Ice in the Bedroom Page 7

  'You waiting for Freddie Widgeon? I'm afraid he's gone up to London.'

  'Oh?' said Dolly. It was all she found herself able to say. The society of coppers, peelers, flatfeet, rozzers and what are known in the newest argot of her native land as 'the fuzz' always affected her with an unpleasant breathlessness.

  'He works in an office, poor devil, and has to leave pretty soon after the morning repast. Around six p.m. is the time to catch him. Is there anything I can do for you? I'm his cousin George.'

  'But…' Dolly's breath was slowly returning. The lack of menace in her companion's attitude had reassured her. Too many policemen in the past, notably in the Chicago days, had shown her their rather brusquer side, generally starting their remarks with the word 'Hey!', and she found the easy polish of this one comforting. She was, of course, still in something of a twitter, for the conscience of a girl who has recently purloined several thousand pounds' worth of jewellery is always sensitive, but she had ceased to entertain the idea that her personal well-being was in danger.

  'But you're a cop,' she said.

  'That's right. Somebody has to be, what?'

  'I mean, you don't talk like one.'

  'Oh, that? Oh, well, Eton, you know. Oxford, you know. All that sort of rot, you know.'

  'I didn't know the bulls over here went to Oxford.'

  'Quite a few of them don't, I believe, but I did. And when I came down, it was a choice between going into an office or doing something else, so I became a flattie. Nice open-air life and quite a chance, they tell me, of rising to great heights at Scotland Yard, though they were probably pulling my leg. What I need to set my foot on the ladder of success is a good pinch, and how that is to be achieved in Valley Fields is more than I can tell you, for of all the unenterprising law-abiding blighters I ever saw the locals take the well-known biscuit. It discourages a chap. But I say, I’m awfully sorry to be gassing about myself like this. Must be boring you stiff. Did you want to see Freddie on some matter of import? Because, if so, you'll find him at Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith and Shoesmith in Lincoln's Inn Fields, if you know where that is. They're a legal firm. Freddie works for them. At least,' said Cousin George, appearing to share the doubts expressed on a previous occasion by Mr. Shoesmith, 'he goes there and sits. Head for Fleet Street and ask a policeman. He'll direct you.'

  'Oh, no, it's nothing important, thanks. I just wanted to say Hello.'

  'Then I'll be off, if you don't mind. We of the constabulary mustn't be late at the trysting place, or we get properly told off by our superiors. Pip-pip, then, for the nonce. Oh, there's just one other thing before I go. You wouldn't care to buy a couple of tickets for the annual concert of the Policemen's Orphanage, would you?'

  'Who, me?'

  'Sounds silly, I know, but the men up top issue bundles of the beastly things to us footsloggers, and we're supposed to unload them on the local residents. They come, nicely graded, to suit all purses - the five-shilling, the half-crown, the two-shilling, the shilling and the sixpenny, only the last-named means standing up at the back. Anything doing?'

  'Not a thing.'

  'Think well. You'll never forgive yourself if you miss hearing Sergeant Banks sing "Asleep In The Deep", or, for the matter of that, Constable Bodger doing imitations of footlight favourites who are familiar to you all. So, on reflection shall we say a brace of the five-bobs?'

  Dolly was firm. The thought of doing anything even remotely calculated to encourage the police went, as she would have said, against her better nature.

  'Listen, brother,' she said, her voice cold and her eyes stony. 'If you are open to suggestions as to where you can stick those tickets of yours, I can offer one.'

  'No need. I take your point. Not in the market, what? Then I don't have to go into my patter. There's a regular recitation they teach us, designed to stimulate trade, all about supporting a charitable organization which is not only most deserving in itself but is connected with a body of men to whom you as a householder will be the first to admit that you owe the safety of your person and the tranquillity of your home. The rozzers, in short. Still, if you're allergic to Policemen's Orphanages, there is nothing more for me to add but---'

  ' "Pip-pip."'

  'I was about to say "Toodle-oo'”.’

