She Fell Among Thieves Read online

  ‘But that’s ideal,’ said I. ‘Are you sure it’s quite convenient?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t,’ said Vanity Fair. ‘What time shall you start?’

  ‘I thought in about half-an-hour.’

  ‘Make it three-quarters,’ she said. ‘And come to my salon, will you, before you set out?’

  With that, she was gone, leaving me ill at ease. Her command was disconcerting. Why should she want to see me…alone…in her private room?

  Thirty-five minutes later, her personal maid, called Esther, a woman with a face like a mask, ushered me into an exquisite little salon which was full of the scent of pot-pourri and fairly ablaze with the sunshine which was not at all shut out.

  Vanity Fair was installed in a deep chaise longue.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Chandos,’ she said. ‘I think you’d look very well in that bracket chair.’

  I took my seat – facing the light.

  ‘This business this morning,’ she said. ‘Now who was first on the scene?’

  ‘That I can’t tell you,’ I said. ‘It was somebody’s cry that woke me, but by the time I had got to the window, whoever it was was gone. When I got down, Wright was there with three other men.’

  ‘I’m told that she fell from a window. Did what you saw bear that out?’

  ‘It certainly did,’ said I, feeling more at my ease.

  ‘But you heard no cry in the night. Do you sleep very sound?’

  ‘Pretty well, I think,’ said I, wishing that I knew what was coming, and crossing my legs. ‘I certainly heard no cry.’

  ‘What time did you go to sleep?’

  So that was it. Vanity Fair wished to know if I had seen the man in the meadows at a quarter to twelve.

  Like a fool, I decided to lie.

  ‘I really can’t say,’ I said. ‘Soon after I bade you good night.’

  ‘That was at eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Soon after that,’ said I. ‘I’d nothing to do.’

  ‘She might have fallen before that. For all you know, she was there when you went to bed.’

  ‘Oh no. I mean – well, I think I should have seen her,’ I said, and could have ripped out my tongue.

  ‘Seen her? How could you have seen her?’

  ‘I leaned out of the window,’ I said, ‘the very last thing. The moon was lighting the terrace: but she wasn’t there.’

  ‘Fancy your remembering that.’

  I shrugged my shoulders – desperately.

  ‘I just do,’ said I. ‘And I’ll tell you another thing. I can tell you the very time, for the castle clock chimed the quarter whilst I was looking out.’

  Another lie – but a good one. If I had retired at a quarter past eleven, I could hardly have seen the man at a quarter to twelve.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ says she. ‘No doubt at all about that?’

  ‘None whatever,’ said I, and felt very pleased with myself.

  ‘Good,’ says Vanity Fair. She flung me a charming smile. ‘I put your mind to the grind-stone, and see how sharp it’s become. You heard the clock chime the quarter, and she wasn’t there.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said I, and grinned back.

  ‘Did you set your watch?’

  ‘I can’t say that,’ said I.

  ‘Well, do so,’ says Vanity Fair. ‘Right away – before you go out. Punctuality’s one of my failings, and I always go by that clock. And now go and have a good walk. To be honest, I envy you. What does the prophet say? “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.” And if I was half my age, I’d keep you company.’

  Thus elegantly dismissed, I took my leave.

  Outside her suite, I drew a deep breath of relief. Vanity Fair had annoyed me and frightened me out of my life: for all that, I had won the round, for my monstrous cross-examination had borne her no fruit. I, Richard Chandos, had beaten Vanity Fair. That lie, of mine, about the clock striking the quarter… I could have hugged myself.

  I proposed to leave by the terrace, but first I made for the courtyard, to set my watch. As I came to the steps, Virginia was taking her seat at the wheel of a fast-looking car.

  When I had explained my quest –

  ‘Good for you, Richard,’ says she. ‘And we’re very proud of that clock. Did mother tell you the legend?’

  ‘No,’ said I, adjusting the hands of my watch.

