“Will you marry me?”
Jane felt as if someone had lifted her up and dropped her again, all very suddenly. Her voice came odd and breathless.
“No-of course not-”
He appeared to be undeflected.
“What’s the good of saying ‘No-of course not,’ when you haven’t given it the least thought? You just blobbed that out without thinking. It’s a business proposition, and you’ve got to think it all out before you say no. And before you can think it out at all you’ve got to listen to me properly.”
Jane said, “Oh-”And then, “How do I listen to you properly?”
“You sit down on that sofa.”
“And have you somewhere up in the ceiling talking down on the top of my head? No, thank you!”
“I sit down too. I’m going to turn off the gas under the kettle first, because we don’t want to have it boiling over whilst I am proposing to you.”
Jane gave a sort of gasp and sat down. Not so much because Jeremy told her to as because her knees were wobbling, and he might think-
She sat down. When he had turned out the gas he came and sat down beside her. He was frowning deeply, and began at once in a businesslike voice.
“I haven’t got a great deal to offer you, but they don’t kick you out of the Army unless you’re pretty bad, and there’s a pension. I get a pension when I retire, and you get one if anything happens to me, and if we have any children, they get something till they’re eighteen-or twenty-one-I’m not sure which, but I can find out.”
“Jeremy, how frightful! Do stop!”
“It’s not frightful at all-it’s a provision. And you ought to be listening instead of making frivolous objections which put me out. Then I’ve got three hundred a year private means.”
Jane gazed at him with respect.
“How on earth did you get it?”
“My mother had two hundred, and my grandfather had a life insurance which brings in the rest. It’s not a lot, but it’s safe, and it makes a lot of difference to have something besides your pay.”
“Jeremy-please-”
He frowned her down.
“I do wish you would listen. I think you’d like the life. There’s rather a lot of moving about, but you see places, and everyone’s very friendly. Anyhow you’d have proper shoes and enough to eat. And you wouldn’t have to try on other people’s clothes for a lot of desiccated vultures to gloat over.”
Jane looked sideways from between her lashes.
“They’re not all desiccated, darling. Some of them bulge.”
He said quite violently,
“It revolts me! It ought to revolt you. I want you to chuck it up and let me look after you.”
Jane gazed down at her hands. There seemed to be something odd about them-they were a long way off. She said in a small obstinate voice,
“I can look after myself.”
“You think you can-girls always do. But they can’t. Anyhow you’re not going to.”
Jane lifted her eyes.
“Who says so?”
“I do, and you do. How much notice do you have to give your Mrs. Harlowe?”
“I’m not giving her notice.”
“I don’t see any sense in a long engagement.”
“We are not engaged.”
He turned a rather daunting look on her.
“You’re just being deliberately obstructive.”
She shook her head, and then wished she hadn’t, because it made the room go round.
“I’m not. You’ve been asking me to marry you. I’m saying no.”
“Why?”
“You don’t love me-I don’t love you-cousins oughtn’t to marry.”
He looked away for a minute, and then back again.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s true.”
He gave rather a curious laugh.
“That I don’t love you? Jane, you’re not really a fool-you know perfectly well.”
“I don’t. Why should I? You’ve never said so.”
Jeremy said in quite an expressionless voice,
“I love you like blazes, and you know it.”
Jane said, “Oh!”
He put his hands on her shoulders. They felt hard and heavy.
“Do you love me? Come along-be honest!”
Jane said, “No-” She said it three times in a voice that dwindled until it made no sound at all, because every time she said it Jeremy kissed her. The last kiss went on for quite a long time.
When he lifted his head he said,
“Liar!”
Jane said nothing at all.
CHAPTER 6
Chief Detective Inspector Lamb rose from behind his office table and shook hands with Miss Maud Silver. As always when they met, there was a ritual of polite enquiry.
“I need not ask if you are well, Chief Inspector.”
He had his jovial laugh for that, a sign, if one had been needed, that the proceedings were to be of a not too formal nature.
“My health doesn’t trouble me, I’m glad to say.”
“And Mrs. Lamb? I trust she has not felt the inclement weather.”
“She’s too busy being a grandmother.”
Miss Silver beamed.
“Ah-Lily’s boy-little Ernest. Called after you, is he not?”
“Fancy your remembering that! Well, what do you say to a granddaughter as well? A month old yesterday-little Lily Rose. Pretty, isn’t it?” Miss Silver thought it very pretty indeed.
Detective Inspector Abbott, who had ushered her in and now stood waiting to offer a chair, regarded this interchange with affectionate sarcasm. Lamb’s three daughters were the pride of his heart and the surest way to it. But Miss Silver had no ulterior motive, her interest was genuine and perennial. She was now enquiring after Violet, who had a good job at the Admiralty.
Lamb shook his head.
“Just engaged again. My wife says it won’t last. She’s a pretty girl and a good girl, but she doesn’t know when she’s well off, and that’s a fact. When she’s got a young man she thinks she’d like to have a job, and when she’s got a job she thinks she’d like to get married. Wants to eat her cake and have it.”
“And Myrtle? Is she still training for a nurse?”
Lamb looked gloomy.
“Yes, she’s training, and kept pretty hard at it. My wife says it’s too much for her. The fact is, she’s our youngest and we miss her in the home. Well, take a chair, Miss Silver. I know you’re always ready to help, and there was something I thought perhaps you’d be willing to do for us-privately and without any formality, if you know what I mean. So I thought if we could just have an informal talk-”
Miss Silver seated herself. Her pale, neat features displayed a polite degree of interest. Everything about her was neat, old-fashioned, and rather shabby. A breadth of olive-green cashmere showed beneath the black coat. A bunch of brown and yellow pansies, the gift at Christmas of her niece Ethel Burkett, had replaced the purple ones with which her black felt hat had started its career. She wore black knitted gloves, and a tippet of yellowish fur, friend of many years’ standing, encircled her neck-so warm, so cosy. She settled herself without hurry, arranged an elderly handbag on her lap, and gazed at the Chief Inspector with just the right degree of deference.
“Well,” he said, “let’s get down to it. We’ve generally met over a murder case, haven’t we? This isn’t anything so violent, but I think perhaps you might be able to help us. It isn’t as if your name had ever got into the papers. Of course you’re known to the police, if I may put it that way, but I don’t know that outside of two or three people there’s been anything that would make you, so to speak, a suspected character so far as the criminal classes are concerned. In other words, speaking generally, I don’t think they’d be on to you.”
He was watching her all the time he spoke, wondering if she would take the job or not. Behind a massive façade his mind worked shrewdly. He leaned back in his chair, hands folded at his considerable waistline-heavy, square hands with capable fingers. The overhead light picked out the thinning patch in the strong black hair, and showed up the florid colour in the broad face. The brown eyes bulged a little. Frank Abbott in his irreverence allowed himself to be reminded of peppermint bulls-eyes.