  'Toodle-oo, then. Nice to have met you. Keep your chin up and don't arrest any wooden nickels,' said Dolly, and Cousin George went on his way, his manner a little pensive. He was thinking that Freddie, though unquestionably a picker as far as looks were concerned, had some odd friends. Charming girl, of course, his late companion, and one of whom he would willingly have seen more, but definitely not the sort you brought home and introduced to mother.

  As for Dolly, she remained where she was for some moments, still a little unstrung, as always after she had been talking to policemen. Then, having shaken off most of the ill effects of the recent encounter, she hurried down the road and received further evidence that this was not, as she had at one time supposed, her lucky day. In the Castlewood front garden there was a gate similar to that of Peacehaven. On this Mr. Cornelius was leaning with folded arms and the general appearance of one who planned to be there for some considerable time. Courteous as always to tenants, even when ex, he greeted her with a friendly waggle of his white beard, seeming much more pleased to see her than she was to see him. Of Thomas G. Molloy, as we have seen, he disapproved, but he had always admired Dolly.

  'Why, good morning, Mrs. Molloy. It is a long time since we met. Mr. Molloy told me that you had been away.'

  ‘Yay, visiting friends,’ said Dolly, though feeling that it was stretching the facts a little to apply this term to the authorities of Holloway gaol. 'Quite a surprise it was to me when Soapy said he'd left Castlewood.'

  'To me, also, when he told me he was leaving.'

  'Well, that's how it goes. With all those big business interests of his he found he had to be nearer the centre of things.'

  'I quite understand. Business must always come first.'

  'Kind of a wrench, of course, it was to him, having to move from Valley Fields.'

  'I am not surprised. I am sure it was. There is no place like it. When I think of Valley Fields, Mrs. Molloy, I am reminded of the words of Sir Walter Scott. I daresay you know them. They occur in his poem "The Lay Of The Last Minstrel", where he says: "Breathes there the man with soul so dead, who never to himself has said This is my Own, my native land! Whose heart has ne'er within him burned, as home his footsteps he hath turned, from wandering on some foreign strand," ' said Mr. Cornelius, thinking of the day trip he had once taken to Boulogne.

  Reduced to the status of a captive audience, Dolly found her already pronounced impatience increasing. Mr. Cornelius had recited this well-known passage to her soon after her arrival in Valley Fields, and she knew that, unless he was nipped in the bud, there was a lot more of it to come.

  'Yay,' she said. 'No argument about that. But what I came about---‘

  ' "If such there breathe,"' proceeded the house agent smoothly,' "go mark him well. For him no minstrel raptures swell. High though his titles, proud his name, boundless his wealth as wish can claim, despite those titles, power and pelf---‘

  'What I came about---‘

  ‘ "The wretch, concentred all on self, living shall forfeit

  fair renown, and doubly dying shall go down to the vile dust

  from whence he sprung---" '

  'I just wanted---'

  ' "Unwept, unhonoured and unsung,"' concluded Mr. Cornelius severely, putting the anonymous outcast right in his place. 'Those words, Mrs. Molloy, will appear on the title page of the history of Valley Fields which I am compiling.'

  'Yes, so you told me, couple of months ago.'

  'It will be printed at my own expense and circulated privately. I thought of a binding in limp leather, possibly blue.'

  'Sounds swell. Put me down for a copy.'

  'Thank you. I shall be delighted. It will not be completed, of course, for some years. The
subject is too vast.'

  'I can wait. Say, listen. What I came about was that lucky pig of mine.'

  'That…I beg your pardon?'

  'Little silver ninctobinkus I wear on my bracelet. I've lost it.'

  ‘I am sorry.'

  'Hunted everywhere for it, and then suddenly remembered I’d had it last in the bedroom down here when I was dressing. Put it down somewheres and forgot about it.'

  'These lapses of memory frequently occur.'

  'Yay. Well, do you think whoever's got the house now'

  'Miss Leila Yorke, the novelist,' said Mr. Cornelius reverently.

  'No, really? Is that so? I'm one of her greatest admirers.'

  'I, also.'

  'Swell stuff she dishes out. Knocks the bejeesus out of all competitors.'