  ‘Then listen to me,’ says Virginia. ‘It’s very short. Years and years ago the son of this house was to die – at a quarter past six. I don’t know what he’d done, but he’d disobeyed his father and so was condemned to death. But the servants were bound they’d save him. So during the night they blocked up the gap in the wheel that controls the chimes: the gap that engaged the hammer when the quarter was due. So that, though the time came and went, the clock never struck the quarter and the life of the boy was saved.’

  ‘What a – what a curious tale,’ I stammered. ‘And the – the damage was never repaired?’

  ‘Repaired?’ screamed Virginia. ‘How can you? Would you tear up a dainty legend like that? The piece of oak they fashioned is still in its place, and from that day to this that clock’s never chimed the quarter – the quarter past.’

  Though the valley was handsome enough, I fear my thoughts were busy with Vanity Fair. It was plain I was in the toils. I was suspected of proposing to play her false: I had, therefore, been carefully tested and, while I thought I had passed, I had broken down. Mansel’s words came into my mind. Always tell her the truth. I could have done myself violence…

  I felt suddenly angry. Vanity Fair was outrageous. How dared she subject a guest to such an ordeal? To be summoned and cross-examined, as though I were one of her servants, suspected of stealing goods… I had, of course, no standing. In fact, I was not a guest. In fact, I was being treated precisely as I deserved. And yet I resented that treatment. It made things so very awkward. I had told her a lie, and she knew it – and was sending a car to meet me, to whisk me back to her table and a dinner fit for a king. The truth was this. I knew I was being played with, and the knowledge was making me cross.

  I pulled myself together and sought to review the facts. These were few, but ill-favoured.

  An intensely suspicious woman, Vanity Fair suspected that I was a spy, that I was in league with Mansel, that I was aware that a man had come out of the meadows the night before. These suspicions she meant to confirm, and no convention whatever would stand in her way. When she had to deal with strangers, she much preferred to have them within her gates.

  The evidence she held at the moment was that I had told her a lie. She had tried to make me clinch it – by saying that when the clock chimed, I had set my watch. By the grace of God, I had avoided that pitfall. All the same, honest guests do not lie: they may make mistakes, of course: but they do not lie. I decided with the utmost reluctance that I must correct my statement – repeat what Virginia had told me and say that the chime I had heard must have been the half-hour.

  So much for the moves she had made: now for my own.

  It was perfectly clear that she knew of the man in the meadows, because it was perfectly clear that she wanted to know if I knew. She also knew more than I did of Julie’s death. Why did she want to know who was first on the scene?

  On the whole I supposed that honours were more or less even: but another sitting or two in ‘the Star Chamber’ would certainly settle my hash. I should have to tell Mansel as much. I was no sort of match for Vanity Fair.

  My mind made up, I began to observe such surroundings as must have pleased any man. As is not always the way, the closer you drew to the country, the finer it looked. With a sparkling eye, I marked the sweep of the valley and the depth of the hammercloth forests that covered the mountain sides: the turf I trod was like velvet and the song of unruly water refreshed the ear. The torrent ran to my left – to be tamed lower down to the service of Vanity Fair. It was this laughing water that flowed in the pipes of Jezreel and f
looded the castle with light, as well, of course, as providing the gentle, regular music which I had heard from my bedroom the night before. The further I went, the taller the mountains seemed and the more the forests that clad them hung on their sides: the natural grandeur about me grew more superb and impressive with every step, yet the friendly peace of the country was always there, for the meadows were deep and smiling and gentle-eyed cows were grazing and swinging their cumbersome heads to rout the flies.

  The object of my walk was threefold. I found the valley lovely and I wished to prove the promise which its recesses held out: I wished to acquaint myself with the outskirts of Jezreel: and I wished to discover the way by which the man I had seen had reached the floor of a valley with walls so sheer. (I knew, of course, of one path: but I felt that Vanity Fair would hardly have told me the way which her man had used.)

  Now I had a binocular with me, and when I had covered two miles, I had a sudden whim to survey Jezreel. It was rather late in the day, for, to see any detail at all, I should have looked back when I had gone but three furlongs, or less than that. All the same, my glasses were strong and, since the chance might not come back, I took my seat on a knoll and put them up to my eyes.

