Hide the Baron (9 page)

 

 

Joanna Woburn thought: “I don't know whether I'm going to like him or not.”

The fact that a representative from Jimmy Garfield's solicitors was coming had preoccupied her a great deal since the previous afternoon, when Aylmer had told her. From the time she had returned from the encounter on the road, she had been edgy and harassed, but fighting to keep up outward appearances. She was conscious of a sense of strain with everyone, from Aylmer downwards. The fact that the police were seriously worried about the possibility of physical attack didn't help. When she had heard of the injury to Mannering's wife, she hadn't been able to rest until she'd spoken to him.

She wished he was here.

Now, she looked into his brownish eyes, with the pupils enlarged with drops so that the brown colour looked opaque, and didn't know whether to be pleased or sorry. At least, he wasn't a policeman. He was older than she expected, but it was easy to believe that he would be useful in an emergency. Aylmer had told her that there would be a policeman on duty, as well as ‘Mr. Richardson, from Hodderburn's'; the policeman was a youthful, quiet-moving detective named White, who had taken over Gedde's position.

Everything worked surprisingly smoothly. Mrs. Baddelow and Priscilla went about their work with the usual efficiency. The girl seemed very subdued. The other servants were doing their normal jobs. White was as self-effacing as Gedde had been, and had none of the faint hint of menace that Gedde had carried.

The news from the hospital could have been much worse. Jimmy Garfield was alive, and had had odd moments of consciousness, while George Merrow's leg was on the mend. It would be a long time before it would be out of the plaster, but the risk of complications seemed to have gone.

Now, there was Richardson.

The newcomer arrived in the middle of the afternoon, in a pre-war Austin, which somehow seemed right for him. He drove himself. His luggage consisted of one suitcase and a handcase, and his clothes were anything but smart; good, but not smart. He looked rather as if he had been stored away in the solicitors' offices until such an emergency as this, and had been given a good dusting and shaking out, and delivered safely. His rather dry voice wasn't unpleasant, and he had a way of smiling with a touch of drollness. It was almost a mannerism. She wasn't likely to make a friend, but he brought a welcome sense of security; while he was here from Hodderburn's, she felt that someone represented Jimmy.

“I'll get White to show you round,” she said; “I know you'll forgive me, but I have to go into Orme for an hour.”

“Orme,” said Mannering, and pursed his lips. “May I ask why?”

If he were going to question all her movements, he would be as bad as Aylmer; at least the police just accepted whatever she said, didn't question it.

“I want to see Mr. Merrow.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mannering. “Mr. Garfield's nephew. I understand that the police guard you wherever you go, Miss Woburn.” The little smile came. “Do they do that satisfactorily?”

“Very,” she said dryly.

“Excellent! Some are expendable, but you—” In a man fifteen years younger, she would have thought that almost fresh. In him, it was gallant. “May I make an alternative suggestion? I would like to get to know Orme. I will go ahead of you, and we can both be afforded police—ah—protection, and when you have finished with Mr. Merrow, I will be able to spend a few minutes with him.” He shrugged deprecatingly. “As one of my tasks.”

“It should work out very well,” said Joanna. She told White, who made it easy. At half-past four, when she left, Mr. Richardson's car led the way, she followed in the runabout, which had been repaired, and a police officer followed not far behind. She was not as nervous as she had been; the other two men gave her a sense of security which she knew was probably false, but which helped.

At heart, she didn't quite believe that the danger was as acute as the others said. Even the attack on Mannering and its consequences had affected her only at the time. To be driving along the quiet country road, through the young trees, past the fields of late hay, or grass or the ploughed fields which had already yielded their harvest, and to think that death might strike, was unbelievable.

Only at quiet moments, usually in the darkness of the night, did fear attack her. Now, the sun shone.

She saw the square back of the old Austin as well as the nose of the modern police car in the driving-mirror. There had been rain during the night, and the countryside was as fresh as it could be, and sweetly smelling. She drove fast.

A man outside the parking place of the ‘Grey Mare' was hosing down a small blue car, and Jeff Liddicombe, in his shirt sleeves, was talking to him. A huge Alsatian dog stood looking on, ears cocked. Jeff raised a hand in greeting, and Joanna smiled back. It was hard to believe that Liddicombe was Priscilla's father; he was a big man, running to fat, and without any hint of daintiness; the only similarity was the fair hair.

