Nothing Venture (11 page)

“I'm not an inquisitive man,” he said, “but if you'd begin at the beginning and give me an idea of what this is all about, I'd appreciate it very much.”

Nan leaned back too.

“It's all so tangled up—but I'm frightened—I'll tell it as well as I can—it goes a long way back.”

“Take your own time,” said Ferdinand. “Nobody's thought of taxing that yet, so you can have as much as you like.”

“It goes right back,” said Nan. “I don't know how you recognized me—it was very clever of you. I want to tell you how I came to find Jervis.”

“I'm listening.”

The colour stood high in Nan's cheeks. She didn't care whether he was listening or not. She wasn't going to tell Ferdinand Fazackerley that ten years ago she had had a child's adoration for Jervis which had made her follow him like an unseen shadow. She cast about for an opening. It would be quite easy if she could only get started. She began without any proper beginning at all.

“I saw Jervis come across the rocks. He was going down to bathe—he had a towel over his shoulder. He went behind those rocks where the pool was.”

“What were you doing?” said Mr. Fazackerley.

“I was sitting on the beach,” said Nan with her chin in the air. “There was a way down the cliffs just beyond me. A man came down it and went across to the rocks where Jervis was. I didn't see his face. I think he was walking on the cliff and saw Jervis and came down. He went behind the rocks, and in about five minutes I saw him again. He wasn't coming back, he was going straight on. There's another path up the cliff before you come to Croyde Head. He went up that. I saw him half way up it. I never saw his face at all.”

Mr Fazackerley's eyes were brightly attentive.

“Go right on,” he said.

“I waited a long time. The tide began to come up. I wondered where Jervis was. I climbed up on to the path and looked out to sea, but I couldn't find him. The rocks hid the pool—I want you to remember that—I don't think anyone on the cliff could have seen it.”

Mr Fazackerley nodded.

“That's so.”

“I got frightened about Jervis. I went down to the pool, and he was lying half in and half out of it with his head bleeding and the tide coming in. The water was up to his shoulders. If I hadn't come then, he would have been drowned. If you hadn't come later, we should both have been drowned.”

“What are you meaning?” said Mr Fazackerley.

“That man went behind the rocks and came out again,” said Nan rather breathlessly.

“Now what do you mean by that?”

“You know what I mean—but I don't mind saying it. I mean that the man went behind those rocks because he knew that Jervis was there and that they couldn't be seen from the cliff. I mean that he picked up a bit of rock and struck Jervis with it, and went away and left him there with the tide coming in.”

Fazackerley's eyes went to the painted ceiling and down again. He did not shrug his shoulders, but the right one twitched.

“You can't prove that, you know.”

“Of course I can't,” said Nan. “But you can be sure of lots of things you can't prove.”

“That's so. But you didn't see him strike Jervis—you didn't even see his face; and now you say he's Mr Robert Leonard—and I take it you mean the Mr Robert Leonard who is with Miss Carew tonight.”

Nan nodded.

“Let me go on. After you'd got us out of the pool you went to get help, and I stayed with Jervis. As soon as I heard you coming back, I got away up the cliff path. You see, Cynthia and I were down at Croyston with an aunt, and we were going back to town by the afternoon train. I got into a most frightful row when I turned up at our rooms dripping wet with my dress spoilt and my arm cut. I was bundled into dry things, and we just caught the train. And afterwards I was ill—I believe I was very ill—and all the time I kept seeing that man, and Jervis in the pool. I want you to understand how it was that I could recognize him ten years afterwards. He was
printed
into my mind. All these years I've only had to shut my eyes and think about it to see him walking away, and Jervis in the water.”

Ferdinand saw her eyes darken in a face that had lost all its colour.

“You say you recognized him,” he said.

She gave another of those quick nods.

“Yes—at once. There was a photograph in Jervis' study—a picture of the garden at King's Weare, with old Mr Weare and Rosamund on the lawn and Robert Leonard walking towards them. It didn't show his face; it showed him walking away from me, just as I'd seen him in my mind all those years. I recognized him at once, and Jervis told me his name.”

