So Many Doors, page 28
“What a rollicking time he must have!” murmured Bobby, doing his best to sound envious.
“And I’ve just seen him pick up something from the jewellery—I couldn’t see exactly what—and slip it into Mrs Owen’s handbag when she wasn’t looking.”
Bobby had seen and known too much that was strange to be easily surprised, but this time he fairly gasped.
“Are you sure?” he asked, rather feebly, for Miss Rice, as he very well knew, was not the sort of person to make such a statement without very good reason.
“I saw it myself,” Miss Rice answered. “One of my girls had noticed him. She didn’t know who he was, and she thought he was acting suspiciously. She said he seemed to be following Mrs Owen. Of course, she didn’t know Mrs Owen either, and she thought perhaps they were working it together. Couples do sometimes, you know. One to take, and one to keep. She told me, and I said I would watch. I’m sure Lord Newdagonby saw me. And I saw him pass his hand over Mrs Owen’s handbag and drop something in. I believe he meant me to see.”
“Do you think possibly he had really taken it?” Bobby asked, “and then he saw you and decided he had better get rid of it, and so just pushed it into the first handbag he saw half-open—as,” Bobby added, “most of ’em are half of the time, and I daresay my wife’s like the rest.”
“Don’t I know it?” retorted Miss Rice. “Or else a shopping-basket in provisions with a purse on top shouting ‘Won’t someone please go off with me?’ But Mrs Owen’s was only open just that minute while she was paying for what she had been buying.”
“Another parcel coming?” Bobby sighed, glancing at the pile on the nearby counter.
“A silk head-scarf,” Miss Rice told him, “and will go in your pocket easily, so don’t grumble at nothing, and one of the really, real bargains. Most people never notice, but Mrs Owen spotted it. The Buyer tipped me off, and I’m hoping one or two will be left so I can get one after closing.”
A voice from behind said:
“If I’m interrupting a hot flirtation, don’t mind me.”
“Hullo, Olive,” Bobby exclaimed, turning round. “How on earth have you managed to find me in this hullabaloo?”
“What hullabaloo?” asked Olive. “They are a bit busy,” she admitted, looking round.
“Talking of hot flirtations,” Bobby said, “have you been having one yourself with Lord Newdagonby?”
“Who is Lord Newdagonby?” Olive asked.
“He seems to have been making subtle advances to you,” Bobby told her.
“Oh, how nice!” cried Olive, enchanted.
“Look in your handbag,” said Bobby.
“What for?” asked Olive.
“Do as you are told,” said Bobby with firm, husbandly authority.
“Oh, my lord and master, to hear is to obey,” said Olive with true wifely meekness, and did so. Then she said, “Oh”.
For there, lying on the top of a varied contents, ranging from a small paper-bag of chocolates to scraps of material preserved for matching, was a string of artificial pearls of the kind sold before the second world war for a guinea or two, and to-day for ten times as much.
“From the jewellery counter,” said Miss Rice. “Price not reduced. He must have had it all ready to pop in.”
“Who had?” said Olive, very bewildered and a little alarmed as well.
“Lord Newdagonby,” said Bobby. “Miss Rice was just telling me. She saw him slip it into your bag when you weren’t looking.”
“Who is Lord Newdagonby?” Olive repeated.
“The point is,” Bobby said, “what was he up to? Of course, if it was the beginning or continuation of a courtship, of which I as a stern husband . . .”
“Don’t be silly,” snapped Olive, really cross. “Miss Rice, if Mr Owen can’t be a little bit sensible, who is Lord Newdagonby?”
“One of our directors,” Miss Rice explained. “Very rich and important and all that. His daughter is the Miss Dagon, that’s the family name, who was in the news a year or two ago when she left a sisterhood she had joined because she said she had found there was nothing to religion. She’s married now. I saw him put that necklace in your bag.”
“What for?” asked Olive.
“And I’m perfectly sure he wanted me to see him do it,” Miss Rice added.
“Well, what for?” Olive persisted.