  Inch by inch I raked the façade and the terrace, upon which I could make out two footmen arranging chairs. I inspected the roof and the tower and I saw that the fatal casement was now fast shut. I could see my bedroom windows, at one of which Bell was standing with something of mine in his hand. I could see the private apartments of Vanity Fair, and something at one of their windows of curious shape: a thick-set cross it looked like…

  Vanity Fair lowered her glasses and waved.

  Feeling uncommonly foolish, I did the same.

  I also swore – for some ridiculous reason, under my breath. And then, with what grace I could summon, I put my glasses away and resumed my walk.

  To be so disconcerted was childish, as I very soon saw, but it had not occurred to me that my progress along the valley was to be watched. To take with me and use my glasses was a perfectly natural act: and if it was the way of a knave, it was equally well the way of an honest man. And since, in any event, the damage, if any, was done, from that time on I determined to do as I pleased.

  I, therefore, made the most of that afternoon, judging height and distance, marking what cover there was, surveying the sides of the mountains for signs of paths and seeking and finding three places at which one could cross the water by night as by day.

  So I came to the head of the valley about a quarter past five.

  The head of the valley was closed, except for a deep ravine by which the water came down. The torrent raged in this channel which it had worn and no man on earth could ever have gone that way; but I think, if he could, he would only have come to a cliff, for though, because the gorge curled, I could not see up, above the bellow of the rapids I was almost sure I could hear the roar of a fall. I very soon saw the path which I was to take, but hereabouts there was no other way out and, after a few minutes’ rest in the cool which the rapids dispensed, I left the turf to climb to the mountain road.

  Now the path was mostly open: it follows that the higher I climbed, the better I viewed the mountains on the opposite side of the valley which I had left. These were most heavily wooded: but, observing them carefully, I presently saw that what I had thought one mountain was really two, and that though, from below, the foliage hid their juncture, there must at that point be a way that a man could take. (I do not mean to say that he could not have climbed straight up the mountain-side, for, steep as it was he could have gone up or come down by passing from tree to tree: but this would have been a most hard and perilous progress and could never have been attempted except by day.) When next I stopped to look, it was clear I was right, for I saw the faint ridge in the pretty green quilt of the tree-tops which tells of a pass.

  Now Vanity Fair had not said that the valley was blind, but she had pretty well forced me to take the path on my right. I had little doubt of two things. One was that she did not wish me to find the pass I had marked: and the other that it was by that pass that the man I had seen in the meadows had come to Jezreel.

  I was nearing the road now and I stopped once more to gaze across the valley and see what I could.

  Now the path had been leading me back, away from the head of the valley towards Jezreel, and when I looked round this last time, I saw directly before me a delicate fall of water which was lacing the hanging forest a crow’s mile off. The cascade itself was so slender and the forest about it so deep that unless I had turned at that moment, I should never have known it was there. That was how I had missed it when I had gone by in the valley, because for two or three paces I was looking the other way.

  At once I whipped out my glasses and set my back to a rock.

  If there was a path up to the pass, at some point or other that path had to cross that fall…

  And so it did, halfway up. I could see the rough-hewn bridge that carried it over the foam. There was not so much as a handrail: and the bridge was very narrow, just wide enough for one man.

  At last I lowered my glasses, to smile at my luck. Three paces more or less, and I should have gone empty away. As it was…

  I put my glasses away and turned to the road.

  This was closer than I knew. In fact, the boulder had masked it – the rock against which I had leaned, to steady my gaze. As I rounded that comfortable bulwark –

  ‘That’s right,’ said Vanity Fair. ‘Did you set your watch?’

  She was sitting alone in the back of an open car. On its step was spread a napkin, on which was standing a glass. As I stepped on to the road, the chauffeur, called Jean, ripped open a bottle of beer.

  ‘I knew you’d be thirsty,’ she said. ‘And thirst is a healthy emotion which should be indulged. Not a thirst for knowledge, you know. I’ve known that to be unhealthy.’

