AN OLD RECORD
“I can’t believe it.” Leslie stared at the inspector. “His own
mother charged him? How monstrous!”
Mr. Coldwell had reached an age where it was almost impossible to
surprise him.
“Queer, isn’t it? But, Lord bless you, mothers do rum things! I’ve
known cases--but you’ve heard about ’em, too, Leslie. Peter went down
to Wimbledon to raise the devil for some reason or other. It appears
his mother had heard the fuss he was making at the door and telephoned
for the police before he broke in. It might have been bad for him if
he were a convict on license, but fortunately he’s time-expired, and
he has only to say that it was a family quarrel to get bound over. I
don’t think he will be called upon for defense, anyway.”
Leslie Maughan nibbled at the end of her glove, a devastating habit of
hers in moments of perturbation.
“I really can’t believe it, though of course it must have happened.
What was his mother doing down there? And why on earth did Peter do
such a mad thing?”
Coldwell smiled.
“Go down and ask him,” he said. “I’ll give you a note to the
inspector, and you might have a few minutes’ talk with him before he
appears in court. It is very unlikely that they will remand him to
Brixton. If the princess has got horse sense she will get him
acquitted. Mrs. Dawlish is pretty sick and sorry that she allowed
herself to charge him. I can tell you that because, as soon as I heard
about the case, I phoned up the station and the sergeant in charge
told me that Mrs. Dawlish came to the police station at seven o’clock
this morning to see if she could get her name taken out of the record.
She’d allowed her spite to lead her astray, and she knows that when it
comes into court, the story of a mother charging her son is going to
make a pretty big newspaper sensation. That is why I think that the
charge may be withdrawn.”
When Leslie reached the police station she found that Peter had been
transferred to the cells adjoining the court, and her own card was
sufficient to obtain an interview. He met her with a rueful smile.
“You see me again in my natural environment,” he said cheerfully.
“Why did you go to Bellini’s?”
“I wanted to learn something,” he said, and he would not explain any
more.
She told him of the inspector’s prophecy, but he seemed careless as to
whether the charge would be supported.
“It was certainly a facer,” he said. “I didn’t expect my mother to
take that line. I suppose until then I had not realized how bitterly
she hated me. They may go on with the charge, knowing that in any
circumstances I should not tell what brought me to Wimbledon.”
She did not press him for any further particulars. The interview took
place in the passage adjoining the court; policemen and prisoners were
passing every few seconds, and the conditions were not favourable to
confidences. She told him of her own alarming experience, and when she
had finished he whistled.
“That explains everything--the chain on the door and old Simms being
on guard. I never saw the old devil again after I broke in.”
She made no attempt to hide her astonishment.
“I don’t see why a chain on Anita Bellini’s door explains a little
yellow man in my room,” she said.
“It does--most emphatically.”
Just then his name was called by the court usher and she followed him
into court. Peter had hardly been put in the steel pen when the
detective sergeant who had arrested him stood up, and addressed the
bench.
“This case, your Worship, arose from a visit which the prisoner paid
to the house of the Princess Anita Bellini last night. The prisoner,
who is a very distant relative of the princess’s, had some sort of
grievance, and the argument became so heated that Her Highness was
compelled to telephone for the police. The princess has no wish to
prosecute the prisoner in the circumstances, or to bring a family
quarrel into court, and in these circumstances I don’t propose to
produce any evidence, your worship.”
“But the charge is attempted murder,” said the presiding magistrate.
“The charge was only taken last night,” explained the detective, “and
it was the intention of the police to ask for a remand. But the
princess has modified her statement, and I am advised that a
conviction could not follow on the evidence that she would offer. In
those circumstances I ask your worship to discharge Dawlish.”
The magistrate nodded, and that was the end of the proceedings. Peter
walked out of the dock and joined the girl in front of the police
court.
At first he refused her invitation to drive him back to town.
“You’re coming with me,” she said firmly. “I have a lot of things to
say to you and a list of questions as long as Lucretia’s grocery
order. Probably you will not answer them, but that is beside the
point.”
They were crossing Putney Common when she leaned over and spoke to the
driver, and, slowing down, he brought the car to the edge of the path.
“Let us go for a little walk,” she said, and no sooner were they out
of earshot than she asked: “Why did you go to Princess Bellini’s last
night, Peter Dawlish?”
“To find out something.”
“What did you want to know?”
