Taken at the Flood Read online

  “I should require very definite proof of it.”

  “Would you? Well, of course, there’s no superdefinite proof. Underhay himself could turn up here—in Warmsley Vale. How’d you like that for proof?”

  “It would at least be conclusive,” said David dryly.

  “Oh, yes, conclusive—but just a little embarrassing—for Mrs. Gordon Cloade, I mean. Because then, of course, she wouldn’t be Mrs. Gordon Cloade. Awkward. You must admit, just a little bit awkward?”

  “My sister,” said David, “remarried in perfectly good faith.”

  “Of course she did, my dear fellow. Of course she did. I’m not disputing that for a second. Any judge would say the same. No actual blame could attach to her.”

  “Judge?” said David sharply.

  The other said as though apologetically:

  “I was thinking of bigamy.”

  “Just what are you driving at?” asked David savagely.

  “Now don’t get excited, old boy. We just want to put our heads together and see what’s best to be done—best for your sister, that’s to say. Nobody wants a lot of dirty publicity. Underhay—well, Underhay was always a chivalrous kind of chap.” Arden paused. “He still is….”

  “Is?” asked David sharply.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You say Robert Underhay is alive. Where is he now?”

  Arden leaned forward—his voice became confidential.

  “Do you really want to know, Hunter? Wouldn’t it be better if you didn’t know? Put it that, as far as you know, and as far as Rosaleen knows, Underhay died in Africa. Very good, and if Underhay is alive, he doesn’t know his wife has married again, he hasn’t the least idea of it. Because, of course, if he did know he would have come forward…Rosaleen, you see, has inherited a good deal of money from her second husband—well, then, of course she isn’t entitled to any of that money…Underhay is a man with a very sensitive sense of honour. He wouldn’t like her inheriting money under false pretences.” He paused. “But of course it’s possible that Underhay doesn’t know anything about her second marriage. He’s in a bad way, poor fellow—in a very bad way.”

  “What do you mean by in a bad way?”

  Arden shook his head solemnly.

  “Broken down in health. He needs medical attention—special treatments—all unfortunately rather expensive.”

  The last word dropped delicately as though into a category of its own. It was the word for which David Hunter had been unconsciously waiting.

  He said:

  “Expensive?”

  “Yes—unfortunately everything costs money. Underhay, poor devil, is practically destitute.” He added: “He’s got practically nothing but what he stands up in….”

  Just for a moment David’s eyes wandered round the room. He noted the pack slung on a chair. There was no suitcase to be seen.

  “I wonder,” said David, and his voice was not pleasant, “if Robert Underhay is quite the chivalrous gentleman you make him out to be.”

  “He was once,” the other assured him. “But life, you know, is inclined to make a fellow cynical.” He paused and added softly: “Gordon Cloade was really an incredibly wealthy fellow. The spectacle of too much wealth arouses one’s baser instincts.”

  David Hunter got up.

  “I’ve got an answer for you. Go to the devil.”

  Unperturbed, Arden said, smiling:

  “Yes, I thought you’d say that.”

  “You’re a damned blackmailer, neither more nor less. I’ve a good mind to call your bluff.”

  “Publish and be damned? An admirable sentiment. But you wouldn’t like it if I did ‘publish.’ Not that I shall. If you won’t buy, I’ve another market.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Cloades. Suppose I go to them. ‘Excuse me, but would you be interested to learn that the late Robert Underhay is very much alive?’ Why, man, they’ll jump at it!”

  David said scornfully:

  “You won’t get anything out of them. They’re broke, every one of them.”

  “Ah, but there’s such a thing as a working arrangement. So much in cash on the day it’s proved that Underhay is alive, that Mrs. Gordon Cloade is still Mrs. Robert Underhay and that consequently Gordon Cloade’s will, made before his marriage, is good in law….”

  For some few minutes David sat silent, then he asked bluntly:

  “How much?”

  The answer came as bluntly:

  “Twenty thousand.”

