The Blind Side: An Ernest Lamb Mystery Page 4

  Peter Renshaw frowned. If Mavis thought she could run him in a string with Ross Craddock she would have to think again. He wasn’t asking for a row with Ross. The fact was, they had never been on very good terms, and the more they saw of one another the worse the terms were likely to be. He gave Mavis an aloof smile, and wondered where Bobby Foster was, and whether Mavis was just playing him up, or what. Perhaps she really liked Ross—there was no accounting for tastes. Perhaps she only thought she liked him because Lucinda kept telling her she mustn’t.

  He detached himself from a problem in which he felt no particular interest and listened in a faraway manner to the red-haired girl’s description of the Tower of London. Her name was Maud Passinger, and she described everything in detail and with immense enthusiasm.

  Some time during the next dance he found himself close to Mavis in a jam. She said in her pretty, empty voice,

  “Oh, Peter, I never see you.”

  To which he replied,

  “Well, here I am. Take a good long, satisfying look. It costs you nothing.”

  Mavis’s dark eyes opened wide. Her lips parted in a small puzzled smile.

  “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “Not in the least, darling.”

  “Oh, Peter!”

  Paula Nelson was talking heartily to the next couple in the jam.

  “Where’s Ross?” said Peter.

  “He saw a man he wanted to speak to. Peter, aren’t you going to ask me to dance?”

  “No, my child.”

  “Oh, Peter—why?”

  “Ross appears to have staked out a claim. I am too young to die.”

  She laughed her tripping laugh at that, and said,

  “Silly!” Then, in a patronizing voice, “Are you afraid Ross would hurt you?”

  “Perhaps I’m afraid I might hurt Ross.”

  And with that Paula was saying,

  “Aren’t we going to dance any more? Do you know who that was that I was talking to? Well, it was a girl I was at school with, and she was so fat we used to call her ‘Twice round the Gasworks.’ And now look at her. She swears she’s only thirty-four round the hips. And that’s her husband, and they’re over from Kenya, but they’ll have to go back again. I do wonder how she’s done it. You know, I’d like to be thin, but I just can’t be bothered about a diet, and one person tells you nothing but boiled milk, and another says oranges and tomatoes—and I can’t bear tomatoes—can you? But perhaps you like them. Such a lot of people seem to, but personally I think they’re horrid.”

  Paula’s talk went on and on and on. She had nursed him through a baddish bout of fever, and he felt properly grateful. Beneath the paralyzing dullness of the present moment ran a steady current of affection. He bore up until the party dispersed, and then thankfully retrieved his hat.

  A last look back into the room showed him that Mavis and Ross were still together. They were not dancing now, but sitting out under an electric fan. The light just overhead shone through a many-coloured prism upon Mavis’s silver dress and the champagne in her glass. Marvellous heads girls had nowadays, but it looked to him as if she had had just about enough. Perhaps a little more. Anyhow it was none of his business.

  On the steps he collided with a large young man who said “Sorry,” and then clutched him.

  “Peter!”

  He surveyed Bobby Foster without enthusiasm. The clutch became a bruising grip.

  “Peter! Is she still in there?”

  Peter’s diagnosis was that Bobby had had quite as much to drink as he could carry, and that he was spoiling for a scene. He slipped a hand inside his arm and began to walk away.

  “Who is in where?” he enquired soothingly.

  Bobby stopped dead and struck an attitude.

  “Do you know that she was coming out with me, and when I went to fetch her she’d gone with that—that—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Peter, most untruthfully.

  A hand like a ham came down upon his shoulder. Most of Bobby Foster’s weight appeared to be resting upon it. He swayed on a pair of unsteady legs and said in a broken voice,

  “Mavis—he’s stolen her—cut in on me and stolen her—I can’t give her champagne—like Craddock—”

  Peter frowned. He remembered the dazzle of lights on Mavis’s glass. What a dratted nuisance girls were. Bobby was a good fellow if a bit of an ass. He couldn’t possibly be allowed to go barging into the Ducks and Drakes in the sort of state he was in. A complete toss-up as to whether he would give Ross a black eye or weep on Mavis’s shoulder. Either proceeding was bound to create a scandal.

