The Case Of William Smith (9 page)

William took Katharine round to see Mr. Tattlecombe after the shop closed next day, and found that the visit was in the nature of an Occasion. Mr. Tattlecombe had come out of his splint that morning and had moved across the landing to the upstairs parlour, which dated from the time before Abigail’s marriage when old Mrs. Salt had lived with her son and for the best part of fifteen years had never gone downstairs. The carpet was the one she had chosen, and so were the plush armchairs. The crochet antimacassars were her own handiwork. A photographic enlargement of her in a Victorian widow’s cap looked down from over the mantelpiece.

Mr. Tattlecombe sat in the largest of the armchairs with his leg up on a foot-rest and a brown and white striped woollen shawl spread over it. Abigail Salt had put on her Sunday dress. There was tea, and cake, and sandwiches, and a cold fish mould, and a jelly, and a trifle, and a plate of Abigail’s famous cheese straws, and a pot of her cousin Sarah Hill’s famous apple honey.

Mr. Tattlecombe was as pleased as Punch. If favour was deceitful and beauty was vain, it was nevertheless pleasant to the eye. He found Miss Eversley pleasant to the eye. And not one of the flaunting kind — a very modest, quiet-spoken, ladylike young woman. And fond of William — you couldn’t be in the room with them without getting hold of that. Abigail Salt agreed. A nice girl, if she was any judge of girls, and she thought she was. Something about her that made you wonder why she hadn’t looked higher than William Smith. But easy to see that they were in love. Funny how a thing like that came out when they weren’t so much as looking at each other and the talk was all about the shop, and those painted toys, and Abel’s leg, and Sarah’s apple honey, and how did she get her cheese straws so light. She found herself giving Katharine the recipe, which was a thing she wouldn’t have believed if anyone had told her.

Then, when everything was going as well as it possibly could, who should open the door and look in on them but poor Emily? Not that she wasn’t welcome — Abigail Salt would never have allowed herself to harbour the thought that Emily’s room was preferable to her company. If such a thought presented itself, it would be turned out and the door banged in its face. But she didn’t know when Emily had done such a thing as join them when there was company. Go away down to the kitchen was what she would do, and make her own tea and go picking over the larder for something to eat. And many a time Abigail had been obliged to make it the subject of prayer, for to have your larder picked over was what would try the patience of a saint. If Abby wasn’t a saint she was a kind-hearted woman, and she had put up with Emily and her ways for the best part of thirty years. She lifted her eyes placidly to the tall black figure in the doorway and said,

‘Come in, my dear. This is Miss Eversley. And I think you know Mr. Smith — my sister-in-law, Miss Salt.’

Emily stood there in a black woollen dress with an uneven hem. It dipped at the back and lifted where her angular hips took it up, the neck sagged, and the sleeves left the bony wrists uncovered. She poked her head forward, with its thatch of dark hair piled up like a grizzled haycock, turned lack-lustre eyes on Abel, on Katharine, on William, and came into the room and up to the table. When William offered her a chair she looked at him again. The chair might have been a cup of cold poison or an instrument of torture. William was to consider himself detected and spurned. She went round to the other side of the table, chose a ridiculous small chair a long way after Sheraton, set it down as near to Abigail and as far from William as possible, and began to eat cheese and tomato sandwiches with great rapidity, one down, t’other come on. Without saying anything at all she had contrived to cast a blight. She ate her sandwiches and she drank her tea.

Mr. Tattlecombe, with rising colour, reflected that there were trials that were sent by the Lord and you had to put up with them. But he couldn’t feel like that about Emily, and in his opinion she ought to be in a home.

It was whilst Katharine was telling him that they thought of getting married on Saturday that Emily Salt stopped in the middle of a sandwich to make her first remark. Her voice was harsh and deep, almost as deep as a man’s. She said,

‘Marry in haste and repent at leisure — there’s a proverb about that.’

Abel’s eyes went as blue as marbles.

‘And there’s one about least said soonest mended, Emily Salt.’

