‘A man not fit to be in the same room with my sister!’ he said dramatically.
His father was not unnaturally annoyed, and said angrily: ‘Shut up, you young fool! You don’t know what you’re talking about, and if you think I’m going to put up with your bloody theatrical ways, you’re wrong! What’s more, Sam Jones is a Town Councillor, and goes to chapel regularly.’
‘Yes,’ sneered Alan. ‘Votes against Sunday games in the park, too, not to mention Colonel Morrison’s scheme for better housing for the poor devils in the Old Town. God, it makes me sick!’
‘Perhaps it isn’t true,’ said Janet charitably.
‘Perhaps it isn’t! And perhaps it isn’t true that he gets his own employees into trouble, and doesn’t pay a brass cent in maintenance!’
‘Oh dear!’ said Janet. ‘Not at the dinner-table, Alan, please!’
‘I believe in facing facts unflinchingly,’ said Alan superbly. ‘If that greasy swine’s coming here, I shall go out, that’s all. I suppose, if the truth were told, he’s got some shady scheme on foot, and you and Carter think you’re going to benefit by it.’
‘Alan dear, you oughtn’t to talk to father like that.’
This mild reproof was endorsed by White in terms which finally drove Alan from the table, declaring that he would starve before he ate another morsel under the parental roof.
When he had slammed his way out of the room, Janet, in whom tact was not a predominant feature, said that she didn’t know why it was, but she had never liked Samuel Jones.
‘Well, you’re not asked to like him,’ snapped White. ‘You needn’t think he’s coming for the pleasure of seeing you, because he’s not. In fact, the scarcer you make yourself the better.’
‘Oh dear, that means you’re going to talk business! I do wish you wouldn’t, father: I’m sure he’s not a good man.’
‘Never you mind what we’re going to talk! And if I catch you blabbing all around the countryside any dam’-fool rubbish about Jones and Carter, you’ll be sorry!’
‘Have you paid Mr Carter the money you owe him?’ asked Janet. ‘I know you don’t like me to remind you, but it does worry me so.’
‘Then it needn’t worry you. Carter and I understand one another perfectly.’
‘But I thought he was so cross about it? I’m sure the last time he came over here he was simply horrid, and I do so hate you to be beholden to him.’
‘Oh, shut up!’ said White. ‘You talk like someone out of a cheap novel! What the devil do you suppose Wally’s likely to do about it, even supposing he is annoyed?’
‘But it’s not right to borrow money, and not pay it back!’ faltered Janet.
‘Of course I’m going to pay it back! Good Lord, a pretty opinion my own daughter has of me, I will say! Now, you get this, my girl! When I want you to poke your nose into my business, I’ll tell you! Until then, keep it out!’
Janet was too well accustomed to this rough form of address to be hurt by it. She merely blinked at him, and said: ‘Yes, father. Will they want tea? Because it’s Florence’s half-day.’
‘I suppose you’re just capable of making tea without assistance? God knows what other use you are!’
‘Yes, only if you’d told me yesterday I could have made a cake. I’m afraid there isn’t much.’
‘No, there wouldn’t be,’ said her parent sardonically. ‘Cut some sandwiches, or something.’
‘We might have tea in the garden,’ said Janet, as though this would compensate for the meagre nature of the repast.
Her father intimated that she might set the tea-table where she chose, and added that he had no desire to include his son in the party.
As Alan had expressed his intention of starving before he ate another meal at the Dower House, Janet did not think that he would appear again until suppertime. She went in search of him presently, but found that he had left the house. White went out into the garden, and peace once more descended, so that Janet was able to devote her attention to the writing of her weekly letter to her tea-planter.
She was one of those persons who could, without apparent effort, fill any number of sheets with harmless inanities, and she had not by any means come to the end of all she had to say, when the clock in the hall struck four, and recalled her to her duties. She put away her writing materials, and went into the kitchen to make scones for tea. She was still engaged on this task when White shouted to know whether she was asleep, or meant to prepare for the coming of his guests. He did not show the least gratitude when she hurried out to tell him of her activities in the kitchen, but remarked, with perfect truth, that her hair was coming down, and that her nose was shining.
