“The applicant did turn up, sir, eventually. The lady says she's very sorry, but it was unavoidable. She says things are very difficult, since she's only just been repatriated from France...”
“Repatriated from France?”
“Yes, sir.”
The hands of the gilt clock on the grey-green wall pointed to twenty-five minutes past eleven. Miles Hammond stood very still, and stopped twirling the key in his hand.
“Did the lady leave her name?”
“Yes, sir. Miss Fay Seton.”
Chapter VI
On the following afternoon, Saturday, the second of June, Miles reached Waterloo Station at four o'clock.
Waterloo, its curving acre of iron-girdered roof still darkened over except where a few patches of glass remained after the shake of bombs, had got over most of the Saturday rush to Bournemouth. But it still rang with a woman's spirited voice over a loud-speaker, telling people what queues to join. (If this voice ever begins to say something you want to hear, it is instantly drowned out by a hiss of steam or the thudding chest-notes of an engine.) Streams of travellers, mainly in khaki against civilian drabness, wound back among the benches behind the bookstall and, to the lady like annoyance of the loud-speaker, got mixed up in each other's queues.
Miles Hammond was not amused. As he put down his suitcase and waited under the clock, he was almost blind to everything about him.
What the devil, he said to himself, had he done?
What would Marion say? What would Steve say?
Yet if anybody on this earth represented sanity, it was his sister and her fiance. He was heartened to see them a few minutes later, Marion laden with parcels and Steve with a pipe in his mouth.
Marion Hammond, six or seven years younger than Miles, was a sturdy, nice-looking girl with black hair like her brother, but a practicality that he perhaps lacked. She was very fond of Miles an tirelessly humoured him; because she really did believe, though she never said so, that he was not mentally grown up. She was proud, of course, of a brother who could write such learned books, though Marion confessed sh didn't understand such things herself: the point was that books had no relation to serious affairs in life.
And, as Miles sometimes had to admit to himself, perhaps she was right.
So she came hurrying along under the echoing roof of Waterloo, well dressed even in this year because of new tricks with old clothes, her hazel eyes at ease with life under their dark straight brows, and intrigued―even pleased―by a new vagary of Mile's nature.
“Honestly, Miles!” said his sister. “Look at the clock! It's only a few minutes past four!”
“I know that.”
“But the train doesn't go until half-past five, dear. Even if we've got to be here early to have a prayer of getting a seat, why must you make us get here as early as this?” Then her sisterly eye caught the expression on his face, and she broke off. “Miles! What's wrong? Are you ill?”
“No, no, no!”
“Then what is it?”
“I want to talk to both of you,” said Miles. “Come with me.”
Stephen Curtis took the pipe out of his mouth. “Ho?” he observed.
Stephen's age might have been in the late thirties. He was almost completely bald―a sore subject with him―thought personable-enough looking and with much stolid charm. His fair moustache gave him a vaguely R.A.F. Appearance, though in fact he worked at the Ministry of Information and strongly resented jokes about this institution. He had met Marion there two years ago after being invalided out very early in the war. He and Marion, in fact, were themselves an institution already.
So he stood looking at Miles with interest from under the brim of a soft hat.
“Well?” prompted Stephen.
Opposite platform number eleven at Waterloo there is a restaurant, up two steep flights of stairs. Miles picked up his suitcase and led the way there. When they had installed themselves at a window table overlooking the station platform, in a big imitation-oak-panelled room only sparsely filled, Miles first ordered tea with care.
“There's a woman named Fay Seton,” he sad. “Six years ago, in France, sh was mixed up in a murder case. People accused her of some kind of unnamed bad conduct which set the whole district by the ears.” He paused. “I've engaged her to come to Greywood and catalogue the books.”
There was a long silence while Marion and Stephen looked at him. Again Stephen took the pipe out of his mouth.
“Why?” he asked.
“ don't know!” Miles answered honestly. “I'd made up my mind to have absolutely nothing to do with it. I was going to tell her firmly that the post had been filled. I couldn't sleep all last night for thinking about her face.
“Last night, eh? When did you meet her?”
“This morning.”
With great carefulness Stephen put down the pipe on the table between them. He pushed the bowl a fraction of an inch to the left, and then a fraction of an inch to the right, delicately.
“Look here, old man― he began.
“Oh, Miles,” cried his sister, “what is all this?”
“I'm trying to tell you!” Miles brooded. “Fay Seton was trained as a librarian. That's why both Barbara Morell and old What's-his-name, at the Murder Club, both looked so strange when I mentioned the library and said I was looking for a librarian. But Barbara was even quicker-minded than the old professor. She guessed. What with the present terrific labour shortage, if I went to the agencies for a librarian and Fay Seton was in the market for a job, it was twenty to one Fay would be sent to me. Yes. Barbara guessed in advance.”
And he drummed his fingers on the table.
Stephen removed his soft hat, showing the pinkish bald head above an intent, worried-looking face set in an expression of affection and expostulation.
“Let's get this straight,” he suggested. “Yesterday morning, Friday morning, you came to London in search of a librarian―
“Actually, Steve,” Marion cut in, “he'd been invited o a dinner of something called the Murder Club.”
“That,” said Miles, “was where I first heard about Fay Seton. I'm not crazy and this isn't at all mysterious. Afterwards I met her ...”
Marion smiled.
“And she told you some heart-rending story?” said Marion. “And your sympathies were roused as usual?”
“On the contrary, she doesn't even know I've heard a word about her. We simply sat in the lounge at the Berkeley and talked.”
“I see, Miles. Is she young?”
“Fairly young, yes.”
“Good-looking?”
“n a certain way, yes. But that wasn't what influenced me. It was―
“Yes, Miles?”
“Just something about her!” Miles gestured. “There isn't time to tell you the whole story. The point is that I have engaged her and she's travelling down with us by this afternoon's train. I thought I'd better tell you.”
Conscious of a certain relief, Miles sat back as the waitress came and clanked down tea-things on the table with a wrist-motion suggestive of someone throwing quoits. Outside, under the dusty windows beside which they sat, moved the endless sluggish knots of travellers in front of black white-numbered gates leading to the platforms.
And it suddenly occurred to Miles, as he watched his two companions, that history was repeating itself. There could be no persons more conventional better representing the traditions of home life, than Marion Hammond and Stephen Curtis. Exactly as Fay Seton had been introduced into the Brooke family six years ago, she would now enter another such household.
History repeating itself. Yes.