The Girl in Blue (22 page)

‘Come
here,’ he said, and led him to the window. ‘See that lake?’

Chippendale
admitted to seeing the lake.

‘Well,
go and jump in it, curse you,’ said Willoughby. ‘And one more thing. Before
doing so, be sure to tie a good heavy brick round your repulsive neck.’

6

Having suggested this
course of action, Willoughby made for the door. But while plainly anxious to
remove himself as soon as possible from the society of Chippendale, he paused
for a moment to throw a word at Jerry.

‘I’ll
give you a cheque tomorrow,’ he said, and was gone.

Chippendale,
though taken aback as most people are when told to jump into lakes, was able to
deduce the reason for his brusqueness. He had always been a man who could put
two and two together.

‘I
opened my mouth too wide,’ he said regretfully. ‘I ought to have stuck to the
original terms.’

‘No, it
wasn’t that,’ said Jerry. ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference, whatever you
had asked for. It was the wrong miniature.’

‘How do
you mean, it was the wrong miniature? It looked all right to me.

Jerry
would have preferred not to linger and embark on long explanations, for Jane
had said she would be returning in the evening and he wanted to be at the gate
to welcome her, but it seemed unkind to leave his former ally in a state of
mystification. Even when a partnership has been wound up the partners have
obligations.

‘What
happened was this,’ he said.

He
narrated the story briefly but well, and when he had finished Chippendale said,
‘Cor stone the crows’, not mentioning which crows or who was to cast the first
stone.

‘Are
you telling me all my labour and toil has been for nothing?’

‘I’m
afraid so.’

‘He won’t
brass up?’

‘No.’

Chippendale
mixed himself a whisky and soda and stood brooding for a space. When he spoke,
it was with the same regret in his voice.

‘I
ought to have had a written contract.’

‘Yes.’

‘Though
I might get him on the verbal agreement. Ought I to sue?’

‘Waste
of money, don’t you think?’

‘Perhaps
you’re right. What did he mean by saying my repulsive neck?’

‘He was
very much moved. Spoke wildly.’

‘All
the same, I shouldn’t wonder if it wasn’t slander. I’ll have to consult my
solicitor. Only I heard someone say he’s one.

‘He is.’

‘Then
it’s no good. They all stick together. I’ll have to let it go. You know,’ said
Chippendale, his grievances apparently forgotten and the sunny side of his
nature coming uppermost, ‘I can’t help laughing when I think of us wearing
ourselves to a shadow trying to get the ruddy miniature and all the time it was
the ruddy wrong one. Strikes me as funny, that.’

Had
someone told Jerry that the time would come when he would find himself thinking
highly of Chippendale and regarding him with affection, he would have scouted
the idea as too far-fetched for consideration; but as he heard these gallant
words his heart warmed to him. If Chippendale couldn’t help laughing when Fate
deprived him of a large sum of money, it seemed to him to indicate a nobility
of character that demanded respect. He stood revealed as the sort of man
Rudyard Kipling wrote ‘If’ about.

‘You
take it very well,’ he said admiringly. ‘I don’t think I would have been as
cheerful if Uncle Bill hadn’t given me my money.

‘Was
that what he was talking about when he said he’d be giving you a cheque?’

‘Yes.’

‘Much?’

‘Quite
a lot.’

It was
Chippendale’s turn to admire. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was a bloke who would
touch easy. Did you hypnotize him?’ Jerry laughed.

‘It
wasn’t a touch. My father left me a packet in trust, with Uncle Bill
as a trustee. I couldn’t get it without his consent. He’s now consented.’

‘And it’s
all yours?’

‘Yes.’

Then I
take it we now go to the pub and you stand drinks?’ It was an attractive idea,
but Jerry shook his head. ‘I’d love to, but I have a very important
appointment. I’ll tell you what, suppose I give you five quid and you go and do
the drinking for both of us.’

‘Five
quid!’

‘I
should have said ten. Will that be all right?’ Chippendale removed any doubts
he may have had. He said it would be more than all right. In an impassioned
speech of acceptance he described Jerry as one of Nature’s noblemen.

How
long his eulogy would have continued one cannot say, for it was interrupted at
an early stage by the entrance of a girl in maid’s costume.

‘Mr
Chippendale, Mr Scrope wants you in the study.’

‘Any
idea what for?’

‘It’s
something to do with Mr Simms.’

‘I
thought it might be.’ Chippendale turned to Jerry. ‘I may have to call on you
as a witness, chum. Where’ll you be?’

‘Somewhere
by the main gate.’

‘Right.
I probably won’t need you, but it’s as well to know.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

1

B
arney,
as she returned from the scene of her waterside activities, was filled with the
glow which comes from work well done. If, mingled with a pardonable
self-satisfaction, there was a pang of womanly pity for the victim of those
activities, it was only slight, for a man, she reasoned, who joins the police
force must be aware that he is going to get new experiences and that these
cannot all be agreeable. And, after all, a wet constable can soon be converted
into a dry constable. Time the great healer, she felt, would see to it that
Officer Simms would ere long be himself again. It only needed some brisk work
with bath towels.

For the
most part it was on the intelligent workings of Providence that she mused. As a
girl at a fashionable New York seminary it had often been a source of regret to
her that she was not petite and slender like so many of her schoolmates, but
now she realized that Providence in fashioning her on more substantial lines
had known what it was about. Those fellow students might have looked like
bantamweight fairy princesses, but would they have been able to push a two
hundred pound constable into a brook? They would not have so much as stirred
him from his base. It would have been as if a butterfly had alighted between
his shoulder blades. But thanks to her impressive physique, when she herself
had applied the pressure, he had flown through the air like something shot from
a gun. There are compensations for being the large or king size.