She might not have heard him. She went on eating sandwiches until she had finished the plate. Then she pushed back her chair so roughly that it fell over, and went out of the room as she had come, looking sideways at Abel, at William, at Katharine, turning on the threshold to look again, and then shutting the door so quickly that it seemed as if it must bang. Only it didn’t — it didn’t make any sound at all. It shut, and there was no sound at all. And no sound from the other side of it. Emily Salt might be standing there, pressed close against the panels, listening. Or she might have gone upstairs, or she might have gone down, or she might have flown away on a broomstick.

Inside the room they went on talking. But everyone’s voice had dropped. Emily might be standing there, pressed up against the door.

Late that evening the telephone bell rang in Katharine’s flat. William had gone. The noises in the Mews had for the most part died down. One persistent radio still discoursed dance music at a penetrating pitch, and now and again a car came home to one of the old stables turned garage, but most of the daytime noises had ceased. Even if they had not, Katharine would not have noticed them. During these days she was withdrawn from a harsh external world into her own place of happiness and peace. The telephone bell surprised her, because no one knew she was here. The bank or the post office sent on her letters, but she had not given her address to anyone at all. Of course it might be someone ringing up Carol—

She went over to the writing-table, lifted the receiver, and it was Brett Eversley.

‘Katharine — ’

She was both surprised and angry. She had refused him in as definite terms as a woman can use, and she had refused to give him her address. By what means he had discovered it, she had no idea. It wasn’t until her name had been repeated that she spoke.

‘What is it, Brett?’

‘Have I dragged you out of bed? That’s what you sound like.’

‘No.’

‘Katharine, you’re angry.’

‘Yes.’

‘With me?’

‘Yes, Brett, with you.’

‘But why, my dear?’

‘I didn’t give you my address because I wanted to be left alone. I didn’t give you my telephone number.’

He laughed.

‘And I didn’t take no for an answer. Come — it’s a compliment, you know. You don’t expect a man who’s in love with you to resign himself to not knowing where you are, or what you’re doing, or even whether you’re well or ill.’

She bit her lip.

‘You saw me on Wednesday. I wasn’t ill then.’

He said, ‘Wednesday!’ And then, ‘A tantalising drop of water to a man who is dying of thirst! How much satisfaction do you think I got out of seeing you hemmed in by Cyril and old Holden?’

She said, ‘How did you get my telephone number?’

‘I don’t know. Someone told me Carol had lent you her flat. Look here, I won’t bother you, but what’s the sense of shutting yourself up like this? Dine with me tomorrow. I’ll call for you at seven.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t.’

‘Can’t — or won’t?’

‘Both, Brett.’

‘You’re being rather hard on me, Katharine — don’t you think so? What do you think I’m made of? You go away suddenly without a word to anyone — it’s not very easy to put up with. If we’re nothing more, we’re cousins and friends, and — I love you.’

Her tone softened a little.

‘I’m sorry, Brett, it’s no use.’

‘You don’t give me a chance to make you care.’

‘Brett, there isn’t any chance.’

‘I don’t accept that. There’s always a chance. I’m only asking you to give me mine.’

She had begun to feel as if she were holding a door against which he was pushing hard. It tired her. She wished very much that he would go away. She had said no, and she had meant no, and he wouldn’t take it. Where did you go from there? She said,

‘It’s no use, Brett — there’s no chance for me to give you. I’m going to marry someone else.’

She heard him say ‘Who?’ but she didn’t answer that.

She said in a tired voice, ‘It isn’t any use,’ and put the receiver back.

William Smith was married to Katharine Eversley at St. James’ Church, just round the corner from Rasselas Mews, at half-past two on Saturday afternoon. All the morning they painted together in the workshop behind Tattlecombe’s Toy Bazaar. At one o’clock William drove Katharine home. They had lunch together, after which he put on his best suit, a neat and quite undistinguished blue serge, in what had been Carol’s spare room. It was going to be his dressing-room now. He unpacked and put his things away with the feeling that this unbelievable happiness seemed real and felt real, but all the same he didn’t see how it could possibly be true. There was something reassuring about getting out his shaving things and putting shirts away in a drawer. He put everything away very neatly. Every time he folded anything or opened a cupboard door it seemed to make it more probable that he was going to marry Katharine, because if he wasn’t he wouldn’t be unpacking his things in her flat.

