Death and the Dancing Footman (2 page)

“Pirandello,” Mandrake began, “has become quite—”

“But this is
not
Pirandello,” Jonathan interrupted in a great hurry. “No. In this instance we shall see not six characters in search of an author, but an author who has deliberately summoned seven characters to do his work for him.”

“Then you mean to write, after all.”

“Not I. I merely select. As for writing,” said Jonathan, “that’s where you come in. I make you a present of what I cannot but feel is a golden opportunity.”

Mandrake stirred uneasily. “I wish I knew what you were up to,” he said.

“My dear fellow, I’m telling you. Listen. A month ago I decided to make this experiment. I decided to invite seven suitably chosen characters for a winter week-end here at Highfold, and I spent a perfectly delightful morning compiling the list. My characters must, I decided, be as far as possible antagonistic to each other.”

“Oh God!”

“Not antagonistic each one to the other seven, but there must at least be some sort of emotional or intellectual tension running like a connecting thread between them. Now, a very little thought showed me that I had not far to seek. Here, in my own corner of Dorset, here in the village and county undercurrents, still running high in spite of the war, I found my seven characters. And since I must have an audience, and an intelligent audience, I invited an eighth guest — yourself.”

“If you expect me to break into a paean of enraptured gratitude—”

“Not just yet, perhaps. Patience. Now, in order to savour the full bouquet of the experiment, you must be made happily familiar with the
dramatis personæ
. And to that end,” said Jonathan cosily, “I suppose that we ring for sherry.”

“I propose,” said Jonathan, filling his companion’s glass, “to abandon similes drawn from painting or music and to stick to a figure that we can both appreciate. I shall introduce my characters in terms of dramatic art, and, as far as I can guess, in the order of their appearance. You look a little anxious.”

“Then my looks,” Mandrake rejoined, “do scant justice to my feelings. I feel terrified.”

Jonathan uttered his little cackle of laughter. “Who can tell?” he said. “You may have good cause. You shall judge of that when I have finished. The first characters to make their unconscious entrances on our stage are a mother and two sons. Mrs. Sandra Compline, William Compline, and Nicholas Compline. The lady is a widow and lives at Penfelton, a charming house some four miles to the western side of Cloudyfold village. She is the
grande dame
of our cast. The Complines are an old Dorset family and have been neighbours of ours for many generations. Her husband was my own contemporary. A rackety handsome fellow, he was, more popular perhaps with women than with men, but he had his own set in London and a very fast set I fancy it was. I don’t know where he met his wife, but I’m afraid it was an ill-omened encounter for her, poor thing. She was a pretty creature and I suppose he fell in love with her looks. His attachment didn’t last as long as her beauty, and that faded pretty fast under the sort of treatment she had to put up with. When they’d been married about eight years and had these two sons, a ghastly thing happened to Sandra Compline. She went to stay abroad somewhere and, I suppose with the idea of winning him back, she had something done to her face. It was more than twenty years ago and I daresay these fellows weren’t as good at their job as they are nowadays. Lord knows what the chap she consulted did with Sandra Compline’s face. I’ve heard it said (you may imagine how people talked) that he bolstered it up with wax and that the wax slipped. Whatever happened, it was quite disastrous. Poor thing,” said Jonathan, shaking his head while the lamplight glinted on his glasses, “she was a most distressing sight. Quite lopsided, you know, and worst of all there was a sort of comical look. For a long time she wouldn’t go out or receive anyone. He began to ask his own friends to Penfelton, and a very dubious lot they were. We saw nothing of the Complines in those days, but local gossip was terrific. She used to hunt, wearing a thick veil and going so recklessly that people said she wanted to kill herself. Ironically, though, it was her husband who came a cropper. Fell with his horse and broke his neck. What d’you think of that?”

“Eh?” said Mandrake, rather startled by this sudden demand. “Why, my dear Jonathan, it’s quite marvelous. Devastatingly Edwardian. Gloriously county! Another instance of truth being much more theatrical than fiction, and a warning to all dramatists to avoid it.”