It was Priscilla's afternoon off, and she would probably be in Orme. With a boyfriend? Joanna felt a sharp twinge of an emotion she didn't then recognise, because that made her think of the girl's story.

She hadn't seen George Merrow since the accident.

She had sent a message and some flowers; how could she have done less? She wasn't sure whether she wanted to see him again. What had happened would leave its mark for a long time. One moment, slapping his face for a gratuitous insult; the next freeing him from that ugly trap.

She forgot the danger, forgot the police, even noticed Mr. Richardson only vaguely. She knew the hospital, and pulled up in the main approach. The police car swung off the road and stopped just behind her; the man wouldn't leave her alone anywhere.

She felt a twinge of annoyance.

Richardson had driven on, and she knew that he was due to come here at half-past five; it was now five. George Merrow was in a private ward where visiting hours were elastic. She was still thinking mostly of Merrow. She wasn't going to enjoy the first few minutes of the encounter, and if he appeared to feel any embarrassment, she wouldn't stay more than a few minutes.

The porter directed her to the third floor.

A nurse directed her to Ward 23.

She tapped, and George Merrow called out: “Come in.”

Her fingers tightened on the handle, and she hesitated before pushing the door open; she did that more sharply than she intended, and it banged back against the wall. That made her go red, and couldn't have been a worse start. Vexedly, she closed the door and then approached him. She knew that whatever else, she wasn't going to be embarrassed for long. He wasn't going to allow her to, either. He looked pale, but not really ill. There was a cage over his leg, covered by the bedclothes He was grinning at her, and had both arms stretched out, as if to clutch and to hold her to him. For a moment, she hesitated and drew back; then she laughed.

Merrow dropped his arms and chuckled.

“Thanks, Joanna! For that and for coming. But what have I done? No more flowers?”

“I'm having some fruit sent in.”

“Cold-hearted wench,” said Merrow, while his eyes laughed at her. Her heart beat, very fast. “What good to me is Joanna at second-hand? Sit down, relax, and say anything you like except order me to open my mouth. I do not like nurses.”

Before she could stop it, the retort was out: “That's hardly in character, is it?”

He started, the smile vanishing; but it came back quickly, and was in his eyes as well as at his lips.

“Never have I asked for anything more than I asked for that. It isn't their sex I object to, it's their horrid efficiency and the unrelenting starched white uniforms. Not that I'm complaining, mine is a very nice girl. Outsize, in fact, and motherly!”

Joanna sat at a chair pulled up by the side of the bed, and he took her hand.

They were silent for a long time, and then: “How is it, Jo? Bad?”

She was frank. “Sometimes, very,” she said.

“What a hell of a thing to have walked into!”

“I don't suppose either of us expected it.” She freed her hand.

“No, I suppose not,” agreed Merrow. “Well, no use talking about it now. I've just had a word with the Cutter-Upper-in-Chief, and he says that my venerated Uncle is showing a resistance to Demon Death which would shame a man half his age. He had a conscious and also lucid interval half an hour ago. Like to know what he said?”

She could picture Jimmy, with his battered head.

“I—well, yes, what did he say?”

“‘Before this is over,' said he, ‘I'll show 'em!'”

Joanna's laugh came spontaneously again.

“He's rather wonderful,” she said; “I think I've thought that from the beginning.”

“Everything in the garden would have been lovely but for his snake-in-the-grass of a nephew,” observed George Merrow. He squeezed her hand again, but didn't hold it too long. “I always believe in talking about the inescapable, it might hurt a bit but the risk of putrefaction gets less. Aylmer has asked me seven hundred and thirty-nine questions, plus the one about what was I doing with that pretty maid when someone took a pot shot at me in the copse.”

Joanna said: “There's no need—”

“There's every need. I told him that there was such a thing as a normal man's reaction, and I was caught between an ice box and a fiery furnace, so to speak. I say it in no mood of reproach, Joanna, but do you know how persistently unfriendly you were to me? Almost as if you suspected from the word ‘go' that I was a revolting young man with unwholesome notions, and—”

“George,” Joanna said, very quietly and steadily, “Priscilla put it
very
clearly when she asked: ‘What harm is there in a cuddle?'” That actually made Merrow wince. “Apart from that, why should I criticise you? I've no right—”

“That's enough of that one,” George said, more roughly. His grip was tight, and almost painful; he wouldn't look away from her, so she couldn't avoid his eyes. “From the moment you walked into the library, and Jimmy told me who you were, I scented trouble,” he declared. “It isn't over yet. You know as well as I do that it's been damned uncomfortable living together on terms of frigid politeness melted only by Jimmy's garrulous chatter. No doubt you thought that I looked at you with thoughts which were not proper. And so I did. I liked your face, your figure, your voice and the way you did your hair. If you'd like it in words of four letters, I fell in love with you. I am still in love with you. And—I resent it.”

