The Ha-Ha Case Read online

  “I suppose you’re staying at Edgehill for the partridge-shooting,” she said, after a moment or two, without taking her eyes from the road. “It starts on Monday, doesn’t it? Johnnie’s very keen.”

  Jim Brandon seemed slightly confused for a moment.

  “I only brought my gun down on chance,” he admitted abruptly. “I don’t expect to be here for the partridges. The fact is, I’m not coming to Edgehill. I ought to have apologised for bringing you to the station on false pretences.”

  “Not staying at Edgehill? But Johnnie told me you were coming,” Miss Menteith protested. “And Mrs. Laxford expects you, I’m sure.”

  Jim Brandon’s shoulders twitched in an almost imperceptible shrug.

  “A mistake somewhere, evidently. I’m going to put up at an hotel, if there’s one near by. If there isn’t, I dare say I can find some cottage where they’ll take me in for a night or two.”

  Miss Menteith momentarily diverted her gaze from the road and darted a curious side-glance at her companion. Her eyebrows arched slightly as though in surprise at his announcement; but something in her expression betrayed that she was not quite so astonished as she pretended.

  “I think I’d change my mind, if I were you,” she advised coolly.

  Then, as though feeling she had gone too far, she added in a reluctant tone:

  “There’s the Talgarth Arms in the village, of course. You can try it, if you like. It’s only a mile or so from the lodge-gates. I’ll take you there first of all and you can fix things up: book a room and leave your suitcase. Then we can go on to Edgehill. I was sent to collect you at the train, you know; and I can’t very well turn up empty-handed, can I?”

  Jim Brandon seemed to consider the alternatives.

  “You’re sure they expect me at Edgehill?” he demanded, after a moment or two.

  “It would look rather queer if you didn’t go there, wouldn’t it?” she countered, without giving him a direct answer to his question. “You’re here to see your brother, aren’t you? He expects you to stay at the house. If you go to the Talgarth Arms, he might not like it.”

  Jim Brandon could not feel certain whether that last sentence was faintly emphasised or not. He sat back and thought hard for a moment or two before replying.

  On the one hand, he had come down there with the express intention of putting a spoke in Laxford’s wheel. At any cost, he reflected grimly, he meant to upset that man’s schemes, in which Johnnie was to be used as the essential tool. That being so, he had planned to avoid Edgehill, to establish himself instead at some independent base—like the Talgarth Arms—so that he would be free from accepting Laxford’s hospitality with its technical fetter of bread and salt. Instead of venturing to Edgehill he had intended to summon Johnnie to the inn and to conduct his campaign of persuasion upon neutral territory, outside the Laxford sphere of influence. That, of course, was the chivalrous method.

  But, on the other hand, this observance of punctilio might well be a fatal handicap to his mission. Suppose he asked Johnnie to meet him at this inn. The message would put Laxford on the alert; and he might be strong enough to influence Johnnie—even to prevent him from turning up at all. Already there had been this curious substitution of Miss Menteith for his brother at the station; and perhaps Laxford had a hand in that. It might quite possibly have been arranged deliberately to prevent him getting Johnnie to himself at the start. And now, even if Johnnie consented to come to the Talgarth Arms, Laxford would have an opportunity of priming him immediately beforehand, rousing his suspicions, making him impossible to handle. That would be the worst atmosphere for delicate manœuvres.

  At Edgehill, on the contrary, he could choose his opportunity for tackling Johnnie. He could select a moment when his brother was in a propitious mood. And the thing could be done in a casual way which would give it a far better chance of success.

  After weighing the arguments on both sides, he decided to revise his plans and fall in with Miss Menteith’s proposal.

  “Very well,” he agreed at last, “if they expect me at Edgehill, I’ll go there.”

  “I think you should,” she replied, with no display of triumph at his conversion to her views. “We’ll go straight there, then.”

  “It’s very good of you to take all this trouble for a stranger,” he began.

  “No trouble at all,” she assured him, with a formality which sounded rather strange from her lips.

  Then, with a sudden return to naturalness, she added:

  “You and Johnnie aren’t much alike, Mr. Brandon.”

