Grave Mistake

‘She was run down and needs a complete rest.’

‘I thought you’d tell me where she was. That’s why I came.’

‘I’m afraid not, Claude.’

‘That’s awkward,’ he said fretfully. ‘I was counting on it.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘Oh, up there for the time being. At Quintern.’

‘Did you come by train?’

‘I hitched.’

Verity felt obliged to ask him if he’d had any lunch and he said, not really. He followed her into the kitchen where she gave him cold meat, chutney, bread, butter, cheese and beer. He ate a great deal and had a cigarette with his coffee. She asked him about Australia and he said it was no good, really, not unless you had capital. It was all right if you had capital.

He trailed back after her to the drawing-room and she began to feel desperate.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I was depending on Syb. I happen to be in a bit of a patch. Nothing to worry about really, but, you know.’

‘What sort of patch?’ she asked against her will.

‘I’m short.’

‘Of money?’

‘What else is there to be short of?’ he asked and gave his three inverted sniffs.

‘How about the hundred pounds she sent to Tenerife?’

He didn’t hesitate or look any more hang-dog than he was already.

‘Did she send it!’ he said. ‘Typical of the bloody Classic Line, that is. Typical inefficiency.’

‘Didn’t it reach you?’

‘Would I be cleaned out if it had?’

‘Are you sure you haven’t spent it?’

‘I resent that, Miss Preston,’ he said, feebly bridling.

‘I’m sorry if it was unfair. I can let you have twenty pounds. That should tide you over. And I’ll let Sybil know about you.’

‘It’s a bit off not telling where she is. But thanks, anyway, for helping out. I’ll pay it back of course, don’t worry.’

She went to her study to fetch it and again he trailed after her. Horrid to feel that it was not a good idea for him to see where she kept her housekeeping money.

In the hall she said, ‘I’ve a telephone call to make. I’ll join you in the garden. And then I’m afraid we’ll have to part. I’ve got work on hand.’

‘I quite understand,’ he said with an attempt at dignity.

When she rejoined him he was hanging about outside the front door. She gave him the money. ‘It’s twenty-three pounds,’ she said. ‘Apart from loose change, it’s all I’ve got in the house at the moment.’

‘I quite understand,’ he repeated grandly, and after giving her one of his furtive glances said, ‘Of course, if I had my own I wouldn’t have to do this. Do you know that?’

‘I don’t think I understand.’

‘If I had the Stamp.’

‘The Stamp?’

‘The one my father left me. The famous one.’

‘I’d forgotten about it.’

‘You wouldn’t have if you were in my boots. The Black Alexander.’

Then Verity remembered. The story had always sounded like something out of a boy’s annual. Claude’s father had inherited the stamp which was one of a set that had been withdrawn on the day of issue because of an ominous fault: a black spot in the centre of the Czar Alexander’s brow. It was reputed to be the only specimen known to be extant and worth a fabulous amount. Maurice Carter had been killed in the blitz while on leave. When his stamp collection was uplifted from his bank the Black Alexander was missing. It was never recovered.

‘It was a strange business, that,’ Verity said.

‘From what they’ve told me it was a very strange business indeed,’ he said, with his laugh.

She didn’t answer. He shuffled his feet in the gravel and said he supposed he’d better take himself off.

‘Goodbye then,’ said Verity.

He gave her a damp and boneless handshake and had turned away when a thought seemed to strike him.

‘By the way,’ he said. ‘If anyone asks for me I’d be grateful if you didn’t know anything. Where I am and that. I don’t suppose they will but, you know, if they do.’

‘Who would they be?’

‘Oh – boring people. You wouldn’t know them.’ He smiled and for a moment looked fully at her. ‘You’re so good at not knowing where Syb is,’ he said, ‘the exercise ought to come easy to you, Miss Preston.’

She knew her face was red. He had made her feel shabby.

‘Look here. Are you in trouble?’ she asked.

‘Me? Trouble?’

‘With the police?’

‘Well, I must say! Thank you very much! What on earth could have given you that idea!’ She didn’t answer. He said, ‘Oh well, thanks for the loan anyway,’ and walked off. When he had got half way to the gate he began, feebly, to whistle.

Verity went indoors meaning to settle down to work. She tried to concentrate for an hour, failed, started to write to Sybil, thought better of it, thought of taking a walk in the garden and was called back by the telephone.