‘It’s so hot, bending over the stove on a day like this,’ said poor Janet apologetically.
‘Well, for the Lord’s sake make yourself respectable before Jones and Carter turn up!’ he replied. ‘I’ve put some chairs out, but I don’t know where you keep your tableclothes.’
‘Oh, have you? Oh, thank you, father! I’ll do the rest!’ she said, feeling that she had been right in her judgment of him all along, and that a rough exterior hid a heart of gold.
The garden of the Dower House sloped down to the stream separating it from Palings, but a previous tenant had levelled part of the upper ground into a shallow terrace. Here White had dragged several chairs, and a weather-beaten garden table, disposing them in the shade cast by the house. Janet, who had a slightly depressing habit of making yards of crochet-lace in her spare time, spread a cloth, heavy with this evidence of her industry, over the table, and set the tea-tray down on top of it. Like Ermyntrude, she wished that the rhododendrons and the azaleas were in flower, for she was an indifferent gardener, and the prospect included only a few sickly-looking dahlias, some Michaelmas daisies, one or two late-flowering roses, and a thicket of funereal shrubs that ran from the corner of the house down to the stream. However, it seemed unlikely that either Mr Jones or Wally Carter was coming to admire the garden, so beyond casting a wistful glance at the blaze of colour on the southern slopes of the Palings garden, which she could see through a gap in the bushes, she wasted no time in idle repinings, but went indoors to take her scones out of the oven.
When she came out on to the terrace again, she had changed her workaday garb for a dress of a clear blue, startlingly unsuited to her rather sallow complexion, and had powdered her nose. She found that Mr Jones had already arrived, and was deep in conversation with her father. This conversation broke off abruptly upon her appearance, and Mr Jones hoisted himself out of his chair with a grunt, and shook hands with her.
He was a fat man, with a jowl, and a smile that was altogether too wide and guileless to be credible; and his notion of making himself agreeable to women was to talk to them with an air of patronage mixed with gallantry.
Janet’s rigid standards of the civility due to a guest compelled her to receive Mr Jones’s sallies with outward complaisance, but when, from her chair facing down the garden, she caught a glimpse of Wally descending the path to the bridge between the banks of rhododendrons on the opposite slope, she rose with rather obvious relief, and said that she could see Mr Carter coming, and would go and make the tea.
Her father, who had been treating her with the politeness he reserved for public use, forgot, in the irritation of finding his cigarette-case empty, that in the presence of strangers she was his indulged daughter, and got up, demanding to know why she had not put out a box of cigarettes.
‘Oh dear, didn’t I?’ said Janet distressfully. ‘I’ll get it, shall I?’
‘Not on my account, I beg!’ said Mr Jones, holding up a plump hand.
‘It’s all right: you needn’t bother!’ said White hastily. ‘My fault!’
This handsome admission, accompanied as it was by the smile of a fond parent, not unnaturally made Janet blink. As White moved towards the
window of his study, and leaned in to reach the wooden cigarette-box that stood on his desk, Mr Jones said wisely that his guess was that Janet was one of the Marthas of this world.
Not even the most domesticated girl could be expected to relish this reading of her character, and Janet had just opened her mouth to deny it, when a diversion occurred which changed the words on her tongue to a small shriek of dismay.
From somewhere in the dense rhododendron thickets a shot had sounded, and Wally Carter, who had unlatched the gate on the farther side of the stream, and stepped on to the bridge, sagged suddenly at the knees, and crumpled up into an inanimate heap on the rough planks.
‘Why – what– Good God, what’s happened?’ gasped Mr Jones, his eyes starting out of his head.
White, who had turned quickly at the sound of Janet’s shriek, was not in a position to obtain a view of the bridge over the stream, and demanded testily to know the meaning of his daughter’s scream.
‘Mr Carter – the shot—!’ whimpered Janet.
