Fear by Night: A Golden Age Mystery Page 5

  On Friday morning there was a letter from Charles Anstruther. Ann opened it with a curious feeling of expectation. Which was absurd. The letter began with her name—just “Ann.” This was, of course, highly compromising. It was more compromising than if he had said “Darling Ann,” for nowadays everybody said darling and meant nothing by it. Just “Ann” meant, “I could call you such a lot of names if you would let me. Ann, don’t you want to hear the names I’ve got for you?”

  Ann bit her lip and read the letter:

  Ann, do for any sake chuck this job. I don’t like it for you. I’m sure I could find you something if you would wait. Ann, do wait, and let me lend you something to go on with. I promise I’ll let you pay me back. If you won’t take the job I want you to take, I’m sure I can find you something else. You don’t know anything about these people, and I don’t like what I hear. I’ve been nosing round, and no one seems to know quite where the money comes from. Some of it anyhow is from rum-running—some of it’s possibly shadier than that. Quite definitely I don’t like it for you. And I don’t like your having had a paper sent to you with the advertisement marked. How do you know Mary Duquesne sent it? I don’t believe she did.”

  Ann frowned and bit her lip again. Then she sat down and wrote to Charles:

  Darling Charles,

  What a fuss! You’ve been seeing films. The Hallidays are being frightfully nice to me. She’s an old pet, and he’s the best son in the world. She says so, and she ought to know. She’s got a maid called Riddle who has probably been the most respectable person in England since Mrs. Grundy died. I suppose she is dead—or had you just been having a nice cosy heart-to-heart talk with her when you wrote to me?

  She signed “Ann,” and then wrote underneath:

  Don’t be a Maiden Aunt.

  Boil the head till perfectly clear. One to two hours should suffice. (Mrs. Halliday has just been telling me how to make marrow jam. This ought to reassure you, because villains in films never make marrow jam.)

  My Maiden Aunts told me never to allow young men to lend me money.

  On Friday Ann began to settle down. It wasn’t going to be too bad. Riddle looked after Mrs. Halliday till eleven o’clock, and then Ann took her over. After lunch she rested for two hours under Riddle’s supervision, and at eight o’clock she went to bed. No, it wasn’t going to be at all bad, and the pay was marvellous. If Charles thought she was going to throw up a job like this just because he chose to be a fuss, Charles had got to be taught to think again. Perhaps she would dine with him one day next week. She wondered whether she would have the nerve to ask for what Mrs. Halliday called her wages in advance. She couldn’t dine with Charles unless she could get her dress out of pawn. Ouf! There was something horribly sordid about the idea of dining with Charles in a pawned dress—sordid, and salutary. If she was in any danger of weakening, the thought of the pawnbroker’s shop would have a bracing effect. Yes, she would dine with Charles, just to show them both that she didn’t care a damn.

  And with that, Mr. James Halliday came into the room and inquired whether she had finished packing.

  “Packing?” said Ann.

  Mr. Halliday’s sandy eyebrows rose.

  “Well now! Hasn’t Mrs. Halliday told you?”

  “Nothing about packing,” said Ann.

  “No—no,” said Mr. Halliday—“you’ve not seen her lunch, to be sure. Well, if you like to make a start, you could get in the best part of an hour before tea.”

  “But where are we going?”

  Ann was in one of the old-gold chairs with a book on her lap. A hot, dusty ray of sunshine slanted between her and Mr. James, who stood a couple of yards away fingering the hard, shiny leaf of the aspidistra in the blue pot. He said,

  “We’re going on my boat. I hope you like sailing. It’s too hot here for the old lady, and that’s the truth. We wouldn’t have been here now if it hadn’t been for getting her fixed up.”

  “I love sailing,” said Ann. “Where are we going?”

  Mr. Halliday took out a bright magenta silk handkerchief and dusted the aspidistra. He had shrewd grey eyes and unusually thick sandy lashes. He did not look at Ann.

  “Oh, up along the coast.”

  “And when do we start?”

  “Nine o’clock to-morrow morning,” said Mr. Halliday, and he put the magenta silk handkerchief back into his pocket and went out of the room.

