Death and the Dancing Footman (20 page)

“It’s snowing harder than ever,” said the bird, and at that precise moment Hart cut the hair with a scalpel. “
Down
she comes, by Jupiter,” they all shouted; but Chloris, with excellent intentions, kicked him between the shoulder-blades and he fell with a sickening jolt back into his bed and woke again to hear the rain driving against the window-pane.

At last, however, he fell into a true sleep — and was among the first of the seven living guests to do so. Dr. Hart was the very first. Long before the others came upstairs to bed, Dr. Hart’s dose of proprietary soporific had restored his interrupted oblivion; and now his mouth was open, his breathing deep and stertorous.

His wife was not so fortunate. She heard them all come upstairs, she heard them wish each other goodnight, she heard door after door close softly and imagined key after key turning with a click as each door was shut. Sitting upright in bed in her fine nightgown, she listened to the rain and made plans for her own security.

Hersey Amblington, too, was wakeful. She kept her bedside lamp alight and absent-mindedly slapped “Hersey’s Skin Food” into her face with a patent celluloid patter. As she did this, she tried distractedly to order her thoughts away from the memory of a figure in an armchair, from a head that was broken like an egg, and from a wireless cabinet that screamed “Boomps-a-Daisy.” She thought of herself twenty years ago, afraid to tell her cousin Jonathan that she would marry him. She thought of her business rival and wondered quite shamelessly if, with the arrest of Hart, Madame Lisse would carry her piratical trade elsewhere. Finally, hoping to set up a sort of counter-irritant in horror, she thought about her own age. But the figure in the chair was persistent and Hersey was afraid to go to sleep.

Chloris was not much afraid. She had not seen William. But she was extremely bewildered over several discoveries that she had made about herself. The most upsetting of these was the discovery that she now felt nothing but a vague pity for Nicholas and an acute pity for William. She had never pretended to herself that she was madly in love with William, but she had believed herself to be very fond of him. It was Nicholas who had held her in the grip of a helpless attraction; it was from this bondage that she had torn herself on a climax of misery. She believed that when Nicholas had become aware of his brother’s determined courtship he had set himself to cut William out. Having succeeded very easily in this project, he had tired of her; and, in the meantime, he had met Elise Lisse. She thought of the letter in which she had broken off her engagement to Nicholas and, with shame, of the new engagement to his brother; of how every look, every word that was exchanged between them, for her held only one significance, its effect upon Nicholas; of the miserable satisfaction she had known when Nicholas showed his resentment, of the exultation she had felt when again, he began to show off his paces before her. And now it was all over. She had cried a little out of pity for William and from the shock to her nerves, and she had seen Nicholas once and for all as a silly fellow and a bit of a coward. A phrase came into her thoughts: “So that’s all about the Complines.” With an extraordinary lightening of her spirits she now allowed herself to think of Aubrey Mandrake. “Of Mr. Stanley Footling,” she corrected herself. “It ought to be funny. Poor Mr. Stanley Footling turning as white as paper and letting me in on the ground floor. It isn’t funny. I can’t make a good story of it. It’s infinitely touching and it doesn’t matter to me, only to him.” And she thought: “Did I take the right line about it?”

She had gone to her room determined to break Dr. Hart’s alibi, but a whole hour had passed and not once had she thought of Dr. Hart.

Jonathan Royal clasped his hot-water bag to his midriff and stared before him into the darkness. If the top strata of his thoughts had been written down they would have read something like this: “It’s an infernal bore about Thomas but there must be some way out of it. Aubrey is going to be tiresome, I can see. He’s half inclined to believe Hart.
Damn
Thomas. There must be some way. An ingenious turn, now. My thoughts are going round in circles. I must concentrate. What will Aubrey write in his notes? I must read them carefully. Can’t be too careful. This fellow Alleyn. What will he make of it? Why, there’s motive, the two attempts,
our
alibis — he can’t come to any other conclusion.
Damn
Thomas.”

