Put On By Cunning Page 5
like any lion-hunting sightseer. Sheila, making her escape with Dinah lernhold to a hire car, was attracting as much tention as anyone�a warning, her father jpught, of what they might expect in a light's time. The Zoffanys were nowhere to seen but Natalie Arno, holding the arm of an lerly wisp of a man, a man so frail-looking it it seemed wonderful the wind did not blow about like a feather, was standing on the jps shaking hands with departing visitors. She >re a black coat and a large black hat, new irthes they appeared to be and suited to the fcasion, and she stood erectly, her thin ankles fessed together. By the time Wexford was iven away by the cold, though several dozen >ple had shaken hands with her and passed I, four or five of the men as well as the elderly sp remained with her. He smiled to himself,
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amused to see his prediction fulfilled.
By the end of the week Sheila had received confirmation from the estate agents that her flat was sold, or that negotiations to buy it had begun. This threw her into a dilemma. Should she sign the contract and then go merrily off on her Bermuda honeymoon, leaving the flat full of furniture? Or should she arrange to have the flat cleared and the furniture stored before she left? Persuaded by her prudent mother, she fixed on the Wednesday before her wedding for the removal and Wexford, who had the day off, promised to go with her to St John's Wood.
'We could go to Bermuda too,' said Dora to her husband.
'I know it was the custom for Victorian brides to take a friend with them on their honeymoon,' said Wexford, 'but surely even they didn't take their parents.'
'Darling, I don't mean at the same time. I mean we could go to Bermuda later on. When you get your holiday. We can afford it now we aren't paying for this wedding.'
'How about my new car? How about the new hall carpet? And I thought you'd decided life was insupportable without a freezer.'
'We couldn't have all those things anyway.'
'That's for sure,' said Wexford.
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wonderful holiday or a new car? A thousand
Dunds' worth of sunshine and warmth took
iority now, he reflected as he was driven over
Myringham and the crown court. The snow
is still lying and the bright weather had given
ice to freezing fog. But would he still feel like
is when it was sunny here and spring again?
icn the freezer and the carpet would seem the
ser option.
John Cooper was found guilty of breaking to and entering Sterries and of stealing six rer spoons, and, since he had previous |nvictions, sent to prison for six months, lexford was rather surprised to hear that one of fese convictions, though long in the past, was robbery with violence. Mrs Murray-Burgess in court and she flushed brick-red with tisfaction when the sentence was pronounced, roughout the proceedings she had been feing the dark, rather handsome, slouching )per in the awed and fascinated way one ?ks at a bull or a caged tiger. lit occurred to Wexfbrd to call in at Sterries on way back and impart the news to Natalie 10. He had promised to let her know the itcome. She would very likely be as delighted � her neighbour, and she could have her spoons :k now.
|A man who tried to be honest with himself, he Midered if this could be his sole motive for a it to Ploughman's Lane. After all, it was a
57
task Sergeant Martin or even Constable Loring could more properly have done. Was he, in common with those encircling men, attracted by Natalie? Could she have said of him, too, like Cleopatra with her fishing rod, 'Aha, you're caught'? Honestly he asked himself�and said an honest, almost unqualified no. She amused him, she intrigued him, he suspected she would be entertaining to watch at certain manipulating ploys, but he was not attracted. There remained with him a nagging little memory of how, in the music room at Sterries, before he had ever spoken to her, he had sensed her presence behind him as unpleasing. She was good to look at, she was undoubtedly clever, she was full of charm, yet wasn't there about her something snake-like? And although this image might dissolve when confronted by the real Natalie, out of her company he must think of her sinuous movements as reptilian and her marvellous eyes when cast down as hooded.
So in going to Sterries he knew he was in little danger. No one need tie him to the mast. He would simply be calling on Natalie Arno for an obligatory talk, perhaps a cup of tea, and the opportunity to watch a powerful personality at work with the weak. If the Zoffanys were still there, of course. He would soon know.
