Patricia Wentworth - Out of the Past

“You can’t!”

“Oh, yes, I can. You gave me a power of attorney, you know, after my father died-when you were ill.”

“I can revoke it.”

His bluff had been called. He had not reckoned on her knowing that. He made a light gesture with his cigarette and said in a laughing voice,

“Well, darling, the one thing which would make the whole affair go with a bigger and better bang would be a legal struggle between us as to the ownership of the papers. You see, even if you got the originals, I should have had copies made, and anyhow I’d have read them, and I have a pretty good memory. You wouldn’t be able to prevent the facts from- how do they put it-transpiring. So you see, it’s no go unless you are prepared to hand over the money yourself.”

Esther’s mind had not followed him. It had remained fixed upon Pen’s letters. What could there be in them that she did not know? They had been happy together. He had had his moods, his struggles, his torments of the imagination. Artists were like that, up one day and down the next. They needed someone to rest them, someone who would just go on being the same. Security-yes, that was the word-they needed someone who could give them the sense of security. That was what she had been able to do for Pen. Nobody could take it away from her. She remembered how he used to look at her with that queer twisted smile of his and say, “You’re a comfortable woman, Esther.”

Her eyes had returned to Alan. Sometimes he looked so like Pen that it hurt. She said, labouring to find words,

“But, Alan-you couldn’t-do a thing like that. Not your father’s private letters. I don’t know what they are-or when they were written. I suppose he may have written a great many letters he wouldn’t have wished to see published. He was always very attractive-to women-and they wrote to him. He didn’t make any secret of it, only of course he didn’t tell me their names-only that it was a lot of silly stuff, and he wondered why there had to be so many fools in the world. He used to laugh and tear the letters up and put the pieces in the fire. I shouldn’t have thought he would have kept-any of them.”

“Well, he kept the ones I am talking about. And I can tell you something, he didn’t laugh at them. He kept them, and he answered them.”

“How do you know?”

“Because the answers are there. The whole correspondence is there-his letters and hers. I suppose she didn’t dare to keep them herself, and she couldn’t bear to destroy them.”

Esther Field said, “She?” And then quickly, “No, don’t tell me! I don’t want to know! Don’t tell me anything!”

He laughed as if he were amused.

“My dear, you won’t be able to help knowing-when the letters are published. If they are published! They needn’t be of course. I don’t exactly want to hurt your feelings. I’d much rather let sleeping dogs lie and get the money some other way.” He turned to look at the clock on the mantelshelf, a monumental affair in the same black marble, with a blue face and squat gold hands. “Half past six! How time runs away in these family reunions! What time do you dine?”

Esther said mechanically,

“It’s cold supper at eight.”

“All right. Then I think I’d better drop in on Darsie and see if she can put me up. If not, it’ll have to be the Anchor-that is, unless Carmona can be induced to change her mind.”

Esther’s flush had faded. She looked as if her thoughts were far away, but at the sound of Carmona’s name she roused a little.

“No, no, you can’t stay here-it wouldn’t do at all-”

“What-with three chaperones!”

Her voice shook as she said,

“It wouldn’t do. You ought not to have suggested it. Go and see whether Darsie can take you in. I have about fifteen pounds in the house-I could let you have that to go on with. And then something can be arranged.”

He smiled benignly.

“Of course it can. And you’re not to worry-it will work out all right. Things always do if you take them the right way. Well, I’ll be seeing you!” He blew her a kiss and went out of the room.

She heard the hall door shut, and saw him go past the window with a suit-case in his hand. The gloom of the room closed round her.

All the houses along the cliff bore a strong resemblance to one another. Some were larger, some had more turrets and fewer balconies, others more balconies and fewer turrets. The Annings’ house had more turrets. When Colonel Anning left the East and retired it had seemed to him a very handsome and commodious residence. Through the years during which prices rose and the value of money fell he began to suspect that he had over-housed himself. Even before his death it had become very difficult to find a staff or to pay the bills. It was when his death still farther reduced her income that Mrs. Anning began to supplement it by taking in paying guests. Now, apparently, Darsie was running the place quite frankly as a boarding-house.

Alan Field made a wry face at the thought of it. Boarding-houses were mostly stocked with old ladies. Darsie wouldn’t like that at all. She had been pretty hot stuff in the old days- an exciting creature with a flashing temper and sudden flares of passion. He wondered what she was like now.

She opened the door herself. Well, he would have known her. Or would he? He really wasn’t sure. She couldn’t be thirty yet, but she had a dried-up look. Of course those dark girls didn’t wear so well. Where she had been slim she was thin, where she had been pale she was sallow. Her eyes seemed to have sunk, and there were lines between them.

He said, “Well, Darsie?” and she stared at him for what seemed quite a long time before she spoke.

“Alan-”

She said it in rather an odd sort of way, almost as if she wasn’t sure about him-under her breath too. She might have been talking to herself. And then she said,

“What do you want?”

He stepped past her into the hall.

“Aren’t you going to say how do you do to an old friend? You mayn’t have noticed it, but I’ve been away for three years-in South America, to be precise. And now that I’m back again nobody seems to be killing the fatted calf. I find it a bit damping.”

Her face was closed against him-all the blinds down and the shutters fastened. She said,

“How extraordinary! Or is it? Would you expect, let us say Carmona, to be killing fatted calves? You left her waiting for you at the church, didn’t you? At least that was the story I heard.”

He smiled.

“Rather a public place to discuss our friends, don’t you think?”

She should have sent him away-she knew that. Only there were too many bitter memories-too many bitter words which had said themselves over and over in the endless night watches, but never to him. Now he was here, and they brimmed up in her.

There was a little room on the left where Mrs. Anning had been used to do the flowers. Darsie used it as an office now. She flung open the door.

“You can come in here if you like, but I don’t think we have anything to discuss.”

Alan came in smiling.

“Well, what I really wanted to talk about was the question of whether you could give me a bed for the night. Esther seemed to think you might be able to manage it, because Carmona appears to be full up.”

It was like having cold water thrown in her face. It steadied her. You can’t run a boarding-house without finding out that it doesn’t pay to lose your temper. But-take Alan in? Something in her blazed again.

“So Carmona hasn’t room for you. How surprising!” Her voice had an edge to it.

He gave the slight shrug of the shoulders which she remembered.

“That seems to be the general idea. I’m the big bad wolf, and James mightn’t like it-not even with Esther and the Trevors to do propriety. Cold supper is permitted, so I shan’t have to trouble your housekeeping, but after that the line is drawn. Rather silly, I think.” He laughed. “After all this time you would think we could bury the past! Something in not very good taste about digging it up again!”