Nicholas tossed and turned in the bed his brother had offered to take. He was unaccustomed to consecutive or ordered thinking, and across his mind drifted an endless procession of dissociated images and ideas. He saw himself and William as children. He saw William going back to school at the end of his holidays — Nicholas and his tutor had gone in the car to the station. There was Bill’s face, pressed against the window-pane as the train went out. He heard Bill’s adolescent voice breaking comically into falsetto: “She’d like it to be you at Penfelton and me anywhere else. But I’m the eldest. You can’t alter that. Mother will never forgive me for it.” He saw Chloris the first time she came to Penfelton as William’s guest for a house-party. “Mother, will you ask Chloris Wynne? She’s my girl, Nick. No poaching.” And lastly he saw Elise Lisse, and heard his own voice: “I never knew it could be like this. I never knew.”

Sandra Compline laid down her pen. She enclosed the paper in an envelope and wrote a single word of direction. Outside on the landing, the grandfather clock struck two. She wrapped her dressing-gown more closely round her. The fire was almost dead and she was bitterly cold. The moment had come for her to get into bed. The bed-clothes were disordered. She straightened them carefully and then glanced round the room, which was quite impersonal and, but for the garments she had worn during the day, very neat. She folded them and put them away, shivering a little as she did so. She caught sight of her face in the glass and paused before it to touch her hair. On an impulse she leant forward and stared at the reflection. Next, she moved to the bedside table and for some minutes her hands were busy there. At last she got into bed, disposed the sheet carefully, and drew up the counterpane. Then she stretched out her hand to the bedside table.

It was an isolated storm that visited Cloudyfold that night. Over the greater part of Dorset the snow lay undisturbed, but here in the uplands it was drilled with rain and all through the night hills and trees suffered a series of changes. In the depths of Jonathan’s woods, branches, released from their burden of snow, jerked sharply upwards. From beneath battlements of snow, streams of water began to move and there were secret downward shiftings of white masses. With the diminution of snow the natural contours of the earth slowly returned. Towards dawn, in places where there had been smooth depressions, sharp furrows began to take form, and these were sunken lanes. In Deep Bottom beneath the sound of rain was the sound of running water.

The guests, when at last they slept, were sometimes troubled in their dreams by strange noises on the roofs and eaves of the house where masses of snow became dislodged and slid into gutters and hollows. The drive, and the road from Highfold down into Cloudyfold Village and up into the hills, began to find themselves. So heavy was the downpouring of rain that by dawn the countryside was dappled with streaks of heavy greys and patches of green. When Mandrake woke at eight o’clock his windows were blinded with rain and, through the rain, he saw the tops of evergreen trees, no longer burdened with snow.

He breakfasted alone with Jonathan who told him that already he had seen some of the outdoor staff. His bailiff had ridden up from his own cottage on horseback and had gone out again on a round of inspection. Jonathan had told him of the tragedy. He had offered to ride over Cloudyfold. It meant twelve miles at a walking pace, supposing he did get through.

“If I stick,” said Mandrake, “he can try. If I’m not back in three hours, Jonathan, he had better try. What sort of mess is the drive, did he say?” The Bewlings, it seemed, had been down to the front gates and reported that the drive was “a masterpiece of muck” but not, they thought, impassable. You could get over Cloudyfold on a horse, no doubt, but a car would never do it.

“How about the road down to the village?” asked Mandrake.

“That’s in better case, I understand.”

“Then if I got through Deep Bottom I could drive down to Cloudyfold Village and telephone from there to the rectory at Winton St. Giles?”

“The lines may be down between the village and Winton. They go over the hills. I think it most probable that they are down. As far as the Bewlings went they found nothing the matter with my own line.”

“Can’t I get to Winton St. Giles by way of the village?”

“A venture that is comparable to Chesterton’s journey to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head, my dear Aubrey. Let me see. You would have to take the main road east, turn to your right at Pen Gidding, skirt Cloudyfold hills and — but Heaven knows what state those roads would be in. From Pen Gidding there are only the merest country lanes.”

“I can but try.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Jonathan,” said Mandrake, “do you like the idea of leaving William Compline’s body in your smoking-room for very much longer?”

“Oh, my dear fellow, no! No, of course not. This is horrible, a nightmare. I shall never recover from this week-end, never.”

