Hole and Corner (7 page)

“If you'd come into the dining-room, miss, if you please,” said Mrs Camber, very flushed, very short of breath, and still shiny from the kitchen fire.

The dining-room belonged to Miss Pym, but since she was in Paris, it was at their disposal.

“What is it, Mrs Camber?” said Shirley when the door was shut. Whatever it was, she hoped it wasn't going to take long. The room was stuffy and quite horribly cold. Miss Pym ran to silver photograph frames, and they were all lying down flat, as if a wind had passed over them.

Mrs Camber stood just inside the door and fidgetted with her kitchen apron. She had a round, flushed face and deeply sunk eyes. Her dark hair was brushed back as tight as it would go and pinned into a heavy coil at the back of her head. She said in a choked, gulping way,

“I'm bound to bring it to your notice, miss. And what you've got to say about it you can say it to me down here, for when all's said and done it's my house, and no getting from it, and so I told her.”

The cold stuffiness of the room seemed to thicken about Shirley. It was rather a horrid feeling. She had an involuntary picture of being plunged in cold dirty water that had begun to freeze. What a stupid thing to think about. She said,

“Mrs Camber, what
do
you mean?”

Mrs Camber's flush deepened.

“And I told her straight, unpleasantness is what I've never had in my house before—no more than it might be a gentleman that had had a glass too much and come home a bit noisy, and if so be that it happened more than what you might call once in a way, I'd give him his notice same as I did Mr Peters that had the room Mr Wrenn's got now—and a nicer gentleman never stepped, only when it come to his falling downstairs three nights running and getting on for four in the morning and a-setting on the landing singing
Rule Britannia
, only he couldn't get along with it for the hiccups, well, I took and told him, ‘Mr Peters,' I said, ‘this is my house,' I said, ‘and it's a respectable house, and those as don't behave as such, they must take and go elsewhere,' I said.” She paused for breath, drawing it in with a sound between a gasp and a snort.

Shirley spoke quickly. Once Mrs Camber got going again, she wouldn't have a chance, and she simply must find out what all the fuss was about.

“Mrs Camber
dear
—what's the matter? I didn't come home drunk last night, did I?”

Mrs Camber looked scandalized.

“I never said no such thing, miss—and a drunk woman's a disgrace neither more nor less, and nothing to make a joke about if that's your meaning!”

A spurt of anger flared in Shirley. It made her feel better. She stamped her foot hard on Miss Pym's Brussels square. A little dust came up, because when a lodger was away neither Mrs Camber nor Mabel wasted time on an empty room.

“What
do
you mean? I want my lunch, and you keep hinting and hinting, and don't tell me a thing. What's the matter?”

Mrs Camber's manner changed. She stopped fidgetting with her apron, crossed her arms at the place where her waist would have been some twenty-five years ago, and said darkly,

“Don't you know, miss?”

“No, I don't.”

“Then it's Miss Maltby,” said Mrs Camber.

“Miss Maltby?”

“Miss Maltby,” said Mrs Camber in a tone of heavy I gloom.

Shirley felt as if the dirty water of her imagining had changed to dirty glue. She was entangled and bewildered, and she hadn't the slightest idea what Mrs Camber was driving at, except that it was something unpleasant. The water might have changed to glue, but the dirt was constant.

“What about Miss Maltby?” she said impatiently.

Mrs Camber burst into speech.

“Seeing you won't let on that you know, I'm bound to tell you, and if there's anything you've got to say you can say it to me like I told you first go off. And I told Miss Maltby the same. ‘There'll be no police sent for in my house,' I said, ‘not till I've seen her myself and put it to her straight and heard what she's got to say.' And, ‘Oh, Mrs Camber,' she says, ‘I don't want no police brought into it.' ‘And if you did,' I said, ‘you wouldn't get them, Miss Maltby—not in my house,' I said.”

Shirley's hand came out and caught her by the arm. Shirley's voice rang in the cold, stuffy room.

“What are you talking about?”

Mrs Camber gulped and went on.

