A Little Treachery

41

Emmy turned the key and then stopped to peer rather dubiously into the little sitting-room before entering. The familiar, cold, ancient smell greeted her.

Many shocking and distressing things had happened since she had last stood on that spot; she herself had undergone an invisible but momentous change. She had stepped from that door as a needy, struggling young woman; she returned as an heiress. Emmy could hardly wish with any sincerity that the change had not come about. But she did lament the cause of it, at this moment with a certain keenness.

She had taken care to come alone, out of a jealous, canny, self-preservative instinct; but now she felt that her impulse had been morbid. To see all the bits of furniture in their accustomed places, and the shabby and familiar hat and coat flung down as if by one only just got in, no one having touched them, and the open book, and the clock unwound, and all the little commonplace objects left dusty and neglected – it was a bad experience. These things met one with an impact which a jolly companion would have helped to dispel.

Besides, Emmy was still a little nervous. She had suffered, during the past month or so, not only a distressing shock, but much secret apprehension.

It had started with Ferdy’s manner – But, no, that was another story.

It had started, then, with communications from the executor, followed by a few inquiries which had seemed to Emmy to have a suspicious tone; and after that had come a long and ominous silence. This had given her the idea that the Law and the relatives were taking a good look at her through some spy-hole. So she had spent a jumpy month or two, awaiting developments, not daring to poke her legal informant. Not a single relative, however, had bestirred himself. Probate was at last granted. And the meeting with the Forresters last week had gone off very successfully – Henry Forrester being the acting executor for these good people (to whom, it seemed, Catherine had written very favourably of her young friend) had accepted her in a kind and tolerant fashion, whatever their real feelings. If they had got wind of the fact that Emmy was a girl unfortunate in her brother, well, such a girl is not to blame, she is to be commiserated. And Emmy had been, from beginning to end, modest, subdued, fifty years out of date in being black-clothed from head to foot, and all that a refined young woman mourning the death of a friend and benefactress should have been. She had made herself up for the part quite deliberately, it was not to be denied; yet her mourning was genuine. There had been moments when, seeing Margaret Forrester’s kind brown eyes fill with tears, Emmy had been hard put to it not to start blubbering herself.

But a week had passed since then, and the beneficiary was in command of her feelings. After the first twingeing moments, she began looking round with a hawk-eye, diverted from grief by the burning question of what she was worth.

She was the owner of a house. She was also the owner of a houseful of very indifferent furniture, for which she had no manner of use and which, from what she could hear, nobody would remove for her, even if paid to do so. Sell up the whole outfit with the furniture thrown in, perhaps? Emmy shrewdly judged that, far from adding to the value of the house, it might even detract from it. But ambition to make something out of every stick in the place would die hard in her.

As for the house itself, it was not merely a house, it was a genuine modernized antique, with a wealth of oak-beams, a number of which were actually oak and originals; and, in addition, it had that lovely, old-world appearance for which fools will always pay through the nose. It should have been worth a mint!

Could it only have stood up to the searchings of an honest examination, in the present fantastic state of the market she would have cleared well over two thousand.

Thanks to old Foxy, she would not.

At this stimulating thought, Emmy went ferreting up and down stairs in a shrewish, biting temper. Little old red-face was at last something beyond a joke. She went poking, peering, fingering and appraising, banging down a sharp little heel on questionable boarding, jabbing at woodwork with a pair of scissors – ah, she knew all the tricks of the trade. She flung aside the abandoned garments without giving them a thought and dealt as summarily with many another pathetic witness.

Oh, it was more than shocking thus to confirm with her own intelligence how much less valuable than it might have been her inheritance was. Only one thousand instead of two – two and a half – three!

Still, she gradually calmed; she put it at one thousand. Her mood grew mellower. Her face cleared; her face finally sparkled with a look of joyful greed. At the worst, the outlook was bright. The little gem! Almost she would have liked to keep it. There was a profound reluctance to let go of a valuable of such problematical worth. Supposing prices went even higher? It made you tremble to act. Lord God, what a stroke of luck! Her dear, kind friend.

Emmy’s head began to incline sentimentally. She had never been so happy in her life as in this little house, she said to herself, exaggerating, of course; but still it was true that she had enjoyed herself beyond expectation. There had been the novelty of the place, the amusement of having Simon, and her liking – her more than liking – for Catherine. Yes, it was more than that; her tender pride in her poor invalid.

Thinking thus, she turned to the desk, at which she had so often seen her friend seated, with a sad lowering of mood.

Here Henry Forrester had been at work. With painstaking, kindly thoroughness, perhaps assisted by Margaret, he had cleared the ground for her. He had examined all the contents, tied packages of papers together, labelled each with a direction or suggestion as to what should be done with it – how these might be sent to so-and-so, these destroyed; and on the whole there was little enough to deal with. The packages were few. They were all personal affairs, of course, business having been disposed of. ‘I think this should be burned,’ was clearly written on one of them. These appear to be very private matters which my wife believes she would not have wished read.’ Emmy hesitated.

She began to be conscious of the creeping chill of the house on her shoulders. It was winter, though mild. She thought she would burn up a few of these mournful papers and while she was doing it, find a bit of wood outside or coal from the bunker, if the neighbours had left any, and cheer herself up with a little blaze; get a spot of water from one of the interesting old ruins, find some tea and a tin of milk in the larder and boil a kettle. She would have gone to the Unicorn, but that she was a trifle in the red with them – unless her poor friend had made it good? Well, it was all one now.

