Two Silver Crosses, page 16
Claud took the call himself. ‘I shall be here,’ he said into the mouthpiece. And the look he gave his wife as he put the receiver back in its cradle was too triumphant to be avoided. ‘I’ll deal with this,’ he said. ‘No need for you to worry yourself about it.’
Agnes agreed with him meekly. She could hardly argue with him out there in the hall where the servants might hear. But inside her head she was making secret plans to keep him under surveillance.
If it was wet, she would sit in the hall after the clerk arrived and hope they’d leave the door sufficiently ajar for her to eavesdrop. If anyone came out, she could pretend to be arranging flowers in the hall. If it was fine, she would open one of the south-facing windows in the morning room just before the clerk was due and take her deckchair out on to the terrace. She could tuck it behind the wisteria. Nobody would see it there from inside the room, but she would be able to hear everything that was being said and hear it in comfort. Either way and whatever happened she was determined to know what was going on.
And so all the preparations were made. That evening Charlie Commoner spruced up his business suit, steamed his trilby hat and decided to wear his new white shirt. And the next morning he set off for High Holborn.
He was in a state of suppressed excitement throughout the journey, and, when he emerged from the station at Wolverhampton, he knew beyond any doubt that he was on to something really special. He could feel it.
What a place it is, he thought. Not a bit like London. Anything could happen here. The air was hot with strange smells, grease, burning coke, hot steel, long-settled soot, and the curving street in which he found himself was as exciting as the air. It was lined by hoardings advertising Whitbread’s London stout, Bass pale ales, and Bile Beans for Biliousness, and it was full of impatient travellers, bustling in and out of the station or climbing aboard the local buses — odd-looking snub-nosed vehicles that snorted and chuntered and shuddered their sides as if they too were impatient to be off. They travelled fast, too. His rattled him to the Mermaid pub in no time at all.
‘Follow the road,’ the conductor advised pointing to a footpath which ran uphill alongside the pub between steep banks of brick red sandstone and heavily overhanging trees.
Charlie climbed eagerly, passing under a flimsy wooden foot-bridge, rounding a slight bend towards the top of the hill and found himself entering the grounds of a very great house. Wow! he thought, gazing up at it. This is going to be a very special assignment. Fancy living in a house like this. He straightened his tie, adjusted the angle of his trilby and knocked at the oak door.
A butler, correct in black morning suit and bland expression, ushered him into a panelled hall, received his cheap trilby into gloved hands and asked him if he would be so good as to wait in the morning room, which he did, awestruck by the rich furnishings, ornate fireplace, real paintings, stained-glass windows, and the grandest of grand pianos, all made of inlaid wood. What a place!
He was just beginning to wonder how much longer he would have to wait when a hidden door cracked open in the wall beside the fireplace with a noise like a gunshot. It was so sudden it made him jump to attention. And just as well because the man entering the room had to be Mr Everdale.
He certainly looks the part, Charlie thought, assessing him quickly; tall, dapper, oiled hair, sharp eyes, narrow moustache, wary expression. A man used to making hard bargains and getting his own way. He was dressed in a black suit, of course, being in mourning, but it was from Savile Row and worn with a gold wrist watch and a shirt that was a dazzle of whiteness with immaculate cuffs and a perfectly fitting collar. He made Charlie feel instantly and uncomfortably aware of his own humble origins.
He came straight to the point. ‘You have the document?’ His voice was as sharp as his eyes.
Charlie handed him the folder. ‘Yes, sir.’
The advertisement was perused. ‘It meets the legal requirements?’
‘So I understand, sir.’
‘Mr Holborn was very old, of course,’ Mr Everdale said. ‘A sick man or he would never have complicated our lives in this ridiculous way.’
No answer seemed to be required so Charlie simply waited.
‘However, providing we keep within the letter of the law there is no reason why this matter should trouble us overmuch, I think. If the advertisement is displayed, shall we say discreetly, in The Times for example? And The Telegraph, should Mr Hedgethorn feel a plurality is advisable. I leave it entirely in your hands. The less fuss the better, if you understand.’
