The Girl in Blue (11 page)

‘It
might be on the floor.’

‘What
do you mean it might be on the floor?’

‘Fallen
there. Sudden puff of wind.’

Even to
Crispin this did not seem a very bright suggestion, and Willoughby’s opinion of
it was also low. There was another silence. Eventually he spoke.

‘Don’t
be an ass, Crips.’

‘No,
Bill.’

‘Sudden
puffs of wind!’

‘I see
what you mean, Bill.’ But why —’

‘— do I
think this woman has got away with it? Who else could have? I told you she and
Pyle had been staying with me. You don’t suppose a reputable corporation lawyer
like Pyle would steal things.’

‘Nor
would a charming woman like Barney,’ said Crispin with spirit.

‘Charming
woman, my foot. She’s a snake of the worst type. I know she’s got my miniature,
and I’ll tell you why. The night before they left I was showing it to them at
dinner, and Homer Pyle, though he tried to be polite, was obviously not
interested. Twice I caught him yawning. The blasted female, on the other hand,
gushed over it. Kept picking it up and fondling it and saying how cute it was.
She must have made up her mind there and then that she was going to have it,
and after we had all gone to bed she crept down and pocketed it. It’s the only
possible solution. And I want it back, dammit.’

‘I can
quite understand that, Bill.’

‘And I’m
going to get it. And that’s where you come in.’

‘Me,
Bill?’

‘Yes,
you. I didn’t ring you up to hear you say how sorry you were and what a
disagreeable thing to have happened and all that. I want action, not sympathy.
She’s taken that miniature with her to Mellingham. Go to her, tax her with her
crime, and tell her that if she doesn’t give it up immediately, you’ll send for
the police.’

‘Oh, I
couldn’t.’

‘Then
search her room.’

‘Oh, I
couldn’t.’

‘Why
not?’

‘Oh, I
couldn’t.’

‘Listen,
Crips, I know you’re always hard up. I’ll give you a hundred pounds if you can
choke my
Girl in Blue
out of her.’

A wave
of horror and indignation swept over Crispin. He had the illusion that his
hair, what there was of it, was standing erect on his head. Much as he liked
gold, this offer of it now revolted him. He drew himself to his full height, a
wasted gesture seeing that Willoughby was many miles away, and uttered another
of his dramatic monosyllables.

‘No!’

‘Two
hundred.’

‘No! I
am sorry, Bill, but I absolutely refuse to have any part in this. Mrs Clayborne
is a woman I respect and admire, and I positively decline to wound her feelings
by bringing baseless accusations against her.’

‘Baseless,
did you say?’

‘Yes,
baseless. You have no reason whatsoever for your foul suspicions.’

‘Except
this, that she’s a notorious shoplifter. You didn’t know that, did you? There
isn’t a department store in New York where they don’t have a special squad of
detectives on duty when they see her coming along to do a bit of shopping. That’s
why she’s over in England. She made America too hot for her.’

Crispin
had heard enough.

‘You
ought to be ashamed of yourself, Bill. Goodbye,’ he said coldly, and replaced
the receiver with a bang.

2

For several minutes after
he had put an end to this regrettable scene Crispin sat quivering as a man
might who had come safe but shaken through a testing motor accident. His
thoughts were for the most part chaotic, but he was conscious of a definite
surge of gratitude to the late Alexander Graham Bell for having invented the
telephone. Face to face with his forceful brother he could never have taken
that splendidly firm stand. From boyhood up Willoughby had always dominated
him, and only Mr Bell’s co-operation had kept him from doing so now. Thanks to
that human benefactor’s ingenuity in enabling the weak to triumph over the
strong at long range, he had borne himself with a fortitude and dignity which
would have won the plaudits of the most captious critic. (Chippendale had been
greatly impressed. It had come as a complete surprise to him that Crispin had
it in him.)

As the
after-effects of the battle of wills began to wear off, feelings of a more
tolerant nature took the place of the indignation with which he had been
seething. He could see now that one must make allowances for Willoughby. It was
monstrous that he should have let his bereavement carry him away to the extent
of inventing all that wild stuff about shoplifting, but no doubt quiet
reflection would make him see how mistaken he had been. One must, at any rate,
hope so. There was no real vindictiveness in Willoughby, it was just that he
sometimes spoke without thinking.

He had
reached this charitable conclusion and was preparing to go out again into the
afternoon sunshine, hoping for a resumption of his interrupted conversation
with Barney, when the door opened and Chippendale came in.

Reminded
by the sight of him that he had other troubles beside those arising from a
brother’s unchivalrous attitude towards a woman he respected and admired,
Crispin regarded him without elation. The ‘Well?’ he uttered was entirely free
from geniality. He had not forgotten that he had promised Ernest Simms that he
would speak to this man on the subject of his misdemeanours, and the task was
one from which his sensitive soul shrank. Speaking meant speaking severely, and
he was good at that only over the telephone.

If
Chippendale noticed any absence of warmth, it did not appear to distress him.
He spoke as one old friend to another.

‘Like a
word with you, cully.’

‘Don’t
call me cully!’

‘No
harm in being matey, is there, chum?’

In her
recent remarks on this employee of the people who did the repairs about the
place Barney had described him as a little shrimp, and any impartial observer
would have felt bound to support her in this view. There were only some
sixty-six inches of him, and in the opinion of most of those who knew him that
was quite enough. He was not a physically attractive man. His complexion was
muddy, his ears stuck out like the handles of an antique Greek vase, and he had
the beak and eyes of a farmyard fowl. Seeing him, one wondered how Marlene Hibbs
could enjoy his society, even though a free bicycle lesson went with it. That
he was entrusted with responsible work by the firm he represented was
presumably due to the fact that those who engage the services of broker’s men
place more value on intelligence than on comeliness.