  'Indeed yes,' said Mr. Cornelius, though he would not have put it in quite that way.

  'Well, do you think she would mind if I just popped up to the bedroom and had a look around?'

  'I am sure she would readily give her consent, if she were here, but she has left for London. That, I may say, is the reason for my presence. She asked me to keep an eye on the house. It seems that Miss Yorke received a visit yesterday from a most suspicious character, who tried to insinuate himself into Castlewood on some pretext or other, with the intention, no doubt of returning later and burgling the place.'

  'Well, of all the ideas! Sounds cuckoo to me.'

  'I assure you that sort of thing is frequently done. I was speaking of this man to Mr. Widgeon's cousin, who is in the police and who had had the story from Mr. Widgeon, who had had it from Miss Foster, who had had it from Miss Yorke, and he told me it was a well-known practice of the criminal classes. Casing the joint, it is called, he says. He expressed some chagrin that the exigencies of walking his beat would take him away from Castlewood so that, when the man returned, he would not be there to make what he described as a pinch. He is a most zealous officer.’

  'I'll bet he is. We want more of his sort around.'

  'Very true.'

  'Well, anyway, I'm not casing any joints. All I want is to mosey up to that bedroom and see if my pig's there. I'll prob'ly find I dropped it behind the dressing table or something. Miss Yorke won't mind me doing that?'

  'I feel convinced that she would have no objection, but what you suggest is, I fear, impracticable, for before leaving she locked her bedroom door.'

  'What!'

  'On my suggestion,' said Mr. Cornelius rather smugly.

  Dolly stood silent. Six separate blistering observations had darted into her mind like red-hot bullets, but she remembered in time that she was a lady and did not utter them. Contenting herself with a mere 'Oh, is that so? Well, pip-pip,' she turned and walked away, giving no indication of the vultures that gnawed at her bosom.

  At the corner of the road that led to the station she caught a Number Three Omnibus, and this in due season deposited her in Piccadilly Circus. Partly because the day was so fine and partly because she hoped with exercise to still the ferment in her blood, she walked along Piccadilly and turned up Bond Street, and it was as she did this that out of the corner of her eye she observed a well-dressed man behind her.

  It has already been stated that the sight of a well-dressed man in her rear often called to Dolly to put into effect the technique which years of practice had bestowed on her. A moment later, she was swooning in his arms, and a moment after that withdrawing the hand that had crept toward his pocket. She had seen his face and knew that there would be little in that pocket to reward the prospector.

  'Why, hello, Mr. Widgeon,' she said.

  11

  UNTIL the moment of impact, Freddie had been in the best of spirits, feeling, like the gentleman in Oklahoma, that everything was coming his way. As he started to walk up Bond Street, he was not actually singing 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!', but it would not have required a great deal of encouragement to induce him to do so. Few things so brace up a young man in Springtime as a reconciliation with the girl he loves, and the thought that he and Sally, so recently a couple of sundered hearts, were once more on Romeo and Juliet terms would alone have been enough to raise him to the heights and, as we say, bring him to the very brink of bursting into song.

  But in addition to this there was the uplifting reflection that he had in a drawer at Peacehaven script of the Silver River Oil and Refinery Corporation which he would shortly be selling for ten thousand pounds and, to set the seal on his happiness, someone at the office, just before he left, had dropped a heavy ledger on the foot of Mr. Jervis, the managing clerk, causing him a good deal of pain, for he suffered from corns. In the six months during which he had served under the Shoesmith banner Freddie had come to dislike Mr. Jervis with an intensity quite foreign to his normally genial nature, and he held very strongly the view that the more ledgers that were dropped on him, the better. His only regret was that it had not been a ton of bricks.

  All in all, then, conditions, where he was concerned, could scarcely have been improved on, and joy may be said to have reigned supreme.