‘Um…’ Charlie wondered.
His host paused. ‘Yes?’
‘Would you require a similar advertisement to be inserted in a French newspaper, perhaps?’
‘Does the law require it?’ Mr Everdale said. His voice sounded calm, but there was an increased sharpness about it and a suspicious tilt to his well-groomed head.
‘No sir, not as far as I know.’
‘Then we need not consider it.’
‘No, sir.’
‘They left of their own accord,’ Mr Everdale explained. ‘It was what they wished. We have had no correspondence with them in ten years, you understand. Had they wished to continue as members of this family they would have written. As they have not written we must assume that they do not wish to continue as members of the family. It is sad, of course, but we must accept it. There is no necessity to make strenuous efforts to find them.’
‘No, sir.’
‘I’m glad we understand one another,’ Mr Everdale said, allowing his visitor one neat smile. ‘Sleeping dogs, you know. I mustn’t detain you.’ And that was that. He was turning away, his hand already on the bell. Such a hard, white commanding hand.
The bell buzzed softly, and the butler arrived smooth-footed; the interview was over. As he left the room Charlie was aware that the sun was dappling the parquet surround with lozenges of brightness, sky-blue and rose-pink and buttercup-yellow, and he felt aggrieved that such a hard man should live in such a softly beautiful house.
And out on the terrace, crouched among the foliage, dowdy and brown and quiet as a nightingale, Agnes Everdale was aggrieved, too. What she had just heard had put her into one of her rare, icy tempers.
Providing we keep within the letter of the law…no reason why the matter should trouble us overmuch…they do not wish to continue as members of this family…there is no necessity to make strenuous efforts to find them.
Oh, isn’t there? she thought, appalled by his dishonesty. We’ll see about that, my lad. As soon as Claud had gone back upstairs, she emerged from her hiding place and ran round the side of the house to catch the clerk before he could get out of the gate and she lost her courage. It was the most positive and daring thing she’d ever done in her life.
As he walked back down the gravel path towards the gates, Charlie was doing his best to be professional and to assess the situation according to his training. Mr Everdale was a businessman, so naturally he was protecting the interests of his two sons. It was a reasonable position to take when you saw it his way, in the world of money and property and hard-headed business deals. All the same he couldn’t help feeling cast down to have come so far and for so little.
He was thinking so hard that, at first, he didn’t hear the voice calling to him.
‘Young man! Young man! Just a minute!’
He stopped and looked back. A middle-aged woman wearing a tweed skirt and a buff twin set and pearls, ran flat-footedly along the path towards him, a dumpy-looking woman with mouse-coloured hair and a long nose and an anxious expression.
‘You are Mr Hedgethorn’s clerk, aren’t you?’ she said, out of breath from her exertions.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘I’m Mrs Everdale,’ she said, holding out her hand towards him so that he could shake it. ‘We must talk. Would you follow me into the garden?’ She led him off the path and through a gap in the hedge that bordered it, a formidable hedge of tightly cropped yew, ten-feet high and three-feet thick, if it were an inch. Where were they going?
‘I would rather we weren’t seen from the house,’ Mrs Everdale explained. ‘It’s more private here.’
Charlie found himself in a formal garden surrounded by clipped hedges, well away from everybody.
‘Do sit down,’ Agnes said. And they sat side by side on the garden seat.
‘I want you to tell Mr Crabbit that you have my full support,’ she said, ‘in everything that has to be done in the search for my nieces. My father wanted his granddaughters found as soon as possible, you know. And so do I. Please feel free to put our advertisement in any paper you think fit, here and in France. You must do everything you can to find them. That is what my father would have wished.’
‘Of course,’ Charlie said. ‘You shall have our very best endeavours.’
‘I’m sure of that,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Do you know where to look for them?’
‘No, ma’am,’ Charlie said smoothly. But he was thinking, Now what? Does she know more than her husband? What a lark!
‘If I were you, I should start your search in Amiens.’
‘Amiens?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean they’ve been writing to you?’ Charlie asked, very much surprised.
