Hole and Corner (25 page)

But from the moment he entered the station a most unwelcome change came over his feelings. It is, no doubt, exceedingly unpleasant to feel like the hunted criminal upon whose shoulder the hand of the law may at any moment come crashing down. The stolen emeralds were in the suit-case. He was here for the express purpose of receiving stolen property. Suppose Shirley had been traced. Suppose a detective was watching the left-luggage office. Suppose they let him claim it and then arrested him … “Jasper Wrenn, author”—even at this awful moment it gave him a thrill to think of being so described in print—“of 14 Findon Road, was charged with being in unlawful possession of the historic emeralds recently stolen from Mrs Huddleston—” Not well put—not at all well put. “The property of Mrs Huddleston” was better. Not that it mattered how it was put. He would be done for, branded. And as he couldn't possibly explain how the emeralds came to be in his possession he would certainly be convicted and sent to prison. He wondered what the sentence would be, and what Helena Pocklington would say. But it did not now occur to him to go back and tell Anthony Leigh to do his own dirty work.

In the neighbourhood of the left-luggage office he began to feel extremely sick. As if it had not already tormented him enough, his imagination now presented him with the sordid picture of Jasper Wrenn, author, being violently sick at the moment of his arrest. Fortunately for those who have to contend with this kind of imagination, what really happens however bad comes more or less as a relief. Nothing is in reality quite as unpleasant as fancy paints it. In this instance the reality was most blessedly tame and prosaic. A green and quaking Jasper produced Shirley's ticket, said in a tense undertone, “A suit-case. Initials A.L.” and after quite a brief delay received the said suit-case and walked away with it.

If the bag had concealed a corpse, Jasper would not have felt guiltier. A momentary relief was succeeded by new visions of doom. Somebody was probably trailing him. They had let him get away with the case because they had wanted to see where he would go with it. In books it was always quite easy to find out whether you were being trailed or not. You nipped round a corner, lurked in a doorway, and then watched to see who went by.

Jasper proceeded to put this simple plan into practice. He found quite a suitable doorway, lurked there with a chilly tremor inside him, and waited to see what would happen. A man in a bowler hat went by, then a woman in a brown coat, then a pert-looking girl with an aggressively scarlet mouth. None of these people looked like sleuths, but of course if sleuths did look like sleuths they wouldn't be much use. The only one of the three who appeared to notice Jasper at all was the girl, but he didn't think she was noticing him as a person. She had the kind of eye that rolls automatically when a young man comes in sight. He thought he was just a young man, not a criminal fleeing from justice.

No one else turned the corner. He was just going to pick up the suit-case and go on, when he made a most frightful discovery. His nose had begun to bleed. From childhood agitation had had this effect upon him. There had been times when he had found it extremely-useful. Slight attacks could be induced at will, and had been instrumental in delivering him from sermons, family gatherings, and other undesired entertainments. A genuine attack had once saved him from a flogging. This was a genuine attack—a violent and most uncontrollable attack.

He turned his back on the road, pressed his pocket-handkerchief firmly to his nose, and waited for the affliction to pass. He hoped that anyone who happened to go by would imagine that he was merely blowing it.

By the time that the attack was over his handkerchief was in no state to be seen. Impossible to go on to the Mews like this. Impossible to confront Anthony Leigh in Shirley's presence with a smeared and pallid countenance and a sanguinary rag in one's pocket. He must return to Findon Road, wash his face, and provide himself with another handkerchief—several other handkerchiefs.

Miss Maltby saw him come in. She had visited the police-station, and now sat at her window peering down the street and awaiting developments. Would that young Wrenn return? If he did not return, it would most undoubtedly mean that he was with
that girl
. It would be her duty to write to Helena Pocklington and tell her so. She saw Jasper turn the corner and come up the road carrying a suit-case, and at this point surprise and curiosity became almost unbearable. He had gone out of the house with a suit-case after lunch, and he was coming back to the house with a suit-case now. But it wasn't the same suit-case. Oh no. Oh dear no. You couldn't deceive her. You couldn't possibly deceive her. It wasn't the same suit-case. Not at all. The first suit-case was that girl's suit-case. A cheap affair. Shabby. One corner damaged. This was a much better case. Larger. Newer. Quite a different affair altogether. Her eyes darted questions at Jasper until they lost him at the front door.