Katharine dressed for her wedding with as much care as if the congregation in whose face she was going to be married to William would fill the church and set up the highest possible standard of distinction and elegance, instead of consisting of Abigail Salt and Mrs. Bastable, together with any stray passer-by who might scent a wedding and drop in to see the bride. The dress, of rather a deep shade of blue, threw up her skin and brought out the gold lights in her hair. The long matching coat with the touch of fur at the neck was soft and warm. The small hat, hardly more than a cap, was made of the same stuff, with an odd little knot of the fur.

They walked round to the church together and were with Abigail Salt and Mrs. Bastable as witnesses. To Katharine the church was not empty, or cold, or dark. It was full of her love and William’s.

The immemorial words of the marriage service sounded in the echoing space and trembled away into silence — ‘I require and charge you both, as ye shall answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know of any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it…’ The silence seemed to echo too.

Katharine lifted her head and looked up into the reds and blues of a stained-glass window where Christ turned the water into wine.

Now the old betrothal service followed, and the vows ‘to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part…’ William’s voice quite steady, quite sure of what he was promising. Then her own, rather soft — ‘to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part according to God’s holy ordinance.

William putting the ring on her finger — ‘with my body I thee worship…’

And the prayer, the joining of hands, and — ‘those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder… ’

The young man who took the service had a pleasant voice. It came out strong and full when he pronounced them man and wife and blessed them.

Mrs. Bastable sniffed and dried her eyes. Weddings always made her cry. Abigail Salt sat up very straight in a black coat with a fur collar. Because it was a wedding she had put an unseasonable bunch of cornflowers in her hat. They made her eyes look very blue.

In the vestry Katharine signed her name and looked at it and smiled a little, and stood aside for William to sign too. He wrote his William Smith.

The young parson stopped him as he was turning away.

‘Your father’s name too, Mr. Smith.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know it.’

William was quite simple and unembarrassed. It was the parson who coloured.

‘I’m afraid — ’ he began, and stopped.

‘You see, I’ve lost my memory. I can put blank Smith if you like.’

Well, of course, it wasn’t what he liked or didn’t like. He really didn’t know. He would have to tell the Vicar. After all, if a man didn’t know his father’s name he didn’t.

William wrote Smith with a dash in front of it on the register. And then the young parson called Katharine back.

‘You have to give your father’s name too, Mrs. Smith.’

Still with that small faint smile, Katharine leaned over and wrote. Then she turned round to be congratulated by Mrs. Bastable.

‘I’m sure I hope you’ll be happy, Mrs. Smith. And I’m sure Mr. Smith is one that anyone could be happy with. Believe it or not, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him out of temper, and when you think how most men are — well, it’s bound to make a difference, isn’t it? Mr. Bastable had a very hasty temper. And particular about his food — well you’d hardly believe it. Always talking about his mother’s cooking too, and if there’s anything more likely to make unpleasantness in the home, well, I don’t know what it is. I’ve always been considered sweet-tempered myself, but when he used to look at my scones and say how much lighter his mother made them, it used to come up on the tip of my tongue to say, “Then why didn’t you stay home with her?” But I never said it. I don’t know what he might have done if I had — being so hasty you know.’ She dabbed her eyes and sniffed again. ‘Oh, well, we must let bygones be bygones, mustn’t we? And Mr. Bastable’s been gone getting on for twenty years.’

Abigail Salt had much fewer words. She said, ‘I hope you will be very happy, and Mr. Tattlecombe hopes so too.’

