The Hollow Read online

  “Oh, it’s a special occasion. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

  Then he moved towards Henrietta. “I’ll ring you up, Henrietta.”

  “Yes, do, Edward. But I may be out a good deal.”

  “Out?”

  She gave him a quick, mocking smile.

  “Drowning my sorrow. You don’t expect me to sit at home and mope, do you?”

  He said slowly: “I don’t understand you nowadays, Henrietta. You are quite different.”

  Her face softened. She said unexpectedly: “Darling Edward,” and gave his arm a quick squeeze.

  Then she turned to Lucy Angkatell. “I can come back if I want to, can’t I, Lucy?”

  Lady Angkatell said: “Of course, darling. And anyway there will be the inquest again in a fortnight.”

  Henrietta went to where she had parked the car in the market square. Her suitcases and Midge’s were already inside.

  They got in and drove off.

  The car climbed the long hill and came out on the road over the ridge. Below them the brown and golden leaves shivered a little in the chill of a grey autumn day.

  Midge said suddenly: “I’m glad to get away—even from Lucy. Darling as she is, she gives me the creeps sometimes.”

  Henrietta was looking intently into the small driving mirror.

  She said rather inattentively:

  “Lucy has to give the coloratura touch—even to murder.”

  “You know, I’d never thought about murder before.”

  “Why should you? It isn’t a thing one thinks about. It’s a six-letter word in a crossword, or a pleasant entertainment between the covers of a book. But the real thing—”

  She paused. Midge finished:

  “Is real. That is what startles one.”

  Henrietta said:

  “It needn’t be startling to you. You are outside it. Perhaps the only one of us who is.”

  Midge said:

  “We’re all outside it now. We’ve got away.”

  Henrietta murmured: “Have we?”

  She was looking in the driving mirror again. Suddenly she put her foot down on the accelerator. The car responded. She glanced at the speedometer. They were doing over fifty. Presently the needle reached sixty.

  Midge looked sideways at Henrietta’s profile. It was not like Henrietta to drive recklessly. She liked speed, but the winding road hardly justified the pace they were going. There was a grim smile hovering round Henrietta’s mouth.

  She said: “Look over your shoulder, Midge. See that car way back there?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a Ventnor 10.”

  “Is it?” Midge was not particularly interested.

  “They’re useful little cars, low petrol consumption, keep the road well, but they’re not fast.”

  “No?”

  Curious, thought Midge, how fascinated Henrietta always was by cars and their performance.

  “As I say, they’re not fast—but that car, Midge, has managed to keep its distance although we’ve been going over sixty.”

  Midge turned a startled face to her.

  “Do you mean that—”

  Henrietta nodded. “The police, I believe, have special engines in very ordinary-looking cars.”

  Midge said:

  “You mean they’re still keeping an eye on us all?”

  “It seems rather obvious.”

  Midge shivered.

  “Henrietta, can you understand the meaning of this second gun business?”

  “No, it lets Gerda out. But beyond that it just doesn’t seem to add up to anything.”

  “But, if it was one of Henry’s guns—”

  “We don’t know that it was. It hasn’t been found yet, remember.”

  “No, that’s true. It could be someone outside altogether. Do you know who I’d like to think killed John, Henrietta? That woman.”

  “Veronica Cray?”

  “Yes.”

  Henrietta said nothing. She drove on with her eyes fixed sternly on the road ahead of her.

  “Don’t you think it’s possible?” persisted Midge.

  “Possible, yes,” said Henrietta slowly.

  “Then you don’t think—”

  “It’s no good thinking a thing because you want to think it. It’s the perfect solution—letting all of us out!”

  “Us? But—”

  “We’re in it—all of us. Even you, Midge darling—though they’d be hard put to it to find a motive for your shooting John. Of course I’d like it to be Veronica. Nothing would please me better than to see her giving a lovely performance, as Lucy would put it, in the dock!”

  Midge shot a quick look at her.

