The Listening Eye (2 page)

“Oh, no. This is just Marigold’s fan mail.”

“Well then, I came down to talk to you. About that picture of mine. The Listener—it’s all right about its being sold. I went round to the gallery and met the man who was enquiring about it, and he asked what I wanted for it, so I said two hundred, and when I heard myself say it I thought I’d gone out of my mind. But he just nodded and said that was all right, and he liked it very much, and I’d got a future before me.”

“Oh, David!”

It was naturally meat and drink to have Sally looking at him like that, but he kept his head.

“His name is Bellingdon, and Masters— you know, the Art Gallery people—they say he has one of the best private collections in the south, and when he buys any new stuff it means that other people are likely to be interested too. Anyhow there it is, marked ‘Sold’ and the cheque in my pocket, so I thought it would be a good plan if we were to go out and celebrate.”

The faint stirring of a usually competent sense of duty prompted Sally to say, “I oughtn’t to.”

“Why oughtn’t you?”

She threw a reluctant glance at the typewriter.

“Work.”

He picked up the letters, pulled up a chair, and straddled it.

“I’ll dictate them to you. I suppose they just want tactful answers.”

Sally gave her delightful laugh.

“And you would be so good at that!”

“Oh, I can be tactful when I choose. It’s mostly waste of time, when it’s not plain insincerity.” He used the back of the chair to prop the professor’s letter and regarded it with a gloomy eye. “What this man wants is to be told to go and boil his head. If he’s got the sort that can be bothered to read twenty-five of Marigold’s novels, it’s all it’s fit for. I’d like to tell him so.”

Sally said, “We can’t!” She very nearly said, “darling” again, but stopped in time. She typed rapidly:

“How nice of you to have read so many of my books. I am so grateful to you for your kind interest. I think it is wonderful of you to spare the time.

Yours sincerely.”

She left a space for the signature, withdrew the sheet, and read it aloud.

David relaxed into a grin.

“That’s a good score! He sends her a ticking-off, and you’ve turned it into a compliment. I’d like to see his face when he gets it. He’ll be foaming.”

Sally said,

“I hope so. And now I really have got to be tactful with a woman who wants Marigold to read a book she’s written on odd bits of paper and things.”

“Is she going to read it?”

“Nobody could! I shall have to pack it up and send it back, and I really think I had better just say straight out that Marigold can’t undertake to read manuscripts, and that no publisher will look at anything unless it’s typed. You know, I really can’t think how they managed in the old days. I’ve seen manuscript pages of Scott, and Dickens, and people like that—photographs of them, that is —and I just can’t think how anyone read them.”

“You had better be quite firm about it.”

“Oh, I will.”

They were not getting along very fast, but time didn’t seem to matter any more. They talked about the letters, and all the nice ones got such warm answers that Marigold’s stock went up appreciably.

When they were nearly through, Sally suddenly stopped typing and said,

“Did you say that man’s name was Bellingdon?”

He nodded.

“Lucius Bellingdon. Why?”

“Because I was at school with his daughter. And I’ve just remembered there was something about him in the paper—no, it wasn’t a paper, it was a magazine—an article about who had the most valuable jewels—you know the kind of thing. And it said he had given his wife a most wonderful necklace which is either supposed to be the one Marie Antoinette had and there was all that fuss about it because she didn’t really order it, or else it’s a copy which was made when the original was broken up.”

David produced a frown.

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about.”

“Nonsense—you must have! Everyone knows about the Affair of the Diamond Necklace. It was one of the things that brought on the French Revolution, and I don’t remember all the ins and outs about it, but it was part of a plot by a woman called Lamotte to get hold of a lot of valuable diamonds which the King’s jeweller had tried to sell him to make a necklace for the Queen, only she wouldn’t let him and said much better spend the money on a battleship. And I really do think it’s a shame that everyone remembers the silly story about her saying if the people hadn’t got enough bread to eat why didn’t they eat cake, but practically no one remembers about the battleship. Anyhow, when she wouldn’t have the necklace, the Lamotte woman persuaded Cardinal Rohan that the Queen had changed her mind, and that she really wanted it. There were a lot of forged letters which he thought were from Marie Antoinette saying she wanted him to put the matter in hand, but there mustn’t be any talk about it. Lamotte and her husband got a girl called Oliva to dress up as the Queen and give the Cardinal a secret audience in the palace gardens after dark. You wouldn’t have thought they would have dared, or that he would be such a fool as to be taken in, but he was. And then when M. Lamotte had got away with the necklace, the jeweller sent in the bill to the Queen and the whole thing came out. There was the most colossal row. Marie Antoinette said she didn’t know anything about any of it, but a lot of people didn’t believe her, and it did the Royal Family a great deal of harm.”

