Charles pulled out a chair for her. They were the only customers and for a while no one came to take their order. Mrs. Crilling leant confidingly towards Archery. "My baby has got herself a situation and she starts tomorrow. An operative in a ladies' wear establishment. I understand the prospects are excellent. With her intelligence there's no knowing how far she can go. The trouble is she's never had a real chance." She had been speaking in a low genteel voice. Suddenly she turned her back on him, banged the sugar basin on the table and screamed loudly in the direction of the kitchen: "Service!"
Charles jumped. Archery shot him a glance of triumph.
"Always having her hopes raised and then it comes to nothing," she went on just as if the scream had never happened. "Her father was just the same—struck down with T.B. in the flower of his age and dead within six months." Archery flinched as she jerked away from him once more. "Where the flaming hell are those bloody girls?" she shouted.
A woman in a green uniform with Manageress embroidered on the bodice came out from the kitchen. The look she gave Mrs. Crilling was bored and withering. "I asked you not to come in here again, Mrs. Crilling, if you can't behave yourself." She smiled frostily at Archery, "What can I get you, sir?"
"Three coffees, please."
"I'll have mine black," said Charles.
"What was I talking about?"
"Your daughter," said Archery hopefully.
"Oh, yes, my baby. It's funny really she should have had such a bad break because when she was a little tot it looked as if everything in the garden was lovely. I had a dear old friend, you see, who simply doted on my baby. And she was rolling in money, kept servants and all that kind of thing..."
The coffee came. It was the espresso kind with foam on the top.
"You can bring me some white sugar," said Mrs. Crilling sulkily. "I can't stomach that demerara muck." The waitress flounced away, returned with another sugar bowl and banged it down on the table. Mrs. Crilling gave a shrill little shriek as soon as she was out of earshot. "Silly bitch!"
Then she returned to her theme. "Very old my friend was and beyond being responsible for her actions. Senile, they call it. Over and over again she told me she wanted to do something for my baby. I passed it off, of course, having an absolute revulsion about stepping into dead men's shoes." She stopped suddenly and dropped four heaped teaspoonsful of sugar into her coffee.
"Naturally," said Charles. "The last thing anyone would call you is mercenary, Mrs. Crilling."
She smiled complacently and to Archery's intense amusement, leant across the table and patted Charles's cheek. "You dear," she said. "You lovely, understanding dear." After a deep breath she went on more practically, "Still, you have to look after your own. I didn't press it, not till the doctor told me Mr. Crilling had only got six months to live. No insurance, I thought in my despair, no pension. I pictured myself reduced to leaving my baby on the steps of an orphanage."
For his part, Archery was unable to picture it. Elizabeth had been a sturdy youngster of five at the time.
"Do go on," said Charles. "It's most interesting."
"You ought to make a will, I said to my friend. I'll pop down the road and get you a will form. A thousand or two would make all the difference to my baby. You know how she's gladdened your last years, and what have those grandchildren of yours ever done for you? Damn all, I thought."
"But she didn't make a will?" Archery said.
"What do you know about it? You let me tell it in my own way. It was about a week before she died. I'd had the will form for weeks and weeks and all the time poor Mr. Crilling was wasting away to a shadow. But would she fill it in? Not her, the old cow. I had to use all my most winning powers of persuasion. Every time I said a word that crazy old maid of hers would put her spoke in. Then that old maid—Flower, her name was—she got a bad cold and had to keep to her bed. 'Have you thought any more about disposing of your temporal estates?' I said to my friend in a light-hearted, casual manner. 'Maybe I should do something for Lizzie,' she said and I knew my opportunity was at hand.
"Back across the road I flew. I didn't like to witness it myself, you know, on account of my baby being a beneficiary. Mrs. White, my neighbour, came over and the lady who helped with her housework. They were only too delighted. You might say it brought a ray of sunshine into their humdrum lives."
Archery wanted to say, "But Mrs. Primero died intestate." He didn't dare. Any hint that he knew whom she was talking about and the whole narrative might be brought to a halt.
"Well, we got it all written out. I'm a great reader, Mr. Archery, so I was able to put it in the right language. 'Blood is thicker than water,' said my old friend—she was wandering in her mind—but she only put the grandchildren down for five hundred a-piece. There was eight thousand for my baby and I was to have charge of it till she was twenty-one, and a bit left over for the Flower woman. My friend was crying bitterly. I reckon she realised how wicked she'd been in not doing it before.
"And that was that. I saw Mrs. White and the other lady safely off the premises—more fool I, though I didn't know it at the time. I said I'd keep the will safe and I did. She wasn't to mention it to anybody. And—would you believe it?—a week later she met with her death."
Charles said innocently, "That was a good start for your daughter, Mrs. Crilling, whatever misfortunes came afterwards."
He started as she got up abruptly. Her face had blanched to the whiteness it had worn in court and her eyes blazed.
"Any benefits she got," she said in a choking voice, "came from her dead father's people. Charity it was, cold charity. 'Send me the school bills, Josie,' her uncle'd say to me. 'I'll pay them direct, and her auntie can go with her to get her uniform. If you think she needs treatment for her nerves her auntie can go with her to Harley Street, too.' "
"But what about the will?"
"That bloody will!" Mrs. Crilling shouted. "It wasn't legal. I only found out after she was dead. I took it straight round to Quadrants, the solicitors that were in the High Street. Old Mr. Quadrant was alive then. 'What about these alterations?' he said. Well, I looked and, lo and behold, the old cow had scribbled in a lot of extra bits while I was at the front door with Mrs. White. Scribbled in bits and scratched out bits too. 'These invalidate the whole thing,' said Mr. Quadrant. 'You have to get the witnesses to sign them, or have a codicil. You could fight it,' he said, looking me up and down in a nasty way, knowing I hadn't got a bean. 'But I wouldn't say much for your chances.' "
To Archery's horror she broke into a stream of obscenities, many of which he had never heard before. The manageress came out and took her by the arm. "Out you go. We can't have this in here."
"My God," said Charles, after she had been hustled away. "I see what you mean."
"I must confess her language shook me a bit."
Charles chuckled. "Not fit for your ears at all."
"It was most enlightening, though. Are you going to bother with Primero now?"
"It can't do any harm."
Archery had to wait a long time in the corridor outside Wexford's office. Just as he was beginning to think he would have to give up and try again later, the main entrance doors opened and a little bright-eyed man in working clothes came in between two uniformed policemen. He was plainly some sort of criminal, but everyone seemed to know him and find him a source of ironic amusement.