  It did not take Ann half an hour to pack. She looked at the clock, and wrote to Charles in pencil because there was no ink in her bedroom, and somehow—somehow she didn’t want to write to Charles under the eyes of the mirrors and the aspidistras in the drawing-room. She said:

  Darling Charles,

  Back to the films! Captions: “The Sinister House”—“The Lowly Companion”—“The Seven Aspidistras”—“Rum-runner’s Gilded Hall of Vice”—“The Mysterious Yacht”—“An Unexpected Voyage.” Take three long breaths and emerge into real life. We’re off to-morrow on a cruise up along the coast. Isn’t it simply too thrilling? I adore sailing. I’ll send you an address when I’ve got one. If I don’t, you’ll know I’ve eloped with the run-runner to wherever he keeps his secret still—do you make rum in stills? I shall be able to tell you all about it if we ever meet again. Return to captions: “A Voice from the Ocean. Good-bye—good-bye—good-bye!” Slow fade out.

  Ann.

  Isn’t it too marvellous to be getting out of London?

  Mrs. Halliday came down to tea in a very bad temper. Mr. Halliday did not come to tea at all.

  “And I don’t wonder neither!” said his mother, cutting a thick slice of bread viciously into squares. “It’s right down put me out and ’e knows it, and if ’e’s got any sense, ’e’ll keep out of my road till I’ve slep’ on it.” She put butter on one of the squares, honey on another, marmalade on a third, and black currant jelly, strawberry jam, and apple cheese on the remaining pieces. “’E did ought to know better, and so I told him!”

  “Don’t you want to go away?” said Ann.

  Mrs. Halliday took the square spread with honey in one hand and the square spread with marmalade in the other and took alternate bites from each.

  “Acourse I want to go away!” she said angrily. “Monday we was going, and Monday was a good day to go—start of a week and start of a journey.” She finished the honey and marmalade and went on to strawberry jam and apple cheese. “End of the week travelling’s like end of the week washing—looks as if you’d been trying to get off since Monday and hadn’t made it out. Wash on Saturday, wash for shame—that’s what I was always told in my young days—I’d like some more milk in me tea. ’Ot and milky, and three lump o’ sugar’s the way I like it, Miss Vernon. So I says to James, ‘Have it your own way, my lad, and don’t blame me if things go wrong.’ Another lump of sugar, my dear, and just a dab more honey. Him and me ’ad words, and if ’e goes without ’is tea it’s no more than ’e deserves.” Mrs. Halliday paused, licked a smear of honey from her forefinger, and went on to black currant jelly. “There won’t be any good come of this, and so I told ’im. Dreamt I was packing last night and all, and woke up that put about because Riddle ’ad packed my best bonnet along of Jimmy’s sea-boots. Another cup o’ tea, my dear, and you needn’t trouble to empty the dregs—I like to keep me sugar. I’ve had some terrible strange dreams in my time, and I don’t hold with going against ’em. I dreamt one time that my laundry-line was blowing away, and I run out and tried to catch it, but I couldn’t reach, so I got the kitchen table and climbed on it, and so soon as I got the line in my two ’ands it took me right off me feet and I couldn’t let go, and I tore my best table-cloth clean in two and woke up crying my ’eart out, and that day three weeks I broke my leg through missing the top step of the stairs in the dark. So I don’t ’old with flying in the face of dreams, and never shall.”

  When she had talked herself into a good humour, Ann said,

  “Where are we going, Mrs. Halliday?”

  Mrs. Halliday’s lo
ng nose crinkled a little. Her head, with the grey hair banded on either side of a wide parting and surmounted by a white lace cap trimmed with yellow satin ribbon, nodded in time to her chuckling laugh.

  “You wait and see, Miss Vernon my dear!”