  “Look here, Bobby,” he said, “it’s simply foul in there—Black Hole of Calcutta isn’t in it—temperature about ninety-six and still going up. What you want is nice fresh air. You come along with me. If you feel you’ve got to, you can tell me all about it.”

  Bobby took no notice.

  “I’ll knock his head off!” he said in alarmingly loud tones. “Knock it right off and kick it into the gutter!” His voice rose to a bellow. “Shooting’s too good for him—that’s what I say! The dirty swab! Ouch!” He sprang back with extraordinary agility, managed to retain his balance, and demanded with indignation, “What’d you do that for?”

  “It’s nothing to what I’ll do if you don’t stop making such a row.”

  Mr. Robert Foster nursed his left arm, made several attempts to pronounce the word jujitsu, and fell back upon “Damned dirty trick!”

  “Apologize or I won’t go another step. Do you get that? Apologize!”

  The fact that he could pronounce these four syllables without a tremor appeared to please him so much that he went on doing it.

  “You know, if I were you I should go home,” said Peter.

  “Would you?”

  “Yes—and I’d go to bed.”

  Bobby stared at him with round, blank eyes.

  “You’d go home?”

  “Yes.”

  “And go to bed?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  Mr. Robert Foster became suddenly overcome with emotion.

  “Ah, but then you haven’t lost the only girl you ever loved. And I have. And I’ve not only lost her, I’ve had her stolen from me. And by a dirty swab with pots of money. Pots, and pots, and pots of money. And what I say is, shooting’s too good for him.” He dropped suddenly back into the common-place. “And now I’ll go home.”

  “Yes, I should,” said Peter with relief.

  Having got Bobby into a taxi before he could change his mind, he continued on his way.

  It was a little short of twelve o’clock when he got back to Craddock House. Mary Craddock’s Dresden china clock was striking the hour as he came into the flat and shut the outside door with a bang.

  Chapter Six

  It was more than an hour later that he waked with great suddenness. Waked, or was awakened? For the moment he wasn’t sure, but the more he thought about it the more it came to him that something had waked him up. He put on the light and looked about him. The clock made it half past one.

  He got up and looked into the sitting-room. There were some heavy portraits there. One of them might have fallen. That was the impression that he had brought with him out of his sleep—a crash—something heavy falling. But old David Craddock in neckcloth and whiskers still gloomed between the windows; his wife, Elizabeth, stood stiff in puce brocade; whilst over the mantelpiece his daughters, Mary and Elinor, in white muslin and blue ribbons, played with an artificial woolly lamb.

  He went back to the bedroom and listened. He could hear nothing, but that impression of having heard some loud and unfamiliar sound was very strong. The bed stood with its head against the wall which separated this flat from the next. Ross Craddock’s sitting-room lay on the other side of it. If something had crashed in that room it might very easily have waked him from his sleep.

  A crash—yes, that was what it had been. The impression was getting stronger all the time. He hes
itated for a moment, and then went to the outer door and opened it. A light burned on the landing all night long. Rather a dingy light, but sufficient to show him the empty lift-shaft, two flights of stairs, one up, one down, and the perfectly bare landing with Lucy Craddock’s door facing him across it, and Ross Craddock’s door on his right facing the entrance to the lift. There wasn’t the slightest sound of anything stirring. The whole great block might have been uninhabited except for himself.

  He was just stepping back, when the door of Ross’s flat was wrenched open and Mavis Grey ran out. Her silver dress was torn. She tripped and stumbled over it as she ran, and it tore again. Before Peter had any idea what she was going to do she had flung herself into his arms, and before he had time to say more than “What on earth—” Ross Craddock stood in the open doorway staring at them.

  He stared, and he stood there swaying as if he were drunk. Peter thought he was drunk. And there was Mavis shuddering in his arms. He said,

  “Look here, hold up. What’s happened?”

