Cat and Mouse (12 page)

The visitor disappeared round the corner to the front door, and Katinka leaned back against the cushions and went on with her book. She did not know how long she had read, but she came back to the present to hear Carlyon’s suddenly raised voice. He was saying: “Please speak more quietly.”

“I will say what I like,” said the woman’s voice, in reply.

“You’re free to say what you like,” said Carlyon. “But please don’t say it so loud.” He paused for half a moment and Katinka realized that he had reflected that the woman could not understand what he was saying. He repeated low, but distinctly: “You do not know how loudly you are speaking.”

The woman lowered her voice at once; but she said with a sort of implacable insistence: “I have come because I wish to know about my niece’s affairs. I have a perfect right.”

“I wrote to you at the time of the accident. I told you all about the whole situation.”

“What?” said the woman.

“I say, I wrote to you when it happened.”

“I can’t hear you,” said the woman. “What I say is that you have not answered my letters.”

“I wrote to you fully in America,” said Carlyon, steadily. “I wrote to your solicitors. They know the whole situation.”

She began to fluster a little. Tinka, only half consciously lending an ear, could imagine the beautiful mouth beginning weakly to tremble, the drooping eyes filling with tears of frustration. “I’ve been very ill,” the woman said, fretfully. “The shock made me worse. After all, I brought her up from her childhood. I had a relapse and then I couldn’t get home. It’s been so long; I feel so helpless. I can’t hear what they’re saying, I can’t discuss things any more, I never know what’s going on around me. I can’t hear what
you’re
saying—not properly. …”

“I’ll write it down for you,” said Carlyon, and his voice was kind.

“I want to know about her affairs,” insisted the woman.

Now Carlyon’s voice grew angry, grew impatient, exasperated. “I can’t go over and over all that any more. It’s all been explained to you, to your own family lawyers, to everyone within reach… Oh, lord, you can’t hear me, can you? Just a moment…” There was a little silence, evidently while he wrote and the woman read. Then she said: “I know all that. But she was a very rich girl.”

“I had no need of her money,” said Carlyon stiffly. Silence again while he wrote.

“I know, I know,” said the woman fretfully. “And the solicitors assure me… But some of the things are mine. We just let her have them while we were in America. I wrote to her:
on loan
, I said. Pictures and things. Valuable things. Of course we were willing for her to have the use of them, what was the use of their wasting away in store? But they were only on loan.”

“She has more need of them than ever now,” said Carlyon in a low voice; but she did not hear, her voice overlaid his as she said: “That’s mine. That picture’s one of mine—the Sisley snow scene.”

“If she agrees that it’s yours, you must have it back,” said Carlyon.

“And the Dresden pieces.”

“Anything she tells me is yours, you’re welcome to.”

“After all, they’re valuable,” said the woman querulously. “Very valuable.”

“I know. And I say that if you claim them and she agrees that they’re yours, I’ll return them at once.”

A shadow flickered across the sunny path, and Mr. Chucky appeared in the full splendour of his bright brown suit. He said without preamble: “Can you hear anything from there?”

“Are you suggesting that I’m listening?” said Katinka, up in arms.

“Ssh!” said Chucky. “I can’t hear, while you’re talking.”

“Then I’ll talk like a ruddy minah bird,” said Tinka. “I’m not going to have you snooping any more. It isn’t fair.”

“Shut up—I can’t hear what he’s saying.”

“You won’t be able to anyway. He’s writing most of it down.”

The argument bickered back and forth. “If he sees you, if he realizes that you’ve been listening, then he’ll think that I was in on it too. I’m not going to have you putting anything about him in that filthy rag you represent, whatever it is. …”

“Ssh! Ssh!” said Mr. Chucky, unmoved.

“I shall tell Mr. Carlyon that you’ve been listening.”

“He has invited the police here for that very purpose,” said Chucky, grinning. But he took his ear away from the wall. At that moment Carlyon’s voice said, “Very well. I’ll fetch proof.”

“What proof can you possibly give me?” said the woman.

“A photograph of our wedding,” said Carlyon. “But you’ll have to wait a few minutes. I’ll go and get it.” There was the sound of a closing door. Chucky said urgently, “Come on, now—she’s alone. We’ll talk to her.”

“For Pete’s sake, are you crazy? What about?”

