Blindfold (14 page)

“And of course I've been saying to myself ever since that there are thousands of Mrs Moores, but all the same it seems a bit of a coincidence. I shouldn't have thought of it if I hadn't just met you again, but—Kay, what sort of woman was your aunt really? You said yesterday—” He broke off.

“What did I say?”

“You said she had some horrid friends.”

“Yes, she had. I hated them. Miles, I think she hated them too. I think she was afraid, and that's why we were always moving on.”

“Who were these friends?”

“I don't know. It sounds stupid to say I hated them, because I never really saw them—she used to send me into the garden or up to bed. There was a man who came.”

“The man who spoke to you in the street?”

She pressed a little closer to him.

“I don't know. I was in the garden—he looked out of the window at me. And once when I was in bed Aunt Rhoda opened the door, and she said ‘What a suspicious mind you've got! Look for yourself—she's there all right.' She had a candle—and it dazzled—and there was a strange man standing there—looking in. Then they went away. But it frightened me. I used to dream about it. I didn't like it.”

Miles didn't like it either. Fear went through his mind like a cold wind blowing. Who had been watching Kay? Whose concern was it to watch her? How had she come to the house of shady people like her first employers, the Marstons? And by what underground manoeuvring had she been transferred to Varley Street?

He said abruptly, “How did you come to be with the Marstons? That was the name, wasn't it?”

To Kay the question seemed quite inconsequent. She laughed a little.

“How sudden! We were talking about Aunt Rhoda.”

“And now we're talking about the Marstons. How did you come to go there?”

She laughed again.

“Well, it was rather funny. Someone sent me a paper with a marked advertisement, and I never knew who it was.”

So she had been shepherded there, and then moved on to Varley Street.… Why? There was a dark answer to that, but it didn't seem to him to be the right one. He had a sense of something deeper. And yet it might be.

He said, “Kay, look here—I want you to leave this place you're in. I don't like the way you came here. I don't like any of it. I want you to leave at once.”

“Miles, I
couldn't!”

“I don't like your being there at all. I'd like to take you away to-night, but anyway you've got to leave tomorrow—you've really got to.”

Kay pulled her arm away and set her hand on his sleeve.

“Miles, I couldn't really. I haven't any money.”

“I want you to let me lend you some.”

“Oh no—I couldn't! And it's not at all a bad place—really it isn't.”

He could not shake her. She stuck to it that the place was all right. He elicited that she slept in the basement, and that Mrs Green slept there too. Mrs Green sounded respectable and good-natured. The house, as described by Kay, sounded as dull and respectable as any house in London. An invalid old lady—a hospital nurse—a cook who had been there for years—the ordinary routine of such a household. But it was from this house that Flossie Palmer had run out into the fog shaken with terror because she had seen a hole in the wall, and the head of a wounded man, and cruel eyes watching her.

Kay slipped her arm through his again.

“You know, Miles, we really were talking about Aunt Rhoda. I don't know how we got off on to me, and it's no use, so let's go back. I was just going to tell you something when you switched off like that—something—well, something very odd, Miles.”

“About Mrs Moore?”

“Yes, about Aunt Rhoda. But I want to ask you something first.”

Miles gave up for the moment. He wasn't going to give up altogether and she needn't think it, but just for the moment he didn't mind talking about Aunt Rhoda again, especially if Kay had something to tell him. He said,

“Go ahead.”

“Well, this girl Flossie—what did you say her surname was?”

“Palmer.”

“I thought so. And her mother? I mean the woman who adopted her. Do you know what her name was—her Christian name?”

“Florence. She was called Flo—Flo Palmer.”

He felt her squeeze his arm.

“Oh, Miles!”

“What is it? You don't mean to say—”

“Yes, I do—Miles, I
do!
Aunt Rhoda said it.”

“Said Flo Palmer's name? To you?”

They stood still in the dark between the lamps. She clasped his arm tightly.

“Not to me—not to anyone. It was when she was ill, before she died. I don't think she knew what she was saying.”

“And she talked about Flo Palmer? Will you tell me just what she said? The exact words, if you can remember them.”

