The Riddle of the River Read online

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘This is my counter. I’m here all day, every day, except Sunday, of course.’

  ‘It must be tiring,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, well. It’s not such a bad place,’ she answered quickly. ‘I help gentlemen choose gifts, I sell beautiful things, and I see different kinds of people. By the way, I do remember who bought the bracelet,’ she added, and then looked up at me, surprised at my sudden access of tension, although I said nothing. ‘I don’t know who they are, of course,’ she amended, ‘but I remember quite well what they looked like.’

  ‘They?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, it was a couple. A rather elderly gentleman bought the bracelet for a – for a woman. A young person. They hesitated over any number of things first – she tried them all on, I think. That’s why I remember it.’

  A woman? A young person?

  ‘Was there only one such bracelet? Were there not several similar ones?’ I asked, just to be certain.

  ‘Oh no. There were no two the same. Each one was different. This was the only ivory one with beads, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Ah! Well then, tell me what the people who bought it were like. Can you describe the girl?’ I said, and my heart beat till the blood rushed in my ears. Those limp fingers…

  ‘She was…well…she was very pretty and friendly,’ she said guardedly. ‘And curious. She kept on trying things and laughing. The gentleman seemed fond of her. But, well…’

  The photograph was in my bag – I reached for it, then hesitated. I was afraid that it would turn our cheerful chat into an investigation, and that she would become suspicious and silent.

  ‘But what?’ I said.

  ‘She wasn’t a lady,’ she replied shortly. There was a world of meaning, of contempt, of resentment, of jealousy, in her words. A young person, being offered jewellery by an elderly gentleman, whilst she herself remained forever a prisoner behind her glass counter, a good girl. Thumbnail sketches of the dramatis personae of British society passed in front of me.

  ‘And the gentleman? What was he like?’

  ‘Oh, he was distinguished, with a cane and silver grey hair. He had a rather loud voice, and a lot of authority. I don’t know who he is, but I think he lives in Cambridge. I see him sometimes, passing in the street.’

  ‘Ah!’ I cried, as the import of her words sank into me. This fact presented an astonishing opportunity to succeed in my task.

  ‘Well,’ she added, ‘at any rate, I believe I’ve seen him passing in front of the shop more than once. I spend a lot of my time staring out at the street.’

  I turned involuntarily, and followed her gaze out of the broad display window. The sunlit street appeared like an aquarium, with brightly coloured fish floating past, deprived of their legs by the lower wall.

  ‘I wonder how I could manage to find that gentleman?’ I said.

  ‘If all you want is to give him back the bracelet, then why don’t you simply leave it here with me? I can dash out and catch him next time I see him passing by, and give it back to him.’

  ‘No!’ I said, struck suddenly by the awful image of a man suddenly being handed, in bright daylight, a bracelet he knew to belong to a dead girl – a bracelet he may even be aware that she was wearing when she died.

  It could be dangerous; he could see it as a preliminary to blackmail…

  ‘No, no. No thank you. What I really want is to meet this man myself,’ I said firmly. ‘Will you help me?’

  ‘Why do you want to meet him?’ she asked, looking up at me directly, her curiosity awakened.

  The position was most awkward. I disliked telling the truth – goodness, how dishonest that makes me sound – but I have found it immensely useful to have my professional identity utterly hidden while detecting. Yet it was clear that there might be much to be gained by telling her everything, now, at once. And indeed, I could not see any other way to obtain the information I needed.

  ‘I can tell you, and I must,’ I decided quickly, looking around to make sure no one was within earshot. ‘I need your help, and I see that I cannot ask you for it without making you aware of the facts.’ And with a quick gesture, I withdrew the portrait of the dead girl from my handbag and placed it on the counter in front of her.

  ‘That’s the woman who bought the bracelet!’ she said at once. ‘But – how strange she looks! What is this picture? Is she sleeping? She looks as if she were dead!’

  I felt the taut, narrow possibility of imminent success stretching before me, so fragile, so easily snapped.

  ‘She is dead,’ I said. ‘Her body was found floating in the Cam, and the bracelet was on her wrist.’

