1951 - In a Vain Shadow Read online

  ‘So what do I do?’

  ‘Is nothing for you to do except look after the house. But maybe you don’t care to do that?’

  The thought he might be feel enough to leave me in the house alone with her sent the blood pounding in my temples.

  ‘How about Mrs. Sarek? Can’t she look after it?’

  ‘She come with me.’

  I should have known he wouldn’t have been that much of a fool.

  ‘You mean you want me to hang around, feed the chickens and keep burglars away?’

  ‘Is right. Two years my wife has not been away. All the time the chickens tie her to the house: you understand? I promise her the next time I go to Paris she come with me. So long as the chickens are fed I don’t care what you do. Maybe you keep the house nice, hey? You have the car. You go for drives, but get back before is dark. Keep the foxes away from my chickens. You understand?’

  ‘Well, all right. But isn’t there anything else I can do? How about your business? Can’t I do something for you there?’

  He gave me a quick, sly look, and shook his head.

  ‘You look after the chickens. My business is very, very personal. Is nothing you can do. Emmie can handle it.’

  ‘Just thought I’d offer.’

  ‘Is all right.’

  There wasn’t much for me to do that afternoon. I sat in the outer office, smoking cigarettes and reading the Evening Standard until I knew lumps of it by heart.

  Sarek and Emmie shut themselves up in the inner office and stayed there until closing time.

  Once or twice I put my ear against the door panel, but apart from a continuous murmur of voices I didn’t hear anything worth hearing. All the same I knew Sarek was giving that fat little horror the lowdown on his racket, and it infuriated me she was getting it and not me. But there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t expect him to take me into his confidence when he had known me only for four days.

  Already I was beginning to wonder if I wouldn’t work it so that he accepted me as a son instead of pipe dreaming about a son I felt in my bones she would never give him. I was twenty-seven, and be must have been sixty. If ever anyone deserved that chess set, I did, and given the chance I could prove to him I was no fool when it came to working a racket.

  But that kind of set up needed time and patience. He liked me already. But liking me and making me his heir were things poles apart. What I had to do was to stick with him until the penny dropped, if it ever dropped, and sticking to him wasn’t going to be all that easy.

  They came out of the inner office around six-thirty. He had wrapped himself in his awful overcoat and was smoking a cigar.

  She looked like the cat that had swallowed the canary, and gave me a smirking look of triumph that made me want to sink my list into her fat face.

  ‘Okay. Now we go!’

  I stood up.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do up here during the day, perhaps Miss Pearl will let me know.’

  They exchanged glances while I stood there trying to look as if I had nothing up my sleeve.

  She shook her head.

  That was when I realized just how badly I had played my cards. If I had sucked up to her, treated her with a little politeness at the beginning, she might have given me an in but, instead, she shook her fat, greasy head, and I was as far away from the money as I was when I first sat in the outer office waiting for an interview.

  ‘Is all right. Emmie can manage.’

  I followed him down the stairs, across the pavement to the car.

  I had worked on the car. There had been a lot of things wrong with it. Oil seeped up the camshaft and leaked into the distributor head for one thing, and there was a sticking valve for another. The plugs hadn’t been touched since he bought it, and the engine had as much compression as a milk pudding.

  I fixed the valve, fitted a washer at the back of the camshaft, bought a new set of plugs and scraped the carbon of the distributor head points. I could beat her up to seventy now with a little in hand, but I didn’t tell him that, I kept her at a sedate fifty, and he thought I was a miracle worker.

  As I swung the car on to the Watford Bypass, I said, ‘A woman’s all right up to a point, but when it comes to hard graft, give me a man every time.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. I was voicing my thoughts, but since you ask me, I’ll tell you. You have a business to look after. I don’t know what you do, you do well. All right. You have to go to Paris. That leaves your business wide open until you get back. I should have thought a man with your experience would have felt happier to leave a smart man in charge rather than a smart woman. A woman is all right for certain things. Maybe I have old-fashioned ideas. To me a woman’s place is in the home. I wouldn’t be too happy to leave my business in the hands of a woman, no matter how capable she is.’

  He put his small brown hand across his mouth to stop a spluttering laugh.

  ‘You don’t like Emmie, hey? I know. I watch you. I tell you something. She’s smart. Make no mistake about that. I know her for ten years. Every year she get smarter. I don’t know any man who is as smart as she is. I am smart too, but I am not one-tenth as smart as Emmie. Is true. You go by looks. I don’t. I go by brain. Her brain is worth three of mine and ten of yours. No hard feeling. Is the truth.’

  And I had been sucker enough to think I might call him ‘father’.

  ‘It’s your business, Mr. Sarek.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The next morning I drove them down to the airport to catch the ten o’clock plane. He wore the awful coat, and clutched a briefcase against his chest as if he suspected someone was going to steal it. She wore a tweed coat and skirt, and had a fur coat draped over her arm.

  This was the first time I had seen her out of slacks and sweater, and for a moment I didn’t recognize her. My eyes went to her legs: Marlene Dietrich legs; long, slim and lovely: a crime to hide them in slacks.

