Free The China Governess by Margery Allingham Page A

He seemed astounded by his good fortune. ‘She’s admitted it. The mother went off and left him and Eustace gave him the first name that came into his head.’
    â€˜Oh no, no! That’s not what I said. You’re putting words in my mouth. Mr. Eustace didn’t
look
at me. That was how I knew.’ The last word rose to a wail which could not be ignored.
    â€˜What did you know?’ Mr. Campion’s soft authoritative voice penetrated the protective blanket of noise with which she had surrounded herself. Her tears vanished like an infant’s and she turned to him with some of her normal gossipiness.
    â€˜I knew Baby was either Mr. Eustace’s poor dead brother’s or his own little son, being slipped home quietly under cover of all the other kiddiewinkies in the house,’ she announced, meeting hiseyes with a stare of such earnest romanticism that he was set back on his heels by it. ‘It was a very terrible
time
, sir, and people were frightened. It stands to reason that if he’d got to give a home from the bombs to all those other children, naturally he’d think of his own flesh and blood.’ She sighed, and a shrewder expression appeared upon her tearstained face. ‘I daresay it suited him. He may not have known how his sister was going to take to the idea of a baby. Maiden ladies are maiden ladies, you know, some more than others. They’re not like us married girls. I knew at once, of course, because he didn’t look at me when he asked who Baby was. People never look at you when they’re telling fibs, do they?’
    She delivered the final remark as if it were a statement of scientific fact. Mr. Campion considered her thoughtfully. She believed, it, he saw, literally and obstinately, and always had. Therefore, since she could never have kept completely silent about anything, this version must be the one upon which young Timothy Kinnit had been brought up. He found he was becoming very sorry for the young man.
    Toberman was laughing. ‘So the next day when you told Eustace that the mother hadn’t returned he filled in the name on the form and Timothy got his ration book and identity card. That’s your story, is it?’
    â€˜No it isn’t!’ Mrs. Broome began to roar again. ‘I don’t talk, Mr. Basil. I was trained as a children’s nurse and nurses have to learn to keep little secrets. Where would
you
be if they didn’t? Embarrassed every day of your life! You think you’ve made me say something but you haven’t! Times have changed let me tell you. As long as a boy has a home behind him no one’s going to ask what church his mother and father got married at. Besides, you’re quite wrong about one thing. It wasn’t Timmy’s mummie who brought him down here!’
    â€˜How could you possibly tell that?’ said Toberman airily. The man was elated, Campion noted; above himself with gratification.
    â€˜A young girl with a new baby. Well of course I could!’ An angry blush added to the conflagration already burning in the tear-wet face and Toberman had the grace to appear disconcerted.
    â€˜What was her name, anyway?’
    Mrs. Broome threw up her hands at his obtuseness. ‘If anyone had been able to remember
that
it would have saved a lot of trouble when we came to getting him adopted properly for Totham School,’ she said with a tartness which hinted at considerable argument at some time in the past. ‘No one who wasn’t there at the start of the war seems to be able to remember what that panic was like before the bombing began.
Hundreds
of mothers and babies had been crying through the house. They were all supposed to be labelled but half the tickets had been lost and the babies had sucked the writing off the ones that
were
still fastened. Nine out of ten of the girls wouldn’t give their names in case they were asked to pay something, and we were all frightened