David had his impatient look.

“And what has it got to do with Bellingdon?”

“I told you—he gave the necklace to his wife. At least some people say it’s that one and some people say it isn’t, because the real one disappeared, or was broken up, or something. But if it isn’t the same it’s exactly like it and it’s worth goodness knows what. There was a picture of it, all festoons of diamonds looped up with big ones, and the woman who was writing about it said Mrs. Bellingdon had never worn it because of the war, and then she got ill and died. But Mr. Bellingdon is letting his daughter have it to wear at a ball he is giving at the Luxe next month. It’s a fancy dress ball, and she is going to go as Marie Antoinette. I told you we were at school together. She was a bit older, and of course even a year makes a lot of difference when it comes right in the middle of your teens, but she knows one of Marigold’s daughters and I’ve run across her a good bit lately. She got married a year or two ago, but he was killed motor-racing. I can’t say I think being Marie Antoinette with a lot of diamonds is really her line. Only I suppose most girls would rather jump at the chance. Diamonds do seem to go to people’s heads.”

David Moray frowned.

“I can’t imagine why you should take an interest in this sort of thing.”

The dimple came out again.

“Well, I do. You know, David, I’ll tell you something—just for your own good. If you ever come across a woman who isn’t interested in the sort of odds and ends that you feel all haughty and despising about, she’ll be one of the earnest ones who’ll want to run you and everything else in sight, and you’ll get so bored with her that you’ll probably end by doing her in. Because you know what it would amount to—it wouldn’t leave you anything to feel superior about, and you would hate that like poison.”

She found him looking at her in rather an odd kind of way. If it had occurred to him that there was something in what she said, he would certainly not give her the satisfaction of admitting it. And then all at once he was saying,

“Well, I’m not denying that’s a point of view. I wouldn’t say a woman was any the worse for taking an interest in what you might call the frivolities, always provided the solid stuff is there underneath—like having a good sound cake under the icing. For instance, you mightn’t have noticed it but I’ve a sense of humour myself, only I make it my business to keep it in its place.” He reached across for the last two letters. “It’s time we were getting on,” he said.

PAULINA PAINE came out of the gallery upon the street. She had sturdy legs, but they were shaking under her in a way that had nothing to do with the fact that her shoes were new. She was, in fact unconscious of the feet which had been hurting her so much only a short time ago. There was just this feeling that nothing was quite steady, and that the pavement appeared to be going up and down. Not enough to make her fall, but enough to be troublesome and confusing. She came to a small tea-shop—one of those that still linger in London, where they sell cakes and buns in front and there are half a dozen tables at the back. She sat down at the first one she came to and ordered that British panacea, a cup of tea.

She began to think what she was going to do. Suppose she had just gone on walking till she came to a policeman. She could picture the conversation,

“Now, miss, let’s get this straight. You say you heard this man make a statement to the effect—”

“No, no, I didn’t hear him. I can’t hear anything—I’m deaf—”

It would be quite hopeless. There had been experiences which resembled it closely enough to assure her of that. Besides the next question would be as to the identity of the men she had watched, or at the very least a description of them. Of the nearer one she had seen a turned shoulder, a dark raincoat, a black felt hat, and a profile. Of the other man she had had a better view. She supposed he could have been called quite goodlooking, but by the time you came to make a list of anyone’s features, what was there left of that or of any other impression? The features themselves would sound so exactly like those of a great many other people. She had often wondered how a clever writer managed to convey the living presence of some character in a book. She had no such talent, and when she thought of herself trying to describe the man in the gallery all she could think of was a bare inventory—a drab raincoat as against the first man’s dark one, height medium, age somewhere about thirty, hair neither fair nor dark, eyes neither grey nor blue, no beard or moustache to blur the line of the lips when he spoke. Of course she ought to have waited and tried to see where he went. But equally, of course, it wouldn’t have been any good, because he would have soon found out that she was following him, and he would only have had to hail a taxi or walk into an hotel to get away from her. Detectives followed people, but she hadn’t the least idea how they did it without being seen, and when she thought about the man seeing her and knowing that she was following him the tea-room floor began to shake under her just as the street had done. She took a sip of the strong tea and leaned back until the shaking stopped. Then she went on sipping, and when her cup was finished she had another. It would have been better to have had a pot of tea straight away, but all she could think of when she came into the shop was just “a nice cup of tea”.

