John Creasey - The Toff and the Fallen Angels

Rollison waved him away and moved after Naomi Smith, who was half-way towards the front door. He passed her and put a hand on the door knob, but did not turn it.

“What did I say wrong?” he demanded.

“You know very well what you said.”

“I remember every word,” he admitted, “but I can’t see what made you take offence.” He turned the knob very slowly and with obvious reluctance. “Certainly, none was intended, but if you feel as touchy ever your young women as this perhaps it’s better for me not to try to help. Presumably we would have to work together.”

He opened the door wide—on to a landing and a flight of stone steps; this old terrace house had been converted into four flats, one on each floor, of which this was the top. He was not angry, but troubled.

He had a strange feeling that this beautifully groomed, hitherto very composed woman was on the point of tears. Certainly her eyes seemed to have become much brighter, and her lips appeared to be compressed to stop them quivering.

“Wasn’t that remark intended to be taken literally?” she asked.

“I asked you if it were very rewarding to help—” He broke off as understanding dawned. His face relaxed and his eyes actually laughed at her. “Now I see what a boner I dropped! It sounded as if I were asking if you were being well-paid.”

“It most certainly did!”

“It wasn’t even remotely in my mind,” Rollison said earnestly. “I really wanted to know whether you find it rewarding as a—as a vocation. I’ve somehow always associated guardians of fallen angels as somewhat more forbidding than you.” He put a hand lightly on her arm. “Please come back.”

She averted her gaze.

“Thank you for explaining,” she said. “I’m sorry I took offence.”

“It was an unbelievably clumsy remark,” said Rollison contritely. “Would you like to tidy up before lunch?” He was leading the way back into the big room, only to lead the way out of it by the other door. “Bathroom there,” he said, pushing a door open an inch or two.

She went in, her gaze still averted; and he felt sure that there were tears in her eyes.

He went back to the sitting room, puzzled and frowning. If she were really living on her nerves to the extent her reaction to the misunderstanding seemed to imply, how had she managed to keep up appearances when she had first arrived? He rang for Jolly. There was a spacious dining alcove one step up from the main room, and he drew curtains aside revealing a dining-table already set, Sheraton chairs and a long and graceful sideboard. Steaming vegetables stood on a hot-plate and there was a bottle of wine, the cork drawn. Before Naomi Smith returned, he had put two slices of Spanish honeydew melon on the table, laid so that two people could sit opposite each other.

He heard her coming. There were no signs of tears, now, and he could have been mistaken before, although her make-up was suspiciously new. But her smile was bright. He handed her up the single step, drawing out her chair.

“Sugar or ginger?”

“I don’t think I’ll have either,” she said. “It looks delicious.”

Rollison took a little ginger, and they ate, for a time, in silence. Then he asked with a gleam in his eyes :

“Do you find it rewarding?”

She drew a deep breath.

“It can be. But at the same time it can be—purgatory.” There was such feeling in her voice that he felt a kind of hurt for her. “And when things go wrong, as they have done lately, I almost despair.” She hardly seemed to notice Jolly’s soft-footed approach to change the plates, as she went on: “They really are girls of exceptional talent. I am quite serious about that. The hostel was founded three years ago, when there was a scandal at a red-brick university. A dozen girls were sent down for drug taking, and a certain amount of sexual promiscuity. At the time I was the matron at one of the main resi-dential houses, and four of the girls were under my care. I knew they were brilliant students. One was an outstanding architect, another had a positive genius for mathematics—oh, the details don’t really matter. They all were sent down and disgraced, their studies cut off as with a knife. Several of the professors were greatly disturbed about the waste. They knew the decision of the President was both right and just, but they also knew the talents of these girls and were desperate to find a way of preventing them from being wasted.”

Naomi Smith broke off, as Jolly held the appetising cottage pie with its potato crust perfectly browned, in front of her. She helped herself but did not cease talking, so absorbed was she in what she was saying.

“One of the professors was—and still is—very wealthy. And the others were prepared to give private tutoring if the girls could be cared for nearby. All the girls were scholarship undergraduates, none had enough money without the government grant. And each leapt at the chance of going on with her studies. That’s how it began,” Namoi went on. “That was how the house of the fallen angels, as you call it, was founded. In a way it’s been a great social experiment and on the whole very successful. But I have a feeling—oh, I have more than a feeling, I know someone is trying to make it fail.”

She was now quite oblivious of Jolly and the dish of young carrots he was proffering, as she stared at Rollison as if challenging him to believe everything she told him: willing him to promise to help.

CHAPTER 3

A Promise From The Toff

ROLLISON flickered a glance at Jolly, who immediately began to serve their guest, while he looked very straightly into Naomi Smith’s eyes, feeling great warmth for her.

“On the strength of your feeling,” he said, “I will help if I can.”