“Yes, I can. It's very little. You see, she was talking all the time, only you couldn't make out the words. And then all at once she said quite clearly, ‘Tell Flo Palmer.' And then she seemed to wake up. I was sitting there, and she looked at me and asked for something to drink, and while I was getting it she said, ‘What did I say just now?' So I told her, and she said, ‘Flo's dead. I don't know what's happened to the child. It doesn't matter—I've got
you
.' Then she drank some milk, and she asked me to promise not to leave her.”

“Kay, you're sure she said that?”

“Quite sure.”

He felt her tremble a little against him.

“Because if you're sure, it means that Flo Palmer did get Flossie from your aunt. It means—Kay, I don't know what it might mean. I must go home and try and sort it all out.”

The clock in the church tower of St Barnabas' struck with three heavy strokes. Kay started.

“That's a quarter to ten!”

“Well, you needn't be in till ten—you said so.”

“I've got to put my cap and apron on again and be ready to take up the old lady's Benger. Oh, Miles, listen! What's that?”

It was a faint mewing sound somewhere in the darkness. Kay called “Kitty—Kitty!” and in a moment something warm and soft brushed against her ankles. She stooped and picked up a small wailing kitten.

“Miles—look! No, you can't look here. Come down to the lamp. It's the dearest little soft thing. Feel it! And the milkman was telling us about it this morning. The people at No. 10 have just turned it out. Isn't it a shame? And Mrs Green said if it came to us, she'd take it in because the mice are dreadful. But the milkman said it was so wild it wouldn't let anyone catch it. But it came to me at once—didn't you, Kitty? Look—isn't it a darling?”

She stopped under the lamp and showed him a little grey ball of fur cuddled up against her cheek.

“Miles, it's purring. Listen! Will you come home with me, Kitty, and have bread and milk and a lovely smell of mouse? Oh, Miles, you don't know how our basement smells of mice! And Mrs Green says there are rats in the cellar, but I hope it's not true. She never goes down there, and she says they don't come up, so I don't see how she can possibly know—do you? Miles, I must run!”

He held her. Under the misty light with the kitten against her cheek she was the sweetest thing in the world. It was monstrous to have to let her go back to that house again.

“Kay—meet me to-morrow!”

“I can't.”

“You've got a most damnable habit of saying you can't. You said you couldn't
to-night
, but you did. I'll be up at the corner of the Square at nine o'clock, and if you're more than five minutes late, I shall come and fetch you.”

“Oh, Miles!”

“Oh, Kay!” said Miles. Then he put his arm round her shoulders and gave her something between a hug and a shake.

She laughed, a little soft, shaky laugh, and ran away. The lamp under which they had been standing was the next one beyond the corner of Varley Street. He watched her cross the patch of light at the corner still holding the kitten with both hands. Then he lost her in the shadows.

CHAPTER XIX

Miles went back to his hotel and got down to sorting things out. He took a block and a fountain pen, and wrote:

Mrs Syme:—

Was Mrs Agnes Smith, in whose house the Macintyre baby was born, July 1914.

Says Mrs Macintyre's sister paid all expenses and removed baby, also all Mrs Macintyre's belongings.

Says she has no idea where she went or what she did with them.

N.B. There is no sister.

Further, Mrs Syme says Flossie Palmer isn't her niece. Says Flo Palmer adopted her.

Declines to say any more.

Very
disagreeable person.

Mrs Palmer:—

Serious, formidable person. Conscientious. Fond of Flossie.

Very angry with Mrs Syme for letting out that Flossie is an adopted child. Flossie doesn't know.

Flo Palmer got Flossie from a Mrs Moore in July 1915. She had just lost her husband and a baby aged six months. Flossie was about a year old.

Kay:—

Says her aunt, Rhoda Moore, spoke about Flo Palmer when she was dying. Actual words, in semi-conscious state: “Tell Flo Palmer.” Then, after rousing; “What did I say just now?” and, “Flo's dead. I don't know what's happened to the child. It doesn't matter—I've got
you”
(Meaning Kay)

N.B. Ask Kay if she knows anything about her aunt having charge of any other child or children. Also her exact relationship to Mrs Moore.

