A Question of Hats, page 2
Before Angela could object, he had opened the hat box that stood by his feet and brought out another hat. This one was a mustard yellow, quite as ugly and over-frilled as the first one, and certainly not the sort of hat Angela would ever have dreamt of wearing, but he thrust it into her hands with an ingratiating smile.
‘Please,’ he said, indicating the glass on the wall. ‘By all means, try it on.’
‘I don’t think—’ said Angela, with a glance at William. But before she could go on there was a shout from the hall outside.
‘I knew it!’ said a familiar rough voice. ‘I might have known you’d come here and try to smarm your way in, you sneaky b—’
It was the man William had just thrown out of the flat. He had evidently not departed at all, but must have been hanging about in the street below and seen the newcomer enter.
The second man’s eyes widened in horror, and he seemed about to make a bolt for it, but the first man was too quick for him, and grabbed him by the collar.
‘Try to cheat me out of what’s mine, will you?’ he said.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ panted the other, as he struggled to escape.
‘Oh yes you do. You tried to put one over on me yesterday, while I was out of the way. Greedy, that’s what you are. I knew you’d be after it once you knew it was here, so I made sure as to get in first.’
‘Oh, you did, did you? Trying to cut me out, were you?’
‘No more than what you did to me.’
‘I was keeping it safe for us both. You know I’d never try and cheat you!’
The second man’s voice had risen to a whine. The two began to grapple on the landing. William started forward and pulled them apart.
‘Now just you cut that out!’ he said sharply, as they glared at each other.
‘I don’t know what this is all about,’ said Angela, ‘but I’m sure the police can resolve your differences for you.’
‘No! There’s no need for that, madam!’ said the second man, with as much of his former ingratiating manner as he could summon up in the circumstances. ‘Begging your pardon, it’s just a little difference of opinion between acquaintances.’
The first man seemed to disagree. He swore loudly and lunged at the second man, who gave something resembling a shriek, wormed his way out from William’s grasp and hared off down the stairs, pursued by the first man. William followed them and returned to report that they had run out into the street and disappeared.
‘Are you going to call the police, ma’am?’ he said.
‘Hardly. What could I tell them? That two men were fighting on my doorstep over a hat that may or may not be theirs but certainly isn’t mine? I don’t think they’d take it very seriously.’ She gazed at the yellow hat which she still held in her hands. ‘Well!’ she exclaimed. ‘This morning I couldn’t get rid of the thing, and now everybody wants it. Not only that, but now we have two hats, and I don’t like this one either. What on earth is going on?’
Shortly afterwards Marthe returned home and was most surprised to hear the story of the two hats. She picked up the second hat and assessed it with a professional eye.
‘These are not hats comme il faut,’ she said. ‘They are not what a lady would wear. They are cheap and showy. What is the word? Ah, yes—they are chichi.’ This last word was accompanied by a most proficient curl of the lip. ‘How came this man to think Madame would wear anything of the sort? Why, the first look at you ought to have told him that it would be impertinence even to suggest such a thing!’
(It may be noted that while Marthe gave herself great licence to criticize Angela’s attire and appearance, she would allow no-one else to exercise such a right, and would rise like a tiger to protect her mistress if any such thing were attempted.)
‘I’m less concerned about his impertinence than about his anxiety to get hold of this hat at all costs,’ said Angela.
She was removing the brown paper from the first hat box as she spoke. The three of them stared at the purple creation, bristling gloriously with its lace and satin protuberances.
‘Maybe he wanted to take it away and burn it,’ suggested William after a minute.
‘Now, it’s not that bad,’ said Angela. ‘Someone must have wanted it.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ he said. ‘If you ask me, someone hid something inside it and those two were coming to get it back.’
‘Now there’s an idea!’ Angela turned it over and examined the lining closely for some minutes. ‘Nothing that I can see,’ she said at length.
Marthe took it, then William, but in the end they were forced to admit defeat. The hat seemed to be just that—a hat.
