A Case in Camera
He felt a perfect brute, he says, but he didn't see what else he could
do. Even if he had had the right, he doesn't see that it would have
helped to tell her that, after tying herself up with a drunkard, she was
now going to make a second experiment with a man who had no more sense
than to go and get himself mixed up in an affair that might bring the
police round at any moment. He had no such right. Just as before he had
been unable to explain to Hubbard and myself until he had spoken to
Monty, so now he couldn't take any further step till he had seen Chummy
Smith. It might be hard on Joan and Mrs. Cunningham, not to mention his
wife, but what other course could he take? When you set about to burke
inquiry into a capital Case the fewer people you take into your
confidence the better. Besides, who knew yet that it was a capital Case?
Suppose twenty words from Chummy should somehow explain it all? Suppose
some ridiculous mistake had been made? Suppose our elaborate pretenses
to ourselves were in reality no pretenses at all, and that the thing
really was what it seemed--just an aeroplane accident with nothing more
to be said about it?
Yes, in spite of all the evidence, he would have been glad at the moment
to have believed that.
"Look here, Audrey," he said at last, "I feel absolutely rotten about
all this. I know I'm in the way and I oughtn't to be here at all. When I
turned over this place to you I hadn't the faintest idea of stopping on
like this. I'd go straight into rooms now if I could, but that wouldn't
do. Don't ask me why, there's a dear. For one thing I've got to see
Smith. They tell me he can be seen in a few days now. Then I'll just
stop for the wedding and clear right out afterwards. Whats the matter
with that?"
The matter with that appeared in Audrey Cunningham's next words, which
she spoke slowly and with her eyes on the floor.
"It isn't just you. It's Monty as well. He could tell me if he wanted,
but he doesn't want. I don't think I want to get married," she said.
X
The letter she wrote crossed Mollie Esdaile's Sunday morning one. It was
written on Saturday, and missed the Santon Sunday morning delivery by a
post, arriving there on Monday.
"Please don't think me ungrateful," Mollie read, "but all sorts of
things seem to be happening, and I'm so afraid of hurting you after all
your kindness. Perhaps I'd better come to the point straight away and
explain afterwards. I don't think I can accept your offer of Lennox
Street for Monty and myself after all."
Mollie was standing in the porch of the cottage as she read this. It was
immediately after breakfast. The postman could be seen in the middle
distance, climbing the stile on his way to Newsome's. Joan was
upstairs, getting the children ready for the shore.
Mollie thrust the letter into her breast. If Joan knew that the postman
had been she would come flying downstairs, and in any case Mollie did
not wish to be seen reading a letter. This from Audrey Cunningham was
all there was for her. For Joan there was nothing at all.
Quietly she slipped into the cottage, picked up a floppy print
sunbonnet, and slipped noiselessly out again. The back of the cottage
had no windows. Like a malefactor she skirted the palings of the little
front garden and gained the security of the back. But even this was not
far enough. The path up the field led to the Coast-guard Station, and,
with one furtive glance behind her, she took it. She would finish
Audrey's letter there.
Mollie Esdaile is still a young woman, but she looked every minute of
her age that morning. She had not slept. The room adjoining hers was
Joan's, and the wall between them might just as well not have existed,
so little a barrier had it been to the restless mental ticking of the
girl on the other side of it. A soft and tortured toss, then the
creaking of the bed, then the sounds of Joan moving about her room; the
striking of a match, a long silence, and then the creaking of the bed
again--all night it had gone on. Mollie had not gone to her; what had
there been to do or say? A hundred times she had promised, as if it had
lain in her power, that there should be a letter in the morning. None
had come. She felt a coward. She simply could not face Joan.
There was a merry morning wind, that ruffled the fleeces on the sheep's
backs and set the halliards of the Coast-guard's mast cracking and
rattling. Mollie tied the strings of the print sunbonnet under her plump
chin and walked with her head a little averted in order to see round the
print blinker. Beyond the waving grass-heads the sea appeared, a wide
silver glitter. You cannot see the shore from that hill. The sands and
the mile-long rollers lie far below that cliff's edge over which the men
are let down by ropes to gather the eggs from the awful ledges.
Then, in the little sunken way that runs down to the Rocket-house, she
sat down and took out the letter again.
"I don't think I can accept your offer of Lennox Street for Monty
and myself after all. Our engagement is not definitely broken off,
but I can't stand things as they are, and am back in Oakley Street
again. They say I can stay on, but I may have to pay a little more.
Monty is still at the studio."
"I _knew_ it!" broke from Mollie with soft conviction. "I knew that if
Philip stayed that wedding would be put off! I told him so----"
Frowning, she turned to the letter again.
"I'm trying to think it all over quite calmly," the letter went on.
"Perhaps it isn't Monty after all. Perhaps it is just that men
worry me. I don't know really whether I'm a man's sort of woman.
