Dear Sir Read online

  DEAR SIR

  Mary Burchell

  Why was a stranger’s opinion so important?

  Alexa had a perfectly innocent reason for being with Richard Millom in his Paris hotel room. But in his devilish way, Richard made it seem otherwise to the handsome, disapproving stranger who arrived just at the wrong moment.

  When she met the stranger again, Alexa was grateful that Christopher Walden did not remember her. She wanted Christopher to think well of her—and he would if Richard did not interfere!

  CHAPTER ONE

  “It’s an unusual assignment,” said Mr. Mercer, tipping back his chair at a perilous angle and regarding Alexa across the smooth expanse of his highly polished desk, “and of course it will mean giving up your weekend. On the other hand, it should be quite an interesting occasion.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for anything!” Alexa’s dark blue eyes sparkled. “And I’m flattered that Sir Hector should ask for me personally.”

  “Well, you’ve done good work for him in the past, it seems, and these things are remembered. At least, they’re remembered by some people,” amended Mr. Mercer who, after ten years spent as a director of the most successful secretarial agency in London, had few illusions left about employers and none at all about employees.

  “Could I hear some more about it?” Alexa said, and Mr. Mercer glanced down at the letter that lay, before him on the desk.

  “Sir Hector Phillimore, as you probably know,” he began, a trifle sententiously, “is not only an enormously successful businessman, but also a great contributor to charity. It seems that his pet cause—the Enderby Children’s Home at Parham—needs a new wing or sanatorium or something, and he has undertaken to raise part of the money required, by organizing some big charity show. This weekend he is having a sort of house party at the Gloria, where he lives when he is in town, and he is inviting some of the people he hopes will assist him. He requires someone to look after the secretarial side of things throughout the weekend, and that’s where you come in. He wants you to stay in the hotel—at his expense, of course—and be available from Friday evening until some time late on Sunday.”

  “But why not one of his own secretaries? To my certain knowledge he has three very efficient ones. ”

  “They may not like weekend work, or they may be overworked already,” replied Mr. Mercer indifferently, for he took little interest in anyone not supplied by his agency. “Does it matter?”

  “No. I just wondered—” Alexa thought for a moment.

  Then she asked interestedly, “Does Sir Hector say who is coming?”

  “Yes.” Mr. Mercer referred once more to the letter. “He mentions Florian, the French dress designer. I suppose he will have something to do with dressing the show. Then there’s Irma Loncini, the singer, and Sir Lucas Manning, who will presumably take care of the drama side of things. And Jerome Callender:—I seem to know the name, but can’t place him—”

  “He’s the television producer. You know—married to Bridget Monroe, who does those monthly interviews with celebrities.”

  “Ah, yes, of course. They ought to be able to provide some useful material between them. Then there’s this Russian girl that everyone is raving about. Anya Beranova. Does songs and sketches, doesn’t she, and is supposed to be able to make everyone laugh or cry at will. You’re going to have an interesting time, I’d say.”

  “It sounds wonderful! But surely they’re not all going to stay at the Gloria?”

  “Those who live outside London certainly will,” Mr. Mercer declared. “And possibly the others, too. Sir Hector practically owns the place, in any case, I believe, and has a suite about the size of a department store. But you’ll see all that for yourself later. Perhaps—” he paused and smiled, for he was a kindly man “—you had better take tomorrow off, in place of Saturday. I suppose you will have a few preparations to make for such an occasion?”

  “Oh, thank you!” Alexa also smiled. “But do you think I should be prepared to—well, to take part in the social side of the weekend?”

  “I don’t see why not. Sir Hector speaks very appreciatively of you in his letter,” said Mr. Mercer. And with a friendly little nod he dismissed Alexa, who went out walking on air.

  Mr. Mercer looked thoughtfully after her. In his own judgment—which he valued—Miss Slater was the most efficient and attractive of all the free-lance staff at the West End Secretarial Agency, and he sometimes wondered why she had never accepted any of the good permanent jobs that had been offered to her from time to time.

  She said she preferred the variety—the slight sense of adventure—attaching to her present status. But he was inclined to think that—like many who chose this form of employment—she had home responsibilities that made a degree of flexibility desirable. He remembered that back in the early summer she had seemed worried and had said something about a younger sister causing anxiety.

  Well, she was an independent sort of girl, and although the West End Bureau reckoned to take a friendly interest in their staff, there was a point beyond which one could not go without intruding.

  Meanwhile Alexa walked out into the damp gloom of a late October afternoon, under the illusion that the sun was shining—and especially for her.

  As she boarded her home-going bus and sat down in the front seat, she was already reviewing plans for the weekend. Fortunately she had no engagements of her own, and Jill was going out with a couple of fellow students to a conceit on Sunday, so she would not be entirely alone all the weekend.

  Besides—Alexa frowned and sighed involuntarily—she must learn not to worry so much about her young sister. She must at least seem to have confidence in Jill’s capacity to look after herself, and not let that horrible incident back in the early' summer color all their relationship.