In the midst of these preparations, a weighty thump overhead caused her to drop everything and spring to the door, crying, in a burst of indignation, so now they had brought down the chimney-stack, had they? For a great stream of traffic was in riotous progress along the road. She rushed upstairs in the bitter, exalted mood of one who had prophesied evil and lived to see it. There was no sign of damage. The noise must have been external. No doubt a lorry carelessly laden had merely thundered by, jolting its walloping load over a manhole.

Having come to this conclusion, she stood in the middle room for a few minutes – and began listening.

No wonder nothing had been heard. Not a thing going on in that house would be heard, certainly not a fall. Not a cry. Not a cry for help. It was going upstairs which had done it, so they had reckoned. Perhaps running upstairs too fast, attempting to get up that deep, steep little staircase in too much of a hurry. A sudden strain on the heart. So she fell.

If Mrs Stewart hadn’t at last taken upon herself to break a window, for the back door was locked and bolted, there she might have been lying now.

Emmy descended into the kitchen slowly, carefully, and for several minutes stood quite still by the table, her dark little countenance looking very old and sharp in its unwonted gravity.

Why go rushing upstairs like that?

You might, if frightened.

Emmy’s face grew sullen, the nose drooped, another ten years gathered upon her.

‘Well, I didn’t tell Ferdy, no, I wouldn’t have been so wet as that. Only what did I do but go and tell Roy!’

On October the tenth it had happened. For some moments she did not know why the actual date had suddenly occurred to her so precisely. Then she realized why this was; because it was as good as there, under her eyes. She was standing by the kitchen table, which was covered with American cloth, cloth which had reached the worn, clammy stage when that material easily takes the print of a newspaper put down on it and receiving a pressure. She herself had often washed off such transfers. There the thing was, very faint, partial, upside-down; and Emmy abruptly moved round, without touching the cloth, to fix a long, black stare upon it. She could make out the corner of a line drawing in a slashing, open style – nothing more. But Emmy knew that work of art and what journal it had come out in as well as she knew her own face; knew also the date on which it had appeared, some little incident connected with its publication having fixed in her memory a point which she might otherwise well have forgotten, as it was almost three months ago. Since when had Catherine taken the People’s Peephole, that valuable weekend mixture of gambling, salacity and class-spite – the Peephole, as it was lovingly known to a great section of the mass public? True, the sheet might have been wrapped round something – although publications of that size were rarely put to such use. But on that very day? Impossible! Or could Henry Forrester –? Equally impossible.

But supposing you had thrown the open magazine on the table, and supposing that then you had had sudden occasion to lean hard on the table with one hand as you looked down at something on the floor between the table and the foot of the stairs?

What a mercy he hadn’t fired!

Emmy was moved to spasmodic action. She hurriedly took her handkerchief and with the aid of a little soap rubbed out the impress; then went into the garden-room and shut the door on it all, and sat down rather suddenly. She was quite pale. But her thought completed itself unpreventably. ‘Never needed to. Just shoved in and threatened her, frightened her.’

Presently the kettle boiled and she mechanically made some tea.

Poor old Ferdy. It must have given him a shock. He didn’t like his plans to go awry. It must have upset him. It must have shaken him up properly to have the woman fall down dead on him like that.

But here Emmy made an attempt to adjust her ideas to those higher ways of thinking of which she now had intimations.

Only, first, had the police seen that print? But, Emmy reflected with joy, it wouldn’t have been identifiable to anyone but herself, wouldn’t have meant a thing to anyone else.

Well, it would have been no good ratting, no good running to the police with a tale, it would have benefited nobody. The poor woman herself wouldn’t have wanted her little friend to get slapped down, would she? But Emmy did hope the poor thing, wherever she was (and good luck to her!), would be able to see that point.

The truth was she had been all set for this impression, this print on the cloth. Instinctively, to be on the safe side, she had been publicly amazed to learn of her inheritance, for if she had not known of her inheritance she could not have passed on the news to Ferdy, could she? Greg had kept quiet for her sake, Roy for his own.

And yet, in spite of loyal friends all round, Ferdy was now doing time. Almost at once he had been picked up on some charge one had thought was a bygone – in fact, they had got him on one small, unimportant facet of those apparently successful spring operations into which Emmy had been so terribly scared of being dragged that she had sought country air. (No, Emmy would never have gone to such lengths as a country holiday merely to escape Mumsie’s occasional disposition to murder her. But she did earnestly wish not to be a criminal – so strong was her common sense.) This picking up of Ferdy had looked like sheer petty-mindedness on the part of the police, rather than the thin edge of the wedge. All his friends had thought so. But the idea that the police had framed him simply because they were interested in matters at Ockentree was not so comforting. Had they got wind of his being not a hundred miles from the cottage that night? Did they suspect he had helped the poor thing down the stairs? They must surely know better! No one had anything whatever to fear from Ferdy, in their own persons, but a clean shot. He wasn’t the sort to go bashing people, not even elderly women. (Emmy made this reflection with pride.)

So it was that she herself, hearing it was only a fall (and how joyfully she had heard it, in a manner of speaking), a natural death and a fall, would never have suspected anything but for Ferdy’s manner. Shocked – upset. Yes, poor old Ferdy.

For you might say he had done nothing. Had Emmy not been cultivating high principles of late, she also might have been able to say so.

However, they could lay for him as they liked; they wouldn’t get him on that job.