‘But there must be some reason for all this fuss,’ said Angela. ‘Who were those men?’
‘And how did they know where to find you?’ said Marthe.
‘That’s obvious enough. The woman I spoke to this morning must have told them. I told her when I explained the mistake with the address.’
‘But this is terrible!’ said Marthe in consternation. ‘They are perhaps dangerous criminals. What if they decide to come back?’
‘Then we won’t let them in,’ said Angela. ‘Which reminds me: somebody has obviously been leaving the downstairs door open again. I shall have to have a word with the management. We don’t want people wandering into the building whenever they feel like it.’ She began poking thoughtfully about in the purple hat again. ‘What is so important about this hat? I should like to know.’
‘Want me to go back to Moult Street and speak to that woman, ma’am?’ said William eagerly.
‘Perhaps you might, yes,’ said Angela. ‘But I’d leave it until tomorrow morning. We don’t want to run the risk of your bumping into one of those men again this evening.’
‘Don’t you worry about me!’ he said.
‘It’s not you I’m worried about,’ said Angela dryly. ‘However, I’d prefer to avoid any visits to the magistrate’s court just now, so if you do see either of them then be sure and make yourself scarce.’
Chapter Three
William duly set off for Chelsea the next day, but unluckily for their curiosity, he returned to report that nobody had answered his knock. He had hung about uncertainly for a while, and eventually somebody had emerged from the flat next door to tell him that the woman in Flat 9 had gone away that morning carrying a suitcase, and without saying when she would be back.
‘Bother!’ said Angela. ‘Now I suppose the mystery will never be solved.’
‘What shall we do with these hats?’ said Marthe.
‘I don’t know,’ said Angela, eyeing them with disfavour. ‘I’d like to throw them out, but they must belong to somebody. Put them away somewhere for now, and I’ll think about it later.’
Several days passed without further developments in the hat affair. The weather improved a little and Angela was invited to many social engagements, and so she quickly forgot about the whole thing. One afternoon, however, she was just entering the downstairs lobby of her building when she was accosted by Mr. Woods of the building’s management.
‘I trust you have had no further trouble with people leaving the downstairs door open,’ he said.
‘Oh, no—at least, I don’t think so,’ said Angela.
‘We have had no complaints from anybody else for the past week, so I hope the sign we put up by the door has had its effect. People are inclined to forget, you know, so it does no harm to give them a little reminder. And what about your telephone? I hope it is in full working order now.’
‘Er—yes,’ said Angela hesitantly.
‘No more trouble? Nobody else has reported any difficulties, but I understand just a touch of bad weather can be enough to cause problems on the line.’
‘Oh, we haven’t had any trouble.’
‘No? Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought the man said he had come to fix the telephone.’
‘Which man? When was this?’ said Angela, puzzled.
Mr. Woods wrinkled his brow in thought.
‘Wednesday, I think. Yes, it must have been Wednesday, because Pettifer was away at a funeral, and we had to get Banks as a substitute porter for the day. I just happened to be passing and the man was there at the desk, and Banks stopped me and asked if it would be quite in order to let him into your flat, since Miss Marthe had gone out earlier and there was nobody at home.’
‘I was out all Wednesday, and Marthe had a day off,’ said Angela thoughtfully. ‘And so you let him in?’
‘Why, yes,’ said Mr. Woods. It was beginning to dawn on him that he might have made a mistake. ‘The man had a box of tools and a card from the G.P.O, and he seemed to know what he was talking about, so I thought—I beg your pardon, Mrs. Marchmont, am I to understand that you have had no problems with your telephone?’
‘None at all, as far as I know,’ said Angela. ‘Or at least, certainly none that I’ve reported to the telephone company.’
‘But he had a card from the G.P.O,’ repeated Woods. A dismayed look had begun to spread across his face.
‘What was the name on the card?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t remember. I gave it only the merest glance. Oh, Mrs. Marchmont, I do hope this man had no nefarious purpose in mind. I should be most distressed if that were the case. Nothing has gone missing from your flat, I hope?’