When she had finished the second cup she was feeling herself again. She really couldn’t think how she had come to be so upset. She thought that she had been very stupid. What she would do now was to go back to the gallery and ask the attendant about the men. Even if they had left, he might know something about them. She paid her bill and walked back along the way that she had come.

When she came to the gallery she had to make it clear that she had no intention of paying a second time to go in. It went against her conscience to ask whether she had dropped a handkerchief on or near the seat from which she had contemplated Wilfrid’s nasty picture, but it would have gone against it even more to pay a second entrance fee, a thing which would come under the heading of sinful waste.

Mr. Pegler said no, he hadn’t seen any handkerchief.

“It was the next seat to where the two gentlemen were. About half an hour ago—I don’t know if you noticed them.”

Mr. Pegler was a little rosy-faced man with a flow of conversation. So far from resenting Miss Paine’s hypothetical handkerchief, he welcomed it with enthusiasm.

“Now if that isn’t a funny thing, your mentioning those two gentlemen, miss! Proper interested in you one of them was, and you can take it from me that’s a fact.”

Paulina had to take a grip on herself.

“Interested in me?”

“Well, miss, it was this way. One of them he got up and went out, and after a bit the other one got up too. Walking along looking at the pictures he was, and all of a sudden he come to the one that’s marked ‘Sold’, and the spit and image of you, miss, if you don’t mind my saying so, and I couldn’t help thinking whether it was done from you, and glad to get a chance to ask you if it was.”

“Yes, it was done from me.”

He beamed.

“I thought as much! The only thing—if you’ll excuse me, miss—the gentleman as painted it, Mr. Moray, he was here a bit earlier on with the gentleman that’s bought it. Well, what he said was that the lady he painted it from was deaf. Stone-deaf was what he said, and so be there was a good light, he said, no one would credit it, the way you could do this lip-reading—not unless they saw it. Well, if you’ll pardon me, that’s a thing that interests me a lot on account of my daughter’s youngest. Shocking deaf she is and getting worse, and they said it would help her if she learnt this lip-reading, so when I seen you I thought I’d ask you about it, only you went out so sudden.”

Paulina found herself embarked on advising Mr. Pegler about his grand-daughter. Oh, yes, of course the child must take up lip-reading, and at once—the sooner the better.

“It was much harder for me than it would be for a child. Children learn very quickly.”

It was a little time before Mr. Pegler came back to the gentleman who had been so much interested, but he got there in the end.

“I took the liberty of telling him what Mr. Moray said about you not hearing anything but how quick you was with the lip-reading. ‘What!’ he said. ‘You don’t mean to say she could be standing over there’—and he points back to the seat what he’d been sitting on— ‘and that she could tell what you and me was talking about just by looking at us!’ ‘Well, sir,’ I said, ‘it’s funny you should put it that way, for that’s just the way Mr. Moray put it —him as painted the picture—when he was talking to the gentleman as bought it. Pointed to that very seat he did and said, ‘I give you my word,’ he said, ‘if she was there and we was here, and you was looking her way, she’d read the words off of your lips as fast as you said them.’ You wouldn’t credit how interested he was, miss, when I told him that.”

Paulina found no difficulty at all in believing him. She went out of the gallery and began to walk towards her bus stop. All the way home she was thinking what she had better do, and the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she couldn’t cope with it alone.

She came in at her front door just as David and Sally were going out. She thought it was as if they were in another world—a safe, pleasant one where young people could meet and be happy. It wasn’t a world that had ever come her way, but she liked to think that Sally and David were in it. They went by her with a pleasant word, and then suddenly she had her hand on David Moray’s arm and was speaking to him.

“It was so kind of your cousins the Charles Morays to ask me to their party the other day.”

He said, “It wasn’t kind of them at all. They wanted to meet you.”

“Because of your picture?”

“No, because of you.”

She felt herself flushing with pleasure. But she mustn’t keep them— She said in a hurry,

“I was so much interested—there was someone I met there. I wonder if Mrs. Moray would think me troublesome if I were to ring up and ask her for the address. And I was wondering if by any chance you could remember the number.”

He said, “Four two’s in a row and the same exchange as this. Would you like me to ring up for you?”

She was scrupulous.

“I mustn’t delay you.”

“It won’t take a minute. We’ll go back to Sally’s room.”

Margaret Moray was in. Her voice came pleasantly along the wire. David said,

“Miss Paine wants to speak to you. She’ll say what she wants to, and I’ll repeat your answers so that she can see them. Now, Miss Paine—”

Paulina took the receiver.

“Mrs. Moray, I wonder if you would be kind enough to give me the address of your friend Miss Maud Silver—”