Patricia Wentworth: Through The Wall

“You remember Maureen Potter, Ina-she was in the sixth when we first went to school. She married someone with a lot of money. She came in with her mother. I think dividing the house was her idea really, and she said at once, ‘You’re Marian Brand, aren’t you? Miss Fisher told me you were working here. How do you like it?’ And she asked after you, and said how pretty you were, and said something about coming to see us. But I don’t suppose she’ll have time-she’s only here for a few days.”

There was never anything more exciting than that. Of course if Cyril was at home, everything was different. Sometimes he came back with plenty of money, and for a few days life became almost too exciting. He made love to her in an exigent, masterful way, he took her out to lunch, to tea, to dinner. And then either the money ran out or he became bored-Cyril found it terribly easy to be bored-and he would go off again with an airy “Goodbye-I’ll be seeing you.” It was worse when he came back without any money at all, because that was when Marian put her foot down and kept it there. Cyril could have house-room, and the same meals that she and Ina had, but no more. If he wanted money for drinks or cigarettes, or even for bus fares, he must earn it. Cyril would stick his hands in his pockets and stride dramatically up and down the sitting-room telling Ina just what he thought about the meanness, the callous hard-heartedness of Marian’s behaviour. Ina could, of course, see his point. A man must have some money in his pocket-he must be able to buy a packet of cigarettes and stand a friend a drink. But she could see Marian’s point of view just as clearly, and sometimes she was tactless enough to say so.

“But, darling, she really hasn’t got it. We only just manage as it is.”

It didn’t go down at all well. Cyril would pause in the current stride and give a sardonic laugh.

“That’s what she tells you! She would! And you take her part! You don’t care how much I’m humiliated!”

At which point Ina was apt to dissolve into tears. Taking one thing with another, the dullness of the times when Cyril was away was preferable to the strain and exhaustion of the times when he was here.

Tonight Ina could forget everything and feel sick with longing for his presence. When he had been away for some time she could, and did, superimpose the hero of her latest novel upon her recollections of Cyril. It helped a lot. And now, when she was feeling so frightened about Marian, she thought how wonderful it would be to have Cyril’s arms round her, and his voice telling her how stupid it was to get the wind up. In the book she had finished at tea-time Pendred Cothelstone had had a very hearty way with feminine fears. The longing she felt was actually a longing for someone who would be hearty about Marian not being in at half past nine after saying she would be back by seven.

Half an hour later it is doubtful whether Pendred himself could have reassured her. Mrs. Deane had been up again with a fresh batch of stories. This time they were about people who had disappeared and were never heard of again.

“There was a gentleman, I forget his name, but he was walking down Victoria Street with his wife-rather a lot of people about and the pavement crowded, so she got a step or two ahead of him, but talking all the time if you see what I mean. Well, presently he didn’t answer something she’d said, and she turned round and he wasn’t there, and from that day to this there wasn’t a word or whisper, or anyone who could say what had happened. Just vanished right there in Victoria Street in the middle of the afternoon. And she never even got to know whether she was a widow or not, poor thing.”

“Oh, Mrs. Deane, don’t!”

“Well, my dear, you can’t get away from it, such things do happen, and no good worrying or upsetting yourself. Never meet trouble half way-that’s what my poor husband used to say, and I daresay he was right, though, I usen’t to agree with him. Better be prepared for the worst, I used to tell him, and then if it turns out all right there’s no harm done.”

It was half past ten before a taxi stopped at the door and Marian Brand got out. She had had to borrow the money to pay for it, because her bag was still somewhere under the wreckage. She thanked the driver, and he gave her his arm to help her out and up the steps, because now that it was all over she was stiff and aching from head to foot. Her key was in the lost bag, so she had to ring the bell. And then there was Mrs. Deane, opening the door on the chain in the manner of one who expects armed burglars, and Ina running down the stairs to push her aside.

“Oh, Marian-where have you been? I thought something had happened. Oh!”

The “Oh!” came as the door was shut and the passage light showed quite unmistakably that something really had happened. The dust and blood had been washed from Marian’s face, but there was a dark bruise on her forehead and a narrow line of strapping above it. There had been so little left of her hat that it had not been worth while to bring it away. The right-hand sleeve of her suit had been wrenched from the armhole, and the skirt was fit for nothing but a rag-bag.

“Marian!”

“Oh, Miss Brand!”

The two horrified faces swam in a haze. Marian heard herself say,

“It’s nothing, really. There was an accident-but I’m quite all right.”

She groped her way to the foot of the stairs and sat down on the second step.

Cyril Felton came home on the fourth day after the accident. Someone drew his attention to a paragraph in the evening paper, and he took the first train back. Not too pleased to discover that his wife and sister-in-law had gone to London for the day, but Mrs. Deane was in a chatty mood and more than willing to invite him to tea in her sitting-room and tell him all she knew. If it was impossible to regard him as a good husband, she did think him very handsome and romantic, and she derived considerable satisfaction from the fact that she had just done her hair in what her “Why be dowdy?” column called “a queenly style.” She began to get out her best tea-set.

“I don’t know a thing, Mrs. Deane, except what I saw in the paper.”

“Oh, Mr. Felton-fancy their not letting you know!”

“Oh, well, I was moving about. They wouldn’t know where to write. But what’s happened? All I saw was three or four lines about Marian being in an accident just when she’d heard she had come in for some money.”

“Yes, that’s right. That’s just how it was-on Tuesday. She came home with the clothes pretty well off her back, and a bruise on her forehead. It’s gone down nicely now, and you really wouldn’t notice it. Mrs. Felton was in a terrible way, but there wasn’t any real harm done, and they went off at ten o’clock this morning to do some shopping and to see their uncle’s lawyer-something about the house that was left. Down by the sea, it is, and Miss Brand wants to get Mrs. Felton there as soon as possible, the sea air being what they always say would do her good.”

Cyril said sharply, “There must be something more than a house.”

Mrs. Deane put two spoons of tea in the pot.

“Oh, as to that, I’m sure I couldn’t say, Mr. Felton-I’m not one to pry. But no cause to worry, I’m sure. Mrs. Felton’s been so excited ever since it happened, you wouldn’t know her for the same person-singing all over the house, and quite a colour.”

He had time to feel very impatient indeed before his wife and sister-in-law came home.

Ina’s eyes were shining like stars. She had had her hair set. She had bought all the sort of things she had never been able to afford for her face-a whole range of vanishing creams, cleansing creams, night creams, lipsticks, two different and enchanting shades of rouge, a face-powder which was a dream, and several different shades of nail-polish. The girl in the beauty-parlour had showed her just what to do, and she was in a state of quivering pleasure. She looked what she used to look like when she was eighteen-no, better than that, because she had never had any of these lovely things before. She felt like the heroine of a novel, she felt romantic and sophisticated. She was wearing new shoes and stockings, and a coat and skirt which had cost more than she had ever paid for anything in all her life. She rushed into Cyril’s arms and poured the whole thing out, finishing up with,