The Case of William Smith

Chapter Thirteen

Frank Abbott had had a very busy week. A corn-chandler’s wife in Wapping went missing after a violent quarrel with her husband and had to be traced. Husbands in the most peaceable professions have been known to murder quarrelsome wives, and Wapping is convenient to the river. After a number of voluble neighbours had been interviewed, some dark suspicions hinted at, and a false trail which finished up at a mortuary at Gravesend investigated, it transpired that Mrs. Wilkins was visiting a friend in Hammersmith with the possibly illusory hope that her husband’s heart was being rendered fonder by her absence.

A good deal of energy having been wasted and a good deal of time taken up, Sergeant Abbott would have been in a fair way to forgetting his brief encounter with William Smith if it had not been suddenly recalled to his mind. Then the telephone informed him that his cousin Mildred Darcy had arrived in England after a seven years’ absence. She appeared overjoyed to be back, and wanted, in rapid succession, to know whether policemen ever had any time off duty; if they did, when would he be having any; and what about dining with her and George at the Luxe tonight.

Frank was reputed to have more cousins than anyone else in England and to be on good terms with them all. Seven years is a long time, and people are apt to change in the East, but he had always been very good friends with Mildred, and he thought he would like to see her again. She had been flighty, fluffy, and charmingly incompetent. He wondered if her rather notable complexion had survived. George he remembered as a heavy, worthy young man eminently suited to his probable role of providing ballast.

He accepted the invitation to dinner, and at the appointed hour arrived to find George less noticeably earnest, but Mildred a good deal more inconsequent than he remembered her. The complexion was gone, and so was the charm. She looked out of date in more than the matter of clothes and hair, but she was obviously in high spirits and affectionately pleased to see him again. Under an appearance of rather mannered indifference Frank was clannish. He found himself shaking George by the hand and responding to Mildred’s pleasure. And then, right across all that, there jigged the recollection of William Smith.

Mildred was saying, ‘I can’t think when we met last,’ and all of a sudden he remembered that it was at the party where he had seen William Smith, whom he recalled not as William or Smith, but simply Bill. Bill – and a girl in a gold dress. Up to this moment they were the only two whom he could have sworn to out of all the guests who must have been present, and now, like two bits of a jigsaw puzzle slipping into place, Mildred and George came into the picture. He even remembered that Mildred had worn pink. With the barest possible interval, he heard himself say,

‘It was here at the Luxe, just before the war – somebody’s party. But I can’t remember whose. I can’t remember anyone but you and George, and a man called Bill, and a girl in a gold dress.’

George was leading the way into the dining-room. As they passed under the mirrored archway, Mildred Darcy looked sideways and saw herself reflected there with Frank. The reflection pleased her. Frank’s slim elegance, the excellent cut of his evening clothes, the smoothness of the fair slicked-back hair, his poise and assurance, all pleased her very much. It did not occur to her that her dress was démodée and not very fresh, that her hair looked brittle and dry and was done in a fashion which had died a year ago. The girl in a pink dress who had danced here before the war was gone and would never come back. She had been Mildred Abbott. This was Mildred Darcy after seven years out East but every bit as pleased with herself as Mildred Abbott had been. She glanced into the mirror and glanced back again to tilt her head and say,

‘We make a nice pair, don’t we?’

Frank decided that he needn’t feel sorry for her. He pursued the man Bill. He said,

‘We do – we always did. I remember thinking so last time. You had just got engaged to George. You wore a pink dress.’

‘Fancy your remembering that!’

‘It’s about the only thing I can remember.’

They reached their table and sat down.

‘Look here, who gave that party? For the life of me I can’t remember.’

‘Oh, Curtis and Molly Latimer.’

‘He was killed, wasn’t he?’

‘So was Molly – in one of the first air raids. Lots of the other people, one way and another. Just as well we didn’t all know what was going to happen to us, wasn’t it? It would have been frightfully grim if we had. That boy Bill – what happened to him?’

Frank Abbott said, ‘I fancy he went missing. By the way, what was his name?’

She stared. He remembered the trick, and that it had been attractive. Her eyes were a rather light bright blue, and when she was surprised or flummoxed the whole of the iris showed. She said,

‘I haven’t an idea, darling. I never saw him before, and I never saw him again. But they called him Bill, and he drew dogs and cats and penguins all over the back of the menu – really frightfully clever. I kept it for ever so long, but you can’t travel about with everything, can you?’

‘You’re sure you don’t remember his surname?’

‘I don’t suppose I ever heard it. You don’t, you know – not when you only meet a person once. But I thought he was rather a lamb, and I’ve often wondered if he came through the war. You say he didn’t?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You said he was missing. I thought he was rather a pet. George isn’t listening, so I can tell you as a completely deadly secret that I rather envied the girl.’

‘And who was the girl?’

Women shouldn’t pout when they are over thirty. It should have been George’s business to tell Mildred that her pouting days were over. She made the face which had been freakish and charming when she was twenty, and said,

‘But you remembered her. You said so – she had a gold dress. Was her name Lester?’

‘I don’t remember her name. Who was she, and why did you envy her?’

‘Well she was a daughter of Aunt Sophy’s friend, at least I think it was Aunt Sophy. Anyhow she was the daughter of somebody’s friend, because they were raving about her. Only now I come to think of it, I don’t believe her name was Lester, because I think they were the people she was staying with, but I can’t be sure. I think it began with an L, because if it didn’t, why should I think it was Lester? But it might have been Lyall – or Linkwater – or Satterbee – ’

Frank cocked an eyebrow.

