The China Governess (28 page)

‘Only by accident.'

‘Oh, I see. She left the mother's possessions in a station cloakroom?'

‘Better. She parked the whole suitcase on an honest landlady who kept them until Agnes turned up again four years later. By that time Agnes had become baby-prone herself – after her chat with Mrs. Broome perhaps! – and had achieved Barry who was then about three years old. I imagine she dressed him up in anything she could find in the other woman's bag and thought the certificates might fit him since nothing else did, if she called him four instead of three. He was backward, wasn't he? So he could pass for a bit worse. It wouldn't worry Agnes.' His eyes began to dance. ‘Anyway I'll bet it was the dear good nuns who looked up the father for her in all innocence once she produced the marriage certificate and told the story of rescuing the baby from the bombs. Agnes has that kind of history.'

Mr. Campion sighed. ‘I believe all this,' he said sadly. ‘What about Agnes and Barry now? Have they been pulled in?'

Luke glanced at his watch. ‘I dropped the word to Munday, the D.D.I. at Ebbfield, who has probably got the boy by this time. His last known address was somewhere in Wandsworth. Sometimes it takes a few hours to locate a chap like that but there's never any difficulty in picking him up in the end.'

‘I suppose not. You have some fingerprints from the arson business, haven't you?'

‘Nothing very good. They were being treated in the lab when I left. I wanted to get an identification of Agnes from Mrs. Broome off the record, just in case the woman proved to be involved in a criminal charge and so become unavailable for private questioning.' Luke was a little shamefaced about his own consideration and seemed to feel a need to excuse it. ‘I never see any point in involving people who have a little front to keep up if it isn't necessary,' he went on. ‘I didn't know Mrs. Broome would be so convincing. She might have had to meet Agnes again before she could be sure. As it is, everything is plain sailing. You ought to be able to convince little Miss Julia's papa there's nothing worse than obstinate self-sacrifice in the lad's family, and the poor old Councillor can choose his own bed of nails. Aren't you satisfied?'

‘No.' Campion was frowning. ‘The thing that's worrying me, Charles, is why didn't she follow her?'

‘Why didn't Agnes follow Nanny Broome?'

‘Exactly. The only explanation must be that she had already found the address of the Well House and the name Kinnit, presumably on one of the wreaths. She must also have recognized Mrs. Broome. That meeting took place somewhere around early afternoon, leaving plenty of time for Agnes to telephone the news to anyone anywhere. She could have spoken to the cobbler's shop, for instance.'

Luke was listening doubtfully.

‘She might,' he said. ‘Barry has any intelligence there is between them. He's got a sharp mind in a warped sort of way. You feel he might attack the house because of Timothy?'

‘No,' Mr. Campion was gently obstinate. ‘I think he might be bright enough to see how many beans make five. Surely the only person on earth who can testify that Timothy was the baby left at Angevin by Agnes Leach at the outbreak of war is Nanny Broome?'

Luke sat up. ‘Corblimeah! he said. ‘And we've sent her home alone. Let me get on the telephone!'

ONCE HE WAS
seated at the kitchen table with Alison and Miss Aicheson facing him, Mr. Telpher on his left and Eustace on his right, Tim and Julia in the background draped round the basket chair, Basil Toberman passed into a stage of ponderous arrogance.

With his face crimson and his full mouth glistening he achieved a dictator-like appearance, squat, myopic and preternaturally solemn. The Kinnit family were bearing with him in their own peculiar way and sat smiling at him with tolerant superiority, but the rest of the company was suffering.

‘The bronze is unquestion – unquestion – unquestionably genuine,' he announced, adding unnecessarily, ‘I have said it.'

‘So we hear.' Miss Aicheson was almost as red as he was and had never appeared more masculine. ‘Don't you think, perhaps, all this could wait?'

‘Silence!' Basil had apparently decided to treat them as a public meeting. ‘I have just been half across Europe and have flown through the sky with one of the greatest experts the world has ever known. I speak of Leofric Paulfrey of the Museum.'

‘Professor Paulfrey!' Eustace was delighted; his face lit up with pleasure. ‘Oh splendid. Now that's an opinion which is really worth having. Does he say it's fourth century?'

