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Jeeves appeared in the opening I pushed my way inside.
"Where's Flo?" I demanded. "Miss Greenfield? Is she still in bed?"
The abruptness of my entrance and the lack of delicacy in my question reduced
him to jerky little protests, which I overrode ruthlessly. "I need to talk to
Flo this instant. Where is her room? Oh, never mind, I'll find it myself. "
The house-maid he summoned sprinted up to me after the sixth door I had
opened, and said breathlessly, "This way, miss, er, ma'am."
I'd have found the room eventually, but I did not bother to thank the little
maid, just marched past her towards the formless shape on the bed. "I'll bring
coffee!" the poor girl squeaked, and slammed the door.
"Flo!" I said loudly, shaking where I thought her shoulder would be. "Flo,
wake up, right now. I don't have time for your morning dithers. Flo!"
My shout brought her bolt upright, staring around in a panic. She dashed her
hands across her eyes as if doubting their evidence. "Mary? What on earth-"
"Flo, do you know a man with a scarred face?"
"What?" It came out more like, Wha? With an effort, I resisted the impulse to
slap her awake.
"A man with scars on his face, burn scars."
"What of it?"
"God damn it, Flo, who is he?"
"My father, " she said, her pretty face screwing up in confusion. "What about
him? Mary, what a state you're in! You look like you've been rolling in the
garden!"
I sat down abruptly on the bed, ignoring her fastidious protestations. "Your
father had a scarred face?"
"Yes, it was sort of puckered, like. He got burned rescuing people in the
great fire. Mary, what are you doing here? What time is it? Oh, golly, " she
said, squinting at the clock on her table, "it's not even noon. Do you know
what time I hit the hay?"
"Flo, I really don't care if you haven't slept in a week. What did your father
look like?"
"He used to be handsome once, " she replied, and settled her back against the
head-board in resignation, although I watched her closely to make sure she
didn't fade into sleep again. "At least, that's what Mummy says, and the
picture she has of him is kind of dreamy, in an old-fashioned kind of a way. "
"How tall was he?"
"Oh, yes, his height. Poor Daddy, he was so sensitive about it. Used to wear
shoes to make him taller. Oh, thank God!" she exclaimed as the house-maid
backed in with a tray of coffee. "This feels like one
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of those horrible dreams you keep trying to wake up from and it drags you
back."
"Just a little more and I'll let you go back to sleep, " I said ruthlessly.
"What about a ring?"
"A ring?" she said uncertainly, her cup paused in front of her mouth.
"A pinkie ring with a stone."
She took a gulp, gasped a little with the heat of it, then wheezed out, "How
did you know that? He never used to, but when I saw him later, he had it. I
always figured it meant he'd made it big after the divorce. Although it was a
little flashy."
"You mean, he didn't wear the ring when you were small and they were still
married, but he did later on? When did you see him, later?"
Her face took on a look of childish shiftiness and she glanced at the door,
where the maid had just gone out. "I didn't."
"Flo, I know you saw him. When was it?"
"Mummy didn't like it."
"I won't tell her. When?"
She let out a gusty breath. "Just every so often. After the fire, I didn't see
him for a long time, and when he came back he sort of scared me, his face I
mean. But then I could see that it was him, and he told me that he'd gotten it
rescuing people, so it was all right, sort of. Sad, I mean, and not nice to
look at, but he was so brave and that mattered. But not to Mummy."
"Your mother wouldn't let you see him?"
"She didn't like it. They had a bad divorce, you know, and later on he kept
asking her for money. But I didn't see why that should mean I couldn't see
him. He was fun, you know?"
"Do you remember what years you saw him?"
"No."
"Flo, please. Try."
She screwed up her face again, thinking hard. "He was here for a couple of my
birthdays that's in September, " she added, "the twenty-fifth. He was here for
my tenth, and I think my twelfth yes, it was pretty much every other year."
She was the same age as I, born in 1900. "And your fourteenth?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, he brought me a very pretty pearl necklace from Paris that year, "
she said happily. "I told Mummy they were good fakes that a friend had gotten
tired of and gave me, but they're real, and they were from him."
I rubbed my face, suddenly tired. Flo's father, who had been my own father's
close friend in his youth, whose crimes during the fire had driven the final
wedge between them, had been here immediately before the accident.
"Tell me, " I said, "do you know a woman, she might have been an acquaintance
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of your father's, who is taller than he is by several inches, and younger,
with brown hair she wears up on her head?"
As descriptions went, it did not go very far, Flo's quizzical expression
seemed to say. I began to tell her it was all right, but she surprised me.
"Not a friend, but his sister used to have long brown hair she wore up."
"Sister? The one who owns a night-club in Paris?"
"I don't know about that, but last I heard, she lived in Paris. She was
actually his half-sister, that's what he told me, a lot younger than him.
Didn't look a bit like him, and Daddy kind of flirted with her, which was a
bit strange. Still, she was nice enough to me, sent me pretty things to wear.
When Mummy didn't catch them and take them from me," she said, and yawned. She
added, "Although she must be some
kind of old maid, to be so devoted to her half-brother. Hung on his every
word."
The "sister" sounded less and less like a blood relation, but I suppose it
hardly mattered. "Do you have a photograph of either of them?"
"Sure, why? Mary, what is going on?"
I thought that I preferred her stupefied by sleep.
"I think your father may have been involved in something criminal."
"Oh, bunk! Have you been talking with Mummy? She's got crime on the brain when
it comes to Daddy."
"No, I haven't spoken to your mother. May I see the pictures?"
I thought that the only hope was if I did not pause for explanations, but
simply overwhelmed her with peremptory demands. It worked, in that it got her
out of bed to pad in her pyjamas over to her childhood book-shelves and draw
out a picture album.
She'd hidden the photos of her father behind harmless snapshots of friends and
holiday scenery. One of him, young and handsome, with hair as light as my
father's (blond hair on a guest-room pillow, the machinery in the back of my
mind noted: blond enough that his face would not show much of a stubble some
days after it had been burnt) holding a black-haired baby girl in his arms:
Flo had her mother's hair. The second photograph showed Robert Greenfield some
years later, turning his scarred face slightly away from the camera as he lay
on a deck-chair with some stretch of the Mediterranean behind him; a third
showed him later yet, his body beginning to thicken and his hairline receding,
standing beside a handsome, somewhat taller woman dressed in pre-war
fashion but when I took my eyes from their figures to study the background, my
knees gave way and I had to fumble for a chair.
The photograph had been taken at the Lodge. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]