That same evening Frank Abbott dropped in on Miss Maud Silver at her flat at Montague Mansions. Whatever happened in the outer world, here time stood still. But not in any sluggish, lotus-eating manner — ‘Oh dear, no,’ as Miss Silver herself might have said. He found in her a constant stimulus to thought, and whilst her idiosyncrasies were a continual entertainment, he did actually and in sober truth revere the little woman who, beginning her working life in what she herself termed the private side of the scholastic profession, was now a much sought-after enquiry agent.

Where time had been halted was on the threshold of this room. The furniture inherited from more than one great-aunt was of the type strangely popular in the sixties of the previous century. The chairs, with their walnut frames, bow legs, and spreading upholstered laps, suggested long-departed crinolines and peg-top trousers. Engravings of famous Victorian pictures in yellow maple frames looked down upon a carpet not of contemporary age but of a truly contemporary pattern. The pictures, interchanged from time to time with those in her bedroom, included the late Sir John Millais’ Bubbles, Mr. G. F. Watts’ Hope, together with The Stag at Bay and The Soul’s Awakening. The carpet, new a year ago, was of a lively shade of peacock-blue, with a pattern of pink and white roses in wreaths caught together with bows of green ribbon. The curtains, of the same blue but duller in tone, had survived the war, and though not actually shabby were due to be replaced as soon as Miss Silver felt justified in spending so much money upon herself. Two of her niece Ethel Burkett’s boys were now at school, and a baby girl had been added to the family during the past year. School outfits were expensive, and much as the Burketts rejoiced over having a daughter after three boys in succession, the year had placed a considerable strain on their finances, and it was not in Miss Silver’s nature to allow them to bear it unaided. The curtains could very well do another year, or even two.

As she sat in her comfortable chair beside her comfortable fire, her heart was full of gratitude. She had lived for twenty years in other people’s houses, and had expected to live twenty more before retiring on a pittance. The hand of Providence had, however, translated her into a new profession, and to circumstances of modest comfort. The mantelshelf, the bookcase, two occasional tables, and a whatnot were crowded with photographs of grateful clients incredibly framed in fretwork, in hammered or patterned silver, in silver filigree upon plush. A good many of them were photographs of young men and girls, and of the babies who would never have been born if this little old maid had not brought her intelligence and skill to bear upon their parents’ problems.

Frank Abbott was received very much as if he had been a nephew. He accepted the cup of coffee brought him by Emma Meadows, Miss Silver’s valued housekeeper, and sat back sipping it and feeling pleasantly at home. On the other side of the hearth Miss Silver was knitting a pair of infant’s leggings in pale blue wool. After completing three pairs of stockings each for Johnny, Derek and Roger, she was now equipping little Josephine for the coming spring — so treacherous and changeable. With four children to make and mend for, to say nothing of her husband and all the household work, Ethel really had no time for knitting.

There was a pleasant silence in the room. A coal fell in the fire. Miss Silver’s needles clicked above the pale blue wool. Frank finished his coffee and leaned sideways to put down the cup. Then he said,

‘How did you find out that the way to make people talk is to sit there knitting and make them feel everything is as safe as houses and it doesn’t matter what they say?’

A faint smile just touched her lips. She went on knitting.

He laughed.

‘You know, I’ve been here hundreds of times and it’s only just come to me that the thing you conjure with is security. That’s what you’re putting across. Your pictures, your furniture — they’ve come down from a settled past. They belong to the time when there practically wasn’t an income tax and European wars were just something you read about in The Times. There’s all that — and then the one practical modern touch, your office table. That makes them feel that the security doesn’t just exist in the past — it can be brought up to date and put to work for them.’

Miss Silver coughed.

‘I find that a little fanciful.’

He smiled.

‘How many frightened people have you had in this room?’

Her eyes dwelt on him for a moment.

‘A good many.’

He nodded.

‘Well, I wouldn’t mind betting that very few of them went away as frightened as they came.’

Her needles clicked, the pale blue wool revolved. She said,

‘I think you have something on your mind. What is it?’