Should he tell her? He could not understand himself. Why should he
hesitate to take her into his confidence, she who knew so much? And
yet he felt an unaccountable shyness. It was as though the confession
would make a perceptible difference in their curious friendship. At
last he blurted out the truth.
“Jane had a child,” he said.
She stopped, and her deep violet eyes met his.
“_Your_ child--well?”
He was astonished by the coolness with which she received this
momentous news.
“Did you guess?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I knew,” she answered quietly. “It was born at a little farm called
Appledore, near Carlisle.”
He was momentarily paralyzed.
“You knew--all the time?” he stammered.
“I knew all the time,” she repeated. “I knew you had a child, before I
knew you were married. It was at Appledore that I found the book of
poems, and your little blank verse. And that was why I wasn’t quite
sure you were married. Naturally she would call herself Mrs. Dawlish
in the circumstances.”
They were passing a park bench and she caught his arm and drew him
down.
“I’ll tell you all about it, shall I?” And when she added: “I was
spending a holiday in Cumberland, and I suppose it was fate that led
me to this very farmhouse. The old lady, Mrs. Still, who owned the
place was a widow, and rather a garrulous old soul, but very kind. It
was only natural she should tell me of the interesting people who had
stayed with her. One of the most interesting was a pretty girl, whose
baby was born in the very room I occupied. She came in February,
before the season had started--there is a season in Cumberland, you
know--and stayed till the beginning of April. She called herself--it
doesn’t matter what she called herself--but it was not Jane Dawlish.
The child was born on the seventeenth of March--St. Patrick’s Day. The
old lady, who was half Irish, remembered that fact because she had
sent a bunch of shamrock up to the pretty lady the morning the child
was born.”
“Who was with her?” asked Peter huskily.
“Two women--a nurse, and somebody who was obviously Anita Bellini. No
doctor was called in; apparently the other woman was a maternity
nurse, and it was not necessary to call for medical assistance. My old
Appledore lady never saw the baby; she wasn’t even sure when it was
taken away, but she thought it was on the second day following the
birth, because that was the day a man came from London. The ‘man’ was
obviously Druze. She arrived just before Mrs. Still went into Carlisle
to do her midweek shopping, and when she returned Druze had gone. The
old lady did not know that the baby had gone, too, until the end of
the week, when she asked to be allowed to see it and was told that it
had been sent off to a warmer climate. The only thing she knew was
that it was a boy; the nurse had told her that, and the Appledore lady
was rather disappointed because, as she said, the pretty lady had been
praying and hoping for a girl.
“Why she should pray or hope for a baby of either sex is a little
beyond me, but I have no reason to doubt the truth of the old lady’s
statement. She showed me very proudly a little book that the ‘pretty
young thing’ was in the habit of reading, a book of poems; and then I
saw your ridiculous acrostic. Just about this time I was rather
intrigued by certain things which had happened to Lady Raytham. We
had, in fact, information at Scotland Yard that she was paying
blackmail, and I naturally connected the two events: her appearance
here under an assumed name, the birth of the child, and the fact that
she was paying out large sums of money from time to time for some
unknown service. When, about an hour before I left the farm, old Mrs.
Still said that she had heard one of the women speak about ‘Peter,’ I
was pretty sure that I was on the right track.”
“Do you know the name of the nurse? Was it Martha----”
“Martha!” She sprang up and stared at him. “Martha? What do you know
about Martha?”
He was a little dumfounded by the effect of his words.
“Tell me--tell me quickly,” she said impatiently, and he produced from
his pocket the letter he had received, and which had brought him to
Jane Raytham.
She looked at the pencilled words.
“Martha’s servant. That was Druze’s sister,” she said suddenly. “She
had the child. Peter, I am going on this new trail, and you mustn’t
interfere until I’ve followed this thing to the end.”
“What do you think of me, I wonder?” he asked.
She eyed him steadily.
“What should I think of you? You’re unfortunate, Peter Dawlish. I’ve
told you that before.”
He shook his head with a wry smile.
“You don’t know how fortunate I am,” he said, and she laughed in spite
of herself.
“Come back to the car, or we’ll find ourselves indulging in an orgy of
mutual self-pity.”
It did not occur to Peter that he should ask her why the self-pity
should be mutual, but he never forgot her words.
