Josephine Tey - To Love and Be Wise

'Of course it may be difficult for Nigel —

'No, Nigel can come round behind you before he says his line. Try it, Nigel, will you.

Marta draped herself over the horse-hair and the scared-looking boy went away and made his entrance. He made his entrance nine times. 'Well, it's coming, Bobby said, letting him away with the ninth.

Someone in the stalls went out and came back with cups of tea.

Nigel said his line above the sofa, to the right of the sofa, to the left of the sofa, and without relation to the sofa at all.

Someone came into the stalls and collected the empty cups.

Grant moved over to a lonely lounger and asked: 'When do you think I shall be able to speak to Miss Hallard?

' No one will be able to speak to her if she has much more of Nigel today.

'I have very important business with her.

'You the clothes man?

Grant said that he was a personal friend of Miss Hallard's and must talk to her for a few moments. He wouldn't keep her longer than that.

'Oh. The dim figure crawled away and consulted with another. It was like some muffled ritual.

The consulted one detached himself from the group of shadows to which he belonged and came over to Grant. He introduced himself as the stage-manager, and asked what exactly it was that Grant wanted. Grant said that at the very first opportunity would someone tell Miss Hallard that Alan Grant was here and wanted to speak to her for a moment.

This worked; and during the next pause, the stage-manager crept on to the stage and bending apologetically over Marta murmured something in a wood-pigeon undertone.

Marta got up from the couch and came down to the edge of the stage, shading her eyes in an effort to see beyond the lights into the dark auditorium.

'Are you there, Alan? she said. 'Come through the pass door, will you? Show him where it is, someone.

She came to meet him at the pass door and was plainly glad to see him. 'Come and have a cup of tea in the wings with me while the young lovers get on with it. Thank God that I shall never again have to be one of a pair of young lovers! The theatre's most boring convention. You've never come to rehearsal before, Alan! What moved you to it?

'I would like to say that it was intellectual curiosity, but I'm afraid it is just business. You can help me, I think.

She helped him enormously; and never once asked what these questions might mean.

'We haven't had that dinner with your Sergeant Williams, she said as she went away to make the young lovers look like amateurs and wish that they had gone on the land.

'If you wait for a week or so, Sergeant Williams and I may have a story to tell you.

'Splendid. I've earned it, I feel. I've been so good and discreet.

'You've been wonderful, he said, and went away out the back way into the lane with a slight recurrence of the jubilation that had floated him down the stairs at his entrance.

Armed with the information Marta had given him, he went to Cadogan Gardens and interviewed the housekeeper of some furnished flats.

'Oh, yes, I remember, she said. 'They ran about a lot together. Oh, no, she didn't stay here. These are bachelor flats; I mean, flats for one. But she was around a lot.

And by that time London was shutting up shop for the night and there was nothing more he could do until the police of Jobling, Conn., supplied him with the information he had asked for. So he went home early for once, had a light supper, and went to bed. He lay for a long time working it out in his mind. Working out the details. Working out the wherefore.

Toby Tullis had wanted to know what made Leslie Searle tick; and Grant, too, lying with his eyes on the ceiling, unmoving for an hour at a time, was looking for the mainspring of Leslie Searle's mind.

It was forty-eight hours before word came from Jobling, Conn., and half a dozen times in those forty-eight hours Grant was on the brink of going to that woman in Hampstead and dragging the truth from her by main force. But he restrained himself. He would deal with her presently. Her lies would be neatly laid out on a plate, and presented to her when the time came.

He would wait for that report.

And the report when it came proved worth waiting for.

Grant read it through in one swift eye movement, and then he sat back and laughed.

'If any one wants me for the rest of the day, he said to Sergeant Williams, 'I'll be at Somerset House.

'Yes, sir, Williams said, subdued.

Grant glanced at Williams's unwontedly sober features-Williams was a little hurt that Grant was playing a lone hand over this-and was reminded of something.

'By the way, Williams, Miss Hallard is very anxious to meet you. She has asked me if I would bring you to dinner one night.

'Me? said Williams going pink. 'What on earth for?

'She has fallen a victim to your reported charms. She asked me to arrange a night when you were free. I feel in my bones this morning that by Saturday both you and I will be in a state for celebration; and it would be appropriate if we celebrated with Marta, I think. Saturday any good to you?

'Well, Nora and I usually go to the movies on Saturday, but when I'm on duty she goes with Jen. That's her sister. So I don't see why she shouldn't go with Jen this week.

'When she hears that you are going to dine with Marta Hallard she'll probably start divorce proceedings.

'Not her. She'll wait up for me so that she can ask me what Marta Hallard was wearing, said Williams, the Benedict.

Grant rang to ask Marta if he could bring Sergeant Williams to meet her on Saturday night, and then went away and buried himself in Somerset House.

And that night he did not lie awake. He was like a child that goes to sleep because that way it will quickly be tomorrow. Tomorrow, the one small piece would fall into place and make the pattern whole.

If the one small piece happened not to fit, of course, then the whole picture was wrong. But he was pretty sure that it would fit.

In the short interval between putting out the lamp and falling asleep he ranged sleepily over the 'field'. When that one small piece fell into place tomorrow, life would be a great deal happier for a great many people. For Walter, naturally; Walter would have the shadow of suspicion lifted from him. For Emma Garrowby, with her Liz made safe. For Liz? Relief unspeakable for Liz. And relief for Miss Fitch-who might, he suspected, be a little sad, too. But she could always put it in a book. In a book was where the thing belonged.

Toby would have quite special reasons for self-congratulation, Grant thought; and laughed. And Serge Ratoff would be comforted.

Silas Weekley would not care at all.

He remembered that Marta had remarked on how 'nice' Leslie and Liz had been together. ('A natural pair, she said-but she could never have guessed how natural!) Was it just possible that Liz would be hurt when that one small piece fell into place tomorrow? He hoped not. He liked Liz Garrowby. He would like to think that Searle had meant nothing to her. That she would find nothing but happiness and relief in the vindication of her Walter.

What was it Marta had said? 'I don't think Walter knows anything about Liz, and I have an idea that Leslie Searle knew quite a lot. (Surprising, how Marta had seen that without any clue to the source of Searle's understanding.) But it did not matter very much, Grant thought, that Walter did not know very much about Liz. Liz, he was quite sure, knew all that was to be known about Walter; and that was a very good basis for a happy married life.

He fell asleep wondering if being married to someone as nice and intelligent and lovable as Liz Garrowby would compensate a man for the loss of his freedom.

A procession of his loves-romantic devotions most of them-trailed away into the distance as his mind blurred into unconsciousness.