  “Out of the question! My sister can’t touch the capital, she’s only got a life interest.”

  “Ten thousand, then. She can raise that, easily. There’s jewellery, isn’t there?”

  David sat silent, then he said unexpectedly:

  “All right.”

  For a moment the other man seemed at a loss. It was as though the ease of his victory surprised him.

  “No cheques,” he said. “To be paid in notes!”

  “You’ll have to give us time—to get hold of the money.”

  “I’ll give you forty-eight hours.”

  “Make it next Tuesday.”

  “All right. You’ll bring the money here.” He added before David could speak, “I’m not meeting you at a lonely copse—or a deserted river bank, so don’t you think so. You’ll bring the money here—to the Stag—at nine o’clock next Tuesday evening.”

  “Suspicious sort of chap, aren’t you?”

  “I know my way about. And I know your kind.”

  “As you said, then.”

  David went out of the room and down the stairs. His face was black with rage.

  Beatrice Lippincott came out of the room marked No. 4. There was a communicating door between 4 and 5, though the fact could hardly be noted by an occupant in 5 since a wardrobe stood upright in front of it.

  Miss Lippincott’s cheeks were pink and her eyes bright with pleasurable excitement. She smoothed back her pompadour of hair with an agitated hand.

  Ten

  Shepherd’s Court, Mayfair, was a large block of luxury service flats. Unharmed by the ravages of enemy action, they had nevertheless been unable to keep up quite their prewar standard of ease. There was service still, although not very good service. Where there had been two uniformed porters there was now only one. The restaurant still served meals, but except for breakfast, meals were not sent up to the apartments.

  The flat rented by Mrs. Gordon Cloade was on the third floor. It consisted of a sitting room with a built-in cocktail bar, two bedrooms with built-in cupboards, and a superbly appointed bathroom, gleaming with tiles and chromium.

  In the sitting room David Hunter was striding up and down whilst Rosaleen sat on a big square-ended settee watching him. She looked pale and frightened.

  “Blackmail!” he muttered. “Blackmail! My God, am I the kind of man to let myself be blackmailed?”

  She shook her head, bewildered, troubled.

  “If I knew,” David was saying. “If I only knew!”

  From Rosaleen there came a small miserable sob.

  He went on:

  “It’s this working in the dark—working blindfold—” He wheeled round suddenly. “You took those emeralds round to Bond Street to old Greatorex?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  Rosaleen’s voice was stricken as she said:

  “Four thousand. Four thousand pounds. He said if I didn’t sell them they ought to be reinsured.”

  “Yes—precious stones have doubled in value. Oh well, we can raise the money. But if we do, it’s only the beginning—it means being bled to death—bled, Rosaleen, bled white!”

  She cried:

  “Oh, let’s leave England—let’s get away—couldn’t we go to Ireland—America—somewhere?”

  He turned and looked at her.

  “You’re not a fighter, are you, Rosaleen? Cut and run is your motto.”

  She wailed: “We’re wrong—all this has been wrong—very wic
ked.”

  “Don’t turn pious on me just now! I can’t stand it. We were sitting pretty, Rosaleen. For the first time in my life I was sitting pretty—and I’m not going to let it all go, do you hear? If only it wasn’t this cursed fighting in the dark. You understand, don’t you, that the whole thing may be bluff—nothing but bluff? Underhay’s probably safely buried in Africa as we’ve always thought he was.”

  She shivered.

  “Don’t, David. You make me afraid.”

  He looked at her, saw the panic in her face, and at once his manner changed. He came over to her, sat down, took her cold hands in his.

  “You’re not to worry,” he said. “Leave it all to me—and do as I tell you. You can manage that, can’t you? Just do exactly as I tell you.”

  “I always do, David.”

  He laughed. “Yes, you always do. We’ll snap out of this, never you fear. I’ll find a way of scotching Mr. Enoch Arden.”

  “Wasn’t there a poem, David—something about a man coming back—”

  “Yes.” He cut her short. “That’s just what worries me…But I’ll get to the bottom of things, never you fear.”