‘Not that I’ve noticed,’ said Angela. ‘Perhaps he was from the G.P.O. and the fault was at their end.’
It was some minutes before she could get away from his agitated concern, but at last she made her escape and went up to her flat. Marthe was not at all pleased to hear that somebody had been let into the flat while they were out.
‘Why, it might have been a burglar!’ she said. ‘Or an assassin, sent to lie in wait for you!’
‘I don’t think I’ve offended anyone enough for that,’ said Angela. ‘I try to avoid inspiring murderous urges in people wherever possible. But we haven’t been burgled either, have we? I haven’t noticed anything missing.’
They went around the flat, looking in drawers and cupboards, but drew a blank.
‘All your jewellery is here,’ said Marthe at last. ‘And the money you keep in the drawer there.’
‘Hmm. Those are the first things they’d go for. How very strange. Perhaps Mr. Woods made a mistake—oh!’ She had been struck with a sudden thought. ‘Marthe, where did you put those two hats?’
‘The hats? I put one of them in the cupboard in the hall, but there was not room for both of them, so I put the other in the wardrobe in the spare bedroom.’
Angela was already glancing into the hall cupboard as she spoke.
‘Where is it? I can’t see it.’
‘It is just there,’ said Marthe, indicating the top shelf. ‘Ah, but it has disappeared!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, you see the space where I put the box. I had to move some other things to fit it in, but now it has gone.’
‘What about the other one?’ Angela went into the spare bedroom and looked in the wardrobe. ‘It’s still here!’
She brought out the hat box and took off the lid. There sat the first hat in all its purple frilled splendour. Angela and Marthe stared at one another in bemusement.
‘He took the yellow one, but not this one. I wonder why?’ said Angela. ‘This was the hat they were making all the fuss about, not the yellow one.’
‘Perhaps he made a mistake,’ suggested Marthe. ‘Perhaps he meant to take the purple one but took the yellow one instead.’
‘But why didn’t he look in the box first? After all, he must have had the run of the flat while he was pretending to fix the telephone. He had plenty of time to make sure it was the right one.’
‘Well, then, perhaps he did not know there were two hats.’
Angela stared.
‘Marthe, I believe you’ve got it!’ she said. She went to the telephone and called downstairs. ‘Oh, good afternoon, Pettifer. Is Mr. Woods still there? Thank you. Mr. Woods, it’s Mrs. Marchmont again. Could you describe the man who came here on Wednesday? Yes—yes. I see. What’s that? Yes, of course.’ There was a pause. ‘Is that so? What did the second man look like? Yes. Yes. No, I wasn’t expecting anybody. Pettifer did very well to send him about his business. No, everything seems to be quite in order, thank you.’
She put down the telephone.
‘Our famous telephone repair man sounds very much like the man who came to blows with William,’ she said. ‘And that explains why he took the wrong hat.’ She saw Marthe’s inquiring look and went on, ‘He never saw the purple hat, you see. When he first came to ask for it, it was still in its box on the table. Then when the second man came and he turned up again, all he saw was me holding the yellow one the second man had just given me, and he must have assumed it was the one he wanted. So when he came here posing as a repair man and found the yellow one in the cupboard, he took that without looking any further.’
‘I see,’ said Marthe.
Angela began to laugh.
‘And it rather sounds as though the second man came back too, the next day.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, Pettifer says a smartly-dressed man presented himself yesterday and said he was my cousin come to visit, and that I’d said he was to be let into the flat. Fortunately, Pettifer didn’t believe a word of it and sent him away. Quite right too—and lucky for us, since he would have known to take the purple hat rather than the yellow one.’
‘Lucky, you say, madame?’ said Marthe. ‘It seems to me that it would have been better to let him have the hat, because then they would leave us alone.’
‘Oh, but I can’t let the thing go now,’ said Angela. ‘I must know at all costs what it means. Fetch the hat, Marthe, and let’s take another look at it. There must be something we’ve missed.’
Marthe went out and returned with the hat, and they squinted at it again.
