Free The China Governess by Margery Allingham

probably won’t talk and Alison will back him up, but you can bet your life that Ma Broome would chatter if a newspaper offered her enough money. She must know all about it. There’s a rumour that the girl’s father has stopped Tim’s engagement already. That means that there’s a Press story there, and if I go on telling my little anecdote somegossip writer will arrive at the big idea all by himself and come beetling down here with a cheque book. Then we shall get the human angle.
Foundling and Heiress. Who Abandoned Tiny Tim?
’ He chuckled at his own joke.
    â€˜You’re going to hand me the one about it not mattering to anyone in these enlightened times where in hell he came from or who his parents were,’ he remarked. ‘You may be right, but in my opinion the news is going to shake up the wonderboy himself considerably, and that’s the angle which interests me.’ He met the other man’s eyes and shook his head. ‘He’s had it too easy,’ he added, as if he were passing a fair judgement with reluctance. ‘Far too easy altogether.’
    Mrs. Broome burst into the room so suddenly that there could be no doubt that she had been listening at the door. She was in a highly explosive state. Her cheeks were bright with anger and her eyes were wet. She came forward across the rugs, moving very swifty but taking very short steps, and she glanced round her for the hidden girl with no subterfuge at all so that both men looked about them also. Julia, who could not see her, did not move and the furious woman turned to Toberman.
    â€˜Do you want any tea . . . . Sir?’ she said without hoodwinking anybody.
    Toberman stood looking at her. He was giggling slightly and wore the sorry anxious expression of one caught redhanded.
    â€˜I did say they’d have to offer a lot of money before you’d talk, Broomie,’ he said feebly.
    Mrs. Broome began to cry and whatever Mr. Campion had envisaged it was not this. Everything he had ever heard about his sex’s terror of feminine tears rushed back into his mind in sudden justification. Mrs. Broome was a woman who wept like a baby, noisily, wetly and with complete abandon. The noise was fantastic.
    â€˜Be quiet!’ said Toberman flapping a hand at her idiotically. ‘Be quiet! Be quiet!’
    â€˜I wouldn’t sell Timmie!’ Her extraordinary statement was mercifully incoherent. Her handkerchief was already sodden. ‘You ought not to say such things, you ought not to tell such lies,you’re jealous of him, you always were. He was lovely and you were always an ugly little thing, and you had that tiresome weakness and I was thankful when you went to Wales.’ The incredible words came churning out of the wide-open, quivering mouth in a mass of water and misery. Toberman threw up his hands in terror.
    â€˜Shut up!’ he shouted at her. ‘Shut up! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.’
    Mrs. Broome continued to weep but not quite so loudly. As a spectacle she was unnerving, her face and her drowned eyes red as blood. Both men stood before her temporarily helpless.
    â€˜You said yourself that Mr. Eustace didn’t look at me.’ The words were clear but incomprehensible.
    â€˜What the hell are you talking about?’ Toberman was near panic and his roughness produced another burst of sobbing.
    â€˜You said it yourself!’ Mrs. Broome bawled in her rage and grief. ‘Of course I was listening! I had a right to if you were going to tell lies about me. You said it yourself, I heard you. Mr. Eustace didn’t look at me.’
    â€˜When, for God’s sake?’
    â€˜When I brought Timmy in to him and he asked his name.’
    Toberman stared at her stained face. Incredulity and delight were concentrated in his eyes.
    â€˜Do you hear that Campion?’ he demanded. ‘Do you hear what she says? It
was
Timothy! I was right on the bull’s-eye.’