It was Mrs Jim, speaking from Quintern Place. She sounded unlike herself and said she was sure she begged pardon for giving the trouble but she was that worried. After a certain amount of preliminary explanation it emerged that it was about ‘that Mr Claude Carter’.

Sybil had told the staff it was remotely possible that he might appear and that if he did and wanted to stay they were to allow it. And then earlier this afternoon someone had rung up asking if he was there and Mrs Jim had replied truthfully that he wasn’t and wasn’t expected and that she didn’t know where he could be found. About half an hour later he arrived and said he wanted to stay.

‘So I put him in the green bedroom, according,’ said Mrs Jim, ‘and I told him about the person who’d rang and he says he don’t want to take calls and I’m to say he’s not there and I don’t know nothing about him. Well, Miss Preston, I don’t like it. I won’t take the responsibility. There’s something funny going on and I won’t be mixed up. And I was wondering if you’d be kind enough to give me a word of advice.’

‘Poor Mrs Jim,’ Verity said. ‘What a bore for you. But Mrs Foster said you were to put him up and, difficult as that may be, that’s what you’ve done.’

‘I didn’t know then what I know now, Miss Preston.’

‘What do you know now?’

‘I didn’t like to mention it before. It’s not a nice thing to have to bring up. It’s about the person who rang earlier. It was – somehow I knew it was, before he said – it was the police.’

‘Oh lor’, Mrs Jim.’

‘Yes, miss. And there’s more. Bruce Gardener come in for his beer when he finished at five and he says he’d run into a gentleman in the garden, only he never realized it was Mr Claude. On his way back from you, it must of been, and Mr Claude told him he was a relation of Mrs Foster’s and they got talking and –’

‘Bruce doesn’t know –? Does he know? – Mrs Jim, Bruce didn’t tell him where Mrs Foster can be found?’

‘That’s what I was coming to. She won’t half be annoyed, won’t she? Yes, Miss Preston, that’s just what he did.’

‘Oh damn,’ said Verity after a pause. ‘Well, it’s not your fault, Mrs Jim. Nor Bruce’s if it comes to that. Don’t worry about it.’

‘But what’ll I say if the police rings again?’

Verity thought hard but any solution that occurred to her seemed to be unendurably shabby. At last she said, ‘Honestly, Mrs Jim, I don’t know. Speak the truth, I suppose I ought to say, and tell Mr Claude about the call. Beastly though it sounds, at least it would probably get rid of him.’

There was no answer. ‘Are you there, Mrs Jim?’ Verity asked. ‘Are you still there?’

Mrs Jim had begun to whisper, ‘Excuse me, I’d better hang up.’ And in loud, artificial tones added, ‘That will be all, then, for today, thank you.’ And did hang up. Charmless Claude, thought Verity, was in the offing.

Verity was now deeply perturbed and at the same time couldn’t help feeling rather cross. She was engaged in making extremely tricky alterations to the last act of a play which, after a promising try-out in the provinces, had attracted nibbles from a London management. To be interrupted at this stage was to become distraught.

She tried hard to readjust and settle to her job but it was no good. Sybil Foster and her ailments and problems, real or synthetic, weighed in against it. Should she, for instance, let Sybil know about the latest and really most disturbing news of her awful stepson. Had she any right to keep Sybil in the dark? She knew that Sybil would be only too pleased to be kept there but that equally some disaster might well develop for which she, Verity, would be held responsible. She would be told she had been secretive and had bottled up key information. It wouldn’t be the first time that Sybil had shovelled responsibility all over her and then raised a martyred howl when the outcome was not to her liking.

It came to Verity that Prunella might reasonably be expected to take some kind of share in the proceedings but where, at the moment, was Prunella and would she become audible if rung up and asked to call?

Verity read the same bit of dialogue three times without reading it at all, cast away her pen, swore and went for a walk in her garden. She loved her garden. There was no doubt that Bruce had done all the right things. There was no greenfly on the roses. Hollyhocks and delphiniums flourished against the lovely brick wall round her elderly orchard. He had not attempted to foist calceolarias upon her or indeed any objectionable annuals, only night-scented stocks. She had nothing but praise for him and wished he didn’t irritate her so often.

She began to feel less badgered, picked a leaf of verbena, crushed and smelt it and turned back towards the house.