Jolly’s expression relaxed into obvious approval, and Naomi Smith caught her breath, as if the suddenness of Rollison’s decision took her by surprise. But in a moment she was gripping his hand, and her eyes blazed with rare radiance.

“Oh, thank God!” she exclaimed. “Thank God!” She held tightly for a few moments, then suddenly released him and turned away; for the second time her eyes were dimmed with tears. Almost blindly she picked up her knife and fork, beginning to eat as if she had no idea what was in front of her. “I really didn’t think you would, I couldn’t believe you were all you’re said to be.”

“I’m probably half as bad as my enemies say and half as good as my friends would like to believe,” Rollison said, to ease the tension. He paused, to eat; and Jolly came and poured out wine for the Toff to taste and approve. For the first time, Jolly was noticed; and smiled at. “But the one person who probably sees me as I am is my Aunt Gloria,” went on Rollison.

“Oh?” said Naomi, blankly.

“She also has a heart of gold and a helping hand for fallen angels,” Rollison told her. “So I’ve had some experience.”

“Good gracious !” exclaimed Naomi.

“Now what I need, and do take your time about it, is the full story of what is going wrong among your young women, and why you think that someone is trying to make the hostel fail. What do you call the hostel, by the way?”

“Smith Hall,” she answered.

Rollison’s eyebrows shot up.

“Named after you?”

“Yes.” She was suddenly almost gay. “It’s a big old house in Bloomsbury, very handy for London University. The girls originally called it ‘Smith Hall’ for a joke, now the name has become a fixture.” She went on talking, as she ate, with an easy control of words which Rollison found himself enjoying almost as much as he enjoyed the sound of her voice. “The house was much too large for the half-dozen or so girls we had when we started and we used only the ground floor. Gradually we’ve opened all the rooms. It’s been a remarkable success in a lot of ways—the sponsors put up the money for basic alterations and the fallen angels did all the decorat-ing and arranging.” She paused. “I must stop calling them fallen angels !”

“It sounds all right to me,” murmured Rollison.

Her plate was nearly empty and he got up and went to the hotplate.

“Some pie?”

“I—oh, may I? It’s very nice . . . They do their own cooking and the housework, too, it’s quite remarkable how with a community of twenty-five there’s someone good at every job . . . Even baby-sitting!” She looked up as if wondering how he would react to that.

“It seems a nice self-contained unit with the inevitable flaw,” Rollison remarked.

“Flaw?”

“Yes. No all-one-sex community can really be fully effective, can it!”

“No-one attempts to stop them from having boy-friends in,” said Naomi Smith. “It really is a very modern establishment, Mr. Rollison.” She ate for a few moments and then went on: “I suppose it isn’t easy to explain attitudes. You see, my sponsors and I believe in the same fundamentals. The personal life of all individuals is theit own, providing only they aren’t a burden on, or a charge to, the community.” She looked at Rollison very straightly. “Would you agree with that, Mr. Rollison?”

“I can see problems in living like it, but the theory attracts me,” answered Rollison. “In this case, however, they are being a burden and a charge—if not on the community, then to a band of generous people. Naomi—answer me another question, please.”

“Of course,” she said.

“You aren’t asking me to sponsor or go along with what you’re doing, are you? You’re simply saying that you need help because you’re under some kind of threat which you can’t handle yourself, and are nervous that if this threat gets out of hand it might lead to publicity of a kind you don’t want.”

“That is the situation precisely,” she agreed.

“Good. What, also precisely, is the trouble?”

She finished eating and put her knife and fork down : he had already noticed how she gave herself time to think before answering any questions of importance; she was a most capable woman. Jolly appeared, as if by magic, cleared away and then produced a strawberry flan and cream as well as cheese and biscuits, and left coffee on the hot-plate. Rollison cut the flan into generous portions, as Naomi gave her answers.

“Two of the girls have really been frightened away.”

“ Frightened away,” echoed Rollison. “Help yourself to cream. Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m positive.”

Sid they tell you so?”

“No, but they were obviously frightened, and until about two months ago, were thoroughly happy. They began to change. The whole atmosphere changed, there were quarrels and tensions which had never taken place before. I put it down to the influence of one or two of our new residents, but I couldn’t really trace it to them. What was a happy community—and I mean that—has become tense and edgy. Good friends have become suspicious of each other. The trust that once existed has almost completely gone. It—it’s not really easy to explain in a short time, but I do assure you that it’s happened.”

“You aren’t doing so badly,” said Rollison drily. “Have there been any thefts?”

“No, not so far as I know.”

“Then where does the lack of trust come in?”

“A creeping fear is a tenuous thing not easy to pin down. Each example of it, when reported, seems trivial. The young mothers appear now to be frightened of leaving their babies unwatched.”

“Do you mean the babies are hurt?”