“Do you think one of the Bewling brothers could come with me? If I did come to a standstill it would be helpful to have someone, and if I don’t, he could direct me.”

“Of course, of course. If you must go.” Jonathan brightened a little and began to make plans. “You must take a flask of brandy, my dear boy. James Bewling shall go with you. Chains, now. You will need chains on your wheels, won’t you?”

“There’s not by any chance a police station at Cloudyfold Village?”

“Good gracious, no. The merest hamlet. No, the nearest constable, I fancy, is at Chipping, and that’s beyond Winton St. Giles.”

“At any rate,” said Mandrake, “I think I’d better see Alleyn first. I only hope he’ll consent to run the whole show and come back with me but I suppose I shall run into an entanglement of red tape if I suggest such a thing.”

“Dear me, I suppose so. I scarcely know which prospect is more distasteful — the Chipping constabulary or your terrifying acquaintance.”

“He’s a pleasant fellow.”

“Very possibly. Perhaps I had better send for old James Bewling before he plunges out-of-doors again.”

Jonathan rang the bell, which was answered by Thomas— who was unable to conceal entirely an air of covert excitement. He said that the Bewlings were still in the house, and in a minute or two James appeared, very conscious of his boots.

“Now, James,” said Jonathan, “Mr. Mandrake and I want your advice and assistance. Dry your legs at the fire and never mind about your boots. Listen.”

He unfolded Mandrake’s project. James listened with his mouth not quite shut, his eyes fixed upon some object at the far end of the room, and his brows drawn together in a formidable scowl.

“Now, do you think it is possible?” Jonathan demanded.

“Ah,” said James. “Matter of twenty mile it be, that road. Going widdershins like, you see, sir. She’ll be fair enough so furr as village and a good piece below. It’s when she do turn in and up, if you take my meaning, sir, as us’ll run into muck and as like as not, slips, and as like as not if there bean’t no slips there’ll be drifts.”

“Then you
don’t
think it possible, James?”

“With corpses stiffening on the premises, sir, all things be possible to a man with a desperate powerful idea egging him on.”

“My opinion exactly, Bewling,” said Mandrake. “Will you come with me?”

“That I will, sir,” said James. “When shall us start?”

“Now, if you will. As soon as possible,” And as he spoke these words Mandrake was moved by a great desire for this venture. Soon he would meet Chloris again, and to that meeting he looked forward steadily and ardently, but in the meantime he must be free of Highfold for a space. He must set out in driving rain on a difficult task. It would be with bad roads and ill weather that he must reckon for the next hour or so, not with the complexities of human conduct. His eagerness for these encounters was so foreign to his normal way of thinking that he felt a sort of astonishment at himself. “But I don’t like leaving her here. Shall I wait until she appears and suggest that she comes with us? Perhaps she would not care to come. Perhaps I have embarrassed her with my dreary confidences. She might be afraid I’d go all Footling at her on the drive.” He began to horrify himself with the notion that Chloris thought of him as underbred and overvehement, a man whom she would have to shake off before he became a nuisance. He went upstairs determined that he would not succumb to the temptation of asking her to go with him, met her on the top landing, and immediately asked her.

“Of course I’ll come,” said Chloris.

“It may be quite frightful. We may break down completely.”

“At least we’ll be out of all this. I won’t be five minutes.”

“You’ll want layers of coats,” cried Mandrake. “I’ll get hold of old James Bewling and we’ll have the car round at the front door as soon as he’s found me some chains.”

He went joyfully to his own room, put on an extra sweater, a muffler and his raincoat. He snatched up the attaché-case containing his notes, the drawing-pin and the Charter form. He remembered suddenly that the others were to have gone over the notes before he took them to Alleyn. Well, if they wanted to do that they should have got up earlier. He couldn’t wait about half the morning. They would have plenty of chances to argue over his account when he came back with Alleyn. Now, for the car.

But before he went out-of-doors he found Jonathan and nerved himself to make a request. The thought of revisiting the smoking-room was horrible, but he had promised himself that he would do so. He half hoped Jonathan would refuse, but he did not. “I won’t come with you, that’s all. Don’t ask it. Here are the keys. You may keep them. I simply can
not
accompany you.”