  I saw my chance and leaped in.

  ‘I never asked her,’ I said. ‘She volunteered the information.’

  An image regarded me straitly.

  ‘Who volunteered what?’

  ‘Virginia,’ I said. ‘She saw me setting my watch and told me the legend and that the clock doesn’t chime the quarter past. If she wasn’t pulling my leg, that means that I must be mistaken and that it was the half-hour and not the quarter that I heard chimed last night.’

  The eyes of Vanity Fair were like dancing steel.

  ‘Oh, Richard Chandos,’ she said, ‘when I asked you this afternoon, why ever didn’t you say that you’d set your watch by the chime?’

  I picked up my glass.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been true,’ I said.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of that,’ said Vanity Fair.

  I confess that I drank her health…

  On the way down we stopped, to look at Jezreel.

  ‘You can’t see it so well from the valley,’ said Vanity Fair.

  Nearly an hour had gone by when I stopped in the midst of my toilet to stare upon Bell.

  ‘But I saw you,’ I said. ‘You were standing just there, with something of mine in your hand.’

  ‘It wasn’t me, sir,’ said Bell. ‘I’ve been down in the garage, at work on the Rolls. I’ve never come into this room all the afternoon.’

  For a moment I stood, still staring. Then I returned to the business of fastening the studs of my shirt. It was no good my being annoyed: again I had been treated exactly as I deserved.

  ‘Well, just run through the drawers,’ I said, ‘as a matter of form. I don’t suppose anything’s gone. Whoever it was had orders to search, not steal.’

  With that, I continued to dress.

  As I got into my jacket, I heard Bell exclaim. Then he turned from an open wardrobe and came to my side. The pistol with which I travelled was in his hand. Its magazine was empty, and the round that had lain in the chamber had been withdrawn.

  ‘So they did come to steal,’ said I. ‘Have we any spare ammunition?’

  ‘
That we have, sir,’ said Bell. ‘I’ve got a box in the Rolls.’

  ‘Well, fill it up,’ said I, ‘and put it where I can reach it, just under the bed.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said Bell. ‘But I think you should lock your doors.’

  ‘I will,’ said I. ‘And tell Captain Mansel this. I think that I ought to see him. If I can’t – well, I can’t. But tell him that I’m being played with. He’ll understand.’

  ‘That’s what you’re here for,’ said Mansel.

  Bell and I jumped like two children and then swung round.

  Mansel was sitting on a table, dressed in an old suit of flannels, swinging a leg.

  ‘We’re perfectly safe,’ he said. ‘It’s my evening off. I’m believed to be cycling to Perin. That’s why I’m late. But when you come up to bed, you shall have your talk.’

  ‘Well, I’m damned glad to see you,’ I said. ‘But how did you come? By the salon?’

  Mansel shook his head.

  ‘Don’t lock your doors,’ he said. ‘It isn’t worthwhile.’ He walked to a massive pier-glass, heavily framed in gilt and fastened against the wall. ‘You know the old riddle,’ he said: ‘“When is a door not a door?” Well, here’s a new answer, William: “When it’s a looking-glass”.’ He laid hold of the frame and pulled. At once the mirror swung inwards, and there was a thin, stone corridor, running both right and left. ‘The back-stairs, William. You never saw such a system. Takes you all over the house.’ He closed the door carefully. ‘And now you’ll have to be going. Don’t let your lady friend bounce you, and listen for all you’re worth. I rather think you may get some copy tonight.’

  ‘I’ve more than enough to go on with,’ said I. ‘We simply must have a talk. But I mayn’t be up for ages. You know what she is.’

  ‘You’ll find me here,’ said Mansel. ‘I’m out on the loose, you know: and I can come in when I please. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t care how late you are, for I happen to be very tired and I’m going to sleep – in your room. Don’t you worry, William. Bell will look after me.’

  Two minutes later I was drinking an excellent cocktail and arguing with Virginia about the various styles in which women dress their hair.