  “Meaning that I’ve got a hooked nose and he hasn’t? Most people notice that. There’s a streak of foreign blood in our family—pretty far back, now, but it crops out on the surface at times. I’ve got a dash of the old Norman in me; Johnnie favours the Saxon side of the family. At least, so my Governor says.”

  Miss Menteith had been thinking of mental and moral differences, more important than those between a straight nose and a curved one; but she made no attempt to explain this.

  “That would account for it, certainly,” she admitted. “And then, of course, you’re much older than Johnnie, aren’t you? That helps to make the difference between you bigger still.”

  Jim Brandon shook his head.

  “You’re on the wrong track there, I’m afraid. Johnnie looks much younger than he is really. He’s just on the edge of twenty-one now. In fact, he comes of age to-morrow. There’s only a matter of four years between the two of us.”

  This seemed to surprise Miss Menteith slightly. She glanced aside at him again as though to check her first impressions. Where had she got this false suggestion of a greater seniority? It did not lie in the leanness of the aquiline features, the curve of the predaceous nose, or the hardness of the mouth. These made him different from Johnnie, but not necessarily older-looking. Then she noted the corners of Jim Brandon’s lips and the two vertical lines between his brows. That was where the thing lay, perhaps. Johnnie’s normal expression spoke of happy-go-lucky cheerfulness. Worry, if he showed it at all, was like a swift-passing cloud. Jim Brandon’s face, on the contrary, hinted at a suppressed grudge against a world which had not used him according to his idea of his own merits. That ever-present yet almost invisible trace of bitterness made him look older than his years.

  During the slight pause in the conversation, Jim Brandon’s thoughts had taken a very different channel. He was puzzled by this girl who had been sent to meet him. She was staying at Edgehill. She was on familiar terms there, since she spoke of “Johnnie” instead of saying “your brother” or “Mr. Brandon.” Without risking a direct snub, she had coolly assumed the right to advise him, as if she were an old friend instead of a stranger. She had managed to make him alter his plans at the last moment and go to Edgehill instead of to the village inn.

  These were the facts about her; but what lay behind them? Was she an ally of Laxford, despatched to the station with the aim of enticing him into staying at Edgehill? That was quite on the cards, he reflected sourly. And a scheme of that sort had the further advantage that it prevented him from getting Johnnie to himself when they met at the train. Once at Edgehill, he might be kept under supervision. Privacy would be hard to secure. Seemingly innocent interruptions might easily be contrived to break into any tête-à-tête between Johnnie and himself. He could foresee endless difficulties already, and he began to curse his foolishness in dropping his original plan so hastily.

  However, the blunder had been made—if it was a blunder—and he had to make the best of it. This girl, whoever she was, seemed inclined to talk freely enough; and he determined to utilise the chance. At least he could learn something about the environment into which he was about to plunge. The more information he had about that, the better equipped he would be to meet emergencies.

  “Many people staying at Edgehill just now?” he asked in a casual tone, as though merely wishing to keep the conversation alive. “I suppose you’ve got a crowd on the premises, for the par
tridge-shooting next week?”

  “Unless you call one a crowd, we haven’t. I believe some men are coming down soon, but just now there’s only one extra.”

  “Yourself, you mean?”

  “No, I’m not a guest. It’s a Mr. Hay who dropped in unexpectedly yesterday. I think he’s really here on business. He made some joke about lumber. I didn’t see any point in it. Then Mr. Laxford said they meant to fell some timber at Edgehill, so I suppose Mr. Hay came in connection with that.”

  This information relieved Jim Brandon’s mind. Laxford, with a solitary guest on his hands, could hardly contrive to keep the two brothers apart for a whole week-end. It would be easy enough to get Johnnie to himself and to talk things over without fear of interruption. Edgehill, after all, was the right place, since it would give him the choice of the best opportunity when Johnnie seemed to be in an amenable mood.