‘Satterbee doesn’t begin with an L.’

‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’ She brightened. ‘You know how it is with names – you think it’s an L, and it turns out to be something quite different. Do you think perhaps I said Satterbee because I was running Linkwater into Latimer? It was the Latimers’ party, you know.’

‘Yes, you said so. But I don’t know why it should make you think of Satterbee.’

‘It might – you can’t tell with names. Or it mightn’t have been an L after all. Something made me think of Marriott just then. No, that was Cousin Barbara’s companion who went off her head in the middle of a tea-party and broke four of her best Rockingham cups – that lovely apple-green. Grim, wasn’t it? So it wasn’t Marriott. But it might nave been Carlton – oh, no, it wasn’t. I’ll tell you what it was – it just came in a flash. Do you find things come to you like that? They do to me. It was Elliot! That’s where I got the L from!’ She paused for breath, and added doubtfully, ‘But I’ve got a feeling it might be Lester after all.’

‘Have you?’ Frank had a sardonic gleam in his eye.

Mildred pouted.

‘Anyhow George admired her so much that I nearly broke off the engagement – didn’t I, George?’

George Darcy, having finished a detailed and painstaking conference with the waiter, turned back to his wife and guest.

‘Didn’t you what?’

‘Nearly broke off our engagement because you fell so hard for that Lester girl at the Latimers’ party just before we were married.’

George looked a little sulky.

‘I haven’t an idea.’

‘Well then, I did nearly break it off. And I must say she was awfully pretty.’ She went back to Frank. ‘He can say what he likes now, but he fell for her like anything. But of course she was engaged to Bill and no one else got a look in. They danced together practically the whole evening. I can’t remember whether they were just engaged, or whether it happened that evening, but I know they were married quite soon after that, because Aunt Sophy – if it was Aunt Sophy – told me so. But of course it may have been Cousin Barbara, or Miss Mackintosh, because they were both about a good deal just then.’

With his well-known talent for taking up the least important point in any preceding speech, George enquired,

‘Who was Miss Mackintosh?’

Mildred poured out information about Miss Mackintosh, who was quite old and kept poodles which had to be combed every day and it took hours, and who couldn’t, after all, have imparted any information about Bill and the Lester girl – if she was the Lester girl and not Lyall, Linkwater, Satterbee, Marriott, Carlton, or Rockingham. No – Rockingham was the china smashed by the mad Miss Marriott who was Cousin Barbara’s companion.

Frank Abbott extracted an exasperated humour from the proceedings, but he obtained no further enlightenment on the subject of William Smith.

Later on, when he was saying good night, he asked quite seriously,

‘Look here, Mildred, how sure are you about that chap Bill having got married? Never mind the girl’s name or anything of that sort – just concentrate on whether he married her.

She looked up at him doubtfully.

‘Well, I think he did – ’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘Well, I remember Aunt Sophy writing out and saying she was giving them some china. She had stacks of it, you know.’

‘You really remember that?’

‘Yes, I do, because I wondered which of the sets she was giving them. There was one I wanted myself, and I always hoped she was going to leave it to me.’

‘If she wrote and told you she was giving them a wedding present she must have mentioned their names.’

‘Oh, yes, she did.’

‘Well, then?’

She wrinkled up her forehead, a trick that was going to leave ugly lines, and before very long too. She said,

‘You know, I was thinking about the china. The tea-set I wanted was a pet – those little bunches of flowers and a blue edge, and a nubble on the top of the teapot shaped like a strawberry. I didn’t really bother about the names, but of course she must have said them.’

‘Try and think what she did say.’

‘She said, “I’m giving them one of the china tea-sets”.’

If Frank ground his teeth, he did it silently.

‘Never mind about the tea-set – she didn’t begin like that.’

‘Oh, no – she said I’d be interested to hear they were getting married, because I’d fallen for Bill – I told her I had, you know.’

‘She did say Bill?’

‘Oh, yes – I keep telling you she did.’

‘Then she would have said the girl’s name too. What was it?’

‘Darling, I’ve forgotten.’

‘You’re sure it was that Bill and that girl?’

‘Oh, yes!’ This time she was quite whole-hearted.

‘Are you sure they got married?’

‘Oh, yes, I am, because Aunt Sophy went to the wedding – she couldn’t have done that if they hadn’t got married. And I remember she did go, because she wore her sable cape, and I got her letter telling me about it on a simply sweltering day, and I remember thinking how frightful it sounded – and anyhow sable and Aunt Sophy – too, too grim!’

‘And still you don’t remember their names?’

‘There was Bill – ’

‘Thank you – I got that myself. It’s Bill’s surname and the girl’s names that I want. If you don’t know them yourself, what about your Aunt Sophy?’

‘Darling, she died five years ago. And she did leave me a tea-set, only I don’t know if it’s the one I wanted.’

‘Can you think of anyone else who would know?’

The wrinkles deepened. She shook her head.

‘Honestly, darling, I can’t. You see, such a lot of people are dead – Cousin Barbara – and the Latimers – and Jim and Bob Barrett – I remember they were there, because Jim said I looked like a rosebud, and George was furious. Does it matter?’

Frank Abbott said, ‘It might.’