She Fell Among Thieves (17 page)

‘Don’t you want to know what you’re charged with?’

‘You’ve told me I’m charged with theft. Such a charge is so fantastic that its details would worry me, madam. I am not in the mood to listen to fairy-tales. I mean, we both of us know the thing’s absurd. You might as well charge me with murder.’

‘Perhaps I do.’

‘There you are,’ said I.

There was another silence.

Presently –

‘I wish I didn’t like you so much,’ said Vanity Fair.

I touched my chain.

‘Is this a sign of your favour?’

‘Yes.’ Her change of tone made me look up. She proceeded slowly, her grey eyes feeding on mine. ‘In the next room to this the chain is very much shorter. And it ends in a collar – not a cuff. Whoever wears it can neither sit nor lie down.’

It was not a pleasant saying, but her rendering made it hideous. I can only hope that I did not appear to flinch.

‘I see,’ I said. ‘How very – uncomfortable.’

Vanity Fair nodded.

‘That’s the idea,’ she said. ‘But, as I say, I like you: and I’m not at all surprised that Virginia fell flat. Which reminds me – tell me one thing.
In view of the confession she made, how could you come back to Jezreel?
I mean, it was the way of a cad. And you’re not a cad.’

With a hammering heart, I looked at her very hard.

‘Your secret service,’ I said, ‘is extremely good.’

Vanity Fair was pleased.

‘It might be worse,’ she purred. ‘Why did you come back?’

I made a most desperate effort to keep my head.

‘If you must know,’ said I, ‘I didn’t take her seriously. I simply couldn’t believe that she meant what she said. And so I decided to ignore it.’

‘That’s not like Richard Chandos,’ said Vanity Fair.

‘We all make mistakes,’ said I, somehow.

Quick as a flash –

‘How d’you know you made a mistake?’

‘She told me as much…in the hall…as I entered the house.’

Vanity Fair raised her eyebrows.

‘D’you deny that she came to your bedroom…last night…at a quarter to twelve?’

I opened my eyes.

‘To my bedroom?’

‘That,’ said Vanity Fair, ‘was the phrase I used.’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘For all I know,’ said I, ‘she may have come to the door. Perhaps it was she that made the noise that I heard.’

‘She was seen to enter your bedroom,’ said Vanity Fair.

‘Which is why my door was locked. Madam, your secret service is not so good as I thought.’

‘In other words…’

‘Nobody saw Virginia enter my room.’

Vanity Fair nodded.

‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘But I’d love to know why you came back.’

‘I’ve told you I made a mistake. I simply–’

‘I know. I heard you say so. The trouble is – you’re not Gaston. Yet you made the one mistake which no gentleman ever makes.’

There was another silence, which I sought to carry off as well as I could. But the round was Vanity Fair’s: and she knew it as well as I. More than the round – much more…

The writing had been there – on the wall: I can only think that some Fate had bandaged my eyes. I had fretted all the way to Jezreel, because I feared that Virginia would think me a cad
. But never once had I seen that Vanity Fair would know that, in view of Virginia’s confession, only some bounden duty could ever have brought me back
. The thing was so glaringly obvious… And that is why I think that some Fate had bandaged my eyes – for if I had seen it, I should have turned back to Anise though I was at the gates of Jezreel.

As though she could read my thoughts –

‘I seem to have confirmed your opinion – that you were a fool to come back.’

‘I came at your invitation.’

‘Naturally. If there weren’t any flies, fish wouldn’t rise, would they?’

The contempt in her voice annoyed me.

‘Madam,’ said I, ‘I’ve never been very much good at playing with words.’

‘No one on earth would know it,’ said Vanity Fair.

‘Well, it’s not my forte,’ said I. ‘But that’s neither here nor there. The point is this. You suspect me of theft and murder and God knows what. Because I accept your invitation to repeat my visit to Jezreel, you consider these charges proved. You, therefore, have me laid out and chained to a wall. You decline to go to the police or to let me go. Well, I can only repeat that you cannot do this sort of thing to people like me –
with impunity
. If I don’t walk out today, when I do walk out, I’m going straight to the police: and if I…never walk out – well, my servant knows where I am…and will know where I was.’