  “Tell me, Henrietta, does it all make you feel vindictive?”

  “You mean”—Henrietta paused a moment—“because I loved John?”

  “Yes.”

  As she spoke, Midge realized with a slight sense of shock that this was the first time the bald fact had been put into words. It had been accepted by them all, by Lucy and Henry, by Midge, by Edward even, that Henrietta loved John Christow, but nobody had ever so much as hinted at the fact in words before.

  There was a pause whilst Henrietta seemed to be thinking. Then she said in a thoughtful voice:

  “I can’t explain to you what I feel. Perhaps I don’t know myself.”

  They were driving now over Albert Bridge.

  Henrietta said:

  “You’d better come to the studio, Midge. We’ll have tea, and I’ll drive you to your digs afterwards.”

  Here in London the short afternoon light was already fading. They drew up at the studio door and Henrietta put her key into the door. She went in and switched on the light.

  “It’s chilly,” she said. “We’d better light the gas fire. Oh, bother—I meant to get some matches on the way.”

  “Won’t a lighter do?”

  “Mine’s no good, and anyway it’s difficult to light a gas fire with one. Make yourself at home. There’s an old blind man stands on the corner. I usually get my matches off him. I shan’t be a minute or two.”

  Left alone in the studio, Midge wandered round looking at Henrietta’s work. It gave her an eerie feeling to be sharing the empty studio with these creations of wood and bronze.

  There was a bronze head with high cheekbones and a tin hat, possibly a Red Army soldier, and there was an airy structure of twisted ribbonlike aluminium which intrigued her a good deal. There was a vast static frog in pinkish granite, and at the end of the studio she came to an almost life-sized wooden figure.

  She was staring at it when Henrietta’s key turned in the door and Henrietta herself came in slightly breathless.

  Midge turned.

  “What’s this, Henrietta? It’s rather frightening.”

  “That? That’s The Worshipper. It’s going to the International Group.”

  Midge repeated, staring at it:

  “It’s frightening.”

  Kneeling to light the gas fire, Henrietta said over her shoulder:

  “It’s interesting your saying that. Why do you find it frightening?”

  “I think—because it hasn’t any face.”

  “How right you are, Midge.”

  “It’s very good, Henrietta.”

  Henrietta said lightly:

  “It’s a nice bit of pearwood.”

  She rose from her knees. She tossed her big satchel bag and her furs on to the divan, and threw down a couple of boxes of matches on the table.

  Midge was struck by the expression on her face—it had a sudden quite inexplicable exultation.

  “Now for tea,” said Henrietta, and in her voice was the same warm jubilation that Midge had already glimpsed in her face.

  It struck an almost jarring note—but Midge forgot it in a train of thought aroused by the sight of the two boxes of matches.

  “You remember those matches Veronica Cray took away with her?”

  “When Lucy insisted on foisting a whole half-doz
en on her? Yes.”

  “Did anyone ever find out whether she had matches in her cottage all the time?”

  “I expect the police did. They’re very thorough.”

  A faintly triumphant smile was curving Henrietta’s lips. Midge felt puzzled and almost repelled.

  She thought: “Can Henrietta really have cared for John? Can she? Surely not.”

  And a faint desolate chill struck through her as she reflected:

  “Edward will not have to wait very long….”

  Ungenerous of her not to let that thought bring warmth. She wanted Edward to be happy, didn’t she? It wasn’t as though she could have Edward herself. To Edward she would be always “little Midge.” Never more than that. Never a woman to be loved.

  Edward, unfortunately, was the faithful kind. Well, the faithful kind usually got what they wanted in the end.

  Edward and Henrietta at Ainswick…that was the proper ending to the story. Edward and Henrietta living happy ever afterwards.

  She could see it all very clearly.

  “Cheer up, Midge,” said Henrietta. “You mustn’t let murder get you down. Shall we go out later and have a spot of dinner together?”

  But Midge said quickly that she must get back to her rooms. She had things to do—letters to write. In fact, she’d better go as soon as she’d finished her cup of tea.