  She was clutching him and sobbing violently.

  “Oh, Peter! Oh, don’t let him touch me!”

  Peter said, “It’s like that, is it? What have you done to her? Mavis, pull yourself together. Has he hurt you?”

  “Of course I haven’t,” said Ross.

  He laughed in a confused sort of way. He had one hand on his head. He dropped it now and held it out palm upwards. The palm was darkly stained. Blood ran down his face from a cut above the eye. He laughed again and said heavily,

  “I was the one that got hurt.”

  “Well, we can’t have a scene about it here,” said Peter. “Come in if you’ve anything to say.”

  Mavis sobbed and clung to him.

  Ross said, “Thank you, I’ve had enough.” He stood there and watched them, swaying.

  Peter stepped back and banged his door. He was in a state of pure rage. This would happen as soon as Lucy had gone away. And a bit of pure luck if no one had heard Mavis sob. She had made enough noise over it in all conscience. He removed her arms from about his neck, put her firmly into Mary Craddock’s big armchair, and said,

  “You’d better tell me what’s happened.”

  Mavis let her head fall back against the magenta cushion and closed her eyes.

  “Something to drink—” she said faintly.

  Peter brought her cold water. She revived sufficiently to register indignation.

  “I don’t call water something to drink!”

  “If you’d stuck to the water-wagon you wouldn’t be here tonight,” said Peter grimly.

  Mavis shuddered. She was suddenly young and disarming.

  “You don’t seem to notice what a lot you’re drinking when everyone’s doing it too, but it does make you do things you wish you hadn’t afterwards—doesn’t it?”

  “It has been known to.”

  She leaned forward.

  “But I wouldn’t have come here tonight if I’d known Aunt Lucy had gone—oh, Peter, I really wouldn’t. He said she’d put off going—something to do with business. And he said it was so late, why not come back here and get her to put me up? Because the Greys do fuss most frightfully if I’m not in before twelve. And I didn’t know she’d gone till I got here, and then he said he’d made a mistake.”

  “It’s the sort of mistake he’d be likely to make—isn’t it?”

  Mavis looked puzzled.

  “I don’t see how he could. Do you? Not really. I mean he couldn’t have thought she had put off going unless she had told him so herself—I mean there couldn’t have been any mistake. And anyhow everyone always knows everything that’s going on in these flats.”

  Peter looked piously at the ceiling.

  “Let’s hope, my dear, that everyone doesn’t know what’s been going on tonight.”

  “Oh!” said Mavis on a shocked breath. And then, hopefully, “But they’re nearly all away, aren’t they?”

  “Miss Bingham came back last night, and she’s the worst of the lot.”

  “She told Aunt Lucy I wanted watching,” said Mavis, with a faint hysterical giggle.

  “And I’m sure she’d have been most happy to oblige.”

  “Oh, Peter!”

  “Oh, Mavis!”

  She shivered and sat up.

  “What had I better do?”

  “Let me take you home, I imagine.”

  She looked over her shoulder at the clock.

  “Oh, Peter—is that right?”

  “Absolutely. It’s a quarter to two.”

  “Then I can’t possibly go home. You don’t know what they’re like. Aunt Gladys is bad enough, but Uncle Ernest is ten times worse. I mean, Aunt Lucy’s a fuss, but she simply isn’t in it with the Grey relations.”

  “All the same I think you will have to go home.”

  “Peter, I can’t—honest. You see, they don’t approve of Ross, and they’ve forbidden me to go out with him, and—well, they think I was at the party at Hampstead with Bobby Foster—his sister Isabel’s party—and I rang up from the Ducks and Drakes and said Isabel was keeping me for the night, so you see I simply can’t go home.”

  With rage in his heart Peter saw. He said in a most unpleasant voice,

  “What you want is about ten of the best with a hair-brush.”

  “How can you be so unkind!”