“Well, well,” said Jonathan. “I daresay. Let’s get on. Sandra was left with her two small sons, William and Nicholas. After a little she seemed to take heart of grace. She began to go about a bit; this house was the first she visited. The boys had their friends for the holidays, and all that, and life became more normal over at Penfelton. The elder boy, William, was a quiet sort of chap, rather plain on the whole, not a great deal to say for himself; grave, humdrum fellow. Well enough liked, but the type that — Well, you can never remember whether he was, or was not, at a party. That sort of fellow, do you know?”

“Poor William,” said Mandrake unexpectedly.

“What? Oh yes, yes, but I haven’t quite conveyed William to you. The truth is,” said Jonathan, rubbing his nose, “that William’s a bit of a teaser. He’s devoted to his mother. I think he remembers her as she was before the tragedy. He was seven when she came back and I’ve heard that although he was strangely self-possessed when he saw her, he was found by their old nurse in a sort of hysterical frenzy, remarkable in such a really rather commonplace small boy. He
is
quiet and humdrum, certainly, but for all that there’s something not quite — Well, he’s a little
odd
. He’s usually rather silent but when he does talk his statements are inclined to be unexpected. He seems to say more or less the first thing that comes into his head and that’s a sufficiently unusual trait, you’ll agree.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. Odd. Nothing wrong, really, of course, and he’s done very well so far in this war. He’s a good lad. But sometimes I wonder… However, you shall judge of William for yourself. I want you to do that.”

“You don’t really like him, do you?” asked Mandrake suddenly.

Jonathan blinked. “What can have put that notion into your head?” he said mildly. He darted a glance at Mandrake. “You mustn’t become
too
subtle, Aubrey. William is merely rather difficult to describe. That is all. But Nicholas!” Jonathan continued, “Nicholas was his father over again. Damned good-looking young blade, with charm and gaiety and dash and all the rest of it. Complete egoist, bit of a showman, and born with an eye for a lovely lady. So they grew up, and so they are to-day. William’s thirty-two and Nick’s twenty-nine. William (I stress this point) is concentrated upon his mother, morbidly so, I think, but that’s by the way. Gives up his holidays for no better reason than that she’s going to be alone. Watches after her like an old Nanny. He’s on leave just now, and of course rushed home to her. Nick’s the opposite, plays her up for all she’s worth, never lets her know when he’s coming or what he’s up to. Uses Penfelton like a hotel and his mother like the proprietress. You can guess which of these boys is the mother’s favourite.”

“Nicholas,” said Mandrake. “Of course, Nicholas.”

“Of course,” said Jonathan, and if he felt any disappointment he did not show it. “She dotes on Nicholas and takes William for granted. She’s spoilt Nicholas quite hopelessly from the day he was born. William went off to prep-school and Eton; Nick, if you please, was pronounced delicate, and led a series of tutors a fine dance until his mother decided he was old enough for the Grand Tour and sent him off with a bear-leader like some young Regency lordling. If she could have cut William out of the entail I promise you she’d have done it. As it is she can do nothing. William comes in for the whole packet, and Nick, like the hero of Victorian romance, must fend for himself. This, I believe, his mother fiercely resents. When war came, she moved heaven and earth to find a safe job for Nicholas and took it in her stride when William’s regiment went to the front. Nick has got some departmental job in Great Chipping. Looks very smart in uniform, and his duties seem to take him up to London pretty often. William, at the moment, as I have told you, is spending his leave with his Mama. The brothers haven’t met for some time.”

“Do they get on well?”

“No. Remember the necessary element of antagonism, Aubrey. It appears, splendidly to the fore, in the Compline family. William is engaged to Nicholas’ ex-fiancée.”

“Really? Well done, William.”

“I need scarcely tell you that the lady is the next of my characters, the ingénue in fact. She will arrive with William and his Mama, who detests her.”

“Honestly, my dear Jonathan—”

“She is a Miss Chloris Wynne. One of the white-haired kind.”

“A platinum blonde?”

“The colour of a light Chablis, and done up in plaster-like sausages. She resembles the chorus of my youth. I’m told that nowadays the chorus looks like the county. I find her appearance startling and her conversation difficult, but I have watched her with interest and I have formed the opinion that she is a very neat example of the woman scorned.”

“Did Nicholas scorn her?”

“Nicholas wished to marry her, but being in the habit of eating his cake in enormous mouthfuls, and keeping it, he did not allow his engagement to Miss Chloris to cramp his style as an accomplished philanderer. He continued to philander with the fifth item in our cast of characters — Madam Lisse.”