  Then his mind went back to the first sentence of the girl’s answer. She was staying at Edgehill, and yet by her own account she was not there as an ordinary guest. She must be some relation of Laxford or of Mrs. Laxford—a close enough relation to reckon herself as one of the family, apparently. In that case, he would have to be very cautious in what he said to her. No use giving points to the enemy.

  Miss Menteith seemed to have the gift of thought-reading. When he made no comment on her remarks she turned to him momentarily with a faintly quizzical expression.

  “You’re trying to place me, aren’t you? Wondering who I am? There’s no mystery about it, Mr. Brandon. I’m the Laxfords’ governess.”

  “Are you?”

  Evidently a trace of surprise crept into his tone, for now she gave a little laugh of pure amusement.

  “You seem a bit taken aback,” she commented. “Why, may I ask? Don’t I look like a governess? Did you expect a poke-bonnet and mittens, or what?”

  Jim Brandon looked slightly confused, but he took the bull by the horns:

  “I didn’t expect to see a governess running a car like this one. You told me it was your own, didn’t you?”

  Miss Menteith’s amusement became even more marked.

  “It seems far above my humble station, you mean? Suspicious affair . . . How did she get it? . . . Queer times we live in . . . We all know what the post-war girl’s like, h’m! . . . And all that sort of thing. You’ll not be too disappointed if I clear my character? Dissipate these dreadful suspicions and what not? I love telling people the story of my life.”

  Jim Brandon glanced sharply at his companion. Despite its irony, her speech sounded rather silly; and silliness was not what he expected from this girl, who seemed to have her wits about her. He had a shrewd idea that some definite purpose lay behind this chatter, though what that purpose was, he could not guess. On the face of things, she evidently wanted him to know her exact status at Edgehill; but surely no detailed explanations were needed.

  Miss Menteith relaxed her pressure on the accelerator and let the car slow down to a mere twenty-mile-an-hour gait. Evidently she meant to allow herself time for her autobiographical sketch. Her opening was hardly what Jim Brandon had anticipated.

  “Suppose for a moment, Mr. Brandon, that you were a girl just out of your teens, left stranded in the world with two hundred or two hundred and fifty a year. What could you do with it?”

  “Live on it, I suppose. What else?”

  Miss Menteith made an attractive grimace.

  “Live on it? Yes. But how?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Digs, or a boarding-house. Something of that sort, I suppose.”

  Miss Menteith nodded as though in confirmation.

  “Yes, you might live in a women’s club or in some boarding-house, of course—very cheap ones. Can you guess what that means? I can remember the animals: the girl who fancies herself at the piano . . . the old lady who always has trouble with her false teeth at meals . . . the woman with a harsh voice that can be heard all over the room . . . the maiden lady who’s seen better days when she didn’t have to mix with dreadful people like yourself . . . and the rest. Bright companions! No privacy unless you shut yourself up in a cheerless bedroom with a slot radiator and a penny-a-night book from a lending library. And most likely the whole establishment will be bathed in an inescapable smell of boiled cabbage or fried onions.”

  “It doesn’t sound very bright,” Jim Brandon admitted cautiously. “But you might take a flat.”

  “Well, I’ve tried that too. Half your income goes in rent, and that leaves you so short that you have to cling to every penny of the rest, as if it were a family heirloom. Spend your mornings trailing from one local greengrocer to another, in the hope of getting potatoes a halfpenny a stone cheaper than last time. Shop at Woolworth’s, or in the Caledonian Market, or at the street stalls in—where is it?—Farringdon Road, I think, trying to pick up bargains in odd cups or job lots of oilcloth. You can’t afford a decent dressmaker. You wear somebody else’s cast-offs—‘only been worn three times, moddom’—from the second-hand dealers in Bayswater. The theatre, when you can afford a splash, means standing at the pit-door. And when you get home after it, the fire’s been smoking before it went out; and you yearn for company—any sort—just someone to talk to, something to take the edge off the loneliness that comes over you when you’re all by yourself in the flat before you get to bed. And the people in the other flats may not be as quiet as you’d like, when you want to get to sleep and forget it all. It’s not much catch, I assure you. London’s the only place worth living in; but it’s merely tantalising to live in it when you have to look twice at a bus-fare before you spend it.”