  But the sudden discovery that his arms had become full of totally unforeseen blondes occasioned a sharp drop in his spirits. There had been a time when, if females of this colouring had fallen into his embrace, he would have clasped them to him and asked for more, but that had been in the pre-Sally days. Sally had changed his entire spiritual outlook. And, thinking of her, as he was now doing, he found himself entertaining a chilling speculation as to what she would say if she knew of these goings-on, to be succeeded by the more soothing thought that, being seven miles away in Valley Fields, she would not know of them. And when Dolly spoke and he realized that this was not some passing stranger who had taken a sudden fancy to him, but merely his next-door neighbour Mrs. Molloy, he was quite himself again. His acquaintance with Dolly was not an intimate one, but her husband had introduced them one afternoon and they had occasionally exchanged good-mornings across the fence, so if she had tripped over something and clutched at him for support, there was really nothing in the whole episode that even Emily Post could shake her head at.

  When, therefore, she said, 'Why, hullo, Mr. Widgeon,' it was with a completely restored equanimity that he replied:

  'Why, hullo, Mrs. Molloy. Fancy bumping into you.'

  'Bumping is right. Hope I didn't spoil the sit of your coat. I kind of twisted my ankle.'

  'Oh, really? Those high heels, what? Always beats me how women can navigate in them. You're all right?’

  'Oh, sure, thanks.'

  'Not feeling faint or anything?'

  'A bit sort of shaken up.'

  'You'd better have a drink.'

  'Now that's a thought. I could certainly use one.'

  'In here,' said Freddie, indicating the Bollinger bar, outside of which they happened to be standing. 'There's no better place, so the cognoscenti inform me.'

  If at the back of his mind, as they passed through the door, there lurked a shadow of regret that he had not steered his guest to one of the many Bond Street tea shoppes for a quick cup of coffee, instead of giving his patronage to an establishment where he knew they charged the earth for an eye-dropperful of alcoholic stimulant, he did not show it. The chivalry of the Widgeons would alone have been enough to keep him from doing that, and when the thought stole into his mind, it was immediately ejected by the reflection that it was to the husband of this woman that he owed the prosperity that in the near future would be his. If a man out of pure goodness of heart has put thousands of pounds in your pocket, the least you can do when you find his wife all shaken from a near-fall in Bond Street is to bring her back to mid-season form with a beaker of the right stuff, even if her taste inclines to champagne cocktails.

  Dolly's taste did, and he bore the blow to a purse ill adapted to the receipt of blows like a Widgeon and a gentleman, not even paling beneath his tan when she drained her first one at a gulp and asked for a refill. Nothing could have been more apparently carefree than his demeanour as he op
ened the conversation.

  'Funny us meeting like this. What are you doing in these parts? Shopping?'

  'No, just strolling along. I'm meeting my husband for lunch at Barribault's. We're living there now.'

  'Really?' said Freddie, impressed. 'Nice place.'

  'Yay. We've got a very comfortable suite.'

  'Bit of a change from Valley Fields. It came as quite a surprise when Cornelius told me you had left Castlewood.'

  ‘I guess we did move kind of quick, but that's Soapy all over.'

  'Oh, is it? Who's Soapy?'

  ‘I call Mr. Molloy that. On account of he made his first million in soap. It's a sort of little joke between us.'

  'I see. Very droll,' said Freddie, though he had heard more hilarious pleasantries in his time. 'You'll never guess who's got the house now.'

  'Is it rented again already?'

  'Went off right away. The new tenant's a terrific celebrity. Leila Yorke, the novelist.'

  'You don't say? What's she doing in Valley Fields? I was reading a piece in a women's paper, where it said she owned one of those stately homes of England you hear about.'

  'Yes, Claines Hall, Loose Chippings, down in Sussex. But she's got the idea of doing a book about the suburbs. Do you read her stuff?'

  'I don't, no. I've heard tell of it, but it sounds too mushy for me. What I like is something with plenty of blood and lots of mysterious Chinamen in it.'

  'Me, too. But you haven't heard the latest. She's changing her act. Her new book's going to be strong and stark and full of greyness and squalor, the sort of thing George someone used to write, and she's gone to Valley Fields to get what they call local colour. I think myself she's a sap to do it, because her usual bilge sells in vast quantities, and I don't suppose anyone'll buy a copy of this one. Still, there it is. She's got this goofy urge to do bigger and better things, and she means to go through with it.'