. I got the letter this morning.”

  Lee stamped her foot so hard that she jarred the line.

  “What a swine!” she said, and shocked Miss Lucy a good deal.

  “Oh, my dear, I don’t think—”

  “Well, I do! What put him up to it?”

  Miss Lucy’s voice trembled.

  “He says he wants the whole floor to himself—dear Mary’s flat, and his, and mine—and to throw them all into one. He says he wants more room. But I think it’s because I spoke to him about Mavis—I do indeed. He was so angry, and told me to mind my own business, but after all she is my niece, and I told him it wasn’t right and he was getting her talked about. And this morning I got his letter—such a horrible, cruel letter—”

  Lee said, “Swine!” again, then added hastily, “What an ass Mavis is!”

  “Oh, my dear!”

  “She always was. But Ross Craddock—what on earth—she can’t like him!”

  “Oh, I don’t know—he is a very handsome man. I feel I oughtn’t to go away, but I promised Mary—”

  “Of course you must go.”

  Miss Lucy sniffed.

  “To stay here and keep on meeting Ross in the lift and on the stairs—I feel I really can’t! I feel as if I should do something before, and it’s so very uncomfortable. It’s not just because he wants to turn me out. There’s Mavis—she’s so young—and there are reasons—” Miss Lucy became very much agitated. “I have got quite a desperate feeling—I have indeed. And Peter says it would be better for me to go away.”

  “Much better,” said Lee firmly. “And look here, darling, let’s get down to brass tacks. Can I have Cousin Mary’s flat?”