Patricia Wentworth - Beggar’s Choice

I began to say “I’m afraid-” but she stopped me.

“I’m not. I’m not the least bit afraid-there’s nothing to be afraid about. Let’s get this right out into the light and have a look at it. Who told you all this?”

I looked back at her and tried to remember. She held my wrist tight.

“You weren’t at the wedding, were you?” she said.

I never saw anything so confident as her eyes.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You couldn’t have been. Nobody was. There wasn’t any wedding for you to be at. If fifty bishops all stood in a row and said they’d married Peter in Westminster Abbey, I shouldn’t believe them!”

She let go of me and sat bolt upright again. She had the air of sitting in judgment. If I’d had anything on my conscience, I should have wanted to clear out. Cocksure wasn’t the word for it.

“Now!” she said. “Did Peter tell you he was married?”

I was trying to think. I remember Peter and Fay going about together, and I remembered Peter saying “Look after Fay for me,” when she and I went to see him off. No, I didn’t-I remembered-

Corinna didn’t give me time.

“Did he? Did he tell you himself? Or did she tell you?”

I remembered.

What I remembered was Fay telling me what Peter had said. It came back in the very tones of her voice-“Peter says you’re to look after me for him. You will-won’t you?” And then, “We’re married. Didn’t he tell you? We’ve been married a month, but it’s a secret.” And then she cried and said, “Don’t tell him I told you-he’ll be so angry-but I can’t bear it all alone. You mustn’t tell him, but you can say nice things about me when you write, to cheer him up.”

“Did Peter tell you he was married?” said Corinna.

“No,” I said.

“Who told you?”

“Fay did.”

“And asked you not to tell Peter she’d told you.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s what I should have done if I’d been telling a lot of lies and didn’t want to be found out.”

I was appalled. It didn’t seem possible-but then it didn’t seem possible that Peter-

“Are you going on being afraid?” said Corinna in a little taunting voice.

I didn’t say anything. I was remembering a heap of little things.

“Well?” said Corinna.

“We’ll have to make sure,” I said.

She gave a judicial nod.

“Right away. I’m going to cable Peter, and I’m going to see Fay Everitt just as fast as I can get to her. And I’m going to ask her where she was married, and if she puts up a bluff and says where, then we’re going along to inspect that register, and if it’s got Peter’s name on it-” She paused.

“Well?” I said.

The color rose brightly in her cheeks.

“Well, then it’ll be just the meanest kind of nightmare, and you can pinch me till I wake up, Car Fairfax.”

When she heard the knock on her door, Fay Everitt turned slowly without the least suspicion that she was turning to meet a reckoning. She had spent a lazy afternoon- first a hot bath; then a little sleep; then a novel, chocolates, and some of those cigarettes which Car so unreasonably disapproved of. She was one of those people who could be desperately unhappy or desperately frightened at one moment, and the next forget, for the time at least, that there was anything to be unhappy about. She could come to the surface of her thoughts and move about there with, as it were, a thin sheet of ice between her and the things that moved darkly below. At any moment the ice might break. It was breaking now, though she did not know it.

She turned, blew a little puff of smoke into the already hazy air, and called,

“Come in!”

Even when the door opened and Car stood aside to let Corinna Lee pass him, her only feeling was one of sharp annoyance because he was not alone.

They came in, and Car shut the door. Corinna spoke at once. She had no intention of shaking hands with Fay. She stood a yard from the door, small, determined, purposeful, with round gray eyes that were very brightly aware. They took in the room with its green curtains-the bed, low and couch-like, with a green spread which was just out of key; the shabby carpet; the old chair, with one very new cushion, gold and green with a black spider embroidered on it; the mantelshelf, dominated by a large framed photograph of Peter. Peter’s eyes in the photograph looked straight at Corinna.

She spoke at once in a little composed voice:

“I’m very pleased to find you in, Miss Everitt, because there’s something I want to ask you. And I don’t think I’ll sit down, thank you”-this as Fay waved her towards a chair-“because it won’t take you any time at all just to answer what I want to ask.”

Fay stiffened. She was standing in the middle of the room with her book in her left hand and the right at her lips replacing her cigarette. She paused, stared, lifted her eyebrows at Car, and remarked,

“Americans are always in a hurry, I suppose.”

“Well, I’m in a hurry,” said Corinna briskly. “I’m in a hurry to know whether it is true that you say you are Mrs. Peter Lymington.”

The book fell out of Fay’s hand with a crash. She jerked round to face Car on Corinna’s right.

“You told her! How dare you?” And then and there she stopped, choked down the anger that was carrying her out of her depth, and faced Corinna again. “I have never called myself Mrs. Peter Lymington!”

“Have you ever said you were married to him?” The hand with the cigarette fell to Fay’s side. “Did you tell Car Fairfax you were married to Peter?”

There was no answer.

Corinna did not move. Her small gray-gloved hands rested one on either side of the big lump of rose quartz which covered the catch of her gray lizard bag. Her small gray-shod feet were planted firmly. Her stern young gaze never left Fay’s frightened face. It had been angry at first, but it was frightened now. The ice had broken and let her down amongst all those dark fears which sometimes came out at night and brought a reign of terror with them.

Corinna spoke again in the same clear voice:

“Did you tell Car Fairfax that you were married to Peter? Car says you did. Is he telling a lie?”

Fay looked at Car. For three years she had looked to him whenever there was anything unpleasant to be done. She looked to him now.

He came forward and put a hand on her arm.

“Haven’t you got anything to say, Fay?”

She shook her head.

“You’re not married to Peter?”

She shook it again.

“Why did you say you were?”

Fay moved back a step, freeing herself. She spoke for the first time since the questions had begun; and she spoke to Car, not to Corinna:

“Tell her to go away,” she said only just above her breath.

“Well, I don’t want to stay,” said Corinna soberly. She turned and went out of the room without another word.

Car followed her down the stairs.

“Do you want a taxi?”

“No-I guess I’d like to walk.”

“I must go back. This has got to be cleared right up.”

She nodded, and on an impulse put her face up to be kissed.

He kissed the soft round cheek, and both of them felt a certain comfort. The kiss seemed to bring the pleasant ordered ways of family affection into sight again. He patted her shoulder, and she went out, her eyes not stern any longer but vaguely troubled. Why should any one tell stupid lies like that? Why should they?

Car went back. He was shocked, and he was beginning to be angry. He didn’t understand what had happened, or why it had happened. He felt rather as if some one had struck him in the face; he would be angry as soon as he got over the first shock of surprise.