The
inner glow increased as her thoughts turned to Crispin. Attracted to him at
their first meeting by the fact that he was so unlike her first husband, in the
days that had passed she had found that affection turning to something deeper.
What in the beginning had been a mere impulse to stroke his head had grown into
a fixed determination to take him for better or for worse and spend the
remainder of her life with him. England was full of people who would have
ridiculed the possibility of anyone falling in love with Crispin Scrope, the
firm that did the repairs about the place heading the list, but she had managed
it.

She had
reached the front door and was about to go in, when he came out. He had changed
his mind about lying down, reflection telling him that if he did lie down he
would merely toss and turn and heave and twitch, and there was nothing to be
gained by behaving like a Welsh rarebit at the height of its fever.

For a
moment, eager to impart the good news, she did not observe his tragic aspect.
Then it impressed itself on her, and she gave a cry of dismay.

‘Crips!
What’s the matter? What is it? What’s wrong?’

To this
Crispin replied succinctly, ‘Everything. Let’s walk,’ he said, and they turned
down the drive towards the main gate.

Tell
me,’ she said.

‘I’m in
an awful fix,’ said Crispin.

Her
alert mind leaped to the obvious explanation. ‘Money?’

‘Yes.’

‘A
bill?’

‘Yes.’

‘How
much?’

‘A
hundred pounds.’

‘Is
that all?’ said Barney, relieved. In the income tax bracket to which she
belonged a hundred pounds or its equivalent in dollars was something which fell
into the category of small change. She suggested the easy way out of his
difficulties. ‘Let me be your banker.’

Crispin
shook his head.

‘No.’

‘Why
not?’

‘I can’t
touch you.’

‘Oh,
come on.

‘It’s
wonderful of you to offer it, Barney, but no.

‘You
would lend it to me if you had it and I needed it.’

‘That’s
different.’

‘Why?’

‘It
just is.’

Barney
gave up the struggle.

‘Oh,
well,’ she said resignedly, ‘if the Scropes have their code, that’s that. I
wish my Uncle Sam was as pernickety about accepting money from me as you are. I’ve
been supporting him for years. Who do you owe this hundred to?’

‘The
repairs people.’

‘Oh,
Chippendale’s buddies. But didn’t you tell me your brother Bill had given you
the money to pay them?’

It was
not easy for Crispin to confess his folly, but it was unavoidable.

‘I lost
a hundred of it on a horse.’

‘But I
thought you never played the races.’

‘I
haven’t done for ages, but you know how it is when you get a really big tip.’

‘I gave
you one, on Brotherly Love, and you wouldn’t take it.’

Crispin
choked.

‘I did
take it,’ he mumbled, and Barney stared, bewildered.

‘Let’s
get this straight,’ she said. ‘My head’s feeling as if it had a hive of bees
inside it. Are you telling me you changed your mind and took my advice?’

‘Yes.’

‘And
had a hundred on Brotherly Love?’

‘Yes,
with Slingsby’s. I’ve still got an account there.’

‘Then
what in the name of goodness is all the song and dance about? You’ve made over
twelve hundred pounds.’

It
seemed to Crispin that the hive of bees to which she had objected had
transferred itself to his head. It was full of their buzzing. Her words came to
him dimly.

‘Brotherly
Love started at a hundred to eight.’

‘But…’

‘But…
But.., you told me it came in second.’

‘And so
it did. Don’t you ever read the papers?’

‘No.’

‘Well,
you ought to. It came in second, half a length behind Muscatel, and there was
an objection. Boring or bumping or something. The big brass went into a huddle,
examined the evidence, found that Muscatel had bored or bumped or whatever it
was, slapped its jockey’s wrist and told him to be more careful in future and
gave the race to Brotherly Love. You’ll be getting Slingsby’s cheque tomorrow
or the day after, I guess. Depends on when settling day is. Here, hold up.’

Crispin
had not actually fainted, but he had come near enough to it to arouse Barney’s
motherly concern. She led him to a rustic bench beside the drive. There she
adopted what was apparently her policy for dealing with all human ills,
massaging the neck. She did it as thoroughly and as competently as at their
first meeting, and after experiencing for awhile that old familiar illusion of
having been caught in some sort of powerful machinery Crispin sat up,
announcing that he was all right now.

Barney
contested this statement.

‘You
think you are,’ she said, ‘but you never will be till you’ve got a wife to look
after you and see that you don’t get into trouble. I spoke to you about this the
other day, if you remember. You’ll agree that if there’s trouble around, you’re
sure to get into it?’

Crispin
found it impossible to deny this. From early manhood he and trouble had been
inseparable companions.

‘So you
need a wife.’

‘I do.’

‘Try
me,’ said Barney.

2

The glow which had been
warming Barney before Crispin’s arrival became intensified on his departure. On
her advice he had gone to his study to write a cheque for the repair people,
and she had remained on the rustic bench, going over in her mind each little
detail of that tender scene.

Seated
thus, she had a good view of the main gate, and through it now entered her
brother Homer, accompanied by a girl. This, she realized, must be the Miss Vera
Upshaw whom Crispin had told her he was expecting. Trains from London stopped
on request at Mellingham Halt half a mile from the village, and Homer had
presumably gone to meet her there.