‘I see nothing,’ said Marthe at last. ‘There is nothing.’
Angela was unwilling to admit defeat.
‘What about these diamanté and pearl decorations? You don’t think they could be real jewels, do you? No, I suppose not,’ she said, as Marthe snorted. ‘Then might something have been stitched into it in code? It might be some sort of communication we can’t read.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Marthe. ‘But in that case why was the hat addressed to that woman in Chelsea, who did not want it? If it was meant to convey a message, then why not send it to the person who was supposed to read it?’
‘Hmm, you’re right. Well, then, I’m afraid there’s nothing else for it—we’ll just have to take the thing apart. Fetch some scissors, will you?’
Ten minutes later, they stared at the scattered heap of ribbons and beads and felt on the table in front of them.
‘Not even anything under the lining,’ said Angela, wholly perplexed. ‘We’ve ruined it for nothing.’
‘I think it looks better now,’ said Marthe.
Angela was thinking.
‘Very well, if we can’t find anything in the hat, then what can we deduce from what has happened so far?’ she said.
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s not quite true. We know, for example, that the first man knew the hat had been delivered to me, but we can guess that he didn’t know what it looked like, since he stole the wrong one, which means that he probably didn’t send it originally. We don’t know for sure whether the second man has ever seen the hat, but we do know he knows it’s not the yellow one, because he brought that himself. They both knew I had it, and the only person they could have found that out from was the woman in Moult Street. Who is she, I wonder? She seemed angry at the whole business.’
She thought for a minute or two, but without reaching any further useful conclusions.
‘The next thing, I suppose, is to find out where the hat came from, but how can we do that? There’s no name on it. Didn’t you say it was a boy who delivered it, Marthe? Was it a district messenger?’
‘No, madame,’ said Marthe. ‘He had on a uniform, but it was not one I recognized.’
‘I wonder—perhaps we might advertise. Go and put an announcement in the papers—the Clarion and the Herald and suchlike, I mean; don’t bother with the Times—asking for the boy who brought a hat box to 23 Mount Street ten days ago to present himself. You’d better offer a reward.’
‘Very well, madame,’ said Marthe, and went off to do as she was bid.
Chapter Four
On Monday afternoon Angela returned from a whist-drive to find Marthe had something to tell her.
‘There was a boy here, about the hat,’ she said. ‘I told him to come back at half past five. He will be here at any minute, I hope.’
Sure enough, the bell rang shortly afterwards, and Marthe admitted a young man who on prompting introduced himself as Shorty, which Angela took to be a joke, since he was certainly not less than six feet two. He was about fifteen, and it looked as though someone had set him off growing and he had forgotten to stop. He had watery eyes and a large covering of pimples across his face, but despite these afflictions he was perfectly polite and respectful.
‘Now—er—Shorty,’ said Angela. ‘I understand you delivered a parcel here a few days ago.’
‘’S’right,’ said Shorty, and blushed a deep red.
‘Could you tell me where you got it?’
Shorty was not the most talkative of boys, and required a certain amount of encouragement, but eventually they got his story out of him. He worked in the post-room of a large company on Long Acre, and on the day in question he had been in a particularly bad mood, as the head of the department had docked his wages for dawdling outside and smoking (here he became almost animated at the unfairness of it all). At five o’clock he left work, intending to walk to his home on Lisson Grove, and had got as far as Poland Street when a man had grabbed him and asked if he would mind obliging him. The man said he was from a place around the corner, and that a customer had called to request a delivery in a great hurry, as she wanted it that evening, but he couldn’t do it himself as he was wanted in the workshop. Could Shorty see his way clear to a quick run up West? Shorty, thinking of his docked wages, agreed immediately, and the man duly handed him the parcel and some money and disappeared, saying that the address was on the wrapping. Shorty had delivered the package as promised, then resumed his journey home and thought no more of it until he had seen the advertisement in the paper. He hoped he hadn’t got mixed up in anything illegal, as his mum would kill him, she would.