She was just going to turn away from the window and go tiptoe to the door for a closer view, when someone else turned into Findon Road right down at the far end, a mere speck in the distance. But a speck would have to be very small indeed to escape Miss Maltby. Especially when it wore a policeman's uniform. At the far end of Findon Road a policeman had just turned the corner. And he was most undoubtedly coming this way. He wasn't hurrying, but he was most undoubtedly approaching No 14.

With a sigh of rapture Miss Maltby tore herself from the window and set the door of her room ajar in order to be in a position to hear and see what happened when the policeman rang the bell and asked, as he certainly would ask, to speak to Jasper Wrenn.

Jasper was feeling better. Nobody was trailing him. He had got the suit-case. And he had been able to wash his face, change his collar—it had suffered considerable damage—and provide himself with several handkerchiefs. His nose had quite stopped bleeding and, if the past was any guide, could now be trusted to behave itself. He stepped forth blithely from his room with Anthony's suit-case in his hand, and heard in the hall below a heavy, authoritative voice say,

“Good afternoon. I'd like a word with one of your lodgers—Mr Jasper Wrenn.”

It was a policeman's voice—unmistakeably and most terrifyingly a policeman's voice. The Law, with heavy boots and a Surrey accent. The Law, with a note-book ready to take down anything he might say and use it against him.

Miss Maltby's eye, at the crack of her door, saw “that young Wrenn” come to a standstill and stiffen there, just at the top of the stairs. He didn't just look guilty, he looked like a petrified image of guilt, eyes bolting, and—the only part of him that moved—hands closing and unclosing. From the unclosing hand on his right the suit-case fell with a bang, bumped on the top step, and went glissading down towards the hall. Four steps down both catches sprang. The smothering folds of Anthony's dressing-gown interrupted the glissade. The blue and white pyjamas sprawled between the fifth step and the tenth. Jasper paralysed with horror gazed down upon the wreck.

He heard Mrs Camber's fluttered answer. She came into view. The policeman came into view—a very large policeman with a face like an advertisement for some health food. Mrs Camber began to come upstairs. The policeman leaned against the newel.

And quite suddenly Jasper's imagination, which had up till now played so tiresome a part, swung about and cast him for the role of the cool, inscrutable hero. His knees still wobbled, but his mind was flooded with a delicious sense of being able to control the situation. He walked down as far as the fifth step, where he saw Mrs Huddleston's emerald headband lying in a casual heap. Two steps farther down there was an emerald brooch. He picked up the headband and put it in his trouser pocket. He then descended another two steps and collected the brooch. When he picked up the headband he retrieved the pyjama coat. As he stooped for the brooch, he also gathered up the pyjama legs.

Miss Maltby's eye, at the crack of her door, saw no more than Mrs Camber and the policeman did. The stair treads were hidden from all three of them, and in a court of law they would have had to swear that they had seen Mr Jasper Wrenn pick up a pair of pyjamas.

Jasper added Anthony's dressing-gown to the pyjamas and proceeded to cram them back into the suit-case. He was aware of Mrs Camber addressing him, still in that fluttered voice.

“Oh, Mr Wrenn, it's the police. He'd like to speak to you.”

Jasper shut the case, hasped it, and came to the bottom of the stairs with dignity, as befitted one who is playing lead. The policeman towered above his head, and he found himself wishing that he had not come quite all the way down. However, inches are not everything. He said, “Good afternoon”, and the policeman said, “If I might ask you a few questions, sir,” and then produced a note-book and began to ask them.

“Information having been laid that you were seen leaving this house with a suit-case belonging to Miss Shirley Dale after packing same in her room, it is my duty to ask you whether you conveyed the said suit-case to Miss Dale, and if such was the case we should like to know where she is?”

“What do you mean by ‘information having been laid'?” said Jasper haughtily.

Should he say that this was the suit-case he had taken out of the house, or should he deny having taken out a suit-case at all?

The policeman coughed.