  I think about it too much, Alexa told herself. And immediately her thoughts stopped revolving pleasantly around the weekend ahead of her and got bogged down among recollections of those dreadful days in May, when she thought she had failed Jill completely and that disaster must inevitably result.

  Even in the lifetime of their parents, Jill had always been a rather special responsibility. Not particularly strong as a child, she had always remained ravishingly pretty—“baby” of the family—loved and petted and perhaps slightly spoiled by all. And so when their parents died within a few months of each other, Alexa quite naturally took on the responsibility of providing a home and stable background for Jill .while the younger girl completed the musical training on which she had set her heart.

  Aided by the small income their parents left, the girls were able to rent a pleasant little apartment at the top of a tall house in the less fashionable part of Kensington, and here Alexa strove to rebuild something of the happy home life they had always known.

  She found that by working as a free-lance she was able to devote more time and thought to Jill, who was apparently quite happy, attending her music college daily and dreaming dreams of one day becoming a famous concert pianist.

  In her heart Alexa rather doubted Jill’s capacity to become a famous artist. She was realist enough to know that for every aspiring performer who makes the public grade, a hundred eventually become reasonably contented teachers, and probably two hundred marry and virtually give up their studies. But Jill, as a romantic and rather immature nineteen-year-old, was entitled to her dreams, and Alexa had no intention of interfering with them.

  She believed that she understood her young sister very well, and even now, in remorseful retrospect, she sometimes asked herself how it was that she had seen no significance in the fact that Jill was becoming gradually quieter, more thoughtful, and much less inclined to babble artlessly about her day-to-day affairs.

  At the time, if Alexa had noticed it at all, she probably
took the change merely as evidence that Jill was growing up at last. That she was deeply involved in any emotional problem never occurred to her, and the shock had therefore been all the greater when Alexa returned, late and tired one lovely May evening, to an empty apartment and the discovery that a letter awaited her in Jill’s round, youthful handwriting.

  It was not the usual few words scrawled hastily on an odd scrap of paper that they left for each other if one went out and wished to let the other know where she was. It was sealed down in an envelope, and the envelope was thick.

  A faint, premonitory chill had touched Alexa as with slightly unsteady fingers she tore open the envelope. Out fell a letter of such length and incoherence that it was some while before she could entirely grasp its meaning. And when she did, she reached rather gropingly for a chair and sat down to read the letter again, in the confused hope that somehow she had got it wrong somewhere.

  Alexa would understand and forgive her, Jill had stated hopefully in the first paragraph, for Richard said there was always a time in one’s life when one had to make a decision that might hurt others.

  Richard? Richard? Alexa could not recall that she even knew who Richard was. But as she read on, there slowly emerged from the incoherent pages a picture of Richard as the most wonderful, knowledgeable, thrilling person—the only one who had ever really understood and valued Jill as an artist.

  He says I am wasting my whole life as it is. He is sure I have it in me to be a great concert pianist, but only if I have the right sort of guidance and training, under one of the best continental teachers. And so he is taking me with him to Paris, Alexa, so that I can be auditioned by some of the people he knows there.

  I did want to tell you all about it beforehand, but he said you might feel you ought to interfere, and that it was much better to present you with the fait accompli. Indeed he doesn’t even know that I am leaving this letter for you. He thought it better for me to write from Paris. But I felt I must leave some explanation.

  I wish I could describe him. You’ll love him when you know him. He is very amusing and sophisticated, although so kind—absolutely a man of the world. I felt rather badly at first about letting him pay for everything, even though he is rich, but he said that was a very naive point of view and that it’s always a privilege and a duty to assist in the development of a true artist.

  At this point Alexa groaned aloud and glanced helplessly at the clock.

  Where were they now? How far on their journey? And what was going to happen to her dear, idiotic little Jill when she reached Paris, in company with this Richard, who had such a good line of talk?

  She dropped the letter and feverishly scrabbled through the pages of the telephone directory to find “Continental Inquiries” under both railway and airplane connections. But after ten minutes’ anxious telephoning all she had established was that the train connecting with the night ferry had gone, and the only airplane was a very late tourist plane, which would certainly not be the choice of any Richard bent on a nice little weekend in Paris.

  Even now it made Alexa faintly sick to recall the next twenty-four hours. The most horrible part was that she could do nothing until the morning, for the simple reason that she had very little ready money in the apartment. She found her passport—not used since she and Jill had had an inexpensive holiday in France the previous summer—and she packed a few things in a weekend bag. Then she telephoned to reserve a seat on the first plane she would be able to take after a visit to the bank in the morning.

  It was a terrible night, spent tossing and turning in feverish inactivity, but morning came at last, and she telephoned the agency, explaining that urgent family business prevented her coming into the office for a few days. Then, having drawn a substantial sum out of the bank, she rushed to the bus terminal just in time to catch the bus for the airport.

  This was Alexa’s first flight, but neither nervousness nor interest found any place in her consciousness beside the ever present anxiety about Jill. She had no idea what she was going to do when she got to Paris. Only some deep conviction told her that she must go, and that somehow she would find her sister.