  “There’s something in that,” Jim Brandon agreed, thinking of his own experiences. “But what about a provincial town, or the country?”

  “Same drawbacks and none of the advantages,” Miss Menteith commented.

  “And so. . . ?”

  “Well, I thought it out; and finally I put an advertisement into The Times and The Morning Post. Something like this. ‘Young Gentlewoman, age 23, capable, musical, child lover, many useful qualities, seeks post: highest references: salary secondary consideration.’ That threw the net wide enough. Some very rum fish came up in it, I can assure you. I wish I’d kept a few of the replies. Elderly gentlemen pining for Bright Young Society and asking for my photograph to see if I’d suit them. Ancient ladies, a bit uncertain in their spelling, who seemed to want either a maid-of-all-work or else someone to amuse their male friends in the evening. And so on. Rather amusing, really. I felt as if I’d paid my fee and was getting a correspondence course on Human Nature.”

  She paused for a moment as though to give Jim Brandon his turn in the dialogue; but he merely waited for her to continue.

  “The Laxfords saw my advertisement,” she went on, with a momentary smile at some covert jest of her own. “They offered me just the sort of thing I wanted. Two children, seven and five, with a nurse to take them off my hands part of the time. They stay with a grandmother for two months in the summer, and I can go abroad or take a cruise then, if I want to. I love these cruises. Such a weird gang one meets on board at times.”

  Jim Brandon fancied he noticed a faint flush under the light tan on Miss Menteith’s cheek. She ran on with her description of her position.

  “Anyhow, that’s how it works out. I live rent-free as one of the family in nice big houses. I can dress decently and I can just manage to run a car. Besides, it’s the gypsy sort of life I like.”

  “Gypsy sort of life?” queried Jim Brandon. “I don’t see that side of it. Do you go caravanning between whiles?”

  “No, I’d loathe caravanning,” Miss Menteith retorted. “I don’t mean that. But in some ways life with the Laxfords is a hugger-mugger sort of affair,” she explained vaguely. “Rather fun, if you have a sense of humour. It might not suit some people, of course.”

  Jim Brandon picked his words carefully in his next remark.

  “It seems a sound proposition, if you like the Laxfords,” he said at last. “With you
r two hundred and fifty a year, plus your salary, you ought to be able to turn round comfortably enough.”

  “The salary doesn’t worry me,” answered Miss Menteith in an unusually dry tone.

  Jim Brandon had his own ideas about the state of the Laxford finances, and he idly wondered how much Miss Menteith’s salary was in arrear at that moment. It might suit her to take a post with the Laxfords, but it would doubtless suit the Laxfords equally well to have a governess to whom salary was “a secondary consideration.” He could hardly push this subject further without risk of offence, so he turned the talk into a fresh channel.

  “Is Johnnie getting on well with this work of his?”

  “As well as can be expected, I think,” Miss Menteith answered rather evasively. “He certainly works. Mr. Laxford seems well enough pleased with his progress, I gather.”

  Jim Brandon laughed unkindly.

  “Translated into English, that means that he plods away but doesn’t make much of it. Johnnie was always a bonehead. A rabbit would be hard put to it to earn a living if it changed brains with my young brother. In some ways, he’s exasperating, especially if you have to explain anything to him.”

  Miss Menteith seemed more than a little annoyed by the gloss put on her description.

  “He’s very likeable,” she declared rather irrelevantly. “I’m rather fond of Johnnie. He’s pathetically young in some ways, and frightfully earnest about some silly schemes; but he’s not a bit priggish or conceited over them. I’m not sure . . .”

  She broke off her sentence abruptly as though her tongue had run away with her. Jim Brandon guessed what she was avoiding. But this was a matter on which he wanted an outsider’s view; and he deliberately forced the subject upon her.

  “He’s very young for his age, as you say,” he agreed at once. “A case of arrested development on some sides, perhaps. And that makes him easily influenced by some people. He might pick up ideas from anybody who chose to throw them in his way, especially if he liked the author.”