“It’s not affectation. I ought to be in a panic but I’m not. Not really.”
The taxi carried them into Hyde Park Corner. Roberta looked up through the window and saw the four heroic horses snorting soundlessly against a night sky, grandiloquently unaware of the less florid postures of some bronze artillerymen down below.
“We shan’t be long now,” said Henry. “I can’t tell you how frightful this house is. Uncle G.’s idea of the amenities was a mixture of elephantine ornament and incredible hardship. The servants are not allowed to use electricity once the gentry are in bed so they creep about by candlelight. It’s true, I promise you. The house was done up by my grandfather on the occasion of his marriage and since then has merely amassed a continuous stream of hideous
“I read somewhere that Victorian things are fashionable again.”
“So they are, but with a difference. And anyway I think it’s a stupid fashion. Sometimes,” said Henry, “I wonder if there is such a thing as beauty.”
“Isn’t it supposed to exist only in the eye of the beholder?”
“I won’t take that. There are eyes and eyes. Fashion addles any true conception of beauty. There’s something inherently vulgar in fashion.”
“And yet,” said Roberta, “if Frid dressed herself up like a belle of 1929 you wouldn’t much care to be seen with her.”
“She’d only be putting her fashion back eleven years.”
“Well, what do you want? Nudism? Or bags tied round the middle?”
“You are unanswerable,” said Henry. “All the same…” and he expounded his ideas of fashion, giving Roberta cause to marvel at his detachment.
The taxi bucketed along Park Lane and presently turned into a decorous side-street where the noise of London was muffled and the rows of great, uniform houses seemed fast asleep.
“Here we are,” Henry said. “I
As Henry rang the front doorbell, Roberta heard a clock chime and strike a single great note.
“One o’clock,” she said. “Where is it striking?”
“I expect it was Big Ben. You hear him all over the place at night-time.”
“I’ve only heard him on the air before.”
“You’re in London now.”
“I know. I keep saying so to myself.”
“It’s a damn shame you should be landed in our particular soup. Here comes somebody.”
The great door swung inwards. With the feeling that an ominous fairy tale was unfolding, Roberta saw a very old woman dressed in black satin and carrying a lighted candle in a silver candlestick. She stood against a dim background of stuffed bears, marble groups, gigantic pictures and a wide staircase that ascended into blackness. Henry said: “Good morning, Moffatt,” to this woman and added, “I expect Tinkerton has explained that Miss Grey and I have come to stay with her ladyship.” The woman answered: “Yes, Mr. Henry. Yes, my lord.” And like all the portresses of elfland she added: “You are expected.”
They followed her, crossing a deep carpet and ascending the stairs. They climbed two flights up to a muffled landing. The air was both cold and stuffy. Moffatt whispered an apology for her candle. A detective had arrived and insisted that the light should not be turned off at the switchboard but at least they could keep his poor lordship’s rule and not go using the lights before, as Moffatt said with relish, he was scarcely cold. Great shadows marched and stooped across unseen walls as Moffatt walked ahead with her candle. There was no sound but the stealthy whisper of her satin hem. Sometimes, as she held the candle before her, she was a black figure with a golden rim, but sometimes she turned to light them, and then her shadow sprang up beyond her. They came at last to a doorway which Moffatt opened. With a murmured apology she went in before them. Roberta, pausing on the threshold, saw a dim reflection of Moffatt in a dark looking-glass. Branched candlesticks stood on an immense dressing-table. Moffatt lit the candles and looked at Roberta, who on this hint entered her new bedroom. Henry followed.
“If there is anything you require, Miss?” suggested Moffatt. “Perhaps I may unpack for you? We only keep two maids when the family is not in residence and they are both in bed.”
Roberta said that she would unpack for herself and Moffatt and the candle and Henry went away.
The bedroom had a very high ceiling with a central plaster ornament. The walls were covered with a heavily patterned, paper and hung at intervals with thick curtains. Enormous pieces of furniture stood about the room, perpetuating some Victorian cabinetmaker’s illegitimate passion for mahogany and low relief. But the bed was a distinguished four-poster with fine carvings, a faded French canopy, and brocaded curtains where gold threads shone among rose-coloured flowers. The carpet was deep and covered with vegetable conceits. Upon the walls Roberta found four steel engravings and one colour print of a child with a kitten. There was a great charm in this print, so artlessly did the beribboned child simper over the blue bow of the tiny animal. Beside her bed Roberta found a Bible, a novel by Marie Corelli, and a tin of thick, dry biscuits. She unpacked her suitcase and, too timid to hunt down back passages for a bathroom, washed in cold water provided by a garlanded ewer. There was a tap at the door. Henry came in wearing his dressing-gown.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it frightful? I’m over the way so if you want anything you’ve only to cross the passage. There’s nobody else on this side. Aunt V. is across the landing in a terrible suite. Good night, Robin.”
“Good night, Henry.”
“You interrupted me,” said Henry. “I was going to add, ‘my darling.’ ”
He winked solemnly and went out.
A wind got up during the small hours. It hunted desolately about London, its course deflected by sleeping buildings. It moaned about Peasaunce Court Mansions, shaking the skylight of the lift well. The policeman on duty there stared upwards and wished the black, rattling panes would turn grey for the dawn. It blew the curtains of Patch’s windows across her face, giving her another nightmare and causing her to make horrid noises in her throat. The rest of the family, hearing Patch, turned fretfully in their beds and listened for the thud of Nanny’s feet as she stumped down the passage. Gathering strength in the open places of Hyde Park, the wind howled across Park Lane and whistled up Brummell Street so that the old chimney-cowls in No. 24 swung round with a groan and Roberta heard a voice in the chimney moaning “Rune — Rune — Rune.” Out at Hammersmith the wind ruffled the black waters of the Thames and the blameless dreams of Lady Katherine Lobe. Indeed the only actor in the Pleasaunce Court case who was not disturbed by that night wind was the late Lord Wutherwood who lay in a morgue awaiting his tryst with Dr. Curtis.
“Wind getting up,” said Fox in the Chief Inspector’s room at Scotland Yard. “Shouldn’t be surprised if we had rain before dawn.” He pulled a completed sheet and two carbons from his typewriter, added them tidily to the stacked papers on his desk, and took out his pipe.
“What’s the time?” asked Afleyn.
“Five-and-thirty past two, sir.”
“We’ve about finished, haven’t we, Fox?”
“I think so, sir. I’ve just got out the typescript of your report.”
Alleyn crumpled a sheet of paper and threw it at Nigel Bathgate, who was asleep in an office chair. “Wake up, Bathgate. The end’s in view.”
“What? Hullo, are we going home? Is that the report? May I see it?” asked Nigel.
“If you like. Give him a carbon, Fox. We’ll all have a brood over the beastly thing.” And for twenty minutes they read and smoked in a silence broken by the rustle of papers and occasional gusts that shook the window frames.
“That covers it, I think,” said Alleyn at last. He looked at Nigel, who with the nervous, half-irritated concentration of a press-man was still reading the report.
“Yes,” said Fox heavily, “as far as the family goes it’s all pretty plain sailing. Their truthful statements seem to hang together and so, if you can put it that way, do their untruthful statements.”
Nigel looked up. “Are you so positive,” he said, “that some of their statements are not true?”