White strode up to her, and looked in the direction of her shaking finger. The sight of Wally’s still form made him give an exclamation under his breath, but instead of joining Janet and Mr Jones in their stupefied immobility, he threw the cigarette-box into a chair, spilling its contents haphazard, and snapped out: ‘Don’t stand there like a stuck pig! Come on!’
His words jerked the other two out of their trance. Mr Jones heaved himself out of his chair, and set off down the slope in White’s wake at a lumbering trot, while Janet followed, sobbing, ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ in an ineffectual manner that would certainly have infuriated White had he lingered to hear it.
By the time she and Samuel Jones reached the bridge, White had raised Wally in his arms, and was feeling for his heart. He was looking rather pale, and when he drew his hand away it was reddened with blood.
‘Oh, is he dead? Oh, whatever shall we do?’ cried Janet distractedly.
‘Stop that screeching, and get something to stanch the blood!’ snapped White. ‘Here, Sam, see what you can do! I don’t know how far gone he is. I’ll get hold of Chester at once. Thank God it’s a Sunday, and he won’t be out!’
Mr Jones, whose cheeks had assumed a yellow pallor, knelt clumsily down beside Wally’s body, and told Janet in an unsteady voice to tear a piece off her petticoat, or something.
Janet, however, had had her father’s handkerchief thrust into her hand, and with trembling fingers was unbuttoning Wally’s shirt to lay bare a neat, red hole in his chest. The sight of blood made her feel sick, but after the first few moments of startled horror she had managed to pull herself together and even had the presence of mind to call after her father, who was running back to the house, that it was of no use for him to ring up Dr Chester.
‘He’s out!’ she shouted. ‘I saw his car pass the house from my bedroom window just before I came down! Going towards Palings!’
‘Damn!’ said White, checking for an instant. ‘All right, I’ll get his partner!’
He vanished from their sight round a clump of azaleas, and Janet, swallowing hard, turned back to Wally’s body.
Samuel Jones had struggled out of his coat, and rolled it into a pillow for Wally’s head. His gaily striped shirt seemed out of keeping with his blanched, horror-stricken countenance. He said in a hushed voice: ‘It’s no use, Miss Janet. He’s gone.’
‘Oh no, don’t say that! He can’t have!’ quavered Janet, holding White’s handkerchief pressed to the wound in Wally’s chest. ‘Oh, what an awful thing! Oughtn’t we to try to give him brandy? Only, it says in my First-aid book that one should never—’
‘He’s gone,’ repeated Jones, laying Wally’s slack hand, which he had been holding by the wrist, down on the planks. ‘You can’t feel a pulse. Not a flicker. Clean through the heart, if you ask me. My God, if I’d known this was going to happen I’d never have come!’
Janet was too busy fussing over Wally’s body to pay much heed to this somewhat egoistic remark. Under her sharp directions, Jones reluctantly undid Wally’s collar and tie; but when neither this nor the chafing of his hands produced in him the smallest sign of life, Janet realised that he must indeed be dead, and broke into gulping sobs of nervous shock. Mr Jones, who was himself feeling, as he afterwards expressed it, a bit jumpy, with difficulty restrained himself from swearing at her, and tried, instead, to offer such comfort as lay in repeated assurances that it was not her fault, and she had done all that she could.
It seemed hours before White reappeared, and was, in actual fact, some seven minutes later. Neither Janet nor Mr Jones, though both now convinced that Wally was dead, had moved from the bridge, each feeling vaguely that to leave Wally’s body would be a callous action; but when White came hurrying into sight, Jones rose with a good deal of puffing and groaning to his feet, and stepped forward to meet him.
‘No use, old man. He’s gone,’ he said, for the third time that afternoon.
‘God, what a ghastly thing!’ muttered White, staring down at Wally. ‘I was afraid it was all up with him. But how the devil— Oh, shut up, Janet! Stop that bloody row!’
Janet tried, ineffectively, to muffle her sobs in her handkerchief. Mr Jones laid a hand on White’s arm, saying in a deep voice: ‘Steady on, old man! We stand in the presence of death, you know.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake don’t give me any of that cant!’ retorted White. ‘As though it wasn’t damnable enough for a thing like this to happen without your adding to it with the sort of talk that’s enough to make a man sick!’
