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The call concluded, she replaced the receiver and handed the pad on which she had been writing to the inspector. The place of origin was Paris and the message ran as follows:
Fortescue Yewtree Lodge Baydon Heath Surrey. Sorry your letter delayed. Will be with you tomorrow about teatime. Shall expect roast veal for dinner. Lance.
Inspector Neele raised his eyebrows.
“So the Prodigal Son had been summoned home,” he said.
Chapter Six
At the moment when Rex Fortescue had been drinking his last cup of tea, Lance Fortescue and his wife had been sitting under the trees on the Champs Elysées watching the people walking past.
“It’s all very well to say ‘describe him,’ Pat. I’m a rotten hand at descriptions. What do you want to know? The Guvnor’s a bit of an old crook, you know. But you won’t mind that? You must be used to that more or less.”
“Oh, yes,” said Pat. “Yes—as you say—I’m acclimatized.”
She tried to keep a certain forlornness out of her voice. Perhaps, she reflected, the whole world was really crooked—or was it just that she herself had been unfortunate?
She was a tall, long-legged girl, not beautiful but with a charm that was made-up of vitality and a warm-hearted personality. She moved well, and had lovely gleaming chestnut brown hair. Perhaps from a long association with horses, she had acquired the look of a thoroughbred filly.
Crookedness in the racing world she knew about—now, it seemed, she was to encounter crookedness in the financial world. Though for all that, it seemed that her father-in-law, whom she had not yet met, was, as far as the law was concerned, a pillar of rectitude. All these people who went about boasting of “smart work” were the same—technically they always managed to be within the law. Yet it seemed to her that her Lance, whom she loved, and who had admittedly strayed outside the ringed fence in earlier days, had an honesty that these successful practitioners of the crooked lacked.
“I don’t mean,” said Lance, “that he’s a swindler—not anything like that. But he knows how to put over a fast one.”
“Sometimes,” said Pat, “I feel I hate people who put over fast ones.” She added: “You’re fond of him.” It was a statement, not a question.
Lance considered it for a moment, and then said in a surprised kind of voice:
“Do you know, darling, I believe I am.”
Pat laughed. He turned his head to look at her. His eyes narrowed. What a darling she was! He loved her. The whole thing was worth it for her sake.
“In a way, you know,” he said, “it’s hell going back. City life. Home on the 5:18. It’s not my kind of life. I’m far more at home among the down and outs. But one’s got to settle down sometime, I suppose. And with you to hold my hand the process may even be quite a pleasant one. And since the old boy has come round, one ought to take advantage of it. I must say I was surprised when I got his letter . . . Percival, of all people, blotting his copybook. Percival, the good little boy. Mind you, Percy was always sly. Yes, he was always sly.”
“I don’t think,” said Patricia Fortescue, “that I’m going to like your brother Percival.”
“Don’t let me put you against him. Percy and I never got on—that’s all there is to it. I blued my pocket money, he saved his. I had disreputable but entertaining friends, Percy made what’s called ‘worthwhile contacts.’ Poles apart we were, he and I. I always thought him a poor fish, and he—sometimes, you know, I think he almost hated me. I don’t know why exactly. . . .”
“I think I can see why.”
“Can you, darling? You’re so brainy. You know I’ve always wondered—it’s a fantastic thing to say—but—”
“Well? Say it.”
“I’ve wondered if it wasn’t Percival who was behind that cheque business—you know, when the old man kicked me out—and was he mad that he’d given me a share in the firm and so he couldn’t disinherit me! Because the queer thing was that I never forged that cheque—though of course nobody would believe that after that time I swiped funds out of the till and put it on a horse. I was dead sure I could put it back, and anyway it was my own cash in a manner of speaking. But that cheque business—no. I don’t know why I’ve got the ridiculous idea that Percival did that—but I have, somehow.”
“But it wouldn’t have done him any good? It was paid into your account.”
“I know. So it doesn’t make sense, does it?”
Pat turned sharply towards him.
“You mean—he did it to get you chucked out of the firm?”
“I wondered. Oh well—it’s a rotten thing to say. Forget it. I wonder what old Percy will say when he sees the Prodigal returned. Those pale, boiled-gooseberry eyes of his will pop right out of his head!”