“That's not for me to say.”

Jasper made up his mind—or had it made up for him. He pushed Anthony's suit-case at the policeman and said,

“I don't know what all this is about. This is the only suit-case I've got. It certainly doesn't belong to Miss Dale. Look for yourself.”

The policeman looked. A masculine hair-brush, dressing-gown, pyjamas. He coughed again.

“Our information is that you left the house with a suit-case after lunch, and you say it was this suit-case. Will you explain why you should take it out and then bring it back again?”

Mrs Camber chipped in in a flurried way.

“Oh, sir, I see him come back—not five minutes ago it wasn't, and the suit-case in his hand like he says.”

Jasper frowned upon the policeman. His knees no longer shook.

“I don't mind explaining in the least. I went round to borrow these things from a friend. I took the suit-case to bring them back in.”

The policeman stooped down and examined the case. Perhaps he did it to conceal a growing conviction that the balmy old girl had let them down. He looked a little brighter when he stood up again.

“Those aren't your initials on the case, Mr Wrenn, I take it?”

Jasper did not bat an eyelid. With superb calm he said,

“The suit-case is borrowed too. From the same friend. You can have his address if you like.”

The policeman did not ask for the address, rather to Jasper's disappointment. It would have been agreeable to direct the attentions of the police to Anthony Leigh. Why shouldn't he come in for a spot of suspicion, and bully ragging, and having his answers taken down in a note-book.

The policeman dropped the subject of the suit-case, dropped Mr Jasper Wrenn, and retired in good order. Mrs Camber wiped her brow as she returned from letting him out.

“Never had the police in my house before. And poor Miss Dale, as nice a young lady as I ever see and no trouble in the house—not like some I could mention but wouldn't demean myself, spying out of windows and looking through cracks till you don't know when you've got an eye on you and when you haven't, which it gives me the creeps and I don't mind saying so. And did I hear you say you were going away, Mr Wrenn?”

Jasper blushed very slightly.

“No, I don't think I am—not now.”

He let Mrs Camber get well away to the basement, and then walked out of the house with Anthony's suit-case in his hand and Mrs Huddleston's emeralds in his pocket.

Miss Maltby's blind was down. Miss Maltby's eye watched him from behind it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Anthony and Shirley were still sitting on Miss Pocklington's steep and dusty stair. This was partly because they had a great deal to say to one another, and partly because there was nowhere else to sit. There didn't seem to be a single chair on the premises. After ranging over their past lives they had returned to Miss Maltby. Shirley was doing her best to remember exactly what the muttering voice had said whilst she crouched behind the Potato Field and clutched her nose against the impending sneeze—“And you don't know how difficult it is to be interested enough to remember anything when a sneeze is just going to go off like a bomb and land you in the deepest dungeon below the castle moat.”

“I want you to try all the same. What sort of things was she saying? See if you can remember any of them. Shut your eyes and imagine you're back behind the picture and she is walking up and down muttering to herself. What is she saying? Keep quite still for a minute and see if you can't repeat any of it.”

Shirley leaned back against the wall and shut her eyes. Presently she said in a sort of half voice,

“It was rather horrid really, Anthony. I think she's—not right in her head.”

Anthony's voice was very low too. He said,

“Try and remember.”

Shirley's hands took hold of one another in her lap—grubby little hands, with grimy nails from crawling on Helena Pocklington's grimy floor.

“She said things like, ‘All that money', and, ‘You shouldn't have let me down, Jane Rigg.' She said Jane could have lived if she'd wanted to, and if she'd lived another six months, Miss Maltby would have got her share. She seemed to think Jane had died just to spite her.”

“Was that all?”

“
Darling
—of course it wasn't! She went on for hours—at least I suppose not really, but the sneeze was
slipping
and it felt like years. I got out a book from the Free Library once which said there wasn't any such thing as Time. I didn't read it all, because it made my head go round, but I did read that bit, and when I was lurking behind that awful picture and the Maltby was raving up and down on the other side of it I understood exactly what the man meant—not just then, you know, but looking back on it now, because it really did seem like
hours
. Practically everything
has
since six o'clock yesterday evening when I started to run away.”