Vanity Fair regarded her elegant hands.

‘Is Chandos also among the prophets?’ she said.

I made no reply, and presently she lifted her eyes.

‘I have,’ she said, ‘an infinite variety of failings. I’m sure you’ll agree with me there. But when I am dead and the tale of my shortcomings is whispered by those who stand by my bier, no one will ever say, “She was improvident.” I look ahead, Mr Chandos: and I never do things by halves.

‘One of my windows commands the stable-yard. At half-past seven this morning I saw some movement below. Marc was there, with your luggage, and under his direction your car was being pushed from its coach-house into the yard. At once I dispatched a servant, to ask what this meant. For this particular mission I chose a talkative maid…

‘Now this was the report which she brought me.

‘Mr Chandos was leaving Jezreel. He had rung for Marc at seven and had told him to pack his things. When this was done, he had given Marc the keys of his car, told him to take them to Wright and ask the latter to bring the Rolls round to the door. As it happened, Wright wasn’t there. He had left, on my business, for Perin, ten minutes before. (He’s an excellent man – John Wright: but I didn’t want him on in this scene.) So Marc, who knows how to drive, was proposing to do Wright’s duty and drive the Rolls round himself. And so he did. I saw him drive out of the yard.

‘Well, I waited for half an hour. Then I sent for the sergeant-footman and asked him if it was true that Mr Chandos had left. He replied that you had been gone a quarter of an hour. When I seemed incredulous, he declared he had seen you go – that so had all the servants that happened to be about.

‘This was his report – in detail.

‘That just after half-past seven Marc brought your car into the courtyard and went upstairs to your room. That ten minutes later you yourself came down, gave the sergeant-footman two hundred and fifty francs, entered your car in silence and drove away.

‘That was his report – in detail. And you can’t say the man was lying, because he firmly believed he was telling the truth.

‘Now what was the truth? I’ll tell you…

‘Marc is almost exactly your height and build. When he went upstairs to your room, he whipped off his clothes and put on those you were wearing yesterday afternoon. Then he put on your hat
and the sun-glasses which you were wearing when you arrived
. Then he hid his own clothes in the passage of which you know: and then he went down to your car and drove it away.

‘And there you are,’ she concluded. ‘By nine o’clock this morning the whole of Jezreel was aware that Mr Chandos had gone without taking his leave.’

In the silence which followed her statement I kept my eyes on the floor. To be honest, I dared not look up, lest Vanity Fair should read the utter dismay in my face. She knew that her news would hit me – and hit me hard: but she did not know that it had laid in ruins the smiling prospects I had. Mansel fooled…the game I had won, thrown away… Virginia left in the lurch – to find me the cheapest blackguard that ever let a girl down. I could hear her pitiful sayings –
You won’t go without me, Richard?… It’d be the end of me
. As for myself, I was now a pawn on the board – a pawn about to be taken and pitched to one side.

With an effort, I pulled myself together. At least I was not yet taken. I could put up a fight, so long as I was still on the board.

‘You don’t stick at much, madam, do you?
My
clothes,
my
car–’

‘
My
spoons,’ said Vanity Fair.

I rose to my feet.

‘I cannot leave you, madam: but you can leave me.’

Vanity Fair frowned.

‘Pray sit down, Mr Chandos. When I rise you will know that this interview is at an end.’

With a sigh of resignation, I did as she said.

‘Be sure that that air won’t help you,’ said Vanity Fair. ‘You can fight me as much as you like, but you’ll only annoy me by kicking against the pricks. You have been arrested and charged. Well, you quarrelled with your arrest, as I knew you would. I, therefore, took pains to show you that any hopes you might harbour of righting that particular wrong would be disappointed. Now if my demonstration had been less convincing, you would, I think, have been wise to decline to discuss the charge. In fact, to be perfectly frank, that is what I should have done in your place. But now that it’s clear that your future depends entirely on me and that, however I may use you, the shadow of retribution can never fall on my path, to decline to discuss the charge would be, I think, the act of a fool. I mean, you’ve nothing to lose.’

‘Oh, I see that all right,’ said I. ‘But, frankly, it irritates me when you talk about theft.’

‘D’you prefer the word “abduction”?’