He didn't smile at that, but uttered the words fiercely. She felt as if her heart had almost stopped beating. With the glitter in his eyes, and fierceness in his manner, he was magnificent-looking.

“I don't want to be in love,” he said. “I don't want it to matter a tinker's damn what you think about me. But it did, does and will. Understand?”

She was flaming red. “But, George—”

“I don't want any ‘but, Georges', either,” he said, and suddenly his fingers were tight about her wrists and he was drawing her forward with surprising strength, although he couldn't move his body freely; the force came from his shoulders. “
This
is what I want.”

He kissed her.

The door opened.

“Oh, dear,” said ‘Mr. Richardson', in a tone of dry embarrassment. “Apparently I am a little ahead of my time. Never mind, never mind, I can wait.”

 

 

“And who the hell is that?” Demanded George Merrow, as the door closed.

Mannering heard him clearly, for he did not quite close the door. It appeared to be closed, but he stood near it, and heard not only Merrow's question but his heavy breathing; and also the almost agitated breathing of the girl.

“Know him?”Merrow demanded.

“I—he's staying at the house,” Joanna said.

“At
Brook
House?”

“Yes.”

“Sling him out!”

“He's from the solicitors,” Joanna said. A chair scraped. “You can't behave with everyone like that, he happened to look in at an awkward moment, that's all.”

Mannering waited –

There was roughness in Merrow's voice: “Awkward for you?” he demanded.

The breathing seemed to get more agitated; the chair scraped again. Silence was almost painful before the woman said quietly and cuttingly.

“There are times when I think you're the rudest man I've ever met. I'm sorry it's turned out like this, but—”

Quick footsteps –

“Jo!” exclaimed Merrow.

Mannering wished he could see inside, but listening had to be enough. He did not think that either of the others realised that he could hear so clearly. He thought that he had interrupted an intensely personal scene, and the little he had heard before he had opened the door made him feel quite sure. Now, he believed that whatever else might be true of George Merrow, he put his heart into that cry of: “Jo!”

Would the girl ignore or heed him?

There was a pause, as of uncertainty; then she spoke in a different, rather tired voice.

“I think we're both overwrought, George. Can't we just talk about ordinary things, and forget—”

“We can talk about what you like, but I can't forget what I'd rather talk about,” Merrow said. The edge had gone from his voice, and the way he now spoke was likeable. “All right, Jo. I'm much too tense and taut, and I know it. Blame my adventurous past. What's this about Hodderburn's sending a spy.”

“Don't be silly. They thought that with you and Jimmy away—”

“They thought that with Jimmy away,” corrected Merrow, “it would be wise not to trust the nephew who appeared out of the blue. Give them full marks for doing their job properly. Mind you, so they should, there must be a quarter of a million pounds' worth of rococo bric-a-brac in the house. You sit on money, lean against money, read money, are reflected in money, sleep with money, breathe money and we're probably going to celebrate Jimmy's next birthday by eating off gold plate. He is negotiating for some.”

“No!”

“Yes,” mimicked Merrow. “So Hodderburn's were quite right. But if that sawney-voiced old solicitor's clerk makes himself too much of a nuisance, I shall punch him on the nose.”

Mannering heard Joanna's half-reluctant laughter.

“He's not,” she said.

“Not what?”

“A solicitor's clerk.”

“What is he?”

“A private inquiry agent,” said Joanna. “He—”

She paused again, and Mannering sensed the sudden change in her mood, and in the atmosphere. “George, what—”

He said roughly: “Forget it. I don't like amateur policemen, and I don't know that we want one at the house. But I'm not in a position to do much about it. If he makes a pest of himself, tell me—we'll do something about it then. And you might let me know the kind of question he asks, it would be interesting.” Another pause. “Jo, bring your chair a bit nearer.”

“No!” She said that more vigorously than she intended. “I must go, and Mr. Richardson wants to have a word with you.
No!
”
she repeated, but the word was smothered, and the chair scraped.

