Ernest said, ‘Hee, silly little dears.’
Helena lifted her coat, let Ernest help her on with it.
‘Will you send for the man, Ernest? Give him a pound and ask if everything’s all right. I’ll take some of the loose things down to the car. No, ten shillings will do.’
She felt almost alone in the world, wearily unfit for the task of understanding Laurence and Caroline. These new shocks and new insights, this perpetual obligation on her part to accept what it went against her to accept… . She wanted a warm soft bath in her own home; she was tired and worried and she didn’t know what.
Just as she was leaving, Ernest phoning for the housekeeper said, ‘Look, there’s something. A notebook, that’s Caroline’s I’m sure.’
A red pocket notebook was lying on the lower ledge of the telephone table. He picked it up and handed it to Helena.
‘What a good thing you saw it. I’d quite forgotten. Caroline was asking specially for this. A notebook with shorthand notes, she asked for it.’ Helena flicked it open to make sure. Most of it was in shorthand, but on one of the pages was a list in longhand. She caught the words: ‘Possible identity.’
‘This must be connected with Laurence’s investigations,’ Helena said.
She turned again to that page while she sat in the car waiting for Ernest with the bags, but she could make nothing of it. Under ‘Possible identity’ were listed:
Satan
a woman
hermaphrodite
a Holy Soul in Purgatory
‘I don’t know what,’ said Helena, as she put it away carefully among Caroline’s things. ‘I really don’t know what.’
SEVEN
Just after two in the mild bluish afternoon a tall straight old man entered the bookshop. He found Baron Stock alone and waiting for him.
‘Ah, Mr Webster, how punctual you are, how very good of you to make the journey. Come right through to the inside, come to the inside.’
Baron Stock’s large personal acquaintance — though he had few intimate friends — when they dropped in on the Baron in his Charing Cross Road bookshop were invariably greeted with this request, ‘Come to the inside.’ Customers, travellers and the trade were not allowed further than the large front show-place; the Baron was highly cagey about ‘the inside’, those shabby, comfortable, and quite harmless back premises where books and files piled and tumbled over everything except the three old armchairs and the square of worn red carpet, in the centre of which stood a foreign-looking and noisy paraffin stove. Those admitted to the inside, before they sat down and if they knew the Baron’s habits, would wait while he placed a sheet of newspaper on the seat of each chair. ‘It is exceedingly dusty, my dears, I never permit the cleaners to touch the inside.’ When the afternoons began to draw in, the Baron would light a paraffin lamp on his desk: the electricity had long since failed here in these back premises, ‘and really,’ said the Baron, ‘I can’t have electricians coming through to the inside with their mess.’ Occasionally one of his friends would say, ‘It looks a simple job, I think I could fix your lights, Willi.’ ‘How very obliging of you.’ ‘Not at all, I’ll do it next week.’ But no one ever came next week to connect up the electricity.
‘And how,’ said the Baron when he had settled Mr Webster on a fresh piece of newspaper, ‘is Mrs Jepp?’
Mr Webster sat erect and stiff, turning his body from the waist to answer the Baron.
‘She is well I am pleased to say, but worried about her grandson I am sorry to say.
‘Yes, a nasty accident. I’ve known Laurence for years of course. A bad driver. But he’s coming home next week, I hear.’
‘Yes, he had a handsome escape. The poor young lady’s leg is fractured, but she too might be worse, they tell us.’
‘Poor Caroline, I’ve known her for years. Her forehead was cut quite open, I hear.’
‘Slight abrasions, I understand, nothing serious.’
‘Such a relief. I hear everything in this shop but my informants always exaggerate. They are poets on the whole or professional liars of some sort, and so one has to make allowances. I’m glad to know that Caroline’s head has no permanent cavity. I’ve known her for years. I am going to visit her next week.’
‘If you will pardon my mentioning, Baron, if you intend to be in our part of the country, I think at the moment you should not make occasion to call on Mrs Jepp. The Hogarths have had to cancel their trip to the Continent and they frequently call at the cottage.’
‘What was the trouble? Why didn’t they go?’
‘Mrs Jepp had the feeling that the Manders were about to investigate her concerns. She thinks there should be no further trips till the spring. The Hogarths were ready to leave, but she stopped them at the last minute. She is not at all worried.’
‘It sounds fairly worrying to me. The Hogarths do not suspect that I am involved in your arrangements?’
‘I don’t think you need fear that. Mrs Jepp and I are very careful about mentioning names. You are simply Mrs Jepp’s “London connexion”. They have never shown further curiosity.’
‘And the Manders? I suppose Laurence has put them up to something, he is so observant, it’s terrifying. I am never happy when he goes to that cottage.’
‘Mrs Jepp is very fond of him.’
‘Why, of course. I am very fond of Laurence, I’ve known the Manders for years. But Laurence is most inquisitive. Do you think the Manders are likely to suspect my part in the affair?’
‘If anything, their interest would reside in myself and the Hogarths. I do not think you need worry, Baron.’
‘I will tell you why I’m anxious. There is no risk of exposure either from the Hogarths or from the Manders. In the one case they themselves are involved. In the other case the old lady is involved and the Manders would of course wish to hush up anything they found out. But it happens that I am interested in Mervyn Hogarth in another connexion. I have arranged to be introduced to him, and I do not wish to confuse the two concerns.
Mr Webster thought, Ah, to do with the woman, Hogarth’s former wife, but he was wrong.
‘Hogarth is up in London today,’ he informed the Baron, ‘I saw him on the train, but I thought best to remain unseen.
‘Sure he didn’t see you? No chance of his having followed you here out of curiosity?’
‘No, in fact I kept him in sight until he disappeared into a club in Piccadilly. Ho, ho, Baron.’
He handed the Baron a small neat package. ‘I had better not forget to give you this,’ he said, still chuckling in an old man’s way.
The Baron opened it carefully, taking out a tin marked in Louisa Jepp’s clear hand, ‘Soft herring roes.’
‘Mrs Jepp was particularly anxious that you should eat the actual herring roes,’ Mr Webster said. ‘She bade me say that they are very nourishing and no contamination can possibly arise from the other contents of the tin.’
‘I shall,’ said the Baron, ‘I shall.’
He slid the tin into his brief case, then opening a double-locked drawer took out a bundle of white notes. These he counted. He took another bunch and did likewise, then a third; from a fourth lot he extracted a number of notes which he added to the three bundles. He replaced the remainder of the notes in his drawer and relocked it before handing the bundles to Mr Webster. Then he wrote three cheques and handed them over.
‘They are dated at three-weekly intervals. Please check the amount,’ he said, ‘and then I will give you this good strong envelope to put them in.’
‘Much the safest way,’ said Mr Webster as he always did, referring, not to the envelope but to the method of payment. ‘Much the safest in case of inquiries,’ he added as always.