“Does he know you are coming?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t know a damned thing! The old man’s got rather a funny sense of humour, you know.”
“But what has your brother done to upset your father so much?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. Something must have made the old man livid. Writing off to me the way he did.”
“When was it you got his first letter?”
“Must be four—no five months ago. A cagey letter, but a distinct holding out of the olive branch. ‘Your elder brother has proved himself unsatisfactory in many ways.’ ‘You seem to have sown your wild oats and settled down.’ ‘I can promise you that it will be well worth your while financially.’ ‘Shall welcome you and your wife.’ You know, darling, I think my marrying you had a lot to do with it. The old boy was impressed that I’d married into a class above me.”
Pat laughed.
“What? Into the aristocratic riff-raff?”
He grinned. “That’s right. But riff-raff didn’t register and aristocracy did. You should see Percival’s wife. She’s the kind who says ‘Pass the preserves, please’ and talks about a postage stamp.”
Pat did not laugh. She was considering the women of the family into which she had married. It was a point of view which Lance had not taken into account.
“And your sister?” she asked.
“Elaine—? Oh she’s all right. She was pretty young when I left home. Sort of an earnest girl—but probably she’s grown out of that. Very intense over things.”
It did not sound very reassuring. Pat said:
“She never wrote to you—after you went away?”
“I didn’t leave an address. But she wouldn’t have, anyway. We’re not a devoted family.”
“No.”
He shot a quick look at her.
“Got the wind up? About my family? You needn’t. We’re not going to live with them, or anything like that. We’ll have our own little place, somewhere. Horses, dogs, anything you like.”
“But there will still be the 5:18.”
“For me, yes. To and fro to the city, all togged up. But don’t worry, sweet—there are rural pockets, even round London. And lately I’ve felt the sap of financial affairs rising in me. After all, it’s in my blood—from both sides of the family.”
“You hardly remember your mother, do you?”
“She always seemed to me incredibly old. She was old, of course. Nearly fifty when Elaine was born. She wore lots of clinking things and lay on a sofa and used to read me stories about knights and ladies which bored me stiff. Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King.’ I suppose I was fond of her . . . She was very—colourless, you know. I realize that, looking back.”
“You don’t seem to have been particularly fond of anybody,” said Pat disapprovingly.
Lance grasped and squeezed her arm.
“I’m fond of you,” he said.
Ch
apter Seven
Inspector Neele was still holding the telegraph message in his hand when he heard a car drive up to the front door and stop with a careless scrunching of brakes.
Mary Dove, “That will be Mrs. Fortescue now.”
Inspector Neele moved forwards to the front door. Out of the tail of his eye, he saw Mary Dove melt unobtrusively into the background and disappear. Clearly she intended to take no part in the forthcoming scene. A remarkable display of tact and discretion—and also a rather remarkable lack of curiosity. Most women, Inspector Neele decided, would have remained. . . .
As he reached the front door he was aware of the butler, Crump, coming forward from the back of the hall. So he had heard the car.
The car was a Rolls Bentley sports model coupé. Two people got out of it and came towards the house. As they reached the door, it opened. Surprised, Adele Fortescue stared at Inspector Neele.
He realized at once that she was a very beautiful woman, and he realized too the force of Mary Dove’s comment which had so shocked him at the time. Adele Fortescue was a sexy piece. In figure and type she resembled the blonde Miss Grosvenor, but whereas Miss Grosvenor was all glamour without and all respectability within, Adele Fortescue was glamour all through. Her appeal was obvious, not subtle. It said simply to every man “Here am I. I’m a woman.” She spoke and moved and breathed sex—and yet, within it all, her eyes had a shrewd appraising quality. Adele Fortescue, he thought, liked men—but she would always like money even better.
His eyes went on to the figure behind her who carried her golf clubs. He knew the type very well. It was the type that specialized in the young wives of rich and elderly men. Mr. Vivian Dubois, if this was he, had that rather forced masculinity which is, in reality, nothing of the kind. He was the type of man who “understands” women.
“Mrs. Fortescue?”
“Yes.” It was a wide blue-eyed gaze. “But I don’t know—”
“I am Inspector Neele. I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”
“Do you mean—a burglary—something of that kind?”
“No, nothing of that kind. It is about your husband. He was taken seriously ill this morning.”