‘Virginia has. Not regularly, you understand. Now and then. The last was from Amiens, just before my father died.’
‘Do you have an address, ma’am?’
‘I’m afraid not. She only sends postcards you see, and she never gives an address. We work it out from the postmark.’
‘We?’
‘She writes to her governess, Miss Babbacombe. Miss Babbacombe shows the cards to me.’
But not to your husband, Charlie thought. Well, well.
‘You will find them for me, won’t you?’ Agnes asked.
‘I will do my very best,’ Charlie promised.
‘I should be so grateful,’ she said. ‘They’re my brother’s children, you see.’
And he did see. Her affection for them was obvious.
It wasn’t until he was halfway back to London that Charlie realised that there were all sorts of questions he ought to have asked Mrs Everdale. He’d agreed to look for the girls — no, more than that, he’d agreed to find them, and he didn’t know anything about them apart from their names. He didn’t know what they looked like, why they’d left, anything. He didn’t even know how old they were. I shall have to ask Mr Crabbit, he thought. He’s a good old boy. He’ll tell me.
The good old boy was lounging in Mr Hedgethorn’s chair, smoking a cheroot and flicking through the pages of a brief. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said, glancing up as Charlie came in. ‘How did you get on with our Mr Everdale?’
‘Well, sir,’ Charlie said, choosing his words with caution. ‘This is only my opinion, but I don’t think Mr Everdale actually wants us to find these girls.’
‘Quite right,’ Mr Crabbit said, grinning at him. ‘No more he does. But their grandfather did. He made a most particular point of telling me so. So does their aunt, if I’m any judge.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Charlie said happily, sensing a moment of triumph. ‘I know. She spoke to me, too. She knows where they are.’
The bushy eyebrows were raised in query.
Charlie explained.
‘And Mr Everdale doesn’t know this, you say?’
‘No, sir. I’m sure he doesn’t.’
‘Um,’ Mr Crabbit said, flicking ash from his cheroot. ‘Then that’s the way we’ll keep it, for the time being at any rate. We’ll put the advertisements in hand tomorrow morning, starting with the national newspapers in London and Paris. You can attend to it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And if anything comes of it, we’ll send you over to investigate, eh? I’m told you have a yen to see the capital of France. How would that be?’
Charlie gave him an entirely honest answer. ‘Smashing,’ he said, thinking, wait till Mum and Dad hear this. I’ll tell them the minute I get in. Won’t they be bucked!
But when he finally got home to Clapham, much later that afternoon, it didn’t work out quite the way he intended because his Aunt Grace had arrived. And when Aunt Grace arrived in any house everything instantly became different and difficult.
Chapter 11
Grace Allicott was the bane of her relations’ lives. She was actually Stanley Commoner’s first cousin, but they weren’t the least bit alike. He had grown up in a large, hardworking, noisy family, and his mother and father had always been poor but loving. She had been the only child of elderly parents who were comfortably off, but dour and disapproving. Consequently, she’d been spoilt and querulous as a child, had never found anyone she liked enough to marry and, now in her late sixties, was sliding gracelessly into her second childhood, lonely and dissatisfied.
Her miserable outlook on life had left its mark on her features, pinching her nose to sharpness, scoring her cheeks and forehead with deep lines, and reducing her greying hair to a greasy limpness, despite two ‘permanent’ waves a year. Her eyes were hooded and her mouth perpetually downturned.
She spent a great deal of her time visiting with one of her cousins after another, knowing that she was being endured rather than welcomed, but arguing with herself, as well as her relations, that she was owed a little consideration now that she was getting on.
‘After all,’ she would say, ‘you lot’ve had husbands an’ wives an’ children an’ all sorts, an’ what’ve I had. Sweet bugger all.’
Half an hour after Charlie left for work and Wolverhampton, she descended on Abbeville Road for the second time that year. She was six days earlier than expected and weeping because her cousin Maud had been ‘a pig’.
‘The things she said to me, Ruby,’ she wept, ‘you’d never believe. I never thought I’d ever live to hear such things.’ Which was true enough, as Maud had told her she was being a nuisance.
