Patricia Wentworth - Beggar’s Choice

I got out Mrs. Stubbs’ match-box and struck a light. The spurt of the match sounded horribly loud. It was like hearing it through a megaphone. I felt as if the people in the dead houses on the other side of the Crescent must hear it too. The little yellow flame burned straight up in the still air. I saw the underside of branches, black hummocks of bushes, and the wall, like the side of a house. The match burnt my finger and went out. I lit another, sheltering it with my hand. I couldn’t see my handkerchief anywhere. I struck six matches before I saw it, caught up on a low, thin branch just over my head.

It took me ten minutes to find the package, because it had pitched a good deal farther in and lay between two evergreen bushes. I had just picked it up, when I heard some one coming through the bushes, moving slowly and cautiously.

I moved too. I don’t know if he heard me, but I couldn’t just stand there and let him walk into me. I got about half a dozen paces and dived as noiselessly as I could into the shrubbery. The ground was soft and newly forked. The shrubs grew close together, and were well above my head.

I stood still, with an aromatic smell of bruised cypress all round me, and waited to see what was going to happen next.

What did happen was rather startling. The beam of an electric torch cut the dark. It was as sudden as a lightning flash. The beam moved rapidly, up, down, sideways, and came to rest in a bar of light right across the bushes where I was standing. It was on a level with my shoulders. I could see a black tracery of cypress against it like seaweed.

There as a gap by my head. I bent a little, looked back along the beam, and saw the black bulk of a biggish man. He was holding the torch up. I could just see his white shirt-front. I guessed it was Arbuthnot Markham.

I’d got as far as that, when he turned the light and it went straight into my eyes. I had just time to shut them. Eyes catch the light worse than anything. If I’d had them open, he’d have spotted me for certain. As it was, I hoped for the best. The gap was a very little one.

The light flickered away again and turned in the opposite direction. I opened my eyes, and saw it pick out the bricks and moss on the wall. At that moment I heard some one call Arbuthnot Markham’s name:

“Arbuthnot! Arbuthnot!” And then again, “Arbuthnot!”

It was Anna’s voice.

I wasn’t really surprised. I had come back here to get the package, but I think I had had an idea all the time that I might run across Arbuthnot and Anna. There was the business of the telegrams. Isobel had had a bogus telegram asking her to meet me, and I had had another asking me to meet her, in Olding Crescent. In the back of my mind I was pretty sure that Anna had sent both of them; and if she had, it seemed likely that she would be somewhere around. The only thing was, it was now getting on for four hours since I had met Isobel. It seemed a bit late for Anna to be wandering round Arbuthnot’s garden with him. However, that was her affair; it certainly wasn’t mine.

Arbuthnot turned with the torch in his hand.

“I told you not to come.”

I liked the way he said it. I’d often wanted to put Anna in her place. It did me good to hear the rasp in his voice.

She came rustling through the bushes.

“I didn’t come till you turned the torch on. Did you see anything?”

“No.”

“This is where I saw the light.”

“Imagination!” said Arbuthnot.

“It wasn’t. Some one struck a match.”

I was glad to hear her say “a match,” because I suppose first and last I had struck about three dozen. I gave myself marks for not having chucked them about. If she’d only seen one match struck-

He was speaking:

“You’ve got too much imagination. There’s no one here.”

“Some one struck a match.” She sounded positive and obstinate.

He began to flick the light to and fro. Then he walked past me. I could hear him moving towards the drive, and after a moment coming back again.

“There’s no one about. You’ve got the jumps.” Then, in a different tone, “Well, if you’re going, you ought to go.”

“I’m going,” said Anna.

“Damned nonsense, I call it,” said Arbuthnot Markham. “Why can’t you stay here and have done with it?”

“Because I haven’t finished my work.”

He threw back his head and laughed.

“You’re damn funny when you talk in that high-falutin’ way! Come off it, my dear!”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Anna had the pathetic stop out.

“Oh yes, you do-and it doesn’t go down with me. You’re a very pretty woman, but that’s no reason why you should talk like a fool.”

My heart warmed to Arbuthnot. Anna knuckled down to him in the most astonishing way. She said, in quite an ordinary human voice, that it was getting late and she thought she ought to go.

Arbuthnot laughed again.

“You might as well stay here to-night as come away with me to-morrow,” he said.

Anna took him up with a sharp cry.

“To-morrow?”

“That’s what I said.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m afraid you must, my dear.”

“Why? What has happened?”

There was a pause. I wanted to hear the answer as badly as Anna did. What had happened?

“I’m leaving to-morrow instead of next week,” said Arbuthnot.

Anna gave a sort of gasp.

“Why?”

“My affair, my dear.”

She said, “Isn’t it mine too?” in a melting sort of voice.

Arbuthnot didn’t melt. He said,

“You can come, or you can stay behind.”

“Don’t you care which I do?”

“Oh, I’d rather you came. You’d find it more comfortable than traveling by yourself later on.”

“Do you think I’d come later on?”

“Oh, you’d come all right.”

She gave a little gasp-anger, I thought, but I wasn’t sure; it may have been fright. I could see she was afraid of him.

I could hear him make a sudden movement. I think he took hold of her by the shoulders.

“Now look here, Anna! You’ve got to drop all this play-acting. I’ve let you alone because it seemed to amuse you, and it didn’t hurt me. Now my plans are changed, and you’ve got to drop it.”

“What do you mean? Oh! You’re hurting me!”

“No, I’m not. I mean you’ve got to drop all this revenge business. It isn’t pretty, and it doesn’t amuse me any more.”

She gave an angry laugh at that.

“If I drop it, it’s because it’s done,” she said.

“Oh, it’s done, is it? What a fool you are, Anna!”

Something in the easy sarcasm of his tone must have startled her.

“What do you mean?” she said in a new breathless voice.

“What I say.”

“Arbuthnot-tell me what you mean!”

“I’m going to. I’d like it to be a warning to you. Perhaps you’ll think of it next time you try to go behind my back.”

“I-didn’t.”

“Oh yes, you did-you tried to square Bobby to get you some dope, so that you could plant it on that unlucky devil Fairfax.”

“Bobby-promised-”

“Bobby’s got himself into a nasty mess.” Arbuthnot’s voice hardened. “What the silly fool wanted to touch this dope business for, I don’t know. Fosicker got him into it, and I’ve had to get him out of it.”

“Oh!” said Anna.

Arbuthnot went on in a cold anger.

“You played it pretty low down on Bobby, promising to marry him.”

“Oh-I didn’t!”

“Bobby thought you did. Now do you really suppose I’d let him do anything so risky as plant Fairfax with dope that any detective would trace back through you as easily as falling off a log? Not much, my dear!”

I could hear Anna twist herself free and stamp her foot.