“Oh God!”

“More in anger than in sorrow, if Sandra Compline is to be believed, Miss Chloris broke off her engagement to Nicholas. After an interval so short that one suspects she acted on the ricochet, she accepted William who had previously courted her and been cut out by his brother. My private opinion is that when William returns to the front, Nicholas is quite capable of recapturing the lady, and what’s more I think she and William both know it. Nicholas and William had quarrelled in the best tradition of rival brothers and, as I say, have not met since the second engagement. I need not tell you that Mrs. Compline and William and his betrothed do not know I have invited Nicholas, nor does Nicholas know I have invited them. He knows, however, that Madam Lisse will be here. That, of course, is why he has accepted.”

“Go on,” said Mandrake, driving his fingers through his hair.

“Madame Lisse, the ambiguous and alluring woman of our cast, is an Austrian beauty specialist. I don’t suppose Lisse is her real name. She was among the earliest of the refugees, obtained naturalization papers, and established a salon at Great Chipping. She had letters to the Jerninghams at Pen Cuckoo, and to one or two other people in the county. Dinah Copeland at the rectory rather took her up. So, as you have gathered, did Nicholas Compline. She is markedly a dasher. Dark auburn hair, magnolia complexion, and eyes — whew! Very quiet and composed, but undoubtedly a dasher. Everybody got rather excited about Madame Lisse— everybody, that is, with the exception of my distant cousin Lady Hersey Amblington, who will arrive for dinner tomorrow evening.”

The spectacles glinted in Mandrake’s direction but he merely waved his hands.

“Hersey,” said Jonathan, “as you may know, is also a beauty specialist. She took it up when her husband died and left her almost penniless. She did the thing thoroughly and, being a courageous and capable creature, made a success of it. The mysteries of what I believe is called ‘beauty culture’ are as a sealed book to me but I understand that all the best complexions and coiffures of Great Chipping and the surrounding districts were, until the arrival of Madame Lisse, Hersey’s particular property. Madame Lisse immediately began to knock spots out of Hersey. Not, as Hersey explained, that she now has fewer customers, but that they are not quite so smart. The smart clientele has, with the exception of a faithful few, gone over to the enemy. Hersey considers that Madame used unscrupulous methods and always alludes to her as ‘the Pirate.’ You haven’t met my distant cousin, Hersey?”

“No.”

“No. She has her own somewhat direct methods of warfare, and I understand that she called on Madame Lisse with the intention of giving her fits. I’m afraid Hersey came off rather the worse in this encounter. Hersey is an old friend of the Complines and, as you may imagine, was not at all delighted by Nicholas’ attentions to her rival. So you see she is linked up in an extremely satisfactory manner to both sides. I have really been extraordinarily fortunate,” said Jonathan, rubbing his hands. “Nothing could be neater. And Dr. Hart fills out the cast to perfection. The ‘heavy,’ I think, is the professional term for his part.”

“Dr…?”

“Hart. The seventh and last character. He, too, is of foreign extraction, though he became a naturalized Briton sometime after the last war. I fancy he is a Viennese, though whether I deduce this conclusion subconsciously from his profession I cannot tell you.” Jonathan chuckled again and finished his sherry.

“What, in heaven’s name, is his profession?”

“My dear Aubrey,” said Jonathan, “he is a plastic surgeon. A beauty specialist
par excellence
. The male of the species.”

“It seems to me,” said Mandrake, “that you have invited stark murder to your house. Frankly, I can imagine nothing more terrifying than the prospect of this week-end. What do you propose to do with them?”

“Let them enact their drama.”

“It will more probably resemble some disastrous vaudeville show.”

“With myself as
compère
. Quite possibly.”

“My dear Jonathan, you will have no performance. The actors will either sulk in their dressing-rooms or leave the theatre.”

“That is where we come in.”

“We! I assure you—”

“It is where I come in, then. May I, without exhibiting too much complacency, claim that if I have a talent it lies in the direction of hospitality?”

“Certainly. You are a wonderful host.”

“Thank you,” said Jonathan, beaming at his guest. “It delights me to hear you say so. Now, in this party, I have set myself, I freely admit, a stiff task.”