I’ll put the whole thing aside, she thought, until tomorrow. I’ll sleep on it.

But when she came through the lime trees she met Prunella Foster streaking hot-foot up the drive.

IV

Prunella was breathless, a condition that did nothing to improve her audibility. She gazed at her godmother and flapped her hands in a manner that reminded Verity of her mother.

‘Godma,’ she whispered, ‘are you alone?’

‘Utterly,’ said Verity.

‘Could I talk to you?’

‘If you can contrive to make yourself heard, darling, of course you may?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Prunella, who was accustomed to this admonishment. ‘I will try.’

‘Have you walked here?’

‘Gideon dropped me. He’s in the lane. Waiting.’

‘Come indoors. I wanted to see you.’

Prunella opened her eyes very wide and they went indoors where without more ado she flung her arms round her godmother’s neck, almost shouted the information that she was engaged to be married, and burst into excitable tears.

‘My dear child!’ said Verity. ‘What an odd way to announce it. Aren’t you pleased to be engaged?’

A confused statement followed during which it emerged Prunella was very much in love with Gideon but was afraid he might not continue to be as much in love with her as now appeared because one saw that sort of thing happening all over the place, didn’t one, and she knew if it happened to her she wouldn’t be able to keep her cool and put it into perspective and she had only consented to an engagement because Gideon promised that for him it was for keeps but how could one be sure he knew what he was talking about?

She then blew her nose and said that she was fantastically happy.

Verity was fond of her god-daughter and pleased that she wanted to confide in her. She sensed that there was more to come.

And so there was.

‘It’s about Mummy,’ Prunella said. ‘She’s going to be livid.’

‘But why?’

‘Well, first of all she’s a roaring snob and wants me to marry John Swingletree because he’s a peer. Imagine!’

‘I don’t know John Swingletree.’

‘The more lucky, you. The bottom. And then, you see, she’s got one of her things about Gideon and his papa. She thinks they’ve sprung from a mid-European ghetto.’

‘None the worse for that,’ said Verity.

‘Exactly. But you know what she is. It’s partly because Mr Markos didn’t exactly make a big play for her at that dinner-party when they first came to Mardling. You know,’ Prunella repeated, ‘what she is. Well, don’t you, Godma?’

There being no way out of it, Verity said she supposed she did.

‘Not,’ Prunella said, ‘that she’s all that hooked on him. Not now. She’s all for the doctor at Greengages – you remember? Wasn’t he an ex-buddy of yours, or something?’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, anyway, she’s in at the deep end, boots and all. Potty about him. I do so wish,’ Prunella said as her large eyes refilled with tears, ‘I didn’t have to have a mum like that. Not that I don’t love her.’

‘Never mind.’

‘And now I’ve got to tell her. About Gideon and me.’

‘How do you think of managing that? Going to Greengages? Or writing?’

‘Whatever I do she’ll go ill at me and say I’ll be sorry when she’s gone. Gideon’s offered to come too. He’s all for taking bulls by the horns. But I don’t want him to see what she can be like if she cuts up rough. You know, don’t you? If anything upsets her applecart when she’s nervy it can be a case of screaming hysterics. Can’t it?’

‘Well –’

‘You know it can. I’d hate him to see her like that. Darling, darling Godma V, I was wondering –’

Verity thought, She can’t help being a bit like her mother, and was not surprised when Prunella said she had just wondered if Verity was going to visit her mother and if she did whether she’d kind of prepare the way.

‘I hadn’t thought of going. I really am busy, Prue.’

‘Oh,’ said Prunella, falling back on her whisper and looking desolate. ‘Yes. I see.’

‘In any case, shouldn’t you and Gideon go together and Gideon – well –’

‘Ask for my hand in marriage like Jack Worthing and Lady Bracknell?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s what he says. Darling Godma V,’ said Prunella, once more hanging herself round Verity’s neck, ‘if we took you with us and you just sort of – you know – first. Couldn’t you? We’ve come all the way from London just this minute almost, to ask. She pays more attention to you than anybody. Please.’

‘Oh, Prue.’

‘You will? I can see you’re going to. And you can’t possibly refuse when I tell you my other hideous news. Not that Gideon-and-me is hideous but just you wait.’

‘Charmless Claude?’