“About Amista of course,” said Chucky. He strolled up nonchalantly to the window-sill. “Excuse me, Madam…”

No answer from within. “She’s deaf you fool,” said Tinka, triumphantly.

But he fished a shorthand notebook from his pocket and a stumpy pencil. “Good. We’ll do a bit of writing.” He lowered the window and flung a leg over the sill. The woman in the room made no movement. She evidently had not heard or seen him.

There were steps on the gravel and he hastily withdrew his leg. Dai Trouble appeared round the corner. He seemed relieved to see Mr. Chucky. “Oh, there you are, then, Inspector.”

“
Inspector
!” scoffed Katinka.

“Everything under control, Dai bach,” said Chucky. He lowered the window carefully with a significant glance at Katinka.

Dai Trouble acknowledged the wisdom of this manoeuvre with an admiring wink. “Mr. Carlyon had to run up to the attic for a moment. He didn’t want the lady to be—disturbed.” More significant glances at Katinka. Her blood boiled.

And curse and damn and blast that Chucky! she thought. Carlyon must have heard the scrapings and shufflings outside the window, must have realized that someone had been listening there. Now he could not trust his guest alone for five minutes without sending a watchdog to keep guard over
her
. “It’s a damn shame,” she said, hotly, to Dai. “I was sitting here on this bench not—not trying to listen at all, but this prying fool…”

Carlyon came back into the room with what was apparently a photograph, in his hand. Dai Trouble retired, his temporary guardianship over. The woman said tremulously: “Yes, it’s my darling.” She began to weep a little. “How pretty she looks! And now, my poor, lovely one…”

“So you’re convinced,” said Carlyon. Tinka could picture the cold scorn with which he would put out his hand to take the precious picture back from her.

“I’m sorry,” said the woman. “Not being here, not even being in England at the time… And what did we know about you? But she wouldn’t wait, she wouldn’t listen to a word of advice and I was so ill at the time. …” Katinka heard the snap of her handbag as though she had dried her tears and put the handkerchief away. “Well—I’ll go now. I’m sorry to have misjudged you.”

“You’re sure you won’t wait and see her,” said Carlyon. There was a sound of an opening door and Chucky dodged back and sat with an air of great off-handedness on the wooden bench beside Tinka. “They’re coming out.”

Tinka found herself, to her own horror, also adopting an air of studied unconcern. Carlyon passed the corner of the house, his hand on the woman’s elbow to help her dragging steps over the rough ground. “Perhaps you’re right. It would be very painful for you both. And I don’t want anything to happen that would upset her even—even pleasurably, if you understand. …” But he talked to the empty air. The woman stumbled on unhearingly beside him, fretful grey eyes vacant and unaware.

They passed out of sight. Miss Evans might as well set up in the ferry business altogether, reflected Katinka, if there was much more activity at Penderyn.

“Isn’t she going to stay and see her daughter?” said Mr. Chucky, astonished.

“Her niece. She’s the aunt who brought Mrs. Carlyon up.”

“So you
were
listening?” said Chucky, grinning all over. He spread his slim legs out joyfully in the pleasant sunshine. “What else did you hear? I couldn’t get a thing, hardly, through the sitting-room door, and then Dai Jones kept bobbing out and I had to pretend to be just doing sentry go.”

“I wasn’t listening. I happened to be sitting here half asleep and I couldn’t help hearing a little. She was only interested in Mrs. Carlyon’s money and some possessions of her own. I suppose Mrs. Carlyon can’t manage her affairs for herself now, and the aunt says that she’s a very wealthy girl.”

“Why doesn’t she ask Mrs. Carlyon herself about them, if she doesn’t trust
him
?”

“Perhaps she doesn’t realize Mrs. Carlyon’s here,” said Katinka. She corrected herself: “Oh, yes, she did; he asked if she would like to see her.”

But too late. Mr. Chucky was ablaze with a new idea. “Ye Gods! I wonder!” He ignored all protestations, brushed aside all reminders and assurances, turning upon her a face alight with mischief. “That would be something like a story, girl, eh? He asked her—
but did she hear him ask?
Did he
mean
her to hear? What a headline, eh?
BROKEN-HEARTED MOTHER LITTLE KNOWS
… No, no, she was the aunt, wasn’t she? All right.
RAVAGED GIRL KEPT OUT OF SIGHT OF AUNT
.” He had gone all Welsh again. “I think you’d better leave your headlines to the sub-editors,” said Tinka, coldly. “They’re shocking.”