“Ten years is a long time,” said Ferdinand, “and—there's a good proverb about letting sleeping dogs lie.”

“They're not sleeping,” said Nan. “He tried to kill Jervis ten years ago, and he tried to kill him again today.”

Mr. Fazackerley leaned forward, resting his weight on his right hand.

“That's a whole heap more interesting!” he said. “I'm listening.”

Again Nan found it difficult to begin. She couldn't tell Ferdinand Fazackerley what had made her walk up and down in front of Rosamund's house in Leaham Road. As before, she plunged.

“I saw Robert Leonard get out of a taxi. He was with Rosamund Carew. She went into the house.”

“What house?”

“Her house. She went in; but he came back and spoke to the driver. I was on the other side of the taxi. I wasn't trying to listen, but I didn't want them to see me. Robert Leonard said, ‘It's the four-fifteen. You'll have to hurry. He's sure to walk, because he's got a craze for exercise. Let him come out of the station and get-well away.'”

“No names?”

She shook her head.

“No.”

“What made you think—”

“I didn't at first. Let me tell you. The driver said, ‘Suppose he takes a taxi.' And Robert Leonard said, ‘You must just do the best you can.' Then he turned as if he was going away, but the driver stopped him. He said he wasn't as keen on the job as he had been. And then he said five hundred pounds was five hundred pounds, but jug was jug—that's prison, you know. And Robert Leonard said, ‘What's a couple of months for dangerous driving?' And the driver said it might be a lot more than that, but he'd do it because he was a man of his word.” Her voice stopped. It had shaken a little.

“Is that all?” said Mr Fazackerley.

“No,” said Nan. She held her voice steady with all her might. “I met Jervis at Victoria—he came by the four-fifteen from King's Weare. I told him, and he wouldn't believe me; but because he was late for his appointment with Mr Page he went by tube instead of walking. He
would
have walked. And when he came out of his house on his way here, a taxi knocked him down. He saw it coming and jumped, or he wouldn't be here tonight.”

“You saw this?”

“No. He was getting a taxi for me. He told me. His arm was cut—he had to go back and change.”

“But you never heard any names, Mrs Weare. What made you think this Robert Leonard was talking about Jervis?”

“I don't know—I just knew it. Don't you ever know things like that?”

“I've had hunches,” admitted Mr Fazackerley. “I shouldn't be here now if I hadn't.”

“Well, that's what I had,” said Nan—“a hunch.”

“A hunch isn't evidence. You know, Mrs Weare, there wouldn't be much left of that story of ours if you took it into court. Any clever counsel would have you tangled up inside of five minutes so you wouldn't rightly know whether you were on your head or your heels. And then, what does he want to kill Jervis for? What's the motive? You must have a motive.”

“The money,” said Nan in a small frightened voice.

“But he doesn't get the money.”

“No—Rosamund gets it.”

“Don't you get it—after Jervis?”

She shook her head.

“I was in Mr Page's office—I know all about the will, because I typed it. I've got a settlement. I shouldn't get anything else. If Jervis had an accident, everything would go to Rosamund Carew.” The last words only just reached him.

She pushed back the rose-coloured curtain and stood up. The big, still room was empty.

“I'm frightened,” she said. Her eyes implored him.

Mr Fazackerley got to his feet. His brain teemed with questions. The gaps in Nan's narrative had not escaped him—very little ever did escape him. It did not escape him now that they had been here long enough if they did not wish to advertise a consultation. He darted a reassuring glance at Nan and said in his kindest voice,

“Jervis is a pretty tough proposition.”

They crossed the room in silence. At the door Nan turned to him.

“If he asks you to come down to King's Weare, will you come?”

“And butt in on your honeymoon?”

“Yes—
please.
”

“Well, as a matter of fact he
has
asked me,” said Mr Fazackerley.

“And you said?”

