Ladies’ Bane

CHAPTER 27

Fred Flaxman was talking big in the local. He had been in foreign parts, not just as so many of them had, under the tedium and discipline of army life, but in a kind of glorious splashing freedom.

“When I was valet to the Honourable John de Bent-” he would begin, and before you knew where you were you were in the midst of most thrilling adventures-lovely women, dark secrets, night-clubs more astonishing than could be imagined, murder, mystery, and what have you.

“Cross my heart, chaps, he said good-night to us with no more than fifty yards to go-up one street and round the corner-and no one never saw him again!”

Or it might be, “Nobody hadn’t seen her come in. No noise, no sound of the door-nothing. And there she was, staring at us out of those big eyes and holding her cloak tight up under her chin. Till all of a sudden she drops down dead with a great stab wound in her side, and no one to say how she come by it!”

This was a side of Flaxman’s character which would have greatly surprised his present employer. On the whole, it went down well in the Falcon. Some of the men laughed at him behind his back, but they found him good company and were willing to be entertained. It was only Tom Humphreys who kept his shoulder turned and stared moodily down at his beer while the tales went on. He was old Humphreys’ second son and the father of the handsome Nellie.

There had certainly been stories about Nellie in the past. She had a roving eye, and no disposition to keep anyone’s house but her father’s. She had always been perfectly frank about it. “Marry, and you have half a dozen kids under your feet before you can turn round! It’s no thank you for me! Look at poor Milly-up nights with that baby teething and looking fit to drop, and another one on the way! You’d never think she used to be better looking than me-now would you? Well, she was, and see where it’s landed her! I’m not walking into anything like that, thank you!” Tom Humphreys was said to be afraid of her. At any rate he knew when he was well off. His house was spotless and his food well cooked. He worked at some big nursery gardens at Wraydon, and he could be relied on to drink his couple of pints most nights and make them last till closing-time.

It wasn’t much after nine o’clock when Flaxman looked at his watch, finished his beer, and said he must be off. He went out with a laughing “Good-night, all!” and the darkness swallowed him up. He had not been gone for more than ten minutes, when Tom Humphreys muttered something to which nobody could put words and went lurching out after him. There was a loose joke or two, and then no more about it.

But Fred Flaxman didn’t come home that night. Mrs. Flaxman sat waiting, seething with jealous anger until round about three in the morning the anger died in her and she was cold. He wouldn’t stay out all night, not with Nellie Humphreys-he darsn’t! Everyone knew Tom Humphreys went home as soon as the pubs were shut. Ten o’clock. Even if he’d stayed in Wraydon and gone to the Rose or the Gardener’s Arms he’d be home by the half hour or the quarter to. And Nellie wouldn’t dare keep a man in her room if her father was home. Or would she? Would she? She fell into uncertainty again. Her code was a very simple one of black and white. There were good women and bad women. Good women were good, and bad women were bad. The bad woman was the enemy from the beginning. She would take a man from his duty, she would take him from his wife and children, she would spend his money. There was nothing bad she would not do. She was badness itself. She had to be fought. But the good woman had no weapon. If she spoke her mind, the man only ran the more eagerly to the woman who spoke him fair. She began to be sure that Nellie had kept Fred there in the dark cottage, with her father asleep and deceived under the selfsame roof.

At four o’clock she left the back door unlocked and went heavily upstairs to bed, where she fell into a dreary sleep, and waked with a start to the sound of the alarm clock. It was half past six, and Fred Flaxman had not come home.