The China Governess (14 page)

‘She did not die at once, then?' Mr. Campion appeared fascinated by the story.

‘Oh no, thank goodness! That
would
have frightened Mr. Timmy and me! She waited until she got into bed, poor little dear, and then she had a heart attack and died and wasn't found until the morning. The doctor said the fall was quite enough to bring it on with a heart like hers. She ought not to have taken the job,' she added earnestly, ‘not when there was a child to be considered. She might have dropped it or frightened it, you never know.'

‘When did she tell Mrs. Telpher about the shaking?'

‘The night before. She went to bed early, with me fussing round. Mrs. Telpher was worried, because of course they were in someone else's house and illness and accidents are a trouble however polite the people are. In the morning it was dreadful when we
knew she was dead. Mr. Tim felt so guilty about pulling the door open and he was worried to death anyhow about the silly evacuee story of Mr. Basil's, which really is the stupidest thing I ever heard, that he went off as soon as he knew from the doctor that he wasn't to blame and he has hardly been home since. He's a very sensitive boy.'

Lugg raised a heavy hand as if to put it on her shoulder, thought better of it and lowered it hastily.

‘Wot is stoopid about the evac story?' he demanded. ‘Why shouldn't the young feller try to find aht abaht 'is family?'

‘Because he's got a perfectly nice family of people he's very fond of and knows all about and takes after by this time!' Mrs. Broome blazed at him in sudden annoyance. ‘Why Miss Julia's father wants to upset all that I do not know. Besides, suppose Tim did find a family he seemed to have been born into – I don't think he can, mind you, but suppose he did – then what could that do but mystify him completely, poor boy?'

‘Mystify 'im?' Lugg was puzzled.

‘Of course. You don't know anything about people by seeing them! I remember a lady coming to inspect St. Mary's Home where I was brought up and seeing us all in our lovely Elizabethan uniforms we were so proud of, and bursting into tears all over us because “it was wicked to dress us like charity children”. We nearly crowned her we were so offended. She saw us but she didn't know us, did she?'

Lugg stepped back from her and permitted himself his little high-pitched laugh again.

‘You've got it all sorted out, 'aven't yer?' he said admiringly. ‘“Mum knows best”, that's gointer be my name for you! Your young lordship ought'er be dressed by now. You'll all go 'ome together I expeck.' He shuffled out of the room and Julia got up hastily and looked at Campion.

‘I don't want to leave it like this,' she began. ‘Basil Toberman is doing Tim active harm. He's got to be stopped. If I thought —'

She was silenced in mid-sentence by the reappearance of Mr. Lugg whose face was blank with surprise.

‘Gorn.' He announced. ‘He went down the fire escape so as not
to disturb us. Winder's wide open. Wot's the young feller up to, eh?'

There was a moment of complete silence in the room, broken by Julia's sharp intake of breath. Mrs. Broome swung round upon her protectively.

‘Don't take it to heart! It's only because he promised your father faithfully not to see you,' she said so quickly that no one was convinced. ‘It wasn't very nice of the old gentleman to ask it but everything's fair in love and war, isn't it? You two have got to stand up for yourselves. You and me must get together, young lady!'

Both Lugg and Campion glanced at the girl curiously to see how she would respond to this somewhat over-direct mothering and they were both surprised. A fleeting curl appeared at one corner of the pale pink mouth and the swimming eyes twinkled.

‘Poor Tim,' said Julia.

THE HIGHWAY TO
the East Coast which ran through the borough of Ebbfield had always been a main road and even now, despite the vast garages, the pylons and the gaily painted factory glasshouses which had sprung up beside it, there still remained an occasional trace of past cultures.

One of these was a fragment of a terrace of early Victorian middle-class houses of a type which had once lined the broad road for two miles on either side. There were three of them left, tall and dark-bricked, with semi-basement kitchens and once-splendid flights of stone steps leading to square porches and fine front doors. The middle one possessed a cast-iron gate with a patch of bald, sour earth just inside it, and a name plate bearing the number 172 and the words
Waterloo Lodge
welded to its serpentine tracery.

