Patricia Wentworth - Beggar’s Choice

“I don’t know,” said Fanny twittering. “They didn’t say. They’re looking for a man who got away over the roofs- from a house down the street-and they think he might be here, because our skylight wasn’t bolted. They’ve been searching the house.”

“I heard them,” said the old lady very dryly. “Did they find him?”

“No, they didn’t. And of course I wouldn’t let them come in here, because, as I told them, you never leave the room, and I’d been here all the evening, and no one could possibly have come in without our seeing them, so of course there wasn’t the slightest need to search this room. I kept telling them so.”

“Dear me, Fanny,” said the old lady, “you’re very flustered about it all. I should have been delighted to see them, I’m sure. Have they gone?”

“No,” said Fanny. “But I told them they couldn’t see you and they had no right to bother you.”

“Rubbish!” said the old lady. “Open the door!”

I hadn’t quite shut the wardrobe, because I’d been afraid that Fanny would hear the click. I was standing behind the mahogany panel with a piece of fur tickling the back of my neck, and a silk dress hanging down over my left shoulder and rustling when I breathed. There was a strong smell of old clothes and lavender. I was thankful it wasn’t napthalene, because napthalene always makes me sneeze. It would have rather torn it if I had sneezed just as the policeman was coming into the room. I should say by the sound of his voice that he was standing about a yard away from me, just inside the same door that I had come in by.

I wanted to laugh. He sounded so awfully stodgy and embarrassed and polite.

“Sorry to trouble you, ma’am.”

And then the old lady, as sweet as honey:

“It’s no trouble at all, constable.”

“I understand you’ve been in this room all the time, ma’am.”

“All the time,” she said.

“And no one could come in without your seeing them, I take it?”

“Quite impossible,” she said. “If you’ll come over here by the bed, you will see for yourself.”

I heard him cross the floor.

“And the other lady was here too?”

“Until she went down to see who was knocking us up so late.”

I heard him come back again.

“Well, ma’am, I’m very sorry you’ve been troubled, but we’ve got to do our duty.”

“It’s most agreeable to feel that we are so well looked after,” said the old lady. “Good-night, constable.”

He said “Good-night” and shut the door. I could hear him speaking to the other man on the landing. Then one of them went upstairs and the other down. After a minute the front door shut. I began to wonder what was going to happen next.

Miss Fanny came back all in a flurry. I suppose she’d been seeing them off-or one of them; for I suspected that the second man had gone out by way of the skylight.

“You’re not upset, dear Aunt? Now you are not to let it keep you awake. I’m sure I tried to prevent his coming in, but you mustn’t let it excite you.”

The old lady bit her head off.

“Don’t be a fool, Fanny!” she said. “Or if that’s too much to expect, don’t be more of a fool than you can help! And if you want something to do, go and make me a cup of thin arrowroot. And remember it’s got to simmer, so if you come back and say it’s done in less than ten minutes, I shall know that it’s not fit to drink.”

I just caught a glimpse of Fanny as she went past my chink-a kind, limp, poking sort of woman with eyes like pale blue gooseberries, and light sandy hair that was turning gray. She had on the kind of clothes that make you feel that they must have been picked up secondhand a bit at a time. She stopped by the door. I could hear her fidgeting with the handle.

“I don’t like leaving you.”

“And why not?” said the old lady very short and sharp.

“You won’t be nervous? You’re sure? I don’t think I ought to leave you.”

“Am I to make my arrowroot myself?” said the old lady in an ominous voice. “I didn’t ask you to think.”

Fanny let go of the handle in a hurry. I heard her fuss away downstairs, and I opened my wardrobe door and came out.

The old lady wasn’t looking at me. She had gone back to her cross-word.

“Seven,” she said-“it must be seven letters. Now, what’s a word with seven letters which means fine-drawn?”

“What about tenuous?” I said.

“Good!” she said. “Good-good-good! Yes-seven letters! That’s broken the back of it! I shouldn’t have slept a wink if I hadn’t got the better of the thing.”

She put down her pencil and beckoned to me.

“Come over here and tell me what you’ve been up to. Fanny’s safe for ten minutes, and I want to know.”

“I really haven’t done anything,” I said.

“Nobody ever has. What do they say you’ve done?”

“I’m not quite sure.”

“Then why did you run away?”

“Because it was the best thing to do.” I thought this sounded rather bad, so I went on in a hurry: “I really haven’t done anything, but I mightn’t be able to clear myself.”

“Because of some one else?” she said.

I nodded.

“A woman, I suppose? And you’re in love with her? Is that it?”

I felt myself getting red; but it was because I was angry, not because I was embarrassed.

“No, it’s not,” I said.

“Then why don’t you clear yourself?”

I didn’t answer that, and she saw I wasn’t going to. She took up her pencil again and tapped with it on the writing-block.

“Well, well-what are you going to do next?”

I didn’t know. There would probably still be a man in the street, and I didn’t suppose they’d finished searching the roofs yet.

“Your best way is to wait till Fanny comes up with my arrowroot. Then you can get out into the yard and over the wall into the back garden of one of the houses in Ely Street. If you go out of the front door, you may just walk into a trap.”

“I say-you’re most frightfully good!” I said.

“I hope the Recording Angel thinks so,” she said. Then she put out her hand and beckoned to me.

I came close up to the bed.

“What’s your name?” she asked, looking up at me under her queer thick eyebrows.

“Carthew Fairfax.”

“Do they call you all that?”

“No-Car.”

“Is your mother alive?”

“No.”

“Grandmother? Aunts?”

“No.”

“I thought not. Have you got a sweetheart?”

The thought of Isobel came over me like the sun shining suddenly on a dark day.

I said, “Yes.”

“Will you tell me her name?”

“Isobel.”

She laughed in a queer sort of way.

“Mine is Ginevra Cambodia Stubbs. That’s funny enough for a cross-word-isn’t it? Well, if things turn out all right for you, will you come and see me some day?”

I said, “I’d like to.” I tried to thank her, but she stopped me.

“I live entirely surrounded by old women. My doctor’s the worst of them-what Ellen calls ‘a proper old maid.’ She’s one herself, so she ought to know. So is Fanny. They’re all kind, they’re all fussy, and they all bore me to death. I like young men, and as I’ve no sons, and no grandsons, I never see one. I’ve watched you from the window going up and down-I told you that, didn’t I?” She stopped, picked up her pencil, and tapped on the block. “If I don’t do crosswords, I should get as soft in the head as Fanny. Now you ought to be going. You’d better go down to the next landing and wait in the drawing-room till you hear Fanny come up with the arrowroot. You can get into the yard through the scullery. There’s a box of matches on the mantelpiece, if you haven’t got any. You’d better not turn on the electric light, because Ellen sleeps in the basement.”