By the time she opened the door and entered the passage, Mannering was at a window, yards away. When he looked round, Joanna was still flushed, and that certainly hadn't lasted from the time he had looked in. He smiled amiably, and promised that he wouldn't be long, then went into the ward.

George Merrow was leaning back on his pillows, almost flat on his back. He looked as if he were in some kind of pain; and probably his leg hurt. His fists were clenched on the bedspread. He stared at the ceiling, not at the door, and Mannering doubted whether he knew that it had opened again. There was never likely to be a worse time to try to get information out of Jimmy Garfield's nephew. Mannering almost decided not to try, but changed his mind and went forward firmly, looking rather big and ungainly.

He cleared his throat.

“Can you spare me a minute or two, Mr. Merrow?”

Merrow looked at him, but didn't move otherwise, and didn't answer. The film of sweat on his forehead might be the result of physical pain, or of nervous tension. His face was slightly distorted, but that didn't hide the fact that he was aggressively good-looking.

Then he said harshly “If I have to. What's it about?
I'm
not thinking of robbing my uncle of his fortune or his secretary of her—”

“What an unpleasant young man you can be,” interrupted Mannering, with the dry matter-of-factness permitted to middle age. Perhaps it was that which stifled Merrow's angry retort; perhaps it was his rider: “Calculated, I suppose, to rebuff any young woman, no matter how well disposed she may be.”

“Mind your own damned business!”

Mannering gave the little smile he had assiduously practised until it came almost naturally.

“But I am not paid to mind my own business, Mr. Merrow, I am paid to mind your uncle's. These attacks upon you—”

“I've said all I'm going to the police,” Merrow told him acidly.

“They are not particularly impressed by your unready tongue,” murmured Mannering. “I understand that you have told them that you have no idea why you should have been attacked, although since you lived at Brook House you have been, on several occasions. The obvious conclusion is that you were attacked in order to make the way clear for another assault upon your uncle. Do you subscribe to that?”

Merrow said: “You can guess.”

“Why didn't you tell the police of your danger?”

Merrow drew a deep breath, but something in the calmness of Mannering's eyes checked an outburst; he cooled down enough to speak gruffly, and with an answering gleam in his own eyes.

“You haven't judged me aright,” he said. “I'm such a gentlemanly nephew, and so considerate for all other people's feelings, that I preferred to hug the secret to my manly bosom rather than to worry Uncle Jimmy.”

“Did you know that he was in danger?”

Merrow snapped: “Damn you, no! I've told the police—”

“What worries us all is what you haven't told the police. It will worry you, too, if they decide to detain you when you're fit enough to leave.” Mannering let that sink in, but it didn't appear to make much impression. “Let's assume that you didn't tell your uncle because you thought it would worry him. Let's assume you didn't believe that he was in any danger. What did you think was the reason for the attacks on you?” Merrow tightened his lips, looking as if he were clenching his teeth, while Mannering went on in the same calm voice: “What had you done, to deserve being shot at?”

Merrow didn't answer.

“The police aren't fools,” Mannering persisted with calm assurance. “In many years of experience, I've come to admire the way they work, Mr. Merrow. Aylmer is astute, and in this case he is constantly in touch with Scotland Yard. When the Yard gets its teeth into a job, it doesn't let go. The Yard is now probing into your past. It doesn't know much yet, only that you have lived abroad for some years, according to your own statement, and came here, presumably at Mr. Garfield's invitation. That was a little over two months ago, and you were introduced as his nephew.”

Merrow still didn't speak.

“Are you his nephew?” Mannering asked mildly. “The police have their doubts, you know.”

Merrow said: “They can doubt, you can doubt, the whole world can doubt. I'm Jimmy Garfield's nephew, and can prove it. As you and the police are so damned clever, go and see Rackley's, the Detective Agency in the Strand. They found me. Jimmy spent a fortune searching for me, he brought me here. I didn't ask to be invited, and I came because he seemed an old man and it wouldn't do any harm to let him have what he wanted for the last few years of his life.”

“Or
to inherit whatever share you thought that such considerateness would earn,” suggested Mannering.

Merrow clenched his fists, and Mannering was ready to dodge away from a blow, but none came. Merrow said between his clenched teeth!