It was three o'clock on the afternoon of a dull day. Not a light showed in the Sterries windows. Still, many people preferred to sit in the dusk
58
er than anticipate the night too soon. He the bell. He rang and rang again, was ed to find himself not particularly .ppointed that there was no one at home, ter a moment's thought he walked down path to Sterries Cottage. Ted Hicks ered his ring. Yes, Mrs Arno was out. In , she had returned to London. Her friends gone and then she had gone, leaving him his wife to look after the house, oes she mean to come back?' 'm afraid I've no idea about that, sir. Mrs io didn't say.' Hicks spoke respectfully, he had far more the air of an oldioned servant than his wife. Yet again I felt, as he had felt with Muriel Hicks, at any moment the discreet speaker might into abuse, either heaping insults on e or dismissing her with contempt. But g like this happened. Hicks compressed lips and stared blankly at Wexford, though out meeting his eyes. 'Would you care to e in? I can give you Mrs Arno's London ss.'
y bother with it? He refused, thanked the , asked almost as an afterthought if the
was to be sold, ery probably, sir.' Hicks, stiff, soldierly t, unbent a little. This house will be. The and me, we couldn't stick it here now Sir [uel'sgorie.'
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It seemed likely that Natalie had taken her leave of Kingsmarkham and the town would not see her again. Perhaps she meant to settle in London or even return to America. He said something on these lines to Sheila as he drove her up to London on the following morning. But she had lost interest in Sterries and its future and was preoccupied with the morning paper which was carrying a feature about her and the forthcoming wedding. On the whole she seemed pleased with it, a reaction that astonished Wexford and Dora. They had been appalled by the description of her as the 'beautiful daughter of a country policeman' and the full-length photograph which showed her neither as Stewardess Curtis nor in one of her Royal Shakespeare Company roles, but reclining on a heap of cushions in little more than a pair of spangled stockings and a smallish fur.
'Dorset Stores It' was the slogan on the side of the removal van that had arrived early in Hamilton Terrace. Two men sat in its cab, glumly awaiting the appearance of the owner of the flat. Recognition of who that owner was mollified them, and on the way up in the lift the younger man asked Sheila if she would give him her autograph for his wife who hadn't missed a single instalment of Runway since the serial began.
The other man looked very old. Wexford was
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ig he was too old to be of much use until iw him lift Sheila's big bow-fronted chest of rers and set it like a light pack on his lulders. The younger man smiled at
Ps astonishment. ?ity you haven't got a piano,' he said. 'He les from the most famous piano-lifting ly in the country.'
Oxford had never before supposed that its of that kind ran in families or even that I might enjoy a reputation for such a skill. He &ed at the old man, who seemed getting oniCamargue's age, with new respect, icre are you taking all this stuff?' list was consulted. 'This piece and them and that chest up to Keats Grove and...' Fes, I mean what isn't going to Keats Grove.' town the warehouse. That's our warehouse Thornton Heath, Croydon way if you it. The lady's not got so much she'll need than one container.' He named the rental would have to pay per week for the ige of her tables and chairs, 's stacked up in this container, is it, and along with a hundred others? Suppose kaid you wanted it stored for a year and then Ichanged your mind and wanted to get, say, ^item out?'
it'd be no problem, guv'nor. I
t's yours, it? While you pay your rent you can do It you like about it, leave it alone if that's
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what you want like or inspect it once a week. Thanks very much, lady.' This last was addressed to Sheila who was dispensing cans of beer.
'Give us a hand, George,' said the old man.
He had picked up Sheila's four-poster on his own, held it several inches off the ground, then thought better of it. He and the man called George began dismantling it.
'You'd be amazed,' said George, 'the things that go on. We're like a very old-established firm and we've got stuff down the warehouse been stored since before the First War....'
'The Great War,' said the old man.
'OK, then, the Great War. We've got stuff been stored since before 1914. The party as stored it's dead and gone and the rent's like gone up ten, twenty times, but the family wants it kept and they go on paying. Furniture that's been stored twenty years, that's common, that's nothing out of the way. We got one lady, she put her grand piano in store 1936 and she's dead now, but her daughter, she keeps the rent up. She comes along every so often and we open up her container for her and let her have a look her piano's OK.'