  Chapter Seven

  Charles Anstruther got Ann’s letter on Saturday morning. It disquieted him enough to send him straight off to Westley Gardens, where a young footman in undress informed him that the family had left, and that the house was being shut up. He didn’t know anything about an address. Tipped by Charles, he believed that Mr. Halliday, and Mrs. Halliday, and Miss Vernon, and Mrs. Halliday’s maid were going for a cruise on Mr. Halliday’s motor yacht. He was very sorry, but he didn’t know any more than that. He had only been engaged for the month, and it was the same with all the other servants. They were shutting up the house, and handing in the key to a firm of house-agents.

  “I’m very sorry, sir, I’m sure, but I expect they’ll have let the post office know about their letters, so if you was to write to this address, it would likely be forwarded.”

  Charles came away rather more disquieted than before.

  He wrote to Ann, and presently got the letter back again. It was clear that, whatever Mr. and Mrs. Halliday had done, Ann had either not had an opportunity of arranging for her letters to be forwarded or had not availed herself of it. She had promised to send him an address, but none came. He began to rake London for people who might possibly know something about Mr. James Halliday. The man who had hinted at rum-running was a chance-met club acquaintance and had most inopportunely departed to Norway. Everybody Charles wanted appeared to be somewhere else.

  He contrived in the end to meet unofficially one of the Assistant Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police, and of him made discreet inquiries. He did not find the interview a very reassuring one. On Charles’ side Ann appeared as a cousin who had taken a job which worried her family. It is doubtful whether the Assistant Commissioner was deceived by this camouflage. On his part it appeared that, as far as the police were concerned, Mr. James Halliday had no history. He had never been in prison. He had never been in the hands of the police. Officially, there was nothing against him.

  This should have been reassuring, but somehow it wasn’t. As the Assistant Commissioner talked, Charles received a very definite impression that Jimmy Halliday—he spoke of him as Jimmy Halliday—owed this enviable state of affairs not so much to the innocence of his character as to the astuteness of his brain. “He looks like a mug and he talks like a mug, and if he’d been half such a mug as he looks, we’d have landed him long ago.” Pressed by Charles, the Assistant Commissioner had almost as little to impart as the young footman at Westley Gardens.

  “He’s gone off on a cruise,” said Charles.

  “He started life as a sailor, I believe,” said the Assistant Commissioner.

  “Miss Vernon’s on board as his mother’s companion.”

  “Oh, then I should think she’d be all right,” said the Assistant Commissioner cheerfully. “He’s a very good son, I believe. Your—er—cousin will be all right if she’s with the old lady. I can let you know where the yacht touches if you like.”

  It was ten days later that he got a line saying that the Emma had put in at Oban, and by the next post he got a picture postcard from Ann. It depicted the copy of the Acropolis which so incongruously crowns the hill above that West Highland port. Charles could have done without the picture and with more of the pencilled lines in which Ann addressed him as her darling Charles, announced that she was having the time of her life and was thinking of taking a permanent job as a cabin-boy, and concluded with the cryptic remark: “Films are off. This is the great out of doors.” There was a little “Ann” in the corner just slipping off the card.

  Charles called himself seven kinds of damn fool, had a couple of suit-cases packed, his car greased and filled up, and departed up the Great North Road, leaving the sale of Bewley hung up between the boot-manufacturer’s latest advance and his, Charles’, latest retreat.

  The Emma stayed twenty-four hours at Oban, took Gale Anderson on board in an unobtrusive manner, and put to sea again in halcyon weather. Ann was enjoying herself so much that she was ready to be friends with all the world, but even on a day when the sea and the sky swam together in a blue and golden haze and only the faintest of clouds just touched the sparkling water with a passing shade of hyacinth or amethyst, she did not feel as if she could ever really be friends with Gale Anderson. It was a pity, because it would have been nice to have had someone young to play with.

  Gale Anderson was young, in the early thirties. He was good-looking in a quiet, well-featured, fair-haired way—heaps better looking than Charles, who had a dark, ugly face which became ferocious when he frowned. On the other hand, when he smiled, you forgot all about his being ugly and you were put to it not to weaken.

  Ann dragged herself away from remembering how Charles looked when he smiled. If it was undermining, the less she thought about it the better. Charles, refused, would probably marry the boot-manufacturer’s daughter, which would be very nice, because then he wouldn’t have to sell Bewley.