  “All right. I’ll drive you there.”

  “I could get a taxi.”

  “Nonsense. Let’s use the car, as it’s there.”

  They went out into damp evening air. As they drove past the end of the Mews Henrietta pointed out a car drawn in to the side.

  “A Ventnor 10. Our shadow. You’ll see. He’ll follow us.”

  “How beastly it all is!”

  “Do you think so? I don’t really mind.”

  Henrietta dropped Midge at her rooms and came back to the Mews and put her car away in the garage.

  Then she let herself into the studio once more.

  For some minutes she stood abstractedly drumming with her fingers on the mantelpiece. Then she sighed and murmured to herself:

  “Well—to work. Better not waste time.”

  She threw off her tweeds and got into her overall.

  An hour and a half later she drew back and studied what she had done. There were dabs of clay on her cheek and her hair was dishevelled, but she nodded approval at the model on the stand.

  It was the rough similitude of a horse. The clay had been slapped on in great irregular lumps. It was the kind of horse that would have given the colonel of a cavalry regiment apoplexy, so unlike was it to any flesh and blood horse that had ever been foaled. It would also have distressed Henrietta’s Irish hunting forebears. Nevertheless it was a horse—a horse conceived in the abstract.

  Henrietta wondered what Inspector Grange would think of it if he ever saw it, and her mouth widened a little in amusement as she pictured his face.

  Twenty-four

  Edward Angkatell stood hesitantly in the swirl of foot traffic in Shaftesbury Avenue. He was nerving himself to enter the establishment which bore the gold-lettered sign: “Madame Alfrege.”

  Some obscure instinct had prevented him from merely ringing up and asking Midge to come out and lunch. That fragment of telephone conversation at The Hollow had disturbed him—more, had shocked him. There had been in Midge’s voice a submission, a subservience that had outraged all his feelings.

  For Midge, the free, the cheerful, the outspoken, to have to adopt that attitude. To have to submit, as she clearly was submitting, to rudeness and insolence on the other end of the wire. It was all wrong—the whole thing was wrong! And then, when he had shown his concern, she had met him point-blank with the unpalatable truth that one had to keep one’s job, that jobs weren’t easy to get, and that the holding down of jobs entailed more unpleasantness than the mere performing of a stipulated task.

  Up till then Edward had vaguely accepted the fact that a great many young women had “jobs” nowadays. If he had thought about it at all, he had thought that on the whole they had jobs because they liked jobs—that it flattered their sense of independence and gave them an interest of their own in life.

  The fact that a working day of nine to six, with an hour off for lunch, cut a girl off from most of the pleasures and relaxations of a leisured class had simply not occurred to Edward. That Midge, unless she sacrificed her lunch hour, could not drop into a picture gallery, that she could not go to an afternoon concert, drive out of town on a fine summer’s day, lunch in a leisurely way at a distant restaurant, but had instead to relegate her excursions into the country to Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and to snatch her lunch in a crowded Lyons or a snack bar, was a new and unwelcome discovery. He was very fond of Midge. Little Midge—that was how he thought of her. Arriving shy and wide-eyed at Ainswick for the holidays, tongue-tied at first, then opening up into enthusiasm and affection.

  Edward’s tendency to live exclusively in the past, and to accept the present dubiously as something yet untested, had delayed his recognition of Midge as a wage-earning adult.

  It was on that evening at The Hollow when he had come in cold and shivering from that strange, upsetting clash with Henrietta, and when Midge had knelt to build up the fire, that he had been first aware of a Midge who was not an affectionate child but a woman. It had been an upsetting vision—he had felt for a moment that he had lost something—something that was a precious part of Ainswick. And he had said impulsively, speaking out of that suddenly aroused feeling, “I wish I saw more of you, little Midge….”