But Mr. Chucky was impervious to disapproval. He darted off into the house and a moment later came back with scratched hands and a crumpled sheet of paper. “He must have tossed it into the fire and the cat rescued it, and I rescued it from the cat.” He smoothed it out as he walked. “Question and answer,” he said exultantly. “Here are the answers—we make up the questions to fit. There
you
can help me.”

“I’m damned if I will,” said Katinka.

“Then I’ll have to make them up for myself,” said Chucky, equably. He sat down and spread out the paper on his knee. “‘Your own lawyers handled her affairs at the time of the accident.’ Well, that explains itself.”

“I suppose he’d have to have power of attorney and things like that: but after all, he’s her husband. Just because she was rich…”

“O.K., O.K.,” said Chucky, glancing at her with a mild surprise. “You’re not Counsel for the Defence, you know! Now: ‘I did not need it.’ ‘Her lawyers knew all about me when I married her.’ ‘I was at least as well off as she was.’ Oh,
ho
! Auntie thinks he was after the young lady’s money.”

“Some people will think anything,” said Katinka.

“‘If you can prove it, I will return them at once.’ And, ‘You have only to show me proof.’ What was that about?”

Katinka strained her mind, trying to think back over the conversation. “She laid claim to some of the things in the room. The Sisley picture was one.”

“Oh
ho
!” said Mr. Chucky.

“I wish you wouldn’t keep on making those odious exclamations. You sound like something out of the
Seven Dwarfs
.”

Mr. Chucky ignored her. “This must be the part where you kept talking to me and neither of us could hear. ‘In Ireland.’ ‘In the church at Castletownbere.’ ‘County Cork.’ ‘You can go and see for yourself.’ What’s all this?”

“Castletownbere is a little place on the sea coast in County Cork. And County Cork, for your information, is in Ireland. But what can have happened there…?”

“They were married there, of course: and the aunt can go and see the register.”

“But they were married at… Oh, hell!” said Tinka, “I never can disentangle Angela from Amista. Yes, that’s right, they were married at Castletownbere. It was at about this point that the aunt seemed to be questioning whether they were married at all and so he went to get the picture.”

“Why wasn’t she at the wedding, if she brought the girl up and all that?”

“It sounded as if she had been very ill, and she was in America anyway, at the time. She said she
wrote
about the things that the girl could have on loan, ‘while we were in the States.’”

“Wouldn’t Mrs. Carlyon send her aunt the wedding photographs?”

“Perhaps they actually quarrelled over the marriage,” said Katinka. “But anyway, the aunt was so ill and she may have never seen them, or got muddled up or something. She seemed very vague and weepy and nervous, I mean it may have been that sort of illness, that makes you forget things. And she was already ill when the accident happened, because she said that that caused a relapse.” Why she should be discussing it all with this wretched Chucky she could not imagine. “If any of this appears in the press,” she said, “I’ll go straight to Mr. Carlyon with the truth about you, and damnation to honour among journalists.” Journalist, indeed! The man was a blot on an already sufficiently ignoble profession.

At dawn she wakened once again to the light tapping of fingers at her window. Blast his impudence, she thought, I’ll take no notice. Let him whistle for it! This he immediately proceeded to do, hissing interminably through his teeth, the refrain of “All through the night” until she could bear it no longer, but wrapped herself in her dressing-gown and marched in righteous indignation to the window. Mr. Chucky was propped up comfortably outside, whistling happily. “There you are, Miss Jones, bach, and high time too. I nearly gone dry, whistling for you. Come you and see what I found in the attic!”

“What, etchings?” said Tinka.

He burst into laughter, stifling his giggles like a schoolboy with his hand over his mouth. “Don’t flatter yourself, Miss Jones, now, your honour’s safe with me, a man with three children at home, like I told you,
and
one on the way.”

“I’m not going to snoop on Mr. Carlyon. I’m not going to aid and abet you in getting copy for your dirty rag.”

“Nothing to do with any dirty rag. Just curiosity, I gave you my word!” He had on a coat and trousers with a scarf tucked in round his neck. He made a cross on the breast pocket of his jacket, where the well-folded much-too-fancy handkerchief peeped forth. “On my honour—not a word to be printed.”

“A very good expression for my opinion of you,” said Katinka. “Not a word to be printed.” But curiosity was rising up within her like a bubble. “What is it you’ve found?”