Patricia Wentworth - The Alington Inheritance

“He told me your name-that you were Jenny Forbes.”

Jenny repeated the words.

“Yes, I’m Jenny Forbes. But I didn’t know it till yesterday afternoon. I knew that Richard Forbes was my father and Jennifer Hill was my mother, but I didn’t know that they were married. They kept it a secret. It was the war, you know, and my father was killed, and my mother was struck on the head in an air raid-she never spoke again. They sent her to Garsty.”

“Who is Garsty?”

“She had been my mother’s governess. She took her in. Her house was just opposite the gates of Alington House. When the Forbeses came there -Colonel Forbes inherited, you know-Mrs. Forbes came to see Garsty. She wanted her to move right away, and to take me with her, but Garsty wouldn’t.” It all came pouring out-Garsty’s accident, and how she had said that the letter from her father to her mother was in the little chest of drawers, and how she had looked for it after Garsty was gone, and how she couldn’t find it, and how Mac had taken it. “I heard him say so. I wouldn’t have believed it from anyone else. You just can’t believe that sort of thing about the people you know, can you?” The truthful eyes looked into Caroline’s. “You just can’t. But I heard him say it. I was behind the curtain, and they didn’t know I was there, and he said it. He took my father’s letter, the one in which he called her his wife.”

Caroline looked back. Was the child really as unworldly as she seemed? It didn’t seem possible, not at this time of day. She said,

“He called her his wife? But-” she hesitated-“it may only have been that that was how he thought of her. That wouldn’t make a marriage.”

“No-I know it wouldn’t. I’d known about the letter when Garsty died. She told me about it, and I thought, like you said, it was just that he thought of her like that. But Mac said when I was behind the window curtain and he was talking to his mother and they thought they were alone-Mac said he’d been to Somerset House and he had seen the certificate. They had been married five months when my father was killed.”

“Oh, my dear child!”

Jenny went on looking at her.

“It’s a sad story isn’t it? My mother died the night after I was born. I’ve thought about it a lot, and it seems as if it was sad for me and for Garsty, but not really sad for them-for my father and mother. I think they loved one another very much, and they would be together again. So it wasn’t sad for them, was it? Do you think that Mac burned that letter?”

“I don’t know, my dear. I think he would do what was safest for himself.”

“Yes, I thought so too.” She gave a deep sigh and said, “It doesn’t really matter, does it? He wrote to her and she saw it, and that is all that really matters.”

There was a little stir at the door and Richard came in with a tray. There were large cups on it, and a big teapot, and a gold and white milk-jug. On a plate there were slices of plain cake and piled-up biscuits.

“I’m frightfully hungry,” he said.

Jenny suddenly felt hungry too. Her spirits rose. Everything was all right. She was quite, quite safe.

They were just finishing the plate of biscuits and the cake, and Richard was drinking his third cup of tea, when there came a tapping at the door.

“Oh, no!” said Richard. He finished his tea in a hurry and put down his cup. “Not at this hour! It’s not decent! Shall I tell her so?”

Caroline laughed. “It’s no use,” she said. Then she turned to Jenny. “It will be my next-door neighbour, Mrs. Merridew. I wonder what she’ll have thought up this time. I’d better go and see.”

The tapping continued-three taps and a pause-three more taps and another pause. It suggested what Caroline knew only too well was behind it, inquisitiveness and pertinacity. She opened the door, and was aware as she did so that it was being noted that this was not the first time it had been opened that day. Oh dear, no-Mr. Richard had been in and a girl. Now why a girl so early in the morning? The words, unspoken, floated almost visibly on the air.

Mrs. Merridew stood there with a jug in her hand. She was dressed. She had tidied her hair, and she had put on a hat. She was a small woman with little grey eyes which were sharply aware of everything in range and suspicious of everything beyond it. She held out the jug and began at once on what was obviously a prepared speech.

“Oh, my dear Miss Danesworth, do forgive me, but I am short of milk for my early morning tea, and you’ve always been so kind about obliging me. The fact is that Timmy has been a very naughty cat. You know, I told you how clever he was at knocking off the top of the milk-bottle when he wanted a drink-”

“Yes, you did.”

“He’s too clever about it-he really is. But this morning he knocked a little too hard, and the bottle fell down and all the milk was spilt. So if you could just let me have enough for his breakfast-and perhaps for my early tea-”

Caroline had not a suspicious nature, but the excuse had served before and she had her doubts-she had her very grave doubts about it.

Mrs. Merridew stepped over the threshold, jug in hand.

“Your nephew came back this morning? Very early, very early indeed?”

“Yes, he did. Come this way, Mrs. Merridew, if you will. I’ve got plenty of milk.”

“Was he alone?” said Mrs. Merridew, cocking her head on one side.

“Oh, no. He brought Jenny Forbes to stay with me.”

“Jenny Forbes? And who is she? It’s not a very usual name in these parts-Scotch, I believe. But of course it’s his name, too. How stupid of me! Really so very stupid! Is she a relation?”

Caroline said with a calm born of long practice, “I suppose you may call her that. She’s a connection at any rate.”

“Oh, that sounds quite exciting!”

They had reached the kitchen at the back of the house. Caroline said,

“I haven’t been able to get excited about it, but then I haven’t your imagination.”

Mrs. Merridew took this remark as a compliment, a little to Caroline’s relief. She didn’t want to give offence. She wanted peace. She remembered with a slightly guilty feeling that Richard was wont to accuse her of preferring peace at any price. She went rather quickly into the larder and fetched out a big jug of milk.

“How much do you want? I’ve got heaps.”

“Oh, you have! Did you know this girl was coming?”

“Jenny? Well, it was always possible.”

This was as far as Caroline could go in the direction of concealment. She argued against her own sense of guilt. Well, it wasn’t quite true, but it was very nearly true, Richard being what he was. Anything was possible.

And then Mrs. Merridew was saying, “They must have made a very early start-very early indeed. Why, you’re not dressed!”

She had been aware of that from the first moment when Caroline had opened the door. She herself was dressed. She had flung on her clothes in record time, and she had combed through her neat grey curls, so different from Caroline’s large untidy ones, and she had put on her shoes and stockings, and thought of the story about Timmy, and taken the milk-jug, all in less than a quarter of an hour. She had been very clever, she had been very clever indeed.

“No,” said Caroline. “I must have overslept. I’m not dressed, and I must get dressed.”

“Oh, yes, of course you must. I’m just going.”

But Mrs. Merridew didn’t go. She didn’t even pick up the jug of milk which she had borrowed. She came a step nearer, and she said in a confidential undertone,

“It’s a very early hour. They’re not-not engaged-”

There were two courses open to Caroline, she could laugh, or she could lose her temper. She chose to laugh.