  She said:

  “It’s Tuesday night you—take him the money?”

  He nodded.

  “Five thousand. I’ll tell him I can’t raise the rest all at once. But I must stop him going to the Cloades. I think that was only a threat, but I can’t be sure.”

  He stopped, his eyes became dreamy, far away. Behind them his mind worked, considering and rejecting possibilities.

  Then he laughed. It was a gay reckless laugh. There were men, now dead, who would have recognized it….

  It was the laugh of a man going into action on a hazardous and dangerous enterprise. There was enjoyment in it and defiance.

  “I can trust you, Rosaleen,” he said. “Thank goodness I can trust you absolutely!”

  “Trust me?” She raised her big inquiring eyes. “To do what?”

  He smiled again.

  “To do exactly as you are told. That’s the secret, Rosaleen, of a successful operation.”

  He laughed:

  “Operation Enoch Arden.”

  Eleven

  Rowley opened the big mauve envelope with some surprise. Who on earth, he wondered, could be writing to him, using that kind of stationery—and how did they manage to get it, anyway? These fancy lines had surely gone right out during the war.

  “Dear Mr. Rowley,” he read,

  “I hope you won’t think I’m taking a liberty in writing to you this way, but if you’ll excuse me, I do think there are things going on that you ought to know about.”

  He noted the underlining with a puzzled look.

  “Arising out of our conversation the other evening when you came in asking about a certain person. If you could call in at the Stag I’d be very glad to tell you all about it. We’ve all of us felt down here what a wicked shame it was about your Uncle dying and his money going the way it did.

  “Hoping you won’t be angry with me, but I really do think you ought to know what’s going on.

  “Yours ever,

  “Beatrice Lippincott.”

  Rowley stared down at this missive, his mind afire with speculation. What on earth was all this about? Good old Bee. He’d known Beatrice all his life. Bought tobacco from her father’s shop and passed the time of day with her behind the counter. She’d been a good-looking girl. He remembered as a child hearing rumours about her during an absence of hers from Warmsley Vale. She’d been away about a year and everybody said she’d gone away to have an illegitimate baby. Perhaps she had, perhaps she hadn’t. But she was certainly highly respectable and refined nowadays. Plenty of backchat and giggles, but an almost painful propriety.

  Rowley glanced up at the clock. He’d go along to the Stag right away. To hell with all those forms. He wanted to know what it was that Beatrice was so anxious to tell him.

  It was a little after eight when he pushed open the door of the saloon bar. There were the usual greetings, nods of the head, “Evening, sir.” Rowley edged up to the bar and asked for a Guinness. Beatrice beamed upon him.

  “Glad to see you, Mr. Rowley.”

  “Evening, Beatrice. Thanks for your note.”

  She gave him a quick glance.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute, Mr. Rowley.”

  He nodded—and drank his half pint meditatively whilst he watched Beatrice finish serving out. She called over her shoulder and presently the girl Lily came in to relieve her. Beatrice murmured, “If you’ll come with me, Mr. Rowley?”

  She led him along a passage and in through a door marked Private. Inside it was very small and overfurnished with plush armchairs, a blaring radio, a lot of china ornaments and a rather battered-looking pierrot doll thrown across the back of a chair.

  Beatrice Lippincott turned off the radio and indicated a plush armchair.

  “I’m ever so glad you came up, Mr. Rowley, and I hope you didn’t mind my writing to you—but I’ve been turning it over in my mind all over the weekend—and as I said I really felt you ought to know what’s going on.”

  She was looking happy and important, clearly pleased with herself.

  Rowley asked with mild curiosity:

  “What is going on?”

  “Well, Mr. Rowley, you know the gentleman who’s staying here—Mr. Arden, the one you came and asked about.”

  “Yes?”

  “It was the very next evening. Mr. Hunter came along and asked for him.”

  “Mr. Hunter?”

  Rowley sat up interestedly.

