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“I’ve always thought,” she said, “it must be terribly dull to be a man.”
Then she said thoughtfully:
“I think Randall looked on Blackie very much as a kind of younger brother. He relied on her judgment which was always excellent. She kept him out of trouble more than once, you know.”
“She told me that she came to his rescue once with money?”
“That, yes, but I meant more than that. One can speak the truth after all these years. Randall couldn’t really distinguish between what was crooked and what wasn’t. His conscience wasn’t sensitive. The poor dear really didn’t know what was just smart—and what was dishonest. Blackie kept him straight. That’s one thing about Letitia Blacklock, she’s absolutely dead straight. She would never do anything that was dishonest. She’s a very fine character, you know. I’ve always admired her. They had a terrible girlhood, those girls. The father was an old country doctor—terrifically pig-headed and narrow-minded—the complete family tyrant. Letitia broke away, came to London, and trained herself as a chartered accountant. The other sister was an invalid, there was a deformity of kinds and she never saw people or went out. That’s why when the old man died, Letitia gave up everything to go home and look after her sister. Randall was wild with her—but it made no difference. If Letitia thought a thing was her duty she’d do it. And you couldn’t move her.”
“How long was that before your husband died?”
“A couple of years, I think. Randall made his will before she left the firm, and he didn’t alter it. He said to me: ‘We’ve no one of our own.’ (Our little boy died, you know, when he was two years old.) ‘After you and I are gone, Blackie had better have the money. She’ll play the markets and make ’em sit up.’
“You see,” Belle went on, “Randall enjoyed the whole money-making game so much—it wasn’t just the money—it was the adventure, the risks, the excitement of it all. And Blackie liked it too. She had the same adventurous spirit and the same judgment. Poor darling, she’d never had any of the usual fun—being in love, and leading men on and teasing them—and having a home and children and all the real fun of life.”
Craddock thought it was odd, the real pity and indulgent contempt felt by this woman, a woman whose life had been hampered by illness, whose only child had died, whose husband had died, leaving her to a lonely widowhood, and who had been a hopeless invalid for years.
She nodded her head at him.
“I know what you’re thinking. But I’ve had all the things that make life worth while—they may have been taken from me—but I have had them. I was pretty and gay as a girl, I married the man I loved, and he never stopped loving me … My child died, but I had him for two precious years … I’ve had a lot of physical pain—but if you have pain, you know how to enjoy the exquisite pleasure of the times when pain stops. And everyone’s been kind to me, always … I’m a lucky woman, really.”
Craddock seized upon an opening in her former remarks.
“You said just now, Mrs. Goedler, that your husband left his fortune to Miss Blacklock because he had no one else to leave it to. But that’s not strictly true, is it? He had a sister.”
“Oh, Sonia. But they quarrelled years ago and made a clean break of it.”
“He disapproved of her marriage?”
“Yes, she married a man called—now what was his name—?”
“Stamfordis.”
“That’s it. Dmitri Stamfordis. Randall always said he was a crook. The two men didn’t like each other from the first. But Sonia was wildly in love with him and quite determined to marry him. And I really never saw why she shouldn’t. Men have such odd ideas about these things. Sonia wasn’t a mere girl—she was twenty-five, and she knew exactly what she was doing. He was a crook, I dare say—I mean really a crook. I believe he had a criminal record—and Randall always suspected the name he was passing under here wasn’t his own. Sonia knew all that. The point was, which of course Randall couldn’t appreciate, that Dmitri was really a wildly attractive person to women. And he was just as much in love with Sonia as she was with him. Randall insisted that he was just marrying her for her money—but that wasn’t true. Sonia was very handsome, you know. And she had plenty of spirit. If the marriage had turned out badly, if Dmitri had been unkind to her or unfaithful to her, she would just have cut her losses and walked out on him. She was a rich woman and could do as she chose with her life.”
“The quarrel was never made up?”
“No. Randall and Sonia never had got on very well. She resented his trying to prevent the marriage. She said, ‘Very well. You’re quite impossible! This is the last you hear of me!’”
“But it was not the last you heard of her?”
Belle smiled.
“No, I got a letter from her about eighteen months afterwards. She wrote from Budapest, I remember, but she didn’t give an address. She told me to tell Randall that she was extremely happy and that she’d just had twins.”
“And she told you their names?”
Again Belle smiled. “She said they were born just after midday—and she intended to call them Pip and Emma. That may have been just a joke, of course.”
“Didn’t you hear from her again?”
“No. She said she and her husband and the babies were going to America on a short stay. I never heard any more….”
“You don’t happen, I suppose, to have kept that letter?”
“No, I’m afraid not … I read it to Randall and he just grunted: ‘She’ll regret marrying that fellow one of these days.’ That’s all he ever said about it. We really forgot about her. She went right out of our lives….”
“Nevertheless Mr. Goedler left his estate to her children in the event of Miss Blacklock predeceasing you?”
“Oh, that was my doing. I said to him, when he told me about the will: ‘And suppose Blackie dies before I do?’ He was quite surprised. I said, ‘Oh, I know Blackie is as strong as a horse and I’m a delicate creature—but there’s such a thing as accidents, you know, and there’s such a thing as creaking gates …’ And he said,
‘There’s no one—absolutely no one.’ I said, ‘There’s Sonia.’ And he said at once, ‘And let that fellow get hold of my money? No—indeed!’ I said, ‘Well, her children then. Pip and Emma, and there may be lots more by now’—and so he grumbled, but he did put it in.”
“And from that day to this,” Craddock said slowly, “you’ve heard nothing of your sister-in-law or her children?”
“Nothing—they may be dead—they may be—anywhere.”
They may be in Chipping Cleghorn, thought Craddock.
As though she read his thoughts, a look of alarm came into Belle Goedler’s eyes. She said, “Don’t let them hurt Blackie. Blackie’s good—really good—you mustn’t let harm come to—”
Her voice trailed off suddenly. Craddock saw the sudden grey shadows round her mouth and eyes.
“You’re tired,” he said. “I’ll go.”
She nodded.
“Send Mac to me,” she whispered. “Yes, tired …” She made a feeble motion of her hand. “Look after Blackie … Nothing must happen to Blackie … look after her….”
“I’ll do my very best, Mrs. Goedler.” He rose and went to the door.
Her voice, a thin thread of sound, followed him….
“Not long now—until I’m dead—dangerous for her—Take care….”
Sister McClelland passed him as he went out. He said, uneasily:
“I hope I haven’t done her harm.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Mr. Craddock. I told you she would tire quite suddenly.”
Later, he asked the nurse:
“The only thing I hadn’t time to ask Mrs. Goedler was whether she had any old photographs? If so, I wonder—”
She interrupted him.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing of that kind. All her personal papers and things were stored with their furniture from the London house at the beginning of the war. Mrs. Goedler was desperately ill at the time. Then the storage despository was blitzed. Mrs. Goedler was very upset at losing so many personal souvenirs and family papers. I’m afraid there’s nothing of that kind.”