“Well, I said I'd got more than enough to get through in London.”

“Oh, but you haven't—not really.”

“I have—and that's gospel. But if you want me to come—”

“Please,
please
come,” said Nan.

“Well—I'd like to,” said Mr Fazackerley.

XV

“Well?” said Robert Leonard.

He splashed a small amount of soda into a good deal of whisky with a jerk of the hand, picked up his glass, and turned to Rosamund Carew. She was standing by the window of her drawing-room looking out into the cloudy darkness of the August night. Her right hand held back the green and gold curtain, her left hung at her side. There was something in the pose that suggested strain. Without turning, she said,

“It's frightfully late.”

Mr Leonard drank half the contents of his tumbler at a gulp. Then he set down the glass sharply.

“Hospitable creature—aren't you?”

“It's too late to be hospitable, Robert. You oughtn't to have come in,”

“Rubbish!”

She looked rather wearily over her shoulder.

“I have to be careful when I'm here alone—doubly careful just now. It's been touch and go over this business.” She dropped the curtain and turned around. “I've squared Mable Tetterley.”

Robert Leonard was lighting a cigarette.

“She seemed to be all over you.”

Rosamund came slowly from the window. Her gold dress made the faintest slurring sound as she moved. She held herself rather stiffly upright, as if she was fighting fatigue.

“I confided in her,” she said in a dry, toneless voice. “She was dying of curiosity of course, so I told her that when I found out by accident that Jervis was in love with this girl, I didn't feel that I could stand in their way. She simply lapped it up.”

She came up to one of the big chairs and leaned against it.

“What about Jane Manning Temple?”

“I got off the same piece to her. She said I was a saint.” Rosamund's brows drew together. There was a momentary look of Jervis in his black mood.

“Well, that's a bit of all right,” said Leonard. “I noticed she made a beeline for old James Mulroy as soon as you left her, and between 'em they'll do all the broadcasting that's necessary.”

He finished his whisky and stood with the empty glass in his hand, frowning down at it.

Rosamund sat down on the arm of her chair. A bright shot cushion of emerald and blue made for her a background like shoaling water. The light changed upon the gold of her dress and her drooping white shoulder. She looked past Leonard as if he were not there.

All at once he turned to the table and put down the empty glass.

“I suppose—” he said in a considering voice. “I suppose you couldn't work off that piece on Jervis, could you?”

Rosamund stared at him.

“Are you suggesting that I should try and persuade Jervis that I gave him up because he was in love with his typist?”

“Page's typist. Yes, something of the sort.”

“Talk sense!” said Rosamund.

“My dear, you're not being very bright. I am talking the most excellent sense.”

Rosamund laughed.

“Jervis married her to save the cash. In fact he took the cash and let the credit go. He wasn't in love with her, and he isn't in love with her—and whether he ever will be in love with her is on the knees of the gods.”

He blew a cloud of smoke.

“Now you're being high falutin. What's wrong with your making him believe—” He paused, frowning.

“Well? What am I to
make
him believe?” Her voice mocked him.

“Hold on—I'm getting there. Suppose the girl had told you he was in love with her—that they were in love with each other.”

“What are you getting at?”

“It would let you out—noble self-sacrifice, broken heart, and all that. And it would put his back up no end against the girl if he believed he'd been tricked into marrying her. I imagine the Weare temper could be counted on to do the rest.”

Rosamund lifted one hand and let it fall again.

“If!”

“Well, he might. These things stick, and when a man's been let down by one woman he's generally ready to believe the worst about the next one. You think it over. But don't take too long about it. What's wanted at the present moment is, ‘A separation has been arranged between Mr and Mrs Jervis Weare, to take effect immediately.' We don't want any little Weares, you know. That would put the kibosh on the whole affair.”

Rosamund turned sombre eyes upon him. The blue seemed to have gone out of them, leaving them bleak and grey.

“It's time you went home,” she said; and then, with a sudden tang in her voice, “Oh, Lord! What a mess we've made of it!”