  “Yes, Mr. Rowley. No. 5, I said, and Mr. Hunter nodded and went straight up. I was surprised I must say, for this Mr. Arden hadn’t said he knew any one in Warmsley Vale and I’d kind of taken it for granted he was a stranger here and didn’t know any one in the place. Very out of temper Mr. Hunter looked, as though something had happened to upset him but of course I didn’t make anything of it then.”

  She paused for breath. Rowley said nothing, just listened. He never hurried people. If they liked to take their time it suited him.

  Beatrice continued with dignity:

  “It was just a little later I had occasion to go up to No. 4 to see to the towels and the bed linen. That’s next door to No. 5, and as it happens there’s a communicating door—not that you’d know it from No. 5 because the big wardrobe there stands right across it, so that you wouldn’t know there was a door. Of course it’s always kept shut but as it happened this time it was just a bit open—though who opened it I’ve no idea, I’m sure!”

  Again Rowley said nothing, but just nodded his head.

  Beatrice, he thought, had opened it. She had been curious and had gone up deliberately to No. 4 to find out what she could.

  “And so you see, Mr. Rowley, I couldn’t help hearing what was going on. Really, you could have knocked me over with a feather—”

  A pretty substantial feather, thought Rowley, would be needed.

  He listened, with an impassive, almost bovine face, to Beatrice’s succinct account of the conversation she had overheard. When she had finished, she waited expectantly.

  It was fully a couple of minutes before Rowley came out of his trance. Then he got up.

  “Thanks, Beatrice,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

  And with that he went straight out of the room. Beatrice felt somewhat deflated. She really did think, she said to herself, that Mr. Rowley might have said something.

  Twelve

  When Rowley left the Stag his steps turned automatically in the direction of home, but after walking a few hundred yards, he pulled up short and retraced his steps.

  His mind took things in slowly and his first astonishment over Beatrice’s revelations was only now beginning to give way to a true appreciation of the significance. If her version of what she had overheard was correct, and he had no doubt that in substance it was so, then a situation had arisen which concerned every member of the Cloade family closely. Th
e person most fitted to deal with this was clearly Rowley’s Uncle Jeremy. As a solicitor, Jeremy Cloade would know what use could best be made of this surprising information, and exactly what steps to take.

  Though Rowley would have liked to take action himself, he realized rather grudgingly that it would be far better to lay the matter before a shrewd and experienced lawyer. The sooner Jeremy was in possession of this information the better, and accordingly Rowley bent his footsteps straight to Jeremy’s house in the High Street.

  The little maid who opened the door informed him that Mr. and Mrs. Cloade were still at the dinner table. She would have shown him in there, but Rowley negatived this and said he would wait in Jeremy’s study till they had finished. He did not particularly want to include Frances in the colloquy. Indeed the fewer people who knew about it the better, until they should have determined on a definite course of action.

  He wandered restlessly up and down Jeremy’s study. On the flat-topped desk was a tin dispatch box labelled Sir William Jessamy Deceased. The shelves held a collection of legal tomes. There was an old photograph of Frances in evening dress and one of her father, Lord Edward Trenton, in riding kit. On the desk was the picture of a young man in uniform—Jeremy’s son Antony, killed in the war.

  Rowley winced and turned away. He sat down in a chair and stared at Lord Edward Trenton instead.

  In the dining room Frances said to her husband:

  “I wonder what Rowley wants?”

  Jeremy said wearily:

  “Probably fallen foul of some Government regulation. No farmer understands more than a quarter of these forms they have to fill up. Rowley’s a conscientious fellow. He gets worried.”

  “He’s nice,” said Frances, “but terribly slow. I have a feeling, you know, that things aren’t going too well between him and Lynn.”

  Jeremy murmured vacantly:

  “Lynn—oh, yes, of course. Forgive me, I—I don’t seem able to concentrate. The strain—”

  Frances said swiftly:

  “Don’t think about it. It’s going to be all right, I tell you.”

  “You frighten me sometimes, Frances. You’re so terribly reckless. You don’t realize—”