Their ways seem so queer and roundabout to me. Lots of them don't
seem fair. I don't want to marry and make a mess of it a second
time, and I don't think Monty sees this as I do. Of course, I don't
want him to tell me every little thing he does and everywhere he
goes or anything of that kind, but I hate being kept in the dark
as I know I am being. It all seemed to start with that horrible
accident. Nothing's been the same since. Of course, they've told me
about Mr. Smith and poor darling Joan, but if it was only that I
could understand it. I know there's something else. I'm afraid I'd
rather a breakdown yesterday, when all three of us were in your
cellar putting that wardrobe of mine away. There's something
uncanny about that place. Monty thinks so too, but says he doesn't
know what it is any more than I do. But there is something he does
know and won't tell. And now it's all over Chelsea that something
not quite right has happened. Mrs. Cook hinted at it this morning
when she brought my milk up, and she said the milkman had told her.
I really think that if the milkman knows I might be told. The fact
is that just at present I don't feel much like men and marriage.
You'll understand this, because I've told you heaps of things I
should never dream of telling Monty----"
Mollie's gaze wandered to the twinkling silver sea. She remembered some
of those things that would never be told to Monty. It was perhaps not
altogether fair to Monty that he should have to restore the whole of the
credit of his sex that the late George Cunningham had so let down, but
she knew how Audrey felt about it. Men _were_ trials sometimes. "Queer
and roundabout?" Mollie not seldom called them infants outright. Such
little things pleased them, such even less things caused them to dig
their hoofs into the ground and refuse to budge. Whatever Philip's
tremendous reason for remaining in Chelsea might be, Mollie brushed it
aside as a trifle compared with Audrey's marriage. For a moment she
almost forgot Joan's distress. Philip, with his curaçao and
candle-sticks, postpone Audrey's wedding? It was nonsense--not to be
thought of. Mollie wouldn't hear of it. All this mystification should be
put a stop to if she had to do it herself. Audrey, to be sure, was a
highly-strung creature; lying there among the warm grasses and with the
wind ruffling the silver sea, Mollie could afford not to take too
seriously Audrey's broken sentences about uncanny cellars and whispered
hints that ran all over Chelsea; but it seemed to her that there were
two birds to be killed with one stone. If she were to go up to town she
would be able to ascertain for herself what this Audrey-Monty trouble
was all about, and also why newspapers were to be kept from Joan and how
it was that Joan had first heard of Chummy's crash from Chummy himself.
She looked at her wrist-watch and scrambled to her feet. She could not
go without letting Joan know she was going, and Joan would already have
started with the children for the shore. There was a train at midday.
She would have plenty of time to intercept Joan, to tell her she was
going to leave her for a couple of days, to return to the cottage,
change and pack her bag.
And she did not think it necessary to warn Philip of her intention
either.
XI
"But, darling--oh, don't go on like this! Can't you see that if I go I
can clear up everything in half an hour? It's _much_ the best!"
Joan's manner was stony and impregnable. She stared straight before
her.
"I don't mind being left quite, quite alone," was her reply.
"But I shall be back again on Wednesday, foolish child, and I'll wire
you everything immediately if it costs me the whole of my quarter's
pocket-money. Anything's better than this!"
"Just as you like," came the expressionless response.
Not finding her on the shore, Mollie had climbed the precipitous zigzag
path to the cliff-top again and had sat down to rest, fairly blown. Then
she had seen her a quarter of a mile away, sitting motionless on a
rounded sky-line over which a hawthorn hedge straggled. The children
were stolidly watching her, and she as stolidly was watching nothing.
The boughs under which she sat were a custard of white bloom, and white
was the sun-flecked sweater in the shadow of them, and white as snow the
battlemented clouds overhead. Her eyes were dry and quite consciously
enduring, and Mollie was alternately comforting and scolding her.
"I shall catch the midday train, and I shall be back on Wednesday," she
repeated firmly. "If the mountain won't come to Mahomet or whatever it
is, very well. And _do_ try to be a little cheerful, darling. I heard
you last night. That does no good."
"I know you haven't had a letter this morning, either," came the dull
voice.
"I haven't from Philip, but I have from Audrey. She sends her love. Of
course, she knows about Chummy, and it's quite all right."
"But you won't show me the letter," Joan replied, steadfast in her
misery. "I know you won't. Nobody shows me anything. I saw him fall--I
was the only one who did--but nobody tells me anything."
"You shall hear every word the moment I get there."
"I saw him fall," Joan repeated obstinately. "You were all indoors, but
I was in the garden. But of course I didn't know who it was----"
"Don't, darling--just to please me," Mollie begged, distracted.
"He fell like a stone, crash into the tree. You can't realize that. You
haven't been up. I have. I know what it's like."
"But you've had a letter from him!" Mollie protested. "Really you talk
as if he was killed!"
"I don't know where the letter came from, and I can't write to him,
except to the Aiglon Company, which I've done, and there's no reply, and
somebody else had to address the envelope for him. I ought to go, not
you. I saw him fall."
To Mollie's touch on her shoulder she was quite unresponsive. Mollie
could have shaken her. It might have been the best thing to do.