“Yes,” she said, “I see that. I!ve been half expecting the police to come along and say something like that, but they haven’t been, I don’t know why, unless they just don’t know about me. We never met each other’s friends, so there wouldn’t be anybody to know really. That’s why I was so surprised you knew.” She stopped then, and seemed to break down completely. Her face went down into her hands and her shoulders heaved. Debonnair flashed a glance at Shaw, frowned warningly, went across and sat by the girl. For several minutes she talked to her in a low, comforting voice, and the racking sobs began to subside. After a while Gillian Ross looked up, her face tear-stained and blotchy. She said, “I’m awfully sorry. Things have got me down a bit.”
“Of course they have,” Shaw agreed sympathetically. “It’s time you had someone to talk to and take some of the load.” He paused, looking at the girl closely. “I’m going to take a chance and put you in the picture, Miss Ross, and remember, if ever you’ve kept a secret in your life, and I’m sure you have, this is the one time above all others that you’ve got to give me your word you’ll never reveal what I’m going to tell you, not to anyone. I dare say you’ve heard of the Official Secrets Act. Well now, that applies to all I’m going to say, and I’m warning you — officially, and in the name of Her Majesty’s Government. Do you really understand?”
She said wearily, flicking ash off her cigarette, “Of course. I did go to school, you know.”
He smiled. “Fine! Now listen carefully. I’m attached to Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty, and I have certain facts at my disposal, facts which at the moment mustn’t be released even to the police. Remember, I’ve told you I don’t believe MacNamara did kill the man in the Tube — he hadn’t got that sort of reaction. By running away he’s behaving perfectly naturally, if rather stupidly. That’s all. I’m genuinely out to help. And if I can find out who did that killing — well, MacNamara’s in the clear, isn’t he?”
“Uh-huh.” She lit a fresh cigarette, discarding more than half the old one, and he noticed the shake in her fingers as she did so. “Yes, I suppose he is. But what I said was the truth. If I’d known where Pat was, I’d have gone to him myself.”
“You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?” he asked gently.
She didn’t answer right away. She drew deeply on her cigarette and drank some gin, then, frowning a little, she said, “I wasn’t in love with him, if that’s what you mean. Not exactly that. I was attracted, I suppose. I… respected him and I felt terribly sorry for him. I’ve always been able to tell about people.” After that she looked at him sardonically, her lip curling a little. “You think it’s all pretty odd, don’t you?”
He shook his head. “Not necessarily. Would it help at all if you were to tell me about it, Miss Ross?”
She gave a tired sort of smile and said, “What you mean is, you want to know. All right then — I’ll tell you.” She took another mouthful of gin, spilling some on her lap. “I did what girls like me aren’t generally supposed to do. I went to a public hop, all by myself. You know the kind of thing I mean — the Palais…"
It was rather a sad little story really, as the girl told it, abruptly and unsentimentally. She had lost both her parents in a flying accident when she was a baby, and she had no memory of them whatever. She’d been brought up by a bachelor uncle who’d kept what sounded like a very rackety establishment down in the West Country, with drink flowing regularly and girl friends constantly appearing and being replaced by new ones. She’d been pushed around a lot, and the kind of life that she’d had to lead had sickened her and she’d become something of an anti-social recluse, not wanting to meet any of her uncle’s friends or, indeed, anybody else. In the end, soon after leaving school, she’d had an almighty row with the gay uncle, who’d made semi-drunken advances to her one night. He had washed his hands of her, and she’d come to London, alone and utterly friendless, though at first she’d scarcely been conscious of this, and with just one skill to offer, a skill which she’d developed in the long, lonely hours in Devon — an ability to design dresses. This had led her to a small job in a well-known London fashion house, but she’d been unable to get along with her workmates and so, later on, she’d got this job at Helene’s. She’d first come to London four years before, and for a time she’d lived in a young women’s club; there she’d been, after a while, desperately lonely because somehow or other she’d felt she had quite lost the ability to make friends, and she used to sit night after night in the club lounge, all by herself, pretending to read a book, until she went off early to bed. And after a time, she’d begun to change.
London was all around her, and all the girls she knew at work had boy friends, and she felt the lack, felt the awful, grinding loneliness of her position; but she herself never had any opportunity of meeting any men at all. The club had a moral tone so high, she said, that it hit you like a bomb and she almost wished herself back in Devon; but under no circumstances would she crawl to the uncle now. No men were allowed in that club, and most of the young women were of the severe, blue-stocking type; while at work the only men who came into the shop were heavily attached, and all they could do was to make eyes at her and wonder how she would compare in bed with their own wives or mistresses. As to the other girls, she simply could not, as she had said, get along with them, and they had no out-of-hours contact at all. She was, she admitted frankly, becoming a misfit.
In time she had begun to earn more money from her work, especially after moving to Helene’s, and she’d found this flatlet going for a rental which was reasonably within her resources, though it didn’t leave a lot over, and she’d taken it thankfully. It had, however, proved a mistake and she was lonelier than ever.
She explained quite honestly that her position was the worst a girl could be in, bar one. She was by this time frankly avid for male company, but because of her mental conflicts and her deep-seated inhibitions (which, Shaw guessed, had by this time assumed the proportions of a complex), she just couldn’t see any way of getting it except by a pickup. So she’d gone one night to the Palais and she’d seen Patrick MacNamara, sitting all by himself — because, as she suspected, of his colour. That, she said, made two outcasts, two people against the world, and she’d thought to herself, well, what the hell, may as well make myself cheap as be a wallflower. So, when he’d given her a half-defiant grin, she’d started to eye him properly. And that was how it had all begun. She told Shaw now quite openly and without shame that she wasn’t a virgin any more, but she knew how to take care of herself, thanks to early example; and she repeated that she wasn’t in love with Patrick MacNamara, but she had grown, as she’d said earlier, to respect him as a decent boy who was fighting a losing battle against colour prejudice and bad luck and to that extent, and partly because of her own deep loneliness, she said, perhaps she did love him without being in love, if Shaw could understand the difference… they were, she said, almost two of a type apart from the colour of their skins.
“What else do you want to know?” The question was abrupt, as though she felt she had already talked too much and was ashamed after all at having let her hair down so far.