‘You knew! I rang up Quintern from Mardling and Mrs Jim told me. Isn’t it abysmal? When we all thought he was safely stowed in Aussie.’

‘Are you staying tonight?’

‘There! With Claudie-boy? Not on your Nelly. I’m going to Mardling. Mr Markos is back and we’ll tell him about us. He’ll be super about it. I ought to go.’

‘May I come to the car and meet your young man?’

‘Oh, you mustn’t trouble to do that. He’ll come,’ Prunella said. She put a thumb and finger between her teeth, leant out of the window and emitted a piercing whistle. A powerful engine started up in the lane, a rakish sports model shot through the drive in reverse and pulled up at the front door. Gideon Markos leapt out.

He really was an extremely good-looking boy, thought Verity, but she could see, without for a moment accepting the disparagement, what Sybil had meant by her central European remark. He was an exotic. He looked like a Latin member of the jet set dressed by an English tailor. But his manner was unaffected as well as assured and his face alive with a readiness to be amused.

‘Miss Preston,’ he said, ‘I gather you’re not only a godmother but expected to be a fairy one. Are you going to wave your wand and give us your blessing?’

He put his arm around Prunella and talked away cheerfully about how he’d bullied her into accepting him. Verity thought he was exalted by his conquest and that he would be quite able to manage not only his wife but if need be his mother-in-law as well.

‘I expect Prue’s confided her misgivings,’ he said, ‘about her mama being liable to cut up rough over us. I don’t quite see why she shoud take against me in such a big way, but perhaps that’s insufferable. Anyway, I hope you don’t feel I’m not a good idea?’ He looked quickly at her and added, ‘But then, of course, you don’t know me so that was a pretty gormless remark, wasn’t it?’

‘The early impression,’ said Verity, ‘is not unfavourable.’

‘Well, thank the Lord for that,’ said Gideon.

‘Darling,’ breathed Prunella, ‘she’s coming to Greengages with us. You are, Godma, you know you are. To temper the wind. Sort of.’

‘That’s very kind of her,’ he said and bowed to Verity.

Verity knew she had been out-manoeuvred, but on the whole did not resent it. She saw them shoot off down the drive. It had been settled that they would visit Greengages on the coming Saturday but not, as Prunella put it, for a cabbage-water soup and minced grass luncheon. Gideon knew of a super restaurant en route.

Verity was left with a feeling of having spent a day during which unsought events converged upon her and brought with them a sense of mounting unease, of threats, even. She suspected that the major ingredient of this discomfort was an extreme reluctance to suffer another confrontation with Basil Schramm.

The following two days were uneventful but Thursday brought Mrs Jim to Keys for her weekly attack upon floors and furniture. She reported that Claude Carter kept very much to his room up at Quintern, helped himself to the food left out for him and, she thought, didn’t answer the telephone. Beryl, who was engaged to sleep in while Sybil Foster was away, had said she didn’t fancy doing so with that Mr Claude in residence. In the upshot the difficulty had been solved by Bruce who offered to sleep in, using a coachman’s room over the garage formerly occupied by a chauffeur-handyman.

‘I knew Mrs Foster wouldn’t have any objections to that,’ said Mrs Jim, with a stony glance out of the window.

‘Perhaps, though, she ought just to be asked, don’t you think?’

‘He’s done it,’ said Mrs Jim sparsely. ‘Bruce. He rung her up.’

‘At Greengages?’

‘That’s right, miss. He’s been over there to see her,’ she added. ‘Once a week. To take flowers and get orders. By bus. Of a Saturday. She pays.’

Verity knew that she would be expected by her friends to snub Mrs Jim for speaking in this cavalier manner of an employer but she preferred not to notice.

‘Oh, well,’ she generalized, ‘you’ve done everything you can, Mrs Jim.’ She hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘I’m going over there on Saturday.’

After a fractional pause Mrs Jim said, ‘Are you, miss? That’s very kind of you, I’m sure,’ and switched on the vacuum-cleaner. ‘You’ll be able to see for yourself,’ she shouted above the din.

Verity nodded and returned to the study. But what? she wondered. What shall I be able to see?

V

Gideon’s super restaurant turned out to be within six miles of Greengages. It seemed to be some sort of club of which he was a member and was of an exalted character with every kind of discreet attention and very good food. Verity seldom lunched at this level and she enjoyed herself. For the first time she wondered what Gideon’s occupation in life might be. She also remembered that Prunella was something of a partie.