‘
I
say it's absolutely genuine.' Toberman was frowning with he effort of articulation. ‘It is a fellow to the Boy Jockey of the Artimisian wreck; in better condition. I am prepared to guarantee that it's by the same man.'

‘Are you though!' It was Eustace who spoke but both Alison and Geraldine Telpher looked up with exactly the same twinkling smile of good-tempered derision.

‘Laugh! Go on, laugh!' Toberman's thick hand shot out in a gesture which would have been a little oversize in a Pagliaccio ‘Laugh your heads off. You can do it today but it'll be for the last
time, because I've heard the truth about you and I never keep my mouth shut, do I?'

‘My dear fellow, if you've only got the truth about the Bronze it'll be enough for one evening!' Eustace turned the attack gracefully and shot an apologetic glance towards Julia. It was most discreetly done, but Toberman was in the state of over-awareness typical of certain toxic conditions and he pounced upon the girl, noticing her presence for the first time, apparently.

‘This is fitting,' he declared with thick theatricality. ‘This is Rich. This is Justice. Bride of the Wonderboy meets Family Skeleton.'

‘I should hardly call yourself that, Toby.' Tim was juggling with the situation. ‘What about a bit of beautiful shut-eye? Shall we go up to bed?'

‘No. Certainly and absolutely not. I am not as canned as that.' Toberman began to laugh a little himself. ‘I've got something to tell you, Timothy, and when I do you're going to know I'm right just as I knew old Paulfrey was right when he told me. The man was afraid of flying, Timothy. I saw it. I saw it in his eyes and because I was queasy myself, as I always am in the air, I suggested we behaved like reasonable men and drank ourselves out of it and that's how he came to tell me. Otherwise I don't suppose he'd have brought himself to talk to me at all. The man was afraid. He was funky. He sweated. I saw it. To save his face he had to babble out something and because my name reminded him of the Kinnits he babbled out this glorious story.'

‘Which was that the Bronze was genuine,' said Mrs. Telpher briskly.

‘God!' Toberman regarded her with overdrawn contempt. ‘You're a Kinnit and that's typical. That's the first, last and only thing you'd think of. Don't worry, Geraldine, you won't be left out. Professor Paulfrey was very interested to hear that you were staying with your relatives. He knew your late husband by repute, he said, and he knows the Van der Graffs very well indeed. He's been staying with them. But it was your governess he was interested in and so was I, my God, when he told me.' He lurched round to peer at the basket chair. ‘Timothy? Do you
know what was the really interesting thing about the original Kinnit governess?'

‘Basil, you're becoming an abominable bore!' There was an unfamiliar edge to Eustace's voice which jarred warningly on every ear in the room except, apparently, Toberman's own.

He swayed a little but was still remarkably articulate.

‘Don't you believe it you silly old Kinnit,' he declared. ‘Pay attention my little man. I have news for you. The family secret is out. Miss Thyrza is vindicated. She wasn't guilty, Timothy. She didn't kill the boy friend. It was her pupil, the thwarted fifteen-year-old Miss Haidée Kinnit whose immature advances he'd rejected, who prepared the trap for him. She did the murder and planted the blame, with sweet Kinnitty cunning, squarely upon her more successful rival, the unimportant and defenceless governess. Moreover, there is a very strong supposition that the family knew.'

‘Basil! Be quiet! Stop him somebody. Eustace, make him be quiet.' An unexpectedly passionate protest from Alison wiped away any possible doubt of the truth of the story.

Evidently the ancient tale was taken very seriously by the present-day Kinnits. Eustace was shaking with anger, every trace of his normal urbanity gone. Alison was on the verge of tears and for once even Geraldine Telpher seemed startled out of her natural calm. Her face was grey and rigid.

Toberman was enjoying himself.

‘Now I can understand why old Terence Kinnit made such a business of hushing up the crime. Why he bought the Staffordshire moulds and moved house and all the rest of it,' he said happily. ‘If his daughter was the murderess the whole thing hangs together and holds water. They'd driven the poor governess to suicide, you see, between them. I don't suppose that worried them. They'd done her a service by taking her in without references, hadn't they? So it was her duty to repay them with her life if necessary. That would be their attitude.'