'See if you can shift that nut, George,' said the old man.
By two they were finished. Wexford took Sheila out to lunch, to a little French restaurant in Blenheim Terrace, a far cry from Mr Haq's.
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^y shared a bottle of Domaine du Pare and as ford raised his glass and drank to her jiness he felt a rush of unaccustomed
icntality. She was so very much his sure. His heart swelled with pride when he people look at her, whisper together and
look again. For years now she had hardly
his, she had been something like public *rty, but after Saturday she would be rew's and lost to him for ever.... lenly he let out a bark of laughter at these idlin indulgences.
lat's funny, Pop darling?' ; was thinking about those removal men,' he
�
|e drove her up to Hampstead where she was ig the night and began the long haul back igsmarkham. Not very experienced in Ion traffic, he had left Keats Grove at four by the time he came to Waterloo Bridge id himself in the thick of the rush. It was seven when he walked, cross and tired, rshis house.
>ra came out to meet him in the hall. She her voice low. 'Reg, that friend of Sheila's was going to marry Manuel Camargue is . Dinah Whatever-it-is. )idn't you tell her Sheila wouldn't be back it?'
>ra, though aware that she must move with les, though aware that Sheila and Andrew 63
had been more or less living together for the past year, nevertheless still made attempts to present to the world a picture of her daughter as an oldfashioned maiden bride. Her husband's accusing look�he disapproved of this kind of Mrs Grundy-ish concealment�made her blush and say hastily:
'She doesn't want Sheila, she wants you. She's been here an hour, she insisted on waiting. She says...' Dora cast up her eyes. 'She says she didn't know till this morning that you were a policeman!'
Wedding presents were still arriving. The house wasn't big enough for this sort of influx, and now the larger items were beginning to take over the hall. He nearly tripped over an object which, since it was swathed in corrugated cardboard and brown paper, might have been a plant stand, a lectern or a standard lamp, and cursing under his breath made his way into the living room.
This time the alsatian had been left behind. Dinah Sternhold had been sitting by the hearth, gazing into the heart of the fire perhaps while preoccupied with her own thoughts. She jumped up when he came in and her round pale face grew pink.
'Oh, I'm so sorry to bother you, Mr Wexford. Believe me, I wouldn't be here if I didn't think it was absolutely�well, absolutely vital. I've delayed so long and I've felt so bad and now I
64
can't sleep with the worry.... But it wasn't till this morning I found out you were a detective chief inspector.'
'You read it in the paper,' he said, smiling. ' "Beautiful daughter of a country policeman."'
'Sheila never told me, you see. Why should she? I never told her my father's a bank manager.'
Wexford sat down. 'Then what you have to tell me is something serious, I suppose. Shall we have a drink? I'm a bit tired and you look as if you need Dutch courage.'
On doctor's orders, he could allow himself nothing stronger than vermouth but she, to his surprise, asked for whisky. That she wasn't used to it he could tell by the way she shuddered as she took her first sip. She lifted to him those greyish-brown eyes that seemed full of soft light. He had thought that face plain but it was not, and for a moment he could intuit what Camargue had seen in her. If his looks had been spiritual and sensitive so, superlatively, were hers. The old musician and this young creature had shared, he sensed, an approach to life that was gentle, impulsive and joyous.
There was no joy now in her wan features. They seemed convulsed with doubt and perhaps with fear.
'I know I ought to tell someone about this,' she began again. 'As soon as�as Manuel was dead I knew I ought to tell someone. I thought
65
of his solicitors but I imagined them listening to me and knowing I wasn't to--well, inherit, and thinking it was all sour grapes.... It seemed so--so wild to go to the police. But this morning when I read that in the paper--you see, I know you, you're Sheila's father, you won't... I'm afraid I'm not being very articulate. Perhaps you understand what I mean?'