At half past two they arrived at Greengages. It was a converted Edwardian mansion approached by an avenue, sheltered by a stand of conifers and surrounded by ample lawns in which flower-beds had been cut like graves.

There were a number of residents strolling about with visitors or sitting under brilliant umbrellas on exterior furnishers’ contraptions.

‘She does know we’re coming, doesn’t she?’ Verity asked. She had begun to feel apprehensive.

‘You and me, she knows,’ said Prunella. ‘I didn’t mention Gideon. Actually.’

‘Oh, Prue!’

‘I thought you might sort of ease him in,’ Prue whispered.

‘I really don’t think –’

‘Nor do I,’ said Gideon. ‘Darling, why can’t we just –’

‘There she is!’ cried Verity. ‘Over there beyond the calceolarias and lobelia under an orange brolly. She’s waving. She’s seen us.’

‘Godma V, please. Gideon and I’ll sit in the car and when you wave we’ll come. Please.’

Verity thought, I’ve eaten their astronomical luncheon and drunk their champagne so now I turn plug-ugly and refuse? ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but don’t blame me if it goes haywire.’

She set off across the lawn.

Nobody has invented a really satisfactory technique for the gradual approach of people who have already exchanged greetings from afar. Continue to grin while a grin dwindles into a grimace? Assume a sudden absorption in the surroundings? Make as if sunk in meditation? Break into a joyous canter? Shout? Whistle? Burst, even, into song?

Verity tried none of these methods. She walked fast and when she got within hailing distance cried, ‘There you are!’

Sybil had the advantage in so far as she wore enormous dark sunglasses. She waved and smiled and pointed, as if in mock astonishment or admiration at Verity and when she arrived extended her arms for an embrace.

‘Darling Verry!’ she cried. ‘You’ve come after all.’ She waved Verity into a canvas chair, seemed to gaze at her fixedly for an uneasy moment or two and then said with a change of voice, ‘Whose car’s that? Don’t tell me. It’s Gideon Markos’s. He’s driven you both over. You needn’t say anything. They’re engaged!’

This, in a way, was a relief. Verity, for once, was pleased by Sybil’s prescience. ‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘they are. And honestly, Syb, there doesn’t seem to me to be anything against it.’

‘In that case,’ said Sybil, all cordiality spent, ‘why are they going on like this? Skulking in the car and sending you to soften me up. If you call that the behaviour of a civilized young man! Prue would never be like that on her own initiative. He’s persuaded her.’

‘The boot’s on the other foot. He was all for tackling you himself.’

‘Cheek! Thick-skinned push. One knows where he got that from.’

‘Where?’

‘God knows.’

‘You’ve just said you do.’

‘Don’t quibble, darling,’ said Sybil.

‘I can’t make out what, apart from instinctive promptings, sets you against Gideon. He’s intelligent, eminently presentable, obviously rich –’

‘Yes, and where does it come from?’

‘– and, which is the only basically important bit, he seems to be a young man of good character and in love with Prue.’

‘John Swingletree’s devoted to her. Utterly devoted. And she was –’ Sybil boggled for a moment and then said loudly – ‘she was getting to be very fond of him.’

‘The Lord Swingletree, would that be?’

‘Yes, it would, and you needn’t say it like that.’

‘I’m not saying it like anything. Syb, they’re over there waiting to come to you. Do be kind. You won’t get anywhere by being anything else.’

Sybil was silent for a moment and then said, ‘Do you know what I think? I think it’s a put-up job between him and his father. They want to get their hands on Quintern.’

‘Oh, my dear old Syb!’

‘All right. You wait. Just you wait.’

This was said with all her old vigour and obstinacy and yet with a very slight drag, a kind of flatness in her utterance. Was it because of this that Verity had the impression that Sybil did not really mind all that much about her daughter’s engagement? There was an extraordinary suggestion of hesitancy and yet of suppressed excitement – almost of jubilation.

The pampered little hand she raised to her sunglasses quivered. It removed the glasses and for Verity the afternoon turned cold.

Sybil’s face was blankly smooth as if it had been ironed. It had no expression. Her great china-blue eyes really might have been those of a doll.