  She had given me instructions how to feed the chickens, and had shown me where the poultry food was kept. When she talked to me it was as if she were talking to a wax dummy; she didn’t look at me, her eyes were stony, and her face indifferent. I wanted to grab her and shake some life into her, and she knew it.

  Neither of them said a word to each other all the way to the airport. They sat at the back, and every now and then I caught a glimpse of her face in the driving mirror. Her eyes were stony and her mouth sullen.

  Sarek talked to me about the chess game we played the previous night. She had been upstairs all the evening, packing, and I had given him the hiding of his life. That’s what I liked about Sarek. Even when he had a hiding, he didn’t mind, and kept praising my end game and comparing my style with that of his father.

  While I listened to his chatter I wondered how she liked being seen with him in that coat. I knew when he got out of the car everyone would gape at him. I had had some of that myself. Most people, seeing him, imagined he was a music-hall turn, while others, to judge from their expressions, thought he was cracked. It made me hot under the collar to be with him.

  I wondered how she would react. Something told me she wouldn’t care. It would take more than a comic coat to ruffle her. I swung the car into the park and we got out.

  ‘I’ll take the bags.’

  While I was getting the two suitcases out of the car boot, Sarek went into the reception hall.

  ‘You haven’t much time.’

  She was lighting a cigarette, and gave me a quick look out of the comers of her eyes.

  ‘That’s my worry, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. I was just making conversation.’

  ‘When we are away, don’t take a woman into my home.’

  I felt the blood rush into my face. She had put her finger on the thought that had been milling around in my mind as soon as I knew I’d have the house to myself.

  ‘Who said I was going to?’

  The stony, green eyes never left my face.


  ‘I just happen to know your type. And while we’re talking, look for another job. I don’t want you around when I get back.’

  I hadn’t any answer to this direct attack. I just stood goggling at her, a fixed grin on my face.

  Then Sarek came back with a tall blonde in the uniform of an airhostess.

  ‘Is all ready. Miss Robinson arranges everything. Miss Robinson, this is my wife.’ Sarek rubbed his hands, beaming from ear to ear. He looked like a mischievous clown. ‘Rita, Miss Robinson looks after me for two years now. Every time I fly is here to fix things. Is a fine fixer. Is a very kind girl.’

  Rita gave Miss Robinson a thin smile. She said in a flat, hard voice she was glad to meet her.

  ‘I think you should take your seats,’ Miss Robinson said.

  She seemed a little flustered. ‘You have only five minutes. I’ve put magazines and papers in your places. Miss Joyce will look after you on the trip. I’ve spoken to her.’

  ‘You see, she fix everything. All right, we go. You manage those bags all right, Mitchell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I had recovered by now. She had socked one in under my guard, and it had shaken me, but she wouldn’t do that again so easily.

  She and Sarek went on ahead. Miss Robinson and I followed them.

  People were gaping now. In the thin autumn sunlight that coat looked terrible.

  Rita went straight to her seat, but Sarek fussed around until the luggage was on board, then he shook hands with Miss Robinson. My eyes were sharp enough to see what looked like a five-pound note pass hands.

  ‘Okay. Have a good time, Mitchell. I let you know when I return. Watch those foxes.’

  They ran the staircase away and slammed the door.

  Miss Robinson and I stood side by side watching the plane take of.

  When it was rising above the hangars I turned to look at her. She had a fresh complexion and rimless spectacles. Pretty enough, if you like the girl-guide type to go around with. You had only to look at her to know she had as much experience of men as Mary’s Little Lamb. But if she was clean, white and a possible twenty-one, she was no slouch when it came to picking up five-pound notes.

  ‘Great little guy,’ I said and gave her a wide, frank boy-scout smile.

  ‘Oh, yes. He really is a remarkable man.’

  ‘But that coat...’

  She laughed; a nice, fresh laugh that meant nothing except a laugh.

  ‘I wouldn’t know him without it. At first I thought it was terrible, but now ... well, I thought it suits him.’

  ‘He gave you quite a buildup to his wife.’

  ‘Oh, he’s kind. I like doing things for him. He travels a lot with us.’

  I’d do a lot for him too at five pounds a throw.

  I looked her over again, wondering if she might help pass an evening, but decided against it. Why bother to work all that hard when I had Netta?

  ‘Well, I better be getting back. I’m looking after his chickens.’

  ‘Oh, are you?’

  ‘That’s right. His wife used to look after them. Maybe she thinks she’d better see if he’s got any chickens in Paris.’

  The reaction was instantaneous.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  She walked away towards the reception hall her back stiff with angry indignation.

  I made my way back to the car.

  chapter six

  After they had left for Paris I had planned to drive on to London, pick Netta up and take her back to the farm for company; but I didn’t do it. The fact she had guessed that was what I was going to do turned the plan sour.

  ‘I just happen to know your type.’

  That infuriated me more than any other thing she could have thrown at me. Well, I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of proving herself right. There were other ways for me to pass my time she would like a lot less than having a woman in her home.

  I drove back to Four Winds in a cold, vicious fury. I was sure, somewhere in the house I’d find something that would give me a line on her, and I was going to find it. They had lived there for three years, and in that time things accumulate: letters, bits of their past, documents, things like that that might give me something to work on.