  ‘Oooh,’ she breathed, staring at me. ‘Was she killed?’

  ‘It seems she might have been,’ I admitted.

  ‘Are you from the police?’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly. Nothing causes witnesses to close up like clams so much as the mention of that hard-working, earnest and deserving body. ‘I’m just a friend,’ I continued, both vaguely and untruthfully. ‘I thought that I recognised her bracelet as coming from here, and offered my help in trying to identify her. You see, the body is completely unidentified. Nobody has any idea who she is.’

  ‘Oh,’ she breathed thoughtfully. ‘And the gentleman that I saw – is he the murderer?’

  ‘Very likely not,’ I said. ‘It would be a bit too dangerous for him to have done it, wouldn’t it, after all kinds of people like you had seen them together?’

  ‘Well, but he might be,’ she insisted. ‘That kind of gentleman wouldn’t think anything of being seen by people like me. People like me don’t even exist for him.’ She gave an impatient little gesture of frustration.

  ‘Well, that’s as may be,’ I said. ‘People do tend to take more care if they are about to commit a murder. I don’t know, but I do think that if we can find the gentleman you saw, he will at least be able to tell us her name, and that is all I want right now.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, if that’s all, I could just run out and ask him about it, next time he passes.’

  ‘No!’ I said quickly. ‘Don’t speak to him – I definitely advise you not to speak to him at all if you see him, least of all about the young woman or the bracelet.’

  She gave me a quick, penetrating glance. ‘So you do think…’ she murmured.

  ‘I don’t really, but of course we must remain on the safe side,’ I said firmly. ‘We don’t know, that’s all there is to it. It would be best if he were not even to lay eyes on you. What I would like to ask you to do, next time you see him passing, is to follow him a little way and see where he goes. Then send me a message at once.’

  ‘But I’m not supposed to leave my post,’ she hesitated.

  I looked around. To the left of the exotic items was a stand selling silk scarves, and to the right several handbags were on display. There was a young woman behind each of them, and neither of them was doing anything.

  ‘Well,’ she admitted, following my glance, ‘I could run out for just a few minutes if I see him again.’

  ‘How often do you think you see him?’

  ‘It’s hard to tell. But fairly often, I think. Every few days, maybe? Though I don’t believe I’ve seen him since the Chinese sale.’

  ‘If you see him, have a note sent to me immediately,’ I told her, writing down my name and address on a piece of paper which I handed her together with a modest financial encouragement. She flushed.

  ‘I can’t take this,’ she said.

  ‘This is a job I am asking you to do for me,’ I said. ‘It is work, honest work. It is quite all right. In fact, it is very important – you do realise that? A girl hardly older than yourself has died. We must find out who she was and how she died.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do see that. Even if she was just a…even if, well, what I mean is, whoever she was, she was enjoying her life and didn’t deserve to die. I see what you mean. Even if she is dead, this is still like giving her a helping hand. I’ll do it.�
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  Our eyes met across the counter, scattered with its litter of objects, delicate, frivolous, artistic objects, all made uniquely for pleasure – the pleasure of young girls. Her eyes like deep pools showed me anxiety, concern, a consciousness of suffering, a search for meaning.

  ‘She shouldn’t have died,’ she said again, thoughtfully. ‘She was happy.’

  ‘That’s an interesting remark,’ I said. ‘Do you think she was in love with the gentleman?’

  ‘Him? Oh, no. That was just – well, professional. She was very nice to him. He was a gentleman friend. And she liked the bracelet. No, she was just happy in general, I think, happy and excited. Maybe a little too excited. Maybe almost nervous. I can’t remember exactly.’

  An unwed girl, ‘professionally’ befriending an elderly gentleman, a baby on the way…and yet the impression she gave – to another girl of her own age, no less – was of being happy. Why happy? Would not a girl in such a situation be rather fearful and troubled, if not in despair? Yet she seemed happy. And days later, she was dead.

  ‘Vanessa – you’re waiting again,’ said Arthur, after dinner had been cleared away and the twins sent upstairs to be put to bed.