  On arrival she went to the modest hotel in which she and Jill had stayed the previous summer and engaged a room. Then, having obtained a list of hotels from a tourist agency, she went around inquiring at each one for a young English girl called Miss Slater.

  It was a hopeless quest. Paris seemed one solid block of hotels to Alexa on that hot May day, and how was she to guess which Richard had chosen? He might even, she supposed with sinking heart, have an apartment of his own here.

  By late afternoon she was indescribably footsore and disheartened. Her impulsive journey to Paris, which had seemed so resourceful and full of hope in the morning, now seemed pointless and doomed to failure. And sick at heart she went and sat on a seat in the Bois de Boulogne, remembering with a fearful pang that she and Jill had sat just here more than once during their carefree summer holiday together.

  Her head was aching, and if she had been the weeping kind she would have wept then. Instead she shut her eyes and tried to think what else there was in all the world that she could do.

  Presently she was aware that someone else came and sat on the bench. But not until there was the sound of a slight sob did she open her eyes. And there before her sat Jill, looking at her with wide tear-filled eyes, just exactly as though some magic spell had deposited her there by sheer force of Alexa’s longing.

  “Darling!” Alexa flung herself on Jill and they hugged and embraced with far more poignant emotion than either would have thought of displaying at home. “Darling—how on earth did you come here? I’ve been searching Paris for you. It’s like a miracle!”

  “It’s even more of a miracle for me.” Jill gulped slightly. “I came here because it seemed the only place I knew. I remembered our sitting here on those lovely evenings last year. It was, in a sort of way, our seat ”

  “Yes, yes. I suppose that’s why I chose it, too.”

  “But... I don’t understand. You should be in London—”

  “I came after you. You don’t suppose I was going to leave you alone in that frightful position, do you?”

  “Oh, Alexa!” Jill hugged her convulsively again. “How did you know it was going to be a frightful position? Everything was so lovely and—and—”

  Alexa felt her heart sink.

  “I guessed—” she swallowed and groped for moderate words “—I guessed it might not be all you hoped, and—and I thought I’d better come along and make sure. Where is ... Richard?”

  “Back there in the hotel, I suppose.” Jill’s delicate, lovely face looked suddenly mutinous and flushed. “I just—walked out. We had an argument this afternoon. He said I was being coy and stupid, and that I must surely have understood the position.”

  “Suppose you begin at the beginning,” suggested Alexa, with more calm than she felt. “First of all, when did you get here? Which crossing did you take?”

  “We came by the night ferry. And at first everything was perfect, Alexa. He was so kind—and understanding. The whole thing was so—so decent, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Alexa with great self-control.

  “We arrived fairly early this morning and went to the hotel and had breakfast. And then the first trouble was that I found we had a—a hotel suite together. I said I didn’t want that, and he said the hotel people had made a mistake, but that everything would be put right during the day. Then he took me to be auditioned by someone who wasn’t very nice and said I was quite talented but nothing more.

  “Richard said I wasn’t to worry. That we’d find the right person soon enough. And we had lunch together and he took me shopping. He said I’d have to have some—some different clothes if I were to ‘dress’ the part of the real musical artist. But when we got back to the hotel there hadn’t been any change in our accommodation arrangements, after all.”

  “Did you really think there would have been?” Alexa
could not help asking.

  “But you don’t understand, Alexa! Richard is so—so fine and decent and—well, I mean he seemed that way!”

  “Yes, I see. Go on,” said Alexa, daring to draw her first breath of relief, for she was nearly sure now that however embarrassing and humiliating the whole incident might be, at least she had arrived in time to save Jill from real disaster.

  “Well, we had the argument after that. I said I didn’t intend to be put in a compromising position at the hotel, and he asked why did I suppose he had been prepared to spend money on my training and my clothes. Oh, Alexa, he changed all in a minute! But how he changed! You can’t imagine.”

  “I think I can,” said Alexa dryly.

  “I reminded him of what he had said about being glad to help an artist, and he said hadn’t I realized that he was in love with me? I hadn’t—really, Alexa. Although I was attracted myself, of course, and a good deal thrilled by him. But he must be well on in his thirties—perhaps even forty. I told him he was old enough to be my father—”

  “He must have loved that!” observed Alexa with some satisfaction.

  “And we seemed like enemies all at once. It was the most frightful shock, and I just rushed out of the hotel and wandered around wondering what on earth I was going to do, because I had hardly any money of my own. Everything seemed strange, like a nightmare, until I thought of how we used to sit here in the evenings last summer. And so I came—and here you were. I hardly dared speak to you in case you’d disappear or something. Or even be angry with me,” added Jill, as a naive afterthought.

  “I’m not angry,” Alexa said. “Only unspeakably relieved. And now I’m going to take you home. Thank heaven the situation went no further than an embarrassment and a disappointment. As it is—”

  “But, Alexa, my things are still at the hotel. I can’t go back there and face him.” Jill had gone pale. “I’d rather lose everything I have. Only—oh—” she clapped her hand to her mouth in sudden dismay “—I forgot. He has my passport.”