“That,” said Bobby, “is what I would like to know. An attack of kleptomania? But that’s chiefly a feminine disease, and Miss Rice says she feels sure Lord Newdagonby wanted her to see what he was doing. Temporary insanity? But that only applies in cases of suicide.”
“Temporary insanity indeed,” sniffed Miss Rice. “He’s all there all right, trust me.”
“Because he wanted the thing but couldn’t afford to buy it?” Bobby went on. “But Miss Rice says he is a rich man. Where does he get his money from? Do you know, Miss Rice?”
“Stock Exchange,” Miss Rice explained. “He is always buying and selling, and always at a profit.”
“Oh, come, not always,” Bobby protested incredulously.
“Well, that’s what they say,” Miss Rice persisted. “He has a flair.”
This silenced Bobby, because, though he had no idea what the word meant, he knew that he himself had been credited with having it—much to his surprise.
“What’s a flair?” asked Olive, also curious to know what this strange thing was that her man was said to possess.
“I think it means being always right,” Miss Rice explained.
“Then I certainly haven’t got it,” declared Bobby, much relieved.
“They say,” Miss Rice went on, “that a college at Oxford or somewhere was very hard up, so they asked him, because he had been there, and he said: ‘How much do you want?’ and they said: ‘All we can get,’ and he said, ‘Would fifty thousand do?’ and they said: ‘Very nicely,’ so he said he would send them a cheque after next settling day, and he did.”
“Just like that?” asked Bobby.
“Just like that,” repeated Miss Rice firmly. “All out of Stock Exchange dealings.”
“Very nice, too,” said Bobby, much impressed. “Talk about giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a cheque book.” Both the ladies looked as if they wondered what he was talking about. He went on, rather hurriedly: “How about drifting along to the jewellery department and seeing if they’ve missed any odd pearl necklaces recently?”
Thither accordingly the three of them drifted, if that can be called drifting which was in fact one long, stern fight against a whirling tide of opposing currents. However, finally they reached their destination, a little breathless but otherwise not much the worse for wear. There they found a very perturbed young lady. Yes, Lord Newdagonby had been there. He had wanted to see some of their good-class imitation pearl necklaces. He had asked that three of them should be kept out of the showcase while he went to find his friend for her to make her choice. He would be back in less than a minute, he said, but in fact had not been seen since. She, the young lady in charge of the counter, was most emphatic that she had never taken her eyes off the three necklaces for one single second. All the same, one had disappeared, and what had happened to it she couldn’t think. But if the firm wanted her to pay for it she couldn’t and wouldn’t, so there.
Bobby relieved her fears by producing the one found in Olive’s handbag. This she at once identified, since the price ticket was still attached. Bobby told her he would have to keep it for the present, but gave her a receipt for it, and then allowed his thoughts to wander in the direction of lunch. Olive protested against wasting time in eating that could be devoted to bargain hunting. Bobby said simply that he was at the point of death from sheer exhaustion. A little alarmed lest this might be true, Olive yielded. Bobby said gloomily that he supposed by now there would be a queue all round the restaurant lounge and back again. Miss Rice at once offered to fix that for them. Olive said, “Oh, thank you so much,” before Bobby had time to voice a high-minded refusal to take advantage of such gross, back-stairs influence. So instead he followed, silently protestant but also very hungry, to a table specially provided for them.
“Yes, but, Bobby, what does it mean?” Olive asked, as they settled themselves in their places and smugly surveyed that interminable queue, hungry, patient, well trained, at the tail end of which they should now, by all the canons of justice, be taking their stand. “It all,” said Olive, musing over a very satisfactory menu, “it all seems so silly. I do hope they know how to make decent coffee here.”
“It does seem silly and meaningless,” Bobby agreed. “But is it? Or is there behind it something very far from silly?”
Published by Dean Street Press 2017
Copyright © 1949 E.R. Punshon
Introduction Copyright © 2017 Curtis Evans
All Rights Reserved
This ebook is published by licence, issued under the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme.
First published in 1949 by Victor Gollancz
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1911413 96 7
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk
E.R. Punshon, So Many Doors