‘And
don’t call me chum,’ said Crispin. “What do you want?’ In his lighter moments
Chippendale would have replied that he wanted ten thousand a year, a
Rolls-Royce, a villa in the South of France and a diamond tiara, but he was
here on business.’

‘Just a
brief word, mate,’ he said. ‘I must begin by saying that when you and your
brother Bill were on the buzzer just now I happened inadvertently to be on the
extension.’

Crispin
quivered in every limb. Even his moustache became mobile. He found a difficulty
in speaking, but after a moment managed it.

‘How
dare you listen to a private conversation!’

‘And if
you don’t mind me saying so, cocky,’ Chippendale proceeded, rightly taking the
view that this, if a question, was merely a rhetorical one, ‘you were a mug to
tell him off the way you did. If a bloke offers you two hundred quid, the least
you can do is be civil. Civility never hurt anyone. Costs nothing, as somebody
said. I learned that in Sunday school.’

Having
administered this rebuke, Chippendale took a chair and put his feet up on the
table.

‘You
were right, though, in saying you wouldn’t go to the dame and tax her with her
crime,’ he resumed. ‘That wouldn’t get you anywhere. All she’d have to do would
be to deny it what’s the word, begins with a c, categorically,’ said Chippendale,
modestly proud of the scope of his vocabulary, ‘and then where would you be?
Where’s your evidence? But searching her room, that’s another matter. When Bill
suggested that, he was talking sense. And as you probably won’t want to do it
yourself, you not being used to that sort of thing, what you do is hand the job
over to me. And you’re in luck, because I’m an experienced searcher. Had a lot
of practice when I was a nipper. Whenever Father won a bit on the dogs, he’d
hide the stuff around the house so that Mother couldn’t get her hooks on it,
and Mother would pay me a small royalty on any of it I could find, and I always
found most of it. It won’t take me long to locate that miniature, whatever a
miniature is, sort of a small picture, isn’t it; they had some in the
drawing-room of a house I was staying at last year, kept ‘em in a glass case. I’ll
spot it all right. Just a matter of keeping one’s eyes open. We now have to ask
ourselves,’ said Chippendale, this having been disposed of, ‘a very important
question. Is Bill good for two hundred quid? It’s a lot of money, but from the
tone of his voice he seems to be a man of substance. These rich blokes get a
sort of something into the way they talk. Kind of an authoritative note, if you
know what I mean, like a referee sending someone off the field at a football
match. So we’ll take it the two hundred’s there all right and we can go ahead.’

Except
for odd bubbling sounds from time to time, horror and indignation had held
Crispin dumb during the course of this long and revolting soliloquy. He now
found speech.

‘You
are not to search Mrs Clayborne’s room!’ he bleated, and Chippendale smiled
indulgently. These novices! Always getting the wind up.

‘I know
what you’re thinking, chum. You’re saying to yourself Suppose something goes
wrong and I get copped. Well, of course, if I did, the balloon would certainly
go up all right. Everybody would be telling you to send for the police and have
me bunged into the nick, and you’d say No, you didn’t want to bung the poor barstard
into the nick because maybe it’s his first offence and he yielded to sudden
temptation. And then they’d say Well, if you won’t jug him, chuck him out, and
you’d say I can’t chuck him out, because he’s here in an official capacity, and
they’d say How do you mean, an official capacity, and then it would all come
out about you having the brokers in and what that would do to your social
prestige would be plenty. But don’t you worry, cully, I won’t be copped, not if
you do your bit all right. Your job is to get the dame out of the way while I
operate. You say to her “Let’s you and me go for a stroll round the estate,
baby,” and off you go and I pop in. Nothing to it. Though it’s a pity she’s got
a suite and not just a bedroom, because if it was just a bedroom, it’d be
simple. I’d go straight for the top of the cupboard, because that’s where women
always put stuff they want to hide. With a sitting-room what you might call the
scope of enquiry broadens. I may have to bust open drawers and what not. I must
remember to take a chisel. And now,’ said Chippendale, ‘about the split. You
providing the bloke who’s putting up the money and me doing the active work, I’d
suggest a straight fifty-fifty.’

All the
nausea and loathing which had been accumulating in Crispin since this man’s
entry to the room came to a head. He would have given much to have been able to
substitute for his customary bleat the organ tones of his brother Bill, but he
did his best with what he had.

‘I
forbid you to go near Mrs Clayborne’s suite,’ he came as close to thundering as
his vocal cords would allow. ‘Get out!’

Chippendale
stared at him, amazed.

‘You
mean you won’t sponsor the enterprise?’

‘That
is what I mean.

‘Not
for all that lovely splosh?’

‘Damn
the lovely splosh.’

The
deal’s off?’

‘Yes,
it is. Get out.’

‘Cor,
chase my aunt Fanny up a gum tree,’ muttered Chippendale. It was an expression
habitual with him when, as now, he was too astounded to say anything else.

3

Had there been an auditor
of the two conversations just recorded, an auditor capable of hearing what was
said at both, he could scarcely have failed to be impressed by the nobility of
Crispin’s attitude throughout. Here, he would have murmured to himself, is a
man so fiscally crippled that his home is bulging with broker’s men and in
order to continue functioning he has to borrow two hundred and three pounds six
and fourpence from his brother Bill, yet when this same brother Bill offers him
a colossal sum to accuse a woman of stealing a miniature, he refuses because
she is a woman he respects and admires and he doesn’t want to hurt her
feelings. And when the tempter suggests searching her room and securing the
miniature by stealth, he dismisses him haughtily from his presence, saying that
nothing would induce him to countenance such an outrage. The age of chivalry is
not dead, the murmurer would have murmured, realizing that it was just
behaviour of this sort that used to get the Chevalier Bayard such rave notices
in his day.