Mr Jones looked very much shocked by this explosion of temper, but excused it on the grounds that his host was naturally a little upset.
Janet struggled up from her knees, and leaned for support on the rustic rail of the bridge. ‘Did you manage to get hold of Dr Hinchcliffe?’ she asked, between sniffs. ‘You were such ages!’
‘Yes, of course I got hold of him, and the police, too,’ said White savagely. ‘They’ll all be here before we know where we are, so don’t try and move the body!’
Janet emerged from her handkerchief to show a startled face. ‘The police?’ she stammered. ‘The police, father?’
‘Yes, the police,’ he said. ‘You don’t suppose poor old Wally died a natural death, do you?’
‘An accident: it must have been an accident!’
‘Pretty lucky sort of accident that gets a man clean through the heart!’ replied White, with a short laugh.
‘Come, come, Harold!’ expostulated Jones uneasily, ‘you oughtn’t to talk like that! After all, accidents do happen, you know.’
‘Yes, and one dam’ nearly happened to Wally yesterday, from what I’ve been told!’ said White.
‘Oh dear, dear!’ exclaimed Mr Jones, in accents of profound distress. ‘I don’t like getting mixed up in a case like this. A man in my position—’
‘No, and I don’t like it either, so we can cut that bit!’ replied White. A strangled cry from his daughter made him turn his head, saying angrily: ‘Will you stop making a fool of yourself ? Anyone would think—’ He broke off, as the cause of this new disturbance became apparent to him. ‘Go on! Quick! Head her off !’ he said.
It was, however, too late for Janet to obey this command. Vicky’s Borzoi had, an instant earlier, bounded up to the wicket-gate, followed at a little distance by Vicky herself, wending her way along one of the narrow paths through the shrubbery.
‘Hullo!’ said that damsel. ‘What’s all the noise about? Oh, Janet darling, was it you crying? Poor sweet, what’s happened?’
Janet, who was really feeling extremely weak-limbed, stumbled towards the gate with her hands thrust out in a forbidding gesture. ‘Go back, Vicky! You mustn’t come any nearer! Please go back!’
Vicky made no movement to retreat, but regarded Janet with bright-eyed interest. ‘Why? Have you got small-pox or s
omething?’ she inquired.
‘Blast the girl!’ said White under his breath. ‘Well, she’s got to know sooner or later, and at least she isn’t his daughter. Look here, Vicky, you run along up to the house, and tell your mother that Wally’s met with an accident!’
‘Oh no, has he? What kind of an accident?’
‘Oh Vicky, I don’t know how to tell you! We’re afraid he’s dead!’ said Janet.
‘Dead?’ gasped Vicky. She looked from Janet’s swollen face towards White, and then pushed Janet unceremoniously aside, and saw Wally lying in the middle of the bridge with Mr Jones’s coat under his head, and a red stain on his shirt. She did not faint, and since she had decided after her lunch that she was tired of the Tennis Girl, and had reverted to one of the Younger Set, and had made up her face accordingly, she did not change colour either. Instead, she clutched at the top of the gate, and said, ‘Oh gosh!’ in rather a breathless voice. ‘Someone’s shot him! I heard it, too!’
‘You heard it? Did you see anyone?’ asked White sharply.
‘Oh no, I thought it was someone potting rabbits.’
‘Who, for instance? Got any idea who might have taken a gun out?’
Vicky shook her head. ‘No, ’course not. I mean, I can’t imagine, because everyone’s out, now I come to think of it. Oh, I say, have I got to tell Ermyntrude? I haven’t ever broken news to anyone, and I quite definitely don’t want to.’
‘It’s your place to do it,’ said White. ‘Better go and get it over. There’s nothing for you to do here. Janet, go up to the house, and bring Hinchcliffe down here: I thought I heard a car just now.’
‘Oh hell, this is most frightfully disintegrating!’ said Vicky, winking a sudden tear off the curling ends of her lashes. ‘Poor sweet, I always thought he was a complete liability, and now I’m sorry!’