“Down into my kitchen she come, and me with my hands in the flour, and ‘Oh, Mrs Camber, can I speak to you?' she says. And I says, ‘Not if you was Queen Alexandra you can't, not till I've finished with my crust, which if I leave it to Mabel it's spoilt.' I've not got nothing against the Salvation Army, and so I told the Curate when he came. ‘Mabel's religion's all right so far as I can see,' I said. ‘She don't tell lies and she don't carry on with the boys, and hymn-singing don't worry me, not so long as it's cheerful, which most of the Army hymns are, to do them justice. No, her religion's all right, Mr Smithers,' I said, ‘but she's got a shocking heavy hand for pastry and there's no getting from it.'”

Shirley shook the arm she was holding, but that was as far as she could get. To shake Mrs Camber herself was an impossibility.

“What did Miss Maltby want?”

Mrs Camber gulped again.

“I told her straight I'd got to get my pudding on, and what did she do but hang around and watch me till I could ha' screamed? ‘But why do you do it that way?' she says. And, ‘Wouldn't it be better someways else?' she says. And, ‘Oh dear, what a long time it takes to make a pudding,' she says. And, ‘Isn't it funny to call it a pudding when it's got meat inside it?' she says. And Mabel singing in the scullery fit to burst your ears: ‘Is there anyone there at the beautiful gate a-watching and waiting for me?' And I took and told her, ‘You go along upstairs, Miss Maltby, and set down, or I won't be answerable for the pudding
nor
yet for my temper,' I said, and she took and went.”

Shirley let go of the hard, hot arm and stood back. Hopeless to try and hurry Mrs Camber. She had to tell you everything that happened or she couldn't tell you anything at all. She didn't do it on purpose; it was just the way her mind worked. If you burst in, she just went back to the beginning and started all over again.

“Well, you finished the pudding, and then you saw Miss Maltby. What did she want?”

Mrs Camber tossed her head.

“Unpleasantness of some kind it was bound to be—I knew that right along. But when she up and told me what it was you could have knocked me down with a turkey feather. ‘And I want you to come upstairs with me and search her room,' she says, ‘and if I've made a mistake I'll be ready and willing to apologize for troubling you,' she says, ‘but it's a thing that ought to be cleared up, if it's only for the sake of your house,' she says. And I said ‘Right you are,' and up we went.”

Shirley went back one step, two steps, until she touched the table. It was an oval table with a rosewood top and a single massive leg. It was very solid and strong. Shirley leaned against it. She said,

“You went up? Where?”

“Into your room, Miss Dale.”

Shirley felt herself turning white with anger. Her face felt white, and her lips felt stiff. She said in a very slow, cold voice,

“You went into my room with Miss Maltby?
Why?
”

“Because this is my house, and I've always kept it respectable—that's why,” said Mrs Camber.

Shirley put her hands behind her and gripped on to the edge of the table—hard. It was like the worst sort of dream she had ever dreamt. It couldn't be true—it really couldn't be true. Perhaps she would wake up in a minute. Perhaps she wouldn't. She said more slowly than before,

“I don't know what you mean. Will you please tell me?”

“There's things you can tell at once, and there's things you can't,” said Mrs Camber with an air of aloof gloom, “which when she come and told me, ‘Miss Maltby,' I said, ‘I don't believe it.' And she says, ‘Believe it or not, it's true.'”

An awful patience had descended upon Shirley.

“What did Miss Maltby say?”

She thought Mrs Camber's little sunk eyes had a pitying look. That was all nonsense, because why on earth should she be pitying Shirley? And why on earth didn't she come to the point?

“Some people says a sight of things they'd better by half keep to themselves.”

“Mrs Camber, you really must tell me what Miss Maltby said.”

“Which it's nothing anyone would be in a hurry to hear—not if they knew what it was. And I said to her, ‘Well, by all accounts and at the very least of it you've been a-prying and a-poking.'”

Shirley's patience broke suddenly. She stamped again, and very much harder than before. There was a pair of old-fashioned lustres on the mantelpiece. The voice in which she said “
Mrs Camber!
” made them ring.

“And all very well to shout at me, miss, but shouting's no answer.”

“You haven't asked me anything,” said Shirley.

“Well, then I'm going to,” said Mrs Camber—“and if you don't like it, it's not my fault! Was you in Miss Maltby's room day before yesterday round about half-past one when she was over in the bathroom and says she saw you go in and saw you come out through the crack of the bathroom door?”

A bright high colour flamed in Shirley's cheeks. Her skin burned and tingled with it. The lustres rang again as she said,

“What an absolute lie!”