He did not speak at once, but leaned back, looking at her. No one could have suited her room better — the small neat features, the rather pale smooth skin, washed twice a day with soap and water, belonged to a period when a lady did not use make-up and even powder was considered ‘fast’. Her hair conformed more to the Edwardian than the Victorian age, being banked up in a fringe like the late Queen Alexandra’s and coiled neatly at the back, the whole controlled by an invisible net. During the years he had known her Frank had not observed that she had any more grey hairs than the few which he remembered to have been there at their first meeting, nor did she seem to be older in any other way. She might have stepped out of any family group at the end of the last century or at the beginning of this. It was her practice to wear a summer silk in the winter evenings. The current garment, of the type sold by pushing saleswomen to elderly ladies who are not very much interested in dress, was of a boiled spinach colour with an orange pattern of dots and dashes which suggested Morse. It came modestly to the ankles and revealed black woollen stockings and glacé shoes with beaded toes. The V-neck had been rendered high by the insertion of a net front with a boned collar. The pince-nez, used only for fine print, was looped to the bosom of the dress by a gold bar brooch set with pearls, and the base of the V was decorated by Miss Silver’s favourite ornament, a rose carved in black bog oak with an Irish pearl at its heart. Since the January evening was cold, a black velvet coatee reinforced the thin silk of the dress. It was a cherished garment — so comfortable, so warm — but it must be confessed that its better days were definitely past and gone, and that it was now a mere relic. No self-consciousness on that score, however, disturbed Miss Silver’s appreciation of its comfort.

With no need to keep her eyes upon her knitting, she smiled at Frank, maintained her affectionate regard, and waited for him to speak. When he did so, it was in an odd doubtful tone.

‘I’ve run up against something — I don’t quite know what.’

Miss Silver pulled on her ball of pale blue wool.

‘It is disturbing you?’

‘I suppose it is. The fact is, I don’t know whether there’s anything in it or not. There might be nothing — or something. I don’t know quite what to do, or whether I ought to do anything at all.’

‘Perhaps you would feel clearer about it if you were to put conjectures on the subject into words. If you would care to tell me about it — ’

He laughed a little.

‘I’ve come here on purpose, and you know it.’

Miss Silver coughed with the faintest hint of reproof.

‘Then, my dear Frank, suppose you begin.’

He said, ‘There’s probably nothing in it, but I’d like to get it off my chest. About a week ago I was coming along Selby Street, which is a respectable suburban road on the way out to Hampstead, when a man came out of a house on my left and walked along in front of me. I saw him with the open door of the house behind him. He had fair hair, and the light caught it. Anyone else could have seen him too. That’s one of the points — anyone could have seen what I did. After the door was shut and he was out in the street visibility wasn’t too good. It was a thickish night with rain in the air, but we were coming up to a lamp-post and I could see him ahead of me — perhaps twenty feet away, perhaps a little more. Then all of a sudden there was someone else, and I don’t know where he came from — out of one of the other houses — out of a cut between the houses — out of somebody’s porch — I don’t know. The first I saw of him, he was there between me and the light, closing up on the first man. All I can swear to is that he was wearing a raincoat and some kind of a hat. Then in a flash he swung up his arm and brought it down again. The first man dropped, I ran up, and the fellow who had hit him ran away. I lost him almost at once. As soon as you got away from the lamp-post you couldn’t see a thing. I went back to the man on the pavement, and he’d had a pretty lucky escape — hit over the head with something hard enough to break it if it had been the sort that breaks easily. He told me himself that it was tough. His hat had taken the worst of it.’

Miss Silver listened attentively, but made no comment.

Frank leaned forward.

‘Well, he was a bit dazed and shaken. I took him round to the police station and they gave him a cup of tea, and then I took him home to Tattlecombe’s Toy Bazaar, where he is an assistant temporarily in charge. He had been visiting his employer in Selby Street, where he has been laid up after a road accident. I expect you wonder what all this is about — and here it is. The chap said his name was William Smith, but it isn’t. I’d seen him before and I recognized him. I told him so, and he told me that he came out of a German hospital in ’42 as William Smith, and that was as much as he knew. He hadn’t got any past, and he naturally wanted to know who I thought he was.’