‘Well, never mind,’ Ruby said, speaking kindly although she was a bit put out to be visited without warning. ‘You’re with us now. Come an’ have a nice cup a tea.’ But how would she explain to Stan and Charlie? And what would Grandpa say when he came down for his dinner? Oh dear!
Grandpa Jones was furious. He stood on the stairs glaring at the luggage Aunt Grace had left piled all over the hall, narrowed his eyes until they almost disappeared and made snorting noises through his nose.
‘Damn woman!’ he said. ‘What’s she doing here? She’s not due for another six days.’
Ruby rushed out of the kitchen to placate him. ‘She was upset,’ she tried to explain. ‘Maud upset her.’
‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ the old man said. ‘So now she can come barging in here an’ upset all of us. Come to something when you can’t take a bloody nap without her barging in. She’s not due till Thursday. I’ve got it in me diary. Oh fer crying out loud, Rube, how can I get to me dinner wiv all this junk in the way. She’ll have me arse over tit. Bloody woman!’
‘Yes, well,’ poor Ruby said ineffectually, hauling Aunt Grace’s bulky portmanteau out of his way.
The lady herself had retired to the front room and was asleep on the put-u-up with a rug over her legs and her mouth wide open, snoring rhythmically. Now she gave a splutter, woke up instantly and waved at her adversary.
‘Coo-ee, Grandpa,’ she said. ‘Still got yer gammy leg, I see.’
‘I’m not your bloody Grandpa,’ the old man said. ‘And there’s nothing the matter with me leg,’ kicking her hat box to prove it.
We shall have ructions all day, Ruby thought. And she was right.
They quarrelled through dinner and bickered all through the afternoon, sitting, scowling and scoring points, on either side of the empty fireplace in the front room.
When Charlie came home flushed with his success at High Holborn, they took no notice of him whatever, and even Stan had a hard time getting a civil word out of them. They took their places at the tea table like boxers returning to their opposing corners at the end of a bruising round.
Ruby looked as harassed as she felt.
‘It’s only for a couple a’ weeks,’ Stan comforted, as he helped her to ease her meat pie out of the oven. ‘It’ll pass. That smells good.’
Once they were all at the table, Charlie tried to keep the peace between his two cantankerous relations by telling them about the heiresses and his mission to Paris. But they were too disgruntled to listen and far more interested in continuing their quarrel.
‘You don’t wanna go to France,’ Aunt Grace grumbled. ‘They’re a horrible lot the Froggies. They don’t ’ave lavvies, you know. They just do it anywhere.’
‘You do talk a load of old guff an’ gubbins, Grace,’ Grandpa said. ‘You leave ’em be. They’re all right, the old parlez-vous.’
‘How do you know?’ Aunt Grace said aggressively. ‘Been there ’ave yer? No ’course you ain’t.’
‘You got no memory, Grace Allicott,’ the old man said, squinting at her. ‘Where d’you think I was during the war?’
‘Well I think it’s a real step up being sent to Paris,’ Stan said, putting the pie on the table. ‘They must think well of you, Charlie. Don’t you think so, Ruby?’
Aunt Grace was looking thoughtful. ‘Will you be away long then, Charlie?’ she said.
‘A day or two,’ Charlie said. ‘I don’t know. It depends.’
‘A week, maybe?’ Grace asked, and her eyes were sharp with interest.
‘It could be a week,’ Charlie said.
‘Tell us what happened,’ Stan said. ‘Tuck in, Grace, it’s a smashing pie.’
So Charlie told his story at last and Grace ate her pie and none of them noticed how quiet she was being. And when the meal was over, the dishes were all washed, and the white tablecloth had been swept, folded, put in its drawer and replaced by the yellow chenille and the table lamp, she was still thinking.
Even when her four relations passed the cigarettes round and lit up, she still didn’t say anything. She didn’t even complain about the smoke. So the story continued and Stan and Ruby smiled encouragement at their clever son as he told them about the great garden at High Holborn and how Mr Everdale had said one thing and Mrs Everdale another.