  Standing outside in the moonlight, speaking to a Henrietta who was no longer startingly the familiar Henrietta he had loved for so long—he had known sudden panic. And he had come in to a further disturbance of the set pattern which was his life. Little Midge was also a part of Ainswick—and this was no longer little Midge, but a courageous and sad-eyed adult whom he did not know.

  Ever since then he had been troubled in his mind, and had indulged in a good deal of self-reproach for the unthinking way in which he had never bothered about Midge’s happiness or comfort. The idea of her uncongenial job at Madame Alfrege’s had worried him more and more, and he had determined at last to see for himself just what this dress shop of hers was like.

  Edward peered suspiciously into the show window at a little black dress with a narrow gold belt, some rakish-looking, skimpy jumper suits, and an evening gown of rather tawdry coloured lace.

  Edward knew nothing about women’s clothes except by instinct, but had a shrewd idea that all these exhibits were somehow of a meretricious order. No, he thought, this place was not worthy of her. Someone—Lady Angkatell, perhaps—must do something about it.

  Overcoming his shyness with an effort, Edward straightened his slightly stooping shoulders and walked in.

  He was instantly paralysed with embarrassment. Two platinum blonde little minxes with shrill voices were examining dresses in a showcase, with a dark saleswoman in attendance. At the back of the shop a small woman with a thick nose, henna red hair and a disagreeable voice was arguing with a stout and bewildered customer over some alterations to an evening gown. From an adjacent cubicle a woman’s fretful voice was raised.

  “Frightful—perfectly frightful—can’t you bring me anything decent to try?”

  In response he heard the soft murmur of Midge’s voice—a deferential, persuasive voice.

  “This wine model is really very smart. And I think it would suit you. If you’d just slip it on—”

  “I’m not going to waste my time trying on things that I can see are no good. Do take a little trouble. I’ve told you I don’t want reds. If you’d listen to what you are told—”

  The colour surged up into Edward’s neck. He hoped Midge would throw the dress in the odious woman’s face. Instead she murmured:

  “I’ll have another look. You wouldn’t care for green I suppose, Madam? Or this peach?”

  “Dreadful—perfectly dreadful! No, I won’t
see anything more. Sheer waste of time—”

  But now Madame Alfrege, detaching herself from the stout customer, had come down to Edward and was looking at him inquiringly.

  He pulled himself together.

  “Is—could I speak—is Miss Hardcastle here?”

  Madame Alfrege’s eyebrows went up, but she took in the Savile Row cut of Edward’s clothes, and she produced a smile whose graciousness was rather more unpleasant than her bad temper would have been.

  From inside the cubicle the fretful voice rose sharply.

  “Do be careful! How clumsy you are. You’ve torn my hairnet.”

  And Midge, her voice unsteady:

  “I’m very sorry, Madam.”

  “Stupid clumsiness.” (The voice appeared muffled.) “No, I’ll do it myself. My belt, please.”

  “Miss Hardcastle will be free in a minute,” said Madame Alfrege. Her smile was now a leer.

  A sandy-haired, bad-tempered-looking woman emerged from the cubicle carrying several parcels and went out into the street. Midge, in a severe black dress, opened the door for her. She looked pale and unhappy.

  “I’ve come to take you out to lunch,” said Edward without preamble.

  Midge gave a harried glance up at the clock.

  “I don’t get off until quarter past one,” she began.

  It was ten past one.

  Madame Alfrege said graciously:

  “You can go off now if you like, Miss Hardcastle, as your friend has called for you.”

  Midge murmured: “Oh thank you, Madame Alfrege,” and to Edward: “I’ll be ready in a minute,” and disappeared into the back of the shop.

  Edward, who had winced under the impact of Madame Alfrege’s heavy emphasis on “friend,” stood helplessly waiting.

  Madame Alfrege was just about to enter into arch conversation with him when the door opened and an opulent-looking woman with a Pekinese came in, and Madame Alfrege’s business instincts took her forward to the newcomer.

  Midge reappeared with her coat on, and taking her by the elbow, Edward steered her out of the shop into the street.