She dropped him in the centre of London and, going on to Scotland
Yard, interviewed her chief and received permission from him to take a
day off. Her first step was to get into telephonic communication with
the chief detective of Plymouth, who promised to call her up as soon
as his inquiries were completed. Though she was on a holiday, there
were many official interruptions.
First there came the man who had arrested Mrs. Inglethorne to tell her
that that unrepentant lady had been remanded, and to expose the
red-faced woman’s shocking history. Her maiden name had been Zamosser.
She was of Dutch origin, though her parents had lived for many years
in England; and with the exception of a very short interval she had
been either in the hands or under the observation of the police. She
was a receiver, and worse; had been convicted of shoplifting, and,
except for one interval in her early youth when she seemed to have
lived so respectable a life that the police had no trace of her, she
had been in and out of prison since she was a child.
“What about the children?” asked Leslie, anticipating the reply.
The sergeant laughed.
“One of them’s hers; the others are what she calls ‘adopted.’ That is
to say, they have been inconvenient children of whom she has taken
charge for a small weekly sum or for a larger payment cash down. The
only one we have been able to trace is a little boy.”
For a moment wild hopes had surged up into Leslie’s heart, but they
were to die at his words.
“Oh, you’ve traced the boy?” she said. She remembered the wizened
little fellow who had looked up at her with big, sleepy eyes when she
had made her incursion to the kitchen.
“Well, we’ve found his mother, at any rate. The other children mostly
belong to poor little working-class girls.”
“Are there many baby farmers in England?”
“Thousands,” said the officer, and her heart sank. “They’re supposed
to be under police supervision, but of course they’re not. There is no
law to prevent anybody adopting a child, though the actual adoption is
not recognized in law.”
“There is no list of them?”
He shook his head.
“There may be a few hundred on the books. You would know that better
yourself, Miss Maughan, as you’re at the Yard.”
And then, unconsciously extinguishing her last lingering hope:
“I was once asked to trace a little baby that had been handed over to
a ‘farmer,’ but it is like looking for a needle in a haystack, trying
to find an ‘adopted child’ after trace has been lost of it,” he said.
“A few of them drift into the workhouse schools; most of them die. It
doesn’t pay the kind of woman who makes a living out of that sort of
thing to feed them properly. There should be a State institution where
unwanted children could be taken and cared for and become an asset to
the country.”
He had been gone half an hour when the Plymouth call came through and
the news was not especially helpful. Martha Druze had qualified as a
maternity nurse in the years ’89-’90, and had left the hospital to
take up a private position as a general nurse. It was believed she had
gone abroad, but there was no actual evidence of this fact except that
the present matron, who remembered her, had received a postal card
mailed at Port Said a month or two after Martha had gone away. There
was also a rumour that she had married very well, to somebody who was
variously described as a carpenter of Cape Town and a rancher in
Australia. There was only one clue which was faintly promising. Martha
was known to have registered herself in the books of a London agency,
the name of which Leslie jotted down.
As soon as the conversation was through, she searched the telephone
directory for the nurses’ agency. It was not there; possibly it had
been overwhelmed by competition and had died, as so many other
agencies die, from sheer inanition. To make absolutely sure on this
point she called up one well-known woman agent and asked her a
question.
“Ashley’s Agency? Oh, yes. It is now called the Central Nurses’
Bureau--in fact, we are Ashley’s Agency, though we never use that
title!”
Leslie explained who she was and what she required.
“If you’ll come round, we will show you the old books; we still have
them,” was the encouraging reply.
Leslie Maughan put on her hat and coat and went out at once. Halfway
down she remembered Mr. Coldwell’s gift and went back to buckle on a
most uncomfortable garter. The premises of the agency were off Regent
Street, no great distance to walk, and she was there in five minutes.
The secretary, who had replied to her telephone message, was already
selecting the books for her inspection, and by great good fortune the
first of these she had discovered contained the very information that
the girl had asked for.
“Yes, we have her on our books--Martha Druze. She applied to us before
she left Plymouth Hospital apparently, for that is her original
address, and we placed her in a situation in the early part of 1891.”
The secretary had opened the book and her finger pointed to a line.
Leslie read; she found herself gripping tight to the edge of the
table. Looking at her, the secretary saw that her eyes were blazing
and wondered what there was in this simple record to engender such
excitement.
“It was the only job we ever got for her----” she began.
Leslie shook her head.
“She would not want another,” she said.