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

‘And who do you think he is?’

‘That’s the bother of it — I can’t get any farther than Bill. You know how it is, everybody using Christian names — I don’t suppose I ever heard his surname.’ He told her about the party at the Luxe. ‘And you can take it from me that’s the sort of crowd where he belonged, and that quite definitely you wouldn’t expect to find him assisting in a suburban toy bazaar. He told me himself that he wasn’t the William Smith whose identity disc he had somehow acquired. This man came from Stepney, and Bill went down there to make enquiries. Only relative, a sister, had moved away during the blitz and been lost sight of, but the neighbours all laughed at the idea of his being their William Smith. They were thorough-paced Cockneys and were proud of it, and they despised what they called his B.B.C. accent.’

Miss Silver looked at him across her knitting.

‘A curious story, Frank.’

‘Yes, but you’ve only heard half of it. I met the chap again on Thursday night. I’d been dining out, and I was coming home, when I saw William Smith in a bus queue at the Marble Arch. I went up and asked him how he was, and he said he was all right, but something else had happened earlier that evening. He’d been to see his employer again. Coming back, he was standing in a crowd on an island waiting for the lights to change, when, he says, someone jabbed him in the back with a stick. He lost his footing and would have fallen under a bus if the man next to him hadn’t grabbed him. By the time he’d got steadied up enough to look, the lights had changed, everyone was streaming away, and there wasn’t anyone who seemed as if they could have done it. I asked him if he was going to report the incident to the police, and he said no — he couldn’t see what they could do.’ He paused, and added, ‘I gave him your address.’

Miss Silver coughed.

‘My dear Frank!’

‘Well, I thought you might be interested. That’s not all, you know. I’ve given you the last incident for what it’s worth, but two rather uncomfortable points emerge from what I’ve come across myself. Here’s the first. After William Smith dropped and I was running up, the man who had hit him was going to hit him again. That’s all wrong, you know. The chap was down and out — very completely out. If the motive was robbery, the thief ought to have been going through his pockets. Well, I don’t think the motive was robbery — I think it was murder. He’d got what looked like a stick, but it must have been something a good deal more lethal — probably a length of lead piping — and he was going to polish him off, and another blow like the first on a head with a paving stone under it would have polished him off. The fellow was so intent on what he was doing that he couldn’t have known I was there until I started to run, and even then he as near as a toucher took the time for that second blow. I shouted, and he lost his nerve and made off across the road.’

Miss Silver knitted in silence for a moment or two.

‘Do you think that this man was lying in wait for William Smith — that he saw him come out of the house and attempted to murder him?’

‘I can’t go as far as that — there’s no evidence. He could have seen him, he could have recognized him, and I think he certainly tried to murder him. That’s as far as I can go.’

After a slight pause she said,

‘That is your first uncomfortable point. What is the second?’

He said, ‘Bill — the chap I met at that pre-war party at the Luxe — was married.’

Miss Silver said, ‘Dear me!’

‘There was a girl there in a gold dress — very attractive. They danced together most of the evening. No one else got a look in with her — I know I didn’t. Now last night I dined with my cousin Mildred Darcy and her husband, just home after seven years out East. They were at that party. They were engaged at the time. Mildred remembers Bill — she rather fell for him — but she doesn’t remember his surname any more than I do. It’s the other way round with the girl in the gold dress. She has no views of any kind about her Christian name, but she produced at least half a dozen surnames, of which the most probable seemed to be Lester — if it wasn’t Elliot. There was some connection with Mildred’s Aunt Sophy, and she’s sure the girl and Bill were married, because Aunt Sophy wrote out and told her she had given them a tea-set. My cousin Mildred has the world’s most inconsequent mind. She really doesn’t remember Bill’s name or the girl’s, but she sticks to it that she remembers them as apart from their names, and that she is sure they got married — largely, I think, because of the tea-set.’