You understand?
He had accomplished all and more than he had hoped for. At the edge of an adventure, with the water cold and mysterious before his plunge, Robert Welland was a vindicated, even a happy, man.
Or he would have been happy, but for one small scruple.
As soon as he left the conference in Sir Broughton’s room he hurried to the Underground station, and made his way back into London, to the Chelsea street where Chloe Terrell had her top-floor flat. It hadn’t, of course, been absolutely honest of him not to tell Sir Broughton about the note he’d dropped through Mrs. Terrell’s letter-box, when he found her out. The note certainly did confide something, more than he should have said, even to the suggestion of murder. But there was no harm done, after all, because Mrs. Terrell was not merely away from home, but out of the country. He had Blagrove’s own word for that. So no one would have read the note he should never have been so indiscreet as to write, and what he had said was not, in fact, a lie. No one knew anything about this affair from him. And no one would.
There wasn’t even any hurry about it, his sense of anxiety and impatience was folly. She was in Czechoslovakia, and she wouldn’t, couldn’t be back yet. He had plenty of time to dig out the porter of the service flats, explain that he’d left a vital paper by mistake, not knowing Mrs. Terrell was out of the country, and must recover it and get word to her elsewhere at once. The porter would have keys, and it wouldn’t be difficult to establish his own good faith. When he’d burned that note he would feel better, because his shadow of a lie wouldn’t exist, then, and there would be no leakages through him. He liked to have everything above-board, and that was how it would be.
All the same, his mind was not quite easy. Better just have a look at the top-floor flat first, before he tackled the porter, and make sure that it was still closed and empty. Just to reassure himself.
The lift was creaking its way slowly upward as he stood in the hall; he had caught a glimpse of the door closing upon a dark, slender girl with her arms full of parcels, and to judge by the time that elapsed before the lift-cable was still and the door clashed open, high up the shaft, she was disentangling her purchases at least four floors up. He pressed the call button, and nothing whatever happened. A woman with both hands full doesn’t stop to close the lift doors after her. He would have to walk up.
He didn’t know why he was hurrying as he tackled the stairs. Hadn’t he already told himself that there was no haste, no possibility that Mrs. Terrell would have returned and read his note? But he began taking the steps two at a time before he reached the second landing, and by the fourth he was running, his heart pounding and his breath short. He came to the corner from which he could see Chloe Terrell’s door, and baulked as if he had run his nose into a brick wall. For the outside door of the flat stood open. And the pretty girl with the parcels stood in the hall with her burdens dropped unceremoniously about her feet, and his letter open and unfolded in her hands.
She was still as a statue until his rush of movement ended in abrupt stillness, and then she was aware of him, and looked up at him over the spread sheet of paper with great dark eyes blank with horror. For a moment they stared at each other in fascination and dread. He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know what to think.
She couldn’t possibly be, she wasn’t more than eighteen or nineteen! But women did marry as young as that. How was he to know that the wife would be a mere child? Horrified, he lifted his leaden feet up the last few steps, and moved towards her like a hypnotised rabbit, utterly helpless.
“Mrs. Terrell…?”
She stared back at him as if she had heard nothing, following her own fixed channel of consciousness. She looked down at the sheet of paper in her hand, and back at him.
“You’re Robert Welland? It was you who left this note?”
She had a voice that startled, an octave deeper than anyone would have expected; a gruff whisper, like an adolescent boy not yet used to his new instrument. She took a small step back from him, warily and wildly, and stumbled over her own parcels discarded on the floor.
“Yes, I’m Robert Welland. I didn’t mean….I didn’t realise…. Mrs. Terrell, I must apologise and explain….”
“I’m not Mrs. Terrell,” said the girl, shrinking. “I shouldn’t have opened it, but I thought it might be something I ought to send on. I’m Tossa Barber. Sorry, that won’t mean a thing to you.” She put up her hand dazedly, and pushed back the fall of dark hair from her brow. “I’m Mrs. Terrell’s daughter. I came up to do some shopping for the holidays, and I use her flat when I’m in town.” It was extraordinary that she should feel she had to explain to him, when it was he who had so much to explain, the letter, the implications of the letter, his presence here in such a hurry. Suddenly she was calm for both of them, because it was too late to take back anything, and there was no way to go except forward. “You say here,” she challenged pointblank, “that my step-father was murdered.”
In what he had written he had not, he remembered, used that word. He thought of a hundred ingenious evasions, and confronted by Tossa’s large, unwavering eyes, rejected them all. “Yes,” he said helplessly, “that’s what I believe.”
“Come in,” said Tossa. “You may as well. Now I have to know. You can see that, can’t you? I’ve
He made one convulsive attempt to extricate himself, even as he was stepping forward into the flat and closing the outer door behind him. He couldn’t possibly confide in a child like this, even if he hadn’t just sworn secrecy under awful warnings; but neither could he stand in an open doorway close to the echoing well of the stairs and the lift-shaft, and make his excuses for all the house to hear.
“Miss Barber, I’m very sorry I’ve alarmed you for nothing. Since I left this note for your mother I’ve had an opportunity to consult the people who’re best-informed about your father’s…” These relationships were confusing him, he didn’t quite know where he was with them. “—about Mr. Terrell’s death. I should be glad if you would try to forget about the whole matter. I did have my suspicions, but they’re not shared by others who should know best, and it may be that I was quite wrong.”
“You just said: ‘That’s what I believe’,” she reminded him, “not: ‘That’s what I
And he saw that he couldn’t. Not simply because she already understood too much, and could make his escape impossible, but because her face was so desperately resolute and her eyes so full of an acute personal distress for which he was responsible. It was already too late to undo that; all his disclaimers wouldn’t convince her now, all his reassurances wouldn’t restore her peace of mind. His own little indiscretion had trapped him. It wasn’t enough even to plead that he had promised secrecy, since his promise had been breached by accident almost as soon as he had given it. “Miss Barber,” he began earnestly, “I did come here with certain information that disquieted me, and I wanted to consult Mrs. Terrell before I took the matter any further. I’ve now had it impressed upon me that this whole affair is urgently secret, and I’m bound by that. It was foolish of me not to have realised it for myself, and I’m deeply sorry that my mistake has now caused you distress. I wish I could undo it.”
