I soon fell into the habit of going in to have supper with her once a week and at these little meals she used to talk. It was evident that she never opened her lips on any personal matter to anyone else; but for some reason she trusted me. Even so it took me months to find out what was the matter with her. When it came out, it was obvious.
Le Coq au Vin had a debt hanging over it. In Mama Frosné’s time the family had never owed a penny, but in the year or so between her death and his own, Papa Frosné had somehow contrived not only to borrow the best part of four thousand pounds from Adelbert of the Glass Mountain but to lose every cent of it in half a dozen senile little schemes.
Louise was paying it back in five-hundred-pound installments.
As she first told me about it, I happened to glance into her eyes and in them I saw one sort of hell. It has always seemed to me that there are people who can stand Debt in the same way that some men can stand Drink. It may undermine their constitutions but it does not make them openly shabby. Yet to the others, Debt does something unspeakable. The Devil was certainly having his money’s worth out of Louise.
I did not argue with her, of course. It was not my place. I sat there registering sympathy until she surprised me by saying suddenly:
“It’s not so much the work and the worry, nor even the skimping, that I really hate so much. It’s the awful ceremony when I have to pay him. I dread that.”
“You’re too sensitive,” I told her. “Once you have the money in the bank, you can put a check in an envelope, send it to him, and then forget about it, can’t you?”
She glanced at me with an odd expression in her eyes; they were almost lead-colored between the bleached lashes.
“You don’t know Adelbert,” she said. “He’s a queer bit of work.
I have to pay him in cash and he likes to make a regular little performance of it. He comes here by appointment, has a drink, and likes to have Violetta as a witness by way of audience. If I don’t show I’m a bit upset, he goes right on talking until I do. Calls himself a psychologist — says he knows everything I’m thinking.”
“That’s not what I’d call him,” I said. I was disgusted. I hate that sort of thing.
Louise hesitated. “I have watched him burn most of the money just for the effect,” she admitted. “There, in front of me.”
I felt my eyebrows rising up into my hair. “You can’t mean it!” I exclaimed. “The man’s not right in the head.”
She sighed and I looked at her sharply.
“Why, he’s twenty years older than you are, Louise,” I began.
“Surely there wasn’t ever anything between you? You know…anything like that?”
“No. No, there wasn’t, Ellie, honestly.” I believed her — she was quite frank about it and obviously as puzzled as I was. “He did speak to Papa once about me when I was a kid. Asked for me formally, you know, as they still did round here at that time. I never heard what the old man said but he never minced words, did he?
All I can remember is that I was kept downstairs out of sight for a bit and after that Mama treated me as if I’d been up to something; but I hadn’t even spoken to the man — he wasn’t a person a young girl would notice, was he? That was years ago, though. I suppose Adelbert could have remembered it all that time — but it’s not reasonable, is it?”
“That’s the one thing it certainly isn’t,” I told her. “Next time I’ll be the witness.”
“Adelbert would enjoy that,” Louise said grimly. “I don’t know that I won’t hold you to it. You ought to see him!”
We let the subject drop, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I could see them both from behind the curtains in my shop window and it seemed that whenever I looked out, there was the tight-lipped silent woman, scraping every farthing, and there was the fat man watching her from his doorway across the street, a secret satisfaction on his sallow face.
In the end it got on my nerves and when that happens I have to talk — I can’t help it.
There was no one in the street I dared to gossip with, but I did mention the tale to a customer. She was a woman named Mrs. Marten whom I’d particularly liked ever since she’d come in to inquire after the first dress I ever put in my shop window. I made most of her clothes and she had recommended me to one or two ladies in the district where she lived, which was up at Hampstead, nice and far away from Soho. I was fitting her one day when she happened to say something about men and the things they’ll stoop to if their pride has been hurt, and before I’d realized what I was doing I’d come out with the story Louise had told me. I didn’t mention names, of course, but I may have conveyed that it was all taking place in this street. Mrs. Marten was a nice, gentle little soul with a sweet face, and she was shocked.
“But how awful,” she kept saying, “how perfectly awful! To burn the money in front of her after she’s worked so hard for it. He must be quite insane. And dangerous.”
“Oh, well,” I said hastily, “it’s his money by the time he does that, and I don’t suppose he destroys much of it. Only enough to upset my friend.” I was sorry I’d spoken. I hadn’t expected Mrs. Marten to be quite so horrified. “It just shows you how other people live.”
I finished and hoped she’d drop the subject. She didn’t, however.
The idea seemed to fascinate her even more than it had me. I couldn’t get her to leave it alone and she chattered about it all throughout the fitting. Then, just as she was putting on her hat to leave, she suddenly said, “Miss Kaye, I’ve just had a thought. My brother-in-law is Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard. He might be able to think of some way of stopping that dreadful man from torturing that poor little woman you told me about. Shall I mention it to him?”
“Oh, no! Please don’t!” I exclaimed. “She’d never forgive me.
There’s nothing the police could do to help her. I do hope you’ll forgive me for saying so, Madam, but I do hope you won’t do anything of the sort.”
She seemed rather hurt, but she gave me her word. I had no faith in it, naturally. Once a woman has considered talking about a thing, it’s as good as done. I was quite upset for a day or two because the last thing I wanted was to get involved; but nothing happened and I’d just started to breathe easily again when I had to go down to Vaughan’s, the big wholesale trimmings house at the back of Regent’s Street. I was coming out with my parcels when a man came up to me. I knew he was a detective: he was the type, with a very short haircut, a brown raincoat, and that look of being in a settled job and yet not in anything particular. He asked me to come along to his office and I couldn’t refuse. I realized he’d been following me until I was far enough away from Adelaide Street where no one would have noticed him approach me.
He took me to his superior who was quite a nice old boy in his way — on nobody’s side but his own, as is the way with the police; but I got the impression that he was on the level, which is more than some people are. He introduced himself as Detective Inspector Cumberland, made me sit down, and sent out for a cup of tea for me. Then he asked me about Louise.
I got into a panic because when you’re in business in Adelaide Street, you’re in business, and the last thing you can afford to do is get into trouble with your neighbors. I denied everything, of course, insisting that I hardly knew the woman.
Cumberland wouldn’t have that. I must say he knew how to handle me. He kept me going over and over my own affairs until I was thankful to speak about anything else. In the end I gave way because, after all, nobody was doing anything criminal as far as I could see. I told him all I knew, letting him draw it out bit by bit, and when I’d finished he laughed at me, peering at me with little bright eyes under brows which were as thick as silver fox fur.