“All right, and why not? Repeat: I didn't look for Uncle Jimmy, he looked for me. I didn't know that he existed as my uncle. I expected to get along under my own steam. Then I came here for what I knew might be six months or six years or longer, and anything I got for burying myself in this god-forsaken part of the world, I'd earned. Yes. I like money. Are you just a philanthropist yourself?” Mannering chuckled.

“The merit of true honesty,” he observed. “There is little that I like better. You expected to be shot at and in danger, didn't you?” Merrow didn't answer.

“The difficult thing to believe is that there were two distinct motives for the attacks—one for that on you, one for that on Mr. Garfield,” Mannering said flatly. “Mr. Merrow, you hardly know me and have no reason at all to take my word, but I shall not lie to you.” He paused; then added with a kind of dignity!” I am acting now as an agent of Hodderburn, White and Hodderburn who would of course, as solicitors, respect any confidence you placed in them. There is no need for me to tell the police anything that you voluntarily tell me, or in fact, that I discover. Yet if you were to explain the motive for the attacks on you and I were to tell the police that I was fully satisfied, it would ease the pressure which they will almost certainly exert.” Merrow still didn't answer. Silence dragged on.

“I hope to come and see you again tomorrow,” said Mannering, at last, and stood up. “Now I must go and look after Miss Woburn. She shows very little outward sign of the great strain, does she?” He stood up.

“What strain?” Merrow demanded sharply. “We-ell,” said Mannering, pursing his lips when he finished, and looking down at the injured man with a kind of fatherly concern, “I'm not sure that the doctors or the police would approve of this confidence, but—”

He shrugged. “Miss Woburn has already proved her steady nerve and her great personal courage, but there comes a stage when courage breaks. I wish she looked more nervous, or at least showed her nervousness more; then if she did crack it would be much less harmful.”

Merrow said thinly: “She freed my leg. She found Gedde dead and my uncle hurt. What else has she got to fear?”

Mannering put the tips of his fingers together; the skin at the backs of his hands was slightly wrinkled, from a drying lotion, so that they did not look the hands of a young man.

He was deliberately long-winded.

“After all, she has no personal relationship with anyone here, and she hasn't worked for your uncle long enough to have a sense of family loyalty. The—ah—unhappy fact is that she saw one or two men who attempted to kill her, surely you knew that. So did a man named Mannering. I believe the newspapers said that it was a road smash, but it went rather deeper. As a result of it, presumably because she can identify these men for the police, she has been put in a position of great danger. So has Mannering. In fact Mannering's wife has been severely injured, and he was hurt in a bomb explosion. Such ruthlessness! It is difficult to assess the extent of the danger to Miss Woburn, of course, but she has a police guard day and night, and is followed by the police wherever she goes. There was one outside the window when she was here just now.”

Mannering paused again.

Merrow was quite still; hating all this.

“That is why we are all so anxious to find out who is attacking her,” Mannering finished quietly. “At the moment, the police have to spend a lot of time and man power on checking your past. If you told the simple truth that manpower might be released for the other task, of finding the men who would like to see Miss Woburn dead. Perhaps when I see you tomorrow, you will have decided—”

He broke off, and went to the door.

When he began to open it, Merrow called roughly: “Wait a minute. Come here.”

Mannering hesitated.

He judged from the tone of the sick man's voice that he wasn't in a mood to argue any more. Part of Merrow's trouble came from the bad time he'd had with his leg, but there must have been a lot on his mind before that, and possibly a great deal on his conscience; as on his uncle's. The important thing now was to persuade him to tell everything he knew, to handle the situation so that he would not switch off, abruptly, in a defiant refusal to talk. Obviously, he was a creature of mood; it would take very little to sway him one way or the other.

Mannering turned, and began to say: “I haven't known Miss Woburn for long, I admit, but if we can't find a way to help her—”

He hoped that would do the trick.

It might have done, but for the interruption.

He heard footsteps, muffled by the hard rubber flooring of the passage, but didn't look round. He assumed it was a nurse. The door had a hydraulic hinge, and he let it swing behind him, intent only on his effect on Merrow.

The door didn't close.

He smelt a whiff of perfume, heard a rustle of movement followed by a startled: “Oh, I
am
sorry! I didn't know anyone was with you.”

Mannering saw Merrow staring at the girl, his expression blank at first, then twisting in a wry grin. Mannering glanced down at her. She had fair hair and bright, shiny make-up and a bountiful figure.