  ‘Who, me?’ I said, dropping a ball of wool which I had taken out of my workbasket and put back twice already.

  ‘Yes, you. Listen, nothing is easier to observe than a waiting Vanessa. You fidget and don’t do anything.’ Rising, he came to lean over me and smiled.

  ‘I won’t ask you what you’re waiting for, but I will ask you if you’ll have to wait long.’

  ‘I don’t know, that’s the trouble. It could be days and days. Oh, Arthur, you’re right, I do hate waiting and not being able to do anything. It’s my worst defect, I know. I really ought to cultivate the Eastern art of patience.’

  ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘since you haven’t done that yet, let me suggest instead that you relieve the anxiety by spending the weekend in London with me. You know Ernest Dixon and his wife have been inviting us for ages – they have an extra room in their flat. He’s just written to me about it again, and he even asked what we’d like to see. Do let’s go, it would do you good.’

  ‘Oh, I would love to,’ I said eagerly, thinking secretly that Robert Sayle’s is closed on Sundays anyway. ‘But how can I leave the children for a whole weekend?’

  ‘Stuff,’ he said. ‘Sarah will spoil them rotten and they’ll simply love it. And we’ll come home on Sunday. We’ll spend just one night away.’

  ‘But what if the message I’m waiting for comes while I’m gone?’ I worried. ‘I don’t expect it so soon, and yet that is just what would happen, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, there I can’t give you any advice, as I don’t know what kind of message you’re waiting for. Once it comes, what need you do?’

  ‘Well, that will depend on what it says,’ I admitted, wondering what the shopgirl – whose name I suddenly realised I had stupidly omitted to ask – could possibly write, even if she did spot the familiar gentleman. Come at once – he’s in the tea-shop? Or better, Have managed to talk to him and found out his name? No, no, she mustn’t do that!

  ‘Yes, do let’s go,’ I said.

  ‘Good! I knew you would want to!’ he said happily. ‘And I simply can’t face a whole weekend at home with you waiting. I’ll send Ernest a telegram. Let’s have a look at the paper to see what plays are on.’ He rustled the pages of his newspaper to the theatre section and read over it with undisguised pleasure.

  ‘There’s Hamlet, Lear and Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ he said in a faintly hopeful tone, ‘but we’ve seen all of them already, of course.’

  ‘Many times,’ I agreed.

  ‘So perhaps you’d like something different,’ he continued. ‘How about this? The Second Mrs Tanqueray has come back after a break, with the same cast, at the St. James. Do you remember? It was a great hit about two years ago.’

  ‘I remember hearing something about it,’ I said. ‘It’s one of Pinero’s comedies, isn’t it? We couldn’t go at the time.’

  ‘It isn’t a comedy. It’s supposed to be rather a powerful critique of social mores. It was the big revelation of the actress Stella Campbell, who’s become very famous since then.’

  ‘Oh, I remember now! It’s the play about a woman with a past!’ Indeed, I had been intrigued at the time, both by the ‘dangerous’ content and by the flamboyant reputation of the young actress impersonating the main character. But the twins were tiny, and travelling had been out of the question. I had not even had time to think about it again since.

  ‘Yes, that’s the one. It made quite a splash. What do you say? Shall we go?’

  ‘Yes indeed, if the Dixons haven’t already seen it.’

  Like a magician, Arthur had eased the anxious pressure which seemed to constrict me, and filled my mind with eager anticipation. While not necessarily the most exotic thing in the world, a day in London, a visit to friends and a trip to the theatre is a sufficiently rare event in my quiet life for it to cause quite a stir and a ripple there. Taking my candle, I went upstairs to pack a few small items in readiness for a departure early in the morning, glancing out of the window as I did so.

  The sky was clear and starry, and beyond being pleased that the weather seemed fine, I felt moved by its endless depth. But my joy was suddenly marred by the thought that that infinity of twinkling eyes had looked down so recently on this same garden, on the road which ran past the bottom of it, on the Lammas Land beyond, on the river which flowed and whooshed softly through it, and on the corpse of the dead girl floating there, carried by the current, held by the weeds.

