He raised his hat and slipped in the clutch. As Harriet turned back, a voice, faintly familiar, accosted her:
‘Miss er — Miss Vane? Might I speak to you for a moment?’
It was’ the ‘predatory hag’ whom she had seen the evening before in the dance-lounge of the Resplendent.
Chapter V. The Evidence Of The Betrothed
‘He said, dear mother, I should be his countess;
Today he’d come to fetch me, but with day
I’ve laid my expectation in its grave.’
— The Bride’s Tragedy
Friday 19, June
HARRIET had almost forgotten the woman’s existence, but now the whole off the little episode came back to her, and she wondered how she could have been so stupid. The nervous waiting; the vague, enraptured look, changing gradually to peevish impatience; the inquiry for Mr Alexis; the hasty and chagrined departure from the room. Glancing at the woman’s face now, she saw it so old, so ravaged with grief and fear, that a kind of awkward delicacy made her avert her eyes and answer rather brusquely:
‘Yes, certainly. Come up to my room.’
‘It is very good of you,’ said the woman. She paused a moment and then added, as they walked across to the lift;
‘My name is Weldon Mrs Weldon. I’ve been staying here some time. Mr Greely — the manager, that is knows me very well.’
‘That’s all right,’’ said Harriet. She realised that Mrs Weldon was trying to explain that she was not a confidence-trickster or an hotel-crook or a white-slave agent, and was herself trying to make it clear that she did not suppose Mrs Weldon to be any of these things. She felt shy and this made her speak gruffly. She saw a ‘scene’ looming ahead, and she was not one of those women who enjoy ‘scenes’. She led the way in a glum silence to Number 23, and begged her visitor to sit down.
‘It’s about,’’ said Mrs Weldon, sinking into an armchair and clasping her lean hands over her expensive handbag ‘it’s about Mr Alexis. The chamber-maid told me a horrible story — I went to the manager he wouldn’t tell me anything — I saw you with the police — and all those reporters were talking — they pointed you out — Oh, Miss Vane, please tell me what has happened.’
Harriet cleared her throat and began searching her pockets instinctively for cigarettes.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she began. ‘I’m afraid something rather beastly has happened. You see — I happened to be down on the shore yesterday afternoon, and I found a man lying there — dead. And from what they say, I’m dreadfully afraid it was Mr Alexis.’
No use, beating about the bush. This forlorn creature with the dyed hair and haggard, painted face would have to know the truth. She struck a match and kept her eye on the flame.
‘That’s what I heard. Was it, do you know, was it a heart-attack?’
‘Afraid not. No. They — seem to think he — (what was the gentlest form of words?)—‘did it himself.’ (At any rate that avoided the word ‘suicide’.)
‘Oh, he couldn’t have! he couldn’t have! Indeed, Miss Vane, there must be a mistake. He must have had an accident’
Harriet shook her head.
‘But you don’t know how could you? — how impossible it all is. But people shouldn’t say such cruel things. He was so perfectly happy — he couldn’t have done anything like that. Why, he—’ Mrs Weldon stopped, searching Harriet’s face with her famished eyes. ‘I heard them saying something about a razor — Miss Vane! What killed him?’
There were no kindly words’ for this — not even a, long,’ scientific, Latin name.
‘His throat was cut, Mrs Weldon.’
(Brutal Saxon monosyllables.)
‘Oh!’ Mrs Weldon seemed to shrink into a mere set of eyes and bones. ‘Yes — they said — they said — I couldn’t’ hear properly — I didn’t like to ask — and they all seemed so pleased about it.’
‘I know,’ said Harriet. ‘You see these newspaper men it’s what they, live by. They don’t mean anything. It’s bread-and-butter to them. They can’t help it. And they couldn’t possibly know that it meant anything to you.’
‘No, — but it does. But you — you don’t want to make it out worse than it is I can trust you.’
‘You can trust me,’ said Harriet slowly, ‘but really and truly it could not have been an accident. I don’t want to give you the details, but believe me, there’s no possibility of accident.’
‘Then it can’t be Mr Alexis. Where is he? Can I see him?’ Harriet explained that the body had not been recovered. ‘Then it must be somebody else! How do they know it is Paul?’
Harriet reluctantly mentioned the photograph, knowing what the next request would be.
‘Show me the photograph.’
‘It isn’t very pleasant to look at’
‘Show me the photograph. I couldn’t be deceived about it.’
Better, perhaps, to set all doubt at rest. Harriet slowly produce the print. Mrs Weldon snatched it from her hand,
‘Oh, God! Oh God!…’
Harriet rang the bell and, stepping out into the corridor, caught the waiter and asked for a stiff whisky-and-soda. When it came, she took it in herself and made Mrs Weldon drink it. Then she fetched a clean handkerchief and waited for the storm to subside. She sat on the arm of the chair and patted Mrs Weldon rather helplessly on the shoulder. Mercifully, the crisis took the form of violent sobbing and not of hysterics. She felt an increased respect for Mrs Weldon. When the sobs had subsided a little, and the groping fingers began to fumble with the handbag, Harriet pushed the handkerchief into them.
‘Thank you, my dear,’ said Mrs Weldon, meekly. She began to wipe her eyes, daubing the linen with red and black streaks from her make-up. Then she blew her nose and sat up.
‘I’m sorry,’ she began, forlornly.
‘That’s all right,’ said Harriet, again. ‘I’m afraid you’ve had rather a shock. Perhaps you’d like to bathe your eyes a bit. It’ll make you feel better, don’t you think?’
She supplied a sponge and towel. Mrs Weldon removed the grotesque traces of her grief and made her appearance from within the folds of the towel as a sallow-faced woman of between fifty and sixty, infinitely more dignified in her natural complexion. She made an instinctive movement towards her handbag, and then abandoned it.
‘I look awful,’ she said, with a dreary little laugh, but — what’s it matter, now?’
‘I shouldn’t mind about it,’ said Harriet. ‘You look quite nice. Really and truly. Come and sit down. Have a cigarette. And let me give you a phenacetin or something. I expect you’ve got a bit of a; headache.’
‘Thank you. You’re very kind. I won’t be stupid again. I’m giving you a lot of trouble:
‘Not a bit. I only wish I could help you.’