  There was a pause. Peter mastered a desire to shake her and said,

  “Are you going to tell me what happened? You needn’t if you don’t want to, but I think you’d better.”

  Mavis brightened. Now that she wasn’t frightened any more there was something exciting about having had such an adventure. And she had always liked Peter much better than Peter had seemed to like her. Perhaps this was an opportunity. He found a little scrap of a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes with it.

  “Well, I really was going to Isabel’s party with Bobby, so I didn’t tell a lie about that. But then we quarrelled—”

  “You and Bobby, or you and Isabel?”

  “Oh, Bobby of course—about Ross. You know, Peter, it’s frightfully stupid of people to go on warning you about someone. Everyone has been warning me about Ross for months—Aunt Gladys, and Uncle Ernest, and Aunt Mavis, and Aunt Lucy. You know—all the sort of people you can’t have rows with. So when Bobby started in I just let him have it. I’d got it all saved up, and out it came. And then of course I couldn’t go to the party with him—could I? So I rang Ross up. Every time any of the aunts do any of their awful warnings I always ring him up—it just makes me feel I must. So I told Bobby I wasn’t ever going to speak to him again, and I met Ross at the end of the road.”

  “Chapter one,” said Peter. “And chapter two is fun and games at the Ducks and Drakes, and we can skip that, because I was there and saw most of it. And now we come to chapter three.”

  Mavis showed some slight embarrassment.

  “Well, we got here—”

  Peter nodded.

  “I’d gathered that.”

  “And when we got here he said, ‘Come in and have a drink,’ and I said it was too late, but he said oh, he’d just remembered that Lucy wasn’t here after all. And I said, ‘Do you mean the flat is empty?’ and he said ‘Yes,’ and a lot about being awfully sorry and all that—and, Peter, I thought he really was. And when he said I must come in and talk about what would be the best thing to do, I never thought—honest, Peter, I never thought about there being anything wrong—I really didn’t.”

  “Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart,” intoned Peter.

  “How horrid of you! I can’t think why no one ever warns me against you. I think you’re quite the horridest person I know.”

  “You’d better go on with chapter three.”

  He could see her warming to it. Her colour had come back, and her eyes had brightened.

  “We went into the sitting-room, and there was a decanter and glasses on the table, and I said I wouldn’t have anything more, and he said I must, so he g
ot a bottle of champagne and poured out a glass for me and a glass for him, but I really only sipped it. And then he began to make love to me, and at first I liked it, and then I didn’t. And then he got rough, and my dress got torn and I got awfully frightened, and I picked up the decanter and hit him with it as hard as I could, and the table went over and everything broke.”

  “I heard it. Continue.”

  Mavis shuddered enjoyably.

  “Oh, Peter, I thought I’d killed him. He went right down, and he groaned.”

  “Dead men don’t groan.”

  “Oh, no, he wasn’t dead. I only thought he was. I felt absolutely frozen, but when he began to get up I ran away—and oh, Peter, you can’t think how glad I was to see you.”

  “The pleasure was far from mutual,” said Peter, in his most disagreeable voice. “Mavis, you really are an absolutely prize, champion idiot. Anybody could have told you what Ross was like.”

  “They did tell me,” said Mavis tearfully. “That’s why I did it.”

  “That’s why I said you were a prize, champion idiot. Now sit up and pay attention and listen. You’ll have to stay here tonight.”

  “Thank you, Peter.”

  “I don’t want you to thank me—I want you to listen. You will stay here tonight. You can have the bedroom, and I’ll camp down in here. In the morning you must go to this Isabel woman and tell her the exact truth and get her to back you up. She can lend you some clothes to go home in. And now you’d better try and get some sleep.”

  “I don’t think I can sleep,” said Mavis.

  “Well, I can,” said Peter. “So off you go!”

  When she had got as far as the door she turned back.

  “Suppose I had killed Ross—” she said rather breathlessly.

  Peter was arranging a pile of cushions on the sofa.

  “You didn’t, worse luck.”

  Her dark blue eyes opened to their very widest.