  Saturday – Sunday, June 25 – 26th, 1898

  The four of us sat together at a table beautifully laid with white cloth and crystal glasses, awaiting the arrival of the fish. Ernest and Kathleen had quite insisted on bringing us to this little restaurant near the theatre, a newly discovered favourite of theirs, perfect for a late dinner after the play. I settled down contentedly and indulged in feeling experienced and cosmopolitan.

  ‘So what have you been working on lately?’ Arthur asked Ernest, unfolding his napkin and spreading it on his knee. Ernest is of course primarily a physicist rather than a mathematician, and an experimentalist, at that. But Arthur is fascinated by any and all sciences.

  ‘Still the old magnetism experiments,’ replied Ernest. ‘It’s just extraordinary, the power they have. I showed Kathleen some field lines the other day. You know – if you put iron filings on a sheet of paper and hold it over a magnet, the filings literally shift into a picture of force lines, going from one pole to the other. It looks like this,’ and he began scratching out a picture with a point of his fork onto the tablecloth. ‘It’s extraordinary. It means, you must realise, that those lines are more than just abstract pictures of the directions of force. They represent physical action on the atoms! That’s the direction of my present work.’ He completed his thumbnail sketch and displayed it to us proudly. ‘If you do this with a magnet, you literally see in which direction the forces of the magnet’s poles will pull the iron filings. But if you know the theory, you don’t need the experiment!’

  ‘No physics during meals,’ said Kathleen in a hurried whisper, cutting short his enthusiasm as the waiter arrived balancing several dishes on his arm, and hastily rubbing over the scratches with her fingers, ‘and stop spoiling the tablecloth!’ ‘Got to stop them, dear,’ she added, turning to me with a smile, ‘otherwise they’d be at it all night. I simply can’t stand science at the table.’ She shook a finger playfully at her husband to smooth the prickle behind her words, but she meant business clearly enough. Personally, I find these discussions quite interesting, although I am but a poor contributor. However, Kathleen preferred to talk about the play.

  ‘Mrs Campbell is sublime,’ she said. ‘Goodness, how I love to watch all that spunk and fire up there on the stage for all to see! What a difference with Ellen Terry. Terry can portray the divine in woman as no one else can, I’ll g
rant you that. But Campbell gives you a flavour of the devil.’

  ‘Redhead that you are,’ said her husband.

  ‘Well, Mrs Campbell may not be a redhead, but she might well be Irish, if you ask me,’ said Kathleen.

  ‘Campbell is hardly an Irish name.’

  ‘No, but it’s her married name. I’ve no idea what her own name might be. She likes to be known as Mrs Patrick Campbell – it keeps up some semblance of respectability, I suppose.’

  ‘That is an interesting point,’ I said. ‘It makes her sound just like the woman in the play.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, poor Mrs Tanqueray, trying so hard to tear some respectability from the fabric of her life, and discovering the thing to be impossible. The whole play is about nothing else, really.’

  ‘Yes, and yet it’s dramatic, tragic even. It’s odd that a notion like respectability should take on such importance that tragedy can be based on it. What is wrong with our time? Shakespeare would never have employed such stuff for his plots. Since when has social approval been given the power of life or death over us?’

  ‘Oh, well – the power of life or death? Let us not exaggerate.’

  ‘But yes, in the play it does, doesn’t it? After all, Mrs Tanqueray takes her own life at the end. Is she not destroyed by the realisation that her sinful past will prevent her ever obtaining a respectable social position?’

  We all four fell silent, trying to understand why Mrs Tanqueray had committed suicide, or, rather, why the author had caused her to do so, after she had managed to pull herself out of the mud of loose living by contracting a marriage with a gentleman.

  ‘I think it was because of guilt. She felt guilty about having revealed to the pure young girl that her fiancé had been her own ex-lover,’ said Ernest after a moment.

  ‘No,’ argued Arthur. ‘She didn’t feel guilty, for it was her own choice to reveal it; she clearly says that she would feel guilty to hide it.’