“That's what she says—and couldn't come out along of having nothing on but a towel. And what she wants to go having a bath at such a ridiculous hour is what I can't understand and never shall. But that's her way, and as she says, there's no one in the house that don't know it. ‘And what's easier,' she says, ‘than to come down one pair of stairs and slip in and slip out again? And no one wasn't to know,' she says, ‘that I count all my money regular every time I come in or go out,' she says.”

“Is Miss Maltby mad?” said Shirley.

There was a faint sympathetic gleam in Mrs Camber's eye. She repressed it as in duty bound.

“Not that you'd take notice of,” she said.

“She must be if she says I was in her room.”

“That's what you say, miss. And what she says is she saw you there—leastways she saw you go in, and she kept her eye to the crack till you come out again, not above a minute or two it wasn't, she says, and when she'd got some clothes on her, and come back into her room and went over her money, there was two sixpences short.”

“She must be absolutely raving,” said Shirley.

A fleeting look that resembled pity appeared again on Mrs Camber's face. It was gone in an instant. She said in a flat, heavy voice,

“So upstairs we went and into your room, miss, and she says to me, ‘I won't put a finger on nothing, Mrs Camber,' she says, ‘but those two sixpences have got my mark on them same as all my money has and if you won't look and see if Miss Shirley Dale hasn't got them hidden away somewhere, well then I'll have in the police,' she says. And the first thing I see when I took up the toilet-cover off of your chest-of-drawers, there was two sixpences pushed in under, just where the looking-glass would be standing over them.”

“Nonsense!” said Shirley. “Mrs Camber—”

“There they were and you can't get from it. And Miss Maltby she ups and says, ‘I won't touch them nor handle them, but if they're mine they've got a little nick down aside the King's neck right along where the hair stops,' she says. And sure enough there it was on both of them, as plain as a pikestaff.”

Shirley laughed, but it didn't sound like laughter. Even to herself it had a perfectly horrid sound. She said in a voice that matched the laugh,

“It would be—she'd see to that!”

And then all at once the stiff nightmarish feeling went out of her. She caught Mrs Camber by the arm and squeezed it with both hands and said,

“She's the world's champion liar. It's either that or bats in the belfry—lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of them. Mrs Camber
dear
, you don't really think I'd go sneaking into that awful Maltby's room and pinch sixpences and hide them in a perfectly idiotic place all nice and ready for you to find instead of putting them in my purse and squandering them quickly on lipstick or whatever female criminals do squander stolen sixpences on? It's too idiotic—isn't it?”

Mrs Camber bridled.

“I couldn't say, I'm sure. I don't know nothing about criminals nor I don't want to, and so I told Miss Maltby. ‘And you can mark your sixpences in someone else's house and not in mine,' I said—‘an' the sooner the better, Miss Maltby. And if that's your money you'd better pick it up and get back to your room, and when Miss Dale comes in I shall tell her what's happened and give her her notice to go, same as I've given you yours, and that's enough about it,' I said.”

Shirley's hand dropped from Mrs Camber's arm.

“You don't believe I took her sixpences, Mrs Camber! You
can't!
”

Mrs Camber sniffed and gulped.

“Can't?” she said, and sniffed again. “Well, least said soonest mended, but I've got my house to think about, and a week from to-day will suit me if you'll be looking for something else.” She stood aside from the door and held it open for Shirley to pass.

“But, Mrs Camber—”

Mabel came through the hall with a tray.

“If you're going to have time for your lunch you'll have to hurry,” said Mrs Camber.

Shirley walked past her with her head in the air. The interview was over.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Shirley sat on the edge of her bed and stared straight in front of her. A generous helping of beefsteak pudding was rapidly congealing on its tray. Mrs Camber wasn't mean—she always gave you good helpings. Tepid beefsteak pudding was revolting. You had to snatch it from Mabel and eat it like lightning, because it was a long way up from the kitchen anyway, and the house didn't run to plate-covers. It didn't matter, because she wasn't hungry any more. Funny, because just before she had been quite ravingly hungry. Now the idea of swallowing anything made her throat close up. If she could have gone on feeling angry, it would have been much better. She had been angry when she walked out of Miss Pym's room past Mrs Camber, and she had been angry all the way upstairs, but the minute the door was shut and she was alone in her room the anger went away and left her feeling cold, and stiff, and rather sick. If she tried to eat anything she
would
be sick.