  I had at least a week on my own in the house: seven days in which to search, hunt and ferret. There had to be something hidden there that would give me a hold on her. That was all I wanted - some little thing with which to nail her.

  It was odd returning to the empty house. After I had put the car away and locked the garage, I opened the front door and stood in the hall, listening.

  There was nothing of Sarek in the atmosphere of the house, but it was uncanny how much of herself she had left behind.

  It wouldn’t have surprised me to see her coming down the stairs or to hear her footsteps overhead or her hard, sullen voice. I could even smell the perfume she wore; a faint smell of musk that always moved before her like an advance guard.

  I went from room to room on the ground floor, then mounted the stairs, looked into the bathroom, Sarek’s room, the guest room and even my room. I left her room to the last.

  When I turned the handle I found the door locked.

  For a moment I wondered if she was in there. I even rapped sharply, then knowing she couldn’t be in there, that she was by now within a few miles of Paris, I went downstairs again.

  On my way from the airport I had bought a bottle of whisky, a bottle of gin and a bottle of Dubonnet. The whisky had cost me seventy-five shillings, but I hadn’t had a drink for three days, and I didn’t intend to stint myself.

  I poured myself out three inches of whisky, lit a cigarette and sat down before the empty grate in the sitting room.

  Why had she locked her door? Had she guessed I would search her room? She was no fool. Was there something in there she didn’t want me to see? I had examined the lock. Without damaging the door I knew I couldn’t get in. It was a mortice lock, old, stiff with dirt and rust, and no pick, even if I could use one, would have shifted the catch.

  There was the window.

  I finished my drink and went outside and stood on the wet lawn, looking up at the house. I could see the casement window of her room was fastened by a catch. That wouldn’t be easy to open, but I might force out the screws with a chisel.

  That was possible, but I would have to be very careful not to bruise the wood.

  Although the house stood at the end of a lonely, winding lone, and there were no other houses within sight, the house itself wasn’t screened, and anyone corning up the lane could see me as I worked on the window.

  Few people came up the lane, not more than three or four a day: odd labourers going home from a farm and using the lane as a short cut to the village. Two or three tradesmen’s vans passed the house, too.

  If I was seen on a ladder trying to force the window they might stop to find out what I was doing. They might even tell Sarek when he came home.

  The safest way would be to wait until it was dark, but doing a job like that in the dark wasn’t easy. I would have to watch the window frame carefully when I put pressure on the chisel. I couldn’t risk leaving marks nor could I hold a torch and work on the catch at the same time.

  I returned to the house and prepared myself a scratch meal.

  While I ate I wandered around the dining room, wondering how best to tackle the job. I was going to get into her room. Why had she locked the door if there wasn’t something to conceal?

  I finally decided to make believe I was cleaning the windows.

  If anyone spotted me up there on the ladder I had a legitimate excuse for being there.

  I fetched a bucket of water, a wash-leather and a chisel.

  I found a thin strip of wood that I could use to guard the window frame. Then I set the ladder against the guttering and climbed up to the window. I hung the bucket from one of the ladder rungs, took a quick look down the lane and then examined the window. The wood looked pretty rotten and the
catch none too strong.

  It took me less than a minute to prise out the screws. The catch fell of and dropped on the carpet. I got my fingernails under the window ledge and pulled the window open.

  Then, a little late, I again glanced over my shoulder and looked down the lane. A man in a mackintosh and a black slouch hat was standing by the gate, watching me. He gave me such a start I nearly fell of the ladder. But somehow I managed to give him a casual stare, and then looked away. I slipped the chisel into my pocket, keeping it concealed by my body. Then I fished out the wash-leather from the bucket and began to wipe over the window.

  I felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of my neck. I didn’t know who he was: probably the village vicar. I didn’t know if he knew her. If he did, he was almost certain to tell her he had seen me up at her window, and she would make enough of that to tum Sarek against me.

  I heard a crunching sound below me and glanced down.

  He had opened the gate and was coming up the short drive, still looking at me, a puzzled frown on his thin, gaunt face.

  He was a tall, grey-haired man, with a long, bony nose that looked as if it enjoyed poking itself into other people’s business. I suspended operations, hung on to the top rung of the ladder and looked down at him. By now he was standing at the foot of the ladder, peering shortsightedly up at me. I was right about him being the vicar. I spotted his dog collar.

  I got in the first word.

  ‘Did you want to see Mrs. Sarek? I’m afraid she’s away.’

  ‘What are you doing up there, young man?’

  ‘Cleaning the window.’

  ‘You were opening it just now. I saw you.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m going to clean the inside. Mrs. Sarek asked me to do the windows.’

  ‘It looked to me as if you were forcing the window open.’

  The kind of meddler who didn’t miss anything.

  I gave him my wide boy scout smile.

  ‘Well, I was. The wood’s swollen by the rain and I didn’t want to climb down and go upstairs and open it from the inside. Did you think I was a burglar?’

  He looked surprised and a little embarrassed, and gave one of those rich, juicy laughs clergymen cultivate.