It was raining and dark when Timothy Kinnit found the address at last. He was hatless and the collar of his light raincoat was turned up. He was at a splendid age and although his self-assurance was already shaken he ran up the stone steps and pulled the brass knob which he found beside the door.

There was movement inside the house and a light appeared in the transom above his head. The door opened abruptly and a somewhat brusque feminine voice announced: ‘Mrs. Cornish.'

Timothy became shyly voluble.

‘I'm so sorry to trouble you and I'm afraid you don't know me at all but I was given this address by Tom Tray. He repairs shoes in Carroway Street off the Orient Road. I was hoping that Councillor Cornish could spare me a moment or so?'

His diffidence and pleasant voice appeared to mollify her, for although she did not give ground she turned on the porch light and emerged as a small but stalwart woman in the late
forties, still smart and good-looking with bold eyes and a fashionable hair-do. For a moment she regarded him with surprised approval.

‘My God, you've spoiled your beauty, haven't you?' she said at last. ‘What have you been doing, fighting? I warn you we don't approve of boxing. Come in and I'll inquire if Mr. Cornish will see you. What is it? Youth Clubs?'

‘No, I'm afraid it's not.' He followed her into a long, shabby hall which could have belonged to any careless or overworked professional man at any period during the last hundred years. Mrs. Cornish appeared to become conscious of its shortcomings for she frowned at him and said accusingly: ‘When one works as hard as we do for the public good one doesn't have time for frills. What did you say you wanted to see the Councillor about? I don't imagine you're from a firm, so I assume you're canvassing. You're wasting time, you know, because every vote the Councillor has on any committee is well thought out
and
discussed, so he's already made up his mind one way or the other and nothing you can do will shift him one iota.'

Timothy found her trick of answering her own questions to the second stage of argument highly disconcerting but he stuck to his purpose.

‘It's nothing like that. I merely want to ask him something about Turk Street long ago and —'

‘Oh, you're a reporter. Not from one of the local papers, because I know them. Of course! You're the B.B.C. Well, we shall all try to be as interesting as we can.'

‘I'm not!' He was trying not to shout at her. ‘I'm here on my own account. I'm told that your husband knows more about Ebbfield than anyone else on earth. Some weeks ago a detective—'

‘A
detective
!' She gave him a long, suspicious look which he found vaguely unpleasant. ‘So you're a detective! I ought to throw you out at once, but you wait in here and if he wants to see you I shan't stop him.'

She thrust him into an airless dining-room in which no one had eaten for a very long time, and left him standing by the large round table which was covered with a faded red serge cloth.

The mahogany sideboard was spread with out-of-date magazines and the pictures on the walls were all of mountains in shabby gilt frames. It was a depressing room and he was still looking about him gloomily when the door shot open once more and the Councillor appeared, his wife behind him.

Timothy was nearly as startled by the man as Superintendent Luke had been on an earlier occasion. He recognized the type at once. His university was full of them; all passionate, dedicated, sometimes wrong-headed men, wedded to an assortment of ideas of which a few were practical. The fire behind his eyes, his long bony wrists and impatient gestures were all peculiarly familiar, but the more disconcerting because he had not expected to find them in the Ebbfield High Road. The other surprising thing about the Councillor was his open dislike of his visitor, who was a complete stranger. Timothy was young enough to be hurt by it. Cornish's nostrils were flexed and when he spoke his tone was contemptuous.

‘As I have already told one representative of your firm this morning, the matter is closed,' he said. ‘I don't want to hear any more about it. I have the name of your client and that is all I wanted to know when I invited him to call on me.'

Timothy relaxed. ‘I'm sorry, sir. You're making a mistake,' he said cheerfully.

‘You were directed here by Stalkey & Sons.'

‘No, sir. I got your name from the cobbler in Carroway Street.'

‘Have you any connection with the Stalkeys at all? Do you know them? Is the name familiar?' There was more force in the probing than the subject warranted and the younger man hesitated.

