Read Online The Case Of William Smith by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online Page B

wondered whether Cyril expected her not to connect the two events. The letter was in his own hand. She had an idea that it might have undergone some modification if it had been dictated to Miss Jones. There were very definitely no flies on Miss Jones. Cyril on the other hand would never really notice whether there were flies or not. She thought a little bitterly about the two Eversley partners and what they were doing to the firm — Cyril with his policy of drift, and Brett to whom it was a bank on which to draw. Instead of pulling up after the war years they had gone down, and were still going. She wondered a little what would happen if she were to tell Admiral Holden just what she really thought. She wasn’t going to do it, but she couldn’t help wondering what would happen if she did. She was still wondering as she went out to catch her bus.
    William did not receive a letter, but he wrote a great many. He spent a good part of the night writing them. Some of them began one way, and some another, but they were all to Katharine. Since he couldn’t make love to her in the shop or in her flat and he had a strong feeling that streets, buses, tubes, and other places of concourse were not in the least appropriate to all the things he wanted to say to her, the idea of putting them in a letter had on its first appearance seemed quite bright.
    The trouble was that, like so many bright ideas, it was proving very difficult to translate into words. For one thing, it appeared to be quite impossible to make a start. The torn-up sheets on which he had tried to get going littered not only his table but the floor. He wrote, ‘Darling,’ and blushed for his own temerity. He wrote, ‘Miss Eversley,’ and thought how cold it looked, and how unlike everything he felt for Katharine. When he had tried several other openings and torn them up, he took a new sheet and began without any beginning at all.
    ‘I am writing to you because I want you to know that I love you. I hope this will not make you feel uncomfortable in any way, because I should hate to do that, but it seems fairer to let you know how I feel. I do not like to think of your having to work, but if you are going to work anywhere, I would naturally like you to go on doing it here. I hope you will not feel I have made this difficult by writing to tell you how much I love you.
    ‘As far as I know, I am about thirty years old — it might be a year or two more or a year or two less, but that doesn’t make much difference. I had a head wound which was the cause of my loss of memory, but except for that it doesn’t give me any trouble now. I am very strong and healthy, and never have anything the matter with me, I am glad to say.
    ‘I cannot say anything about my family because my memory only goes back to ’42 as I told you, but I seem to have had quite a reasonable education. I don’t know at all what I did before the war, but one of the reasons why I feel sure I am not William Smith is that he worked in a tannery, and I am quite sure that I could not work in a tannery without being sick. I went to the place where he worked to see, and I was sick. If I was William Smith I should think I would have got over it — wouldn’t you? That is only one of the reasons why I don’t think I am William Smith, but I feel quite sure about it myself.
    ‘It is of course a great drawback my not being able to remember anything before I came out of hospital — I mean the German one in ’42. When I went to see Mr. Tattlecombe the other day he asked whether I had ever thought about getting married. I told him that I did not know whether I could think about it, because I might have been engaged to someone, or even married, before I lost my memory. I feel I must put this to you because I put it to him, but on thinking it over I do not think it could be so, because I would not be engaged to anyone, or married, unless I was in love with her, and I do not think I could forget anyone I loved like