  Gale Anderson neither smiled nor looked ferocious. He was pale, polite, and indifferent, and his cool blue eyes when they rested upon Ann appeared to find her of no more interest than if she had been a binnacle or a bulwark.

  “Puts me in mind of a young gentleman that visited in my first place,” said Mrs. Halliday. “Courting Miss Edith he was, and everyone said how lucky she was to get him, but it didn’t turn out at all ’appy—not that there was anything against him, but he’d a sort of h’icy way with him that made me come up goose flesh all over, if you know what I mean.”

  Ann knew exactly what she meant, and said so.

  “Then best keep mum about it,” said Mrs. Halliday, “for him and Jimmy’s as thick as thieves.”

  The words stayed in Ann’s mind. They said themselves over once or twice when Jimmy Halliday and Gale Anderson walked up and down the deck talking in the low tones which never satisfied anyone else’s curiosity. But of course there was nothing to be curious about.

  They dawdled along among the islands and up the coast. It was all quite perfect. The weather went on being blue and gold for two days, and then broke in a thunderstorm. There was a flicker of lightning on the far edge of the horizon as the sun went down, and a lead-coloured bank of cloud crossed by puffs of white like the smoke from a heavy gun. The white clouds raced across the black one, and the black cloud itself came up and filled the sky. In a moment it seemed to be dark.

  Ann was not at all pleased at being ordered off the deck. She wanted to watch. The wind came up in a squally gust and dropped again. For a moment everything held its breath, and then the lightning ran in a jagged scrawl across the zenith and a deafening clap of thunder followed. As James Halliday fairly pushed her inside the companion and slammed the door, a second squall struck the yacht and Ann was tipped down the companion with a noise in her ears that drowned the sound of the thunder. She got to her feet and slid across the saloon. As she caught at the handle of Mrs. Halliday’s cabin, the door gave and she was flung inside. A brilliant flash lit the skylight overhead, but she could not hear the thunder for the noise of the wind. She would not have believed that wind could make so much noise. It was like thunder, and an express train, and a great whip cracking, and about half a million fiddles gone mad.

  She steadied herself against the tilting of the cabin floor. Her blood was racing and she felt as if she had been running hard. It was all very exciting, but it was quite evident that neither Mrs. Halliday nor Riddle was enjoying it. Mrs. Halliday was in her berth with a frilled nightcap on her head and a fine knitted shawl about her shoulders. She looked white but determined, and at intervals of about half a minute she said, “Don’t be a fool, Riddle!” You could see her saying it, but you could not hear the words because of the wind.

  The impassive Riddle was completely dissolved in terrified tears. The
y rolled openly down her large pale face and fell unregarded upon her neat black lap. She sat sideways upon her bunk and clutched the edge. When the wind struck them with one of its heavier blows and the floor tilted, she screamed. Ann could see her mouth opening and the shriek coming out, and whenever it was possible to hear anything, Mrs. Halliday said, “Don’t be a fool, Riddle!” And all the time the skylight brightened and darkened overhead as the lightning came and went. Then with a strange suddenness the fury of the squall was over.

  Ann climbed uphill to the door, and then, as the boat went over, was shot right across the saloon. She wanted desperately to get out on deck again and see the lightning make its flashlight pictures of the black hurrying clouds and straining sea. She began to make her way towards the companion, but a sudden lurch flung her against the door of the cabin shared by Mr. Halliday and Gale Anderson. The door gave and she went slipping down against the bunks. In a moment there was water running down her neck, and her hands groped and slipped upon wet metal. The wind blew down upon her up-turned face. The skylight was an inch or two open, overlooked in the sudden flurry of the storm. It was raining now in torrents, and the water was coming in faster every moment.

  She climbed on to the bunk to shut the skylight, and as she steadied herself, she heard Gale Anderson say, so close that it startled her,

  “Damn fool to send her down! There’ll never be a better opportunity.”

  The voice came through the open skylight. The rain splashed round the sound of it without confusing the words.

  And then James Halliday said,