'I understand you've been feeling diffident about giving some sort of information but I'm mystified as to what it is.'
'Oh, of course you are! The point is, I don't really believe it myself. I can't, it seems so-- well, outlandish. But Manuel believed it, he was so sure, so I don't think I ought to keep it to myself and just let things go ahead, do you?'
'I think you'd better tell me straight away, Mrs Sternhold. Just tell me what it is and then we'll have the explanations afterwards.'
She set down her glass. She looked a little away from him, the firelight reddening the side of her face.
'Well, then. Manuel told me that Natalie Arno, or the woman who calls herself Natalie Arno, wasn't his daughter at all. He was absolutely convinced she was an impostor.'
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CHAPTER SIX
[e said nothing and his face showed nothing of it he felt. She was looking at him now, the jubt intensified, her hands lifted and clasped rd together under her chin. In the firelight the >y on her finger burned and twinkled. fThere,' she said, 'that's it. It was something -to hesitate about, wasn't it? But I don't ly believe it. Oh, I don't mean he wasn't rellous for his age and his mind absolutely id. I don't mean that. But his sight was poor he'd worked himself into such an emotional te over seeing her, it was nineteen years, and Phaps She wasn't very kind and--oh, I don't >w! When he said she wasn't his daughter, was an impostor, and he'd leave her nothing ps will, I....' fpPexfbrd interrupted her. 'Why don't you tell
about it from the beginning?' J* Where is the beginning? From the time she, iwhoever she is....'
f Tell me about it from the time of her return *this country in November.' |Dora put her head round the door. He knew had come to ask him if he was ready for his ler but she retreated without a word. Dinah
lold said:
think I'm keeping you from your meal.'
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'It doesn't matter. Let's go back to November.'
'I only know that it was in November she came back. She didn't get in touch with Manuel until the middle of December�12 December it was. She didn't say anything about our getting married, just could she come and see him and something about healing the breach. At first she wanted to come at Christmas but when Manuel wrote back that that would be fine and I should be there and my parents, she said no, the first time she wanted to see him alone. It sounds casual, putting it like that, Manuel writing back and inviting her, but in fact it wasn't a bit. Getting her first letter absolutely threw him. He was very�well, excited about seeing her and rather confused and it
was almost as if he was afraid. I suggested he phone her�she gave a phone number�but he couldn't bring himself to that and it's true he was difficult on the phone if you didn't know him. His hearing was fine when he could see the speaker. Anyway, she suggested 10 January and we had the same excitement and nervousness all over again. I wasn't to be there or the Hickses, Muriel was to get the tea ready and leave him to make it and she was to get one of the spare rooms ready in case Natalie decided to stay.
'Well, two or three days before, it must have been about the 7th, a woman called Mrs Zoffany phoned. Muriel took the call. Manuel was
68
leep. This Mrs Zoffany said she was speaking behalf of Natalie who couldn't come on the because she had to go into hospital for a icck-up and could she come on the 19th jtead? Manuel got into a state when Muriel >ld him. I went over there in the evening and ie was very depressed and nervous, saying Fatalie didn't really want a reconciliation, itever she may have intended at first, she was 1st trying to get out of seeing him. You can igine. He went on about how he was going to ie soon and at any rate that would be a blessing yr me, not to be tied to an old man et cetera. All msense, of course, but natural, I think. He ms longing to see her. It's a good thing I haven't rt a jealous nature. Lots of women would have m jealous.'
Perhaps they would. Jealousy knows nothing age discrepancies, suitability. Camargue, lought Wexford, had chosen for his second fe a surrogate daughter, assuming his true mghter would never reappear. No wonder, shen she did, that emotions had run high. He id only:
'I take it that it was on the 19th she came?' *Yes. In the afternoon, about three. She came train from Victoria and then in a taxi from ie station. Manuel asked the Hickses not to iterrupt them and Ted even took Nancy away the afternoon. Muriel left tea prepared on table in the drawing room and there was