‘I got myself beaten up by one of the brothers this morning,' he said at last.

‘Why was that?'

‘I don't know. The man set on me out of the air.'

The Councillor stared at him and presently spoke more mildly. ‘That's a very dangerous accusation unless you're perfectly sure what you mean by it, my boy.' Without his animosity he was
revealed as a pleasant person, a little inhuman perhaps but possessing a streak of dry humour.

‘I should hardly have thought that man I met would have hung about long enough to beat up anybody,' he remarked, sniffing a little. ‘His brother, who he assured me was working down here on an inquiry, made the most indecently hasty departure from trouble which I ever witnessed. He was literally jet-propelled and all the way to Canada, I believe. What's your name?'

‘Timothy Kinnit, sir.'

‘
Kinnit!
' The word was an explosion and the lined aesthetic face grew rigid. ‘What's this about? Eh?' He turned to his wife. ‘Marion, leave me with this young man for a minute or two, will you?'

Mrs. Cornish sat down obstinately.

‘I'll wait,' she was beginning, but as he turned and looked at her the colour came into her face and she got up sulkily and went over to the door. ‘I shan't be very far away, anyhow,' she said as she left, but it was not clear if the words were meant as a threat or a reassurance.

The Councillor waited until her footsteps had died away before he leaned across the table in an effort, apparently, to be reasonable at all costs.

‘Who sent you?' he demanded.

Timothy's irritation began to return. ‘I was given your name by the shoemaker off the Orient Road.'

‘And you expect me to believe that?'

‘I really can't imagine why you shouldn't.'

The Councillor ignored him.

‘I think Miss Alison Kinnit sent you,' he said.

Timothy stared. ‘Alison? Why should she?'

‘You know her then?' The intelligent eyes were shrewdly inquisitive.

‘Of course I do. She and her brother brought me up. I live with them.'

‘Oh.' He seemed astonished, even a little put out. ‘Then perhaps you know a woman called Flavia Aicheson?' He put contempt and dislike into the name and Timothy frowned.

‘Certainly I know her,' he admitted. ‘She's been around all my life. She's a great friend of Aunt Alison's and a very nice old thing. Has she been making trouble on one of your committees?' He saw that he had scored a bull's-eye as soon as the words were out of his mouth. The Councillor was verging towards rage and colour had appeared on his thin cheeks.

‘You're very plausible, very smooth,' he began with intentional offence. ‘I'm not a fool, you know, even if I have lived a great deal longer than you have. As soon as I heard a private detective had been snooping along certain lines I suspected something of this sort and I was disgusted, I tell you frankly. For a while I washed my hands of the entire affair but on second thoughts I decided to check and I invited the Stalkeys to call on me. One brother came down this morning and was quite ready to talk, but I only wanted one thing from him and that was the name of his client. As soon as he gave me that I knew I was right. Alison Kinnit and Flavia Aicheson, they're virtually the same woman.'

‘Oh but they're not!' Timothy was so exasperated that he laughed. ‘They may have the same interests and they're certainly very close friends but they're quite different personalities I do assure you.'

‘Are they?' Councillor Cornish conveyed that he was unconvinced. ‘You go back and tell them,' he said. ‘Tell them they may feel that they're serving the Arts but that I serve Humanity and I am not going to have my life's work tampered with. You can also tell them that if they're hoping to use dirty weapons they should consider their own position very carefully. At least,' he hesitated ‘at least tell them not to be so damn silly!'

‘I do assure you you're making a great mistake.' Timothy's embarrassment was mounting. He had discovered to his dismay that the personal aspect of his quest was becoming more agonizingly personal at every new encounter, while at the same time the Councillor's accusatory style upset him in an emotional way which he felt to be absurd.

‘I came here on my own account because I want to know the things that Stalkey was trying to find out and I thought you might help me,' he said lamely.

‘What things? Go on, young man. Put them into words, what things?' There was something savage in the force of the older man's question and his visitor shied away from it.