‘“Abduction”?’ said I, staring.

‘An idiot child was abducted a week ago. I associate you with the crime.’

‘An idiot child.’ A wave of fury swept through me and left me cold.

‘Am I to be downright?’ I said.

‘I advise you to be.’

‘Then one of us, madam, is mad. But I don’t think it’s me.’

There was another silence, of which I was very glad, for so far I had kept my temper, but now, for the moment, it had the upper hand.

‘An idiot child.’

The offensive phrase had provoked me as had nothing else: and the mother’s contemptuous tone had made still more outrageous the outrage her tongue had done. I knew that beneath my tan I was white with rage.

Virginia’s words came to my mind.
They say ‘clever as sin’, don’t they? Well, she is sin
. It was true. Sin was ensconced before me – in the shape of a beast of a woman, a ghoul that dishonoured its dead. In her lust for gold, she had seized her daughter’s birthright, ravished her understanding and put her away. And now she was blowing upon her, defaming the very nonsuch that she had debauched.

I had pitied the woman, and feared her: I had admired and despised her: at times I had felt a liking for Vanity. But now these emotions were gone: and only a deadly hatred possessed my heart. In the window-seat was crouching a hag.

My thoughts whipped back to Jenny – that blessed, gentle darling that knew no wrong. I remembered the light in her eyes and the breath of her parted lips. I saw her grave face above me, as I lay with my head in her lap and I felt the touch of her fingers, disposing my dripping hair. I remembered her arrival at Anise and how, when Jill had come running, Jenny, all shy for an instant, had hidden her face in my coat. I saw her sleeping and walking and ‘sitting in front’ in the car. I could hear her cries of pleasure and watch the grace of her steps. I saw her at my feet in the greenwood, hanging upon my efforts to tell her of
The Wind in the Willows
and the folly of
Mr
Toad
, and I saw – a tiny nosegay, that might have been made by a child and a fairy, between them, lying on the seat of the Rolls…

She had not bade me goodbye, when I had left for Jezreel. She was, I think, upset at my going, which indeed was natural enough. First, Jonathan, her beloved, from whom she had heard no word: and now her faithful William… She might have been forgiven for wondering who would go next and whether her precious dream was not coming about her ears. And so she was not there, when I went: and my going had been the darker – for want of the flash of her smile and the light in her eyes. And then I had noticed her nosegay – a little posy of harebells, because I had found them so pretty the day before… Little wonder that I worshipped a nature that knew how to make a gesture so lovely as that. Worshipped?
Loved!

It was there in that cell at Jezreel, chained to the wall and bayed by Vanity Fair, that for the first time
I knew that I was in love with Jenny… Jenny who was mad about Mansel… Mansel who was mad about her
.

‘Are you quite sure you went to Burgos?’ said Vanity Fair.

I put a hand to my head.

‘Yes, I went to Burgos,’ I said. ‘I – I sent some boots from Burgos – some boots to Below.’

The woman regarded me curiously.

‘Think again,’ she said.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’

And I thought again of Jenny and how neither she nor Mansel must ever suspect that she could have filled the void which was for ever insisting that there was no object in life.

Vanity Fair was frowning. My demeanour was disconcerting: of that there can be no doubt.

‘A postmark tells no tales. Some boots were dispatched from Burgos, and the label the parcel bore was written by you. Are you still sure you went to Burgos?’

‘Yes, I went to Burgos all right. I said so just now.’

‘Kindly pull yourself together,’ said Vanity Fair.

I looked up angrily. Then, all of a sudden, my wits fell back into line. The past and the future faded, and the present took savage shape. I was up against Sin, sitting there, in the guise of a hag. And Sin was out to get Jenny… I moistened my lips.

‘I went to Burgos,’ I said.

‘By car?’

‘Of course.’

‘This morning I inspected your
triptique
. According to that, your car has never left France.’

This was, of course, correct. When I had visited Burgos, I did so in Mansel’s Rolls.

There was nothing to do but lie.

‘I didn’t use my
triptique
. I went into Spain on a pass.’

‘What a singular thing to do. Your
triptique
is ready and waiting: but rather than use it, you go off and purchase a pass.’