‘Will you hold your tongue, sir?' Eustace when angry was quietly formidable and some of it got through. Toberman began to complain.

‘I don't see why you should victimize me,' he grumbled. ‘It all came out in a book; Paulfrey told me so. At the turn of the century a book was published which blew the whole gaff. He told me its name. I've forgotten it but it'll come back.
Ten Trials of Yester Year
I think he said. Something corny like that. You'd know, Eustace.'

‘Toberman, you're drunk! Oblige me by going to bed immediately.'

‘Don't you dare to talk to me like that, old man. Your great grandfather did mine a favour but you haven't bought us body and soul! We're not lackeys!'

‘Good Heavens, boy! What utter nonsense. You must be out of your mind. Pull yourself together.'

‘I am perfectly sober and I am talking to Timothy. Professor Paulfrey told me that this book which he remembered well was written by a parson who had known Miss Haidée when she was an old woman. When she died she left him a letter confessing the whole thing. He didn't do anything about it but put it in a book when he was pretty ancient himself. He was a damn dull writer and nobody was very interested in Miss Thyrza at that time, but somebody bought up most of the copies of the only edition. I wonder who that was. Your father, Eustace?'

‘That will do!'

‘Anyway, no one appears to have read the book but a few kids, one of whom was Paulfrey, and the publication passed without comment in the press.' Basil leant back in his chair and began to laugh.

‘There's no question that it's true, is there?' he jeered, addressing Miss Aicheson and the two young people. ‘Look at them all. Kinnits we have loved. We're all in the same boat, you and me. We're all lame ducks taken in and enslaved by Kinnits because we were cheap. And we all hang about ready to take the buck when it's passed to us.'

Miss Aicheson put a large hand over Alison's slender wrist. ‘I shall go up now, dear,' she murmured. ‘I can't stand much more of this.'

At the same moment Eustace turned to Tim. The old man was
very white and there was a helplessness about him which was embarrassing. ‘It's not true,' he said but without conviction.

‘Of course it isn't!' Tim's response, which was furious, swept the accusation into perspective. ‘It's half true, like all Basil's lies. He's a silly inferior ass and he's tight as a tick. Come on, Basil. Come to bed, you ape. No more damn nonsense. Up you get. Come along.'

He left the arm of the basket chair which creaked protestingly, strode across the room and picked up Toberman in a fireman's lift. The green strength of his body emerged as an unexpected deliverer and Toberman made no attempt to resist. They caught a glimpse of his puffy face and round stupid eyes, solemn and owlish with his head hanging upside-down, as he was borne away through the doorway.

The abrupt departure left a tingling silence behind it. Miss Aicheson settled down again but did not release Alison's arm. ‘I shall wait for a moment or two until he's got him settled,' she murmured.

‘Very sensible, Aich.' Eustace smiled at her vaguely and taking out his handkerchief passed it over his forehead.

‘What a silly fellow,' he said. ‘How tiring. An asinine line to take.' He glanced towards his sister who was looking down at her plate, her delicate face pale and expressionless. Opposite him Geraldine Telpher was in much the same mood. She had withdrawn into herself and appeared preoccupied. The light was unkind to her. Beyond her he suddenly saw Julia sitting quiet in the basket chair, and a frown flickered over his face.

‘My dear child,' he said. ‘I'd quite forgotten you were here. I'm so sorry you should have had to listen to all this unpleasant nonsense. Tim will be down in a moment and he shall take you home.'

Julia was young enough to blush scarlet. ‘I'm staying, I think.'

‘Really?' Eustace was the last person to be impolite but he was irritated and surprised. ‘Alison? I thought we promised – I mean I thought that there was an understanding with Julia's father that the youngsters shouldn't meet just now?'

Alison lifted her head and looked at him blankly. She had been
roused out of deep thought and took some time to surface. ‘Perhaps there was,' she said vaguely. ‘Don't fuss, Eustace.' She turned to Julia. ‘Do you know where your room is?'

‘No. I'm afraid I don't.' Julia was uncomfortable and the situation was saved by the unexpected appearance of Nanny Broome, pink and pleased with herself and still wrapped in her purple coat. She came dancing in, smiling at them all and talking as usual.