He stopped and read the notes through.

Well, he had here four different women—Mrs Syme, formerly Agnes Smith; her sister, Flo Palmer; Flo's sister-in-law, Mrs Palmer; and Kay's aunt, Rhoda Moore. Flo Palmer linked the other three together. She kept turning up. That was the thing that struck him very forcibly—the way Flo Palmer kept on cropping up. He wondered whether the sister-in-law had told him all she knew. He didn't think so. He had come away from her, as he had come away from Mrs Syme, with the feeling that a door had been shut in his face. Behind Mrs Syme's door there might be some criminal knowledge. He wasn't sure. She might have invented Mrs Macintyre's sister, disposed of the jewels, and farmed the baby out. Flo Palmer might have aided and abetted, and after the loss of her own child she might have adopted the baby, in which case Flossie was the Macintyre heiress. The thought tickled him a good deal. But it was the purest supposition. Flo Palmer was dead, and Rhoda Moore was dead—the woman who had adopted the child, and the woman from whom it had been adopted. That meant that the two middle links in the chain were gone. There remained at the one end of it Mrs Syme, and at the other Mrs Palmer. Mrs Syme would not incriminate herself, and Mrs Palmer struck him as being the sort of person whose motto would be “Least said, soonest mended.” He had certainly got Mrs Moore's name out of her. But then she couldn't possibly have supposed that it would mean anything to him.

He went to bed, and dreamed that he was cast on a desert island with Mrs Syme. It was one of the most unpleasant dreams he had ever had.…

Kay came in at the area door rosy and breathless with the kitten on her shoulder. It arched its back, flaunted three inches of tail, and purred a small but resonant purr.

Mrs Green stared and exclaimed, “Well, I never! What do you call that, I should like to know.”

“Oh, Mrs Green, it's the kitten—the one the milkman told us about. It came to me at once. You said you'd keep it.”

Mrs Green laughed.

“What's the good of a little bit of a thing like that? It won't catch no mice—though they do say the smell of a cat'll drive 'em away. Here, what are you doing with my milk?”

“Only a little drop—
please
, Mrs Green. It's so hungry—aren't you, Kitty?”

The kitten lapped vigorously. Mrs Green chuckled.

“If you want a cat to catch mice, you've got to keep it hungry. They'd a sight rather have someone to cook for 'em. And I'm not cooking for no cats, Kay, so don't you fret yourself. If that there kitten's going to stay here, it's got to work for its living same as you and me. Down to the cellar it goes nights, and it's welcome to what it can find there.”

“Oh, Mrs Green, you
can't!
Poor little thing!”

“Poor little nothing!” said Mrs Green firmly. “I'm not going to have my kitchen messed up, and that's all there is about it!”

The kitten crouched close over the saucer which Kay had set for it. Its little pink tongue lapped eagerly. Mrs Green let it finish its meal. Then she picked it up by the scruff of the neck and waddled into the scullery.

There was a door which went out into the back yard, and there was a second door, rather low, set in a piece of bulging wall which rounded one of the inner corners of the room. It looked as if it might be the oven door in the story of Hansel and Gretel, for it was cross-barred with old rusty iron, and the irregular bulge into which it was set had something of the shape of a primitive stove or cooking-place. Mrs Green lifted the latch, pulled the low door towards her, and disclosed a flight of stone steps going down into unknown mouldy depths. She leaned over, dropped the kitten, banged the door, and fastened the latch again.

Kay's colour was flaming and her eyes were wet.

“Oh,
Mrs Green!”

“Oh, fiddlesticks!” said Mrs Green. “I tell you I'm not going to have my kitchen messed up! And for gracious mercy's sake don't look at me like that! There's plenty of dry straw down there, and if it can't make itself a bed, it'll have to do without. I'm not going to tuck no cats up, nor yet sing 'em to sleep! And if you don't want to be late with that there Benger's, you'd better get a move on, Kay my girl. And don't you go letting that there kitten out, or you and me'll have words, which is a thing I don't want nor won't put up with, and if it comes to one of us having to go, I can tell you right away now which of us it'll be.”