Death and the Dancing Footman (21 page)

“I shan’t touch anything. Please wait by the door.”

He was only a few minutes in that room. They had thrown a white sheet over the chair and what was in it. He tried not to look at that, but he was shaken when he came out and said goodbye, quietly, to Jonathan.

He went out by the west door and walked round the back of the house to the garages. The whole world seemed to be alive with the sound of rain and wind. Much of the snow lying in exposed places had gone, everywhere it was pocked and crenellated. From the eaves of Highfold, it hung in strange forms that changed continually and tapered into falling water.

Using his stick vigorously, Mandrake reached the garages to find James Bewling, assisted by his brother, engaged in fitting chains to the car-wheels. They seemed to Mandrake to be incredibly slow about this. The chains were improvised arrangements and one set kept slipping. At last, however, they were ready and he prepared to drive out.

“They’ll hold now, sartin sure. Lucky we had ’em,” said James. “Us’ll need ’em up-along, never fear. Now then, sir, if you be agreeable I reckon car’s ready to start. Us’ve filled her up with petrol and water and there’s hauly-chains and sacks in the back.”

“Come on men,” said Mandrake.

James climbed in the back. As they left the garage his brother bawled at them: “If ’er skiddles, rush ’er up.” He drove round to the front doors and found Chloris there. The collar of her heavy coat was turned up and she had a gay scarf tied round her head so that he saw her face as a triangle. It was a very white triangle and her eyes looked horror-stricken. As soon as she saw the car she stumbled down the steps and, leaning against the wind, ran round to the passenger’s door. Before he could get it open she was struggling with the handle and in a moment had scrambled in beside him.

“What now?” asked Mandrake.

“I’d better tell you. before we start, but Mr. Royal says we’re to go anyway. Another ghastliness. Mrs. Compline. She’s tried to kill herself.”

Mandrake turned with his hands on the driving-wheel and gazed at her. James Bewling cleared his throat stertorously.

“Please start,” said Chloris and without a word Mandrake engaged his first gear. To the sound of slapping chains, driving wind and rain, and with a cold engine, they moved across the wide sweep and round the west side of the house.

“She did it herself,” said Chloris. “One of the maids went up with her breakfast and found the door locked. The housekeeper thought she ought not to be disturbed but the maid had seen lamplight under the door when she went up with early tea. So they told Mr. Royal. It seemed queer, you see, for the lamps to be going after it was light. In the end they decided to knock. It was just after you went out. They knocked and knocked and she didn’t answer. By that time Nicholas was there and in an awful state. He insisted on Mr. Royal forcing the door. She’d left a note for him — for Nicholas. There’s been a frightful scene, it seems, because Mr. Royal said Nicholas should give the note to somebody. He won’t let Nicholas keep it, but he hasn’t read it himself. I don’t know what was in the note. Only Nick knows. She’s unconscious. They think she’s dying.”

“But — how?”

“The rest of that sleeping draught and all the aspirins she’d got. She’d told Lady Hersey she had no aspirins. I suppose she wanted to get as much as possible. You’d feel sorry for Nicholas if you could see him now.”

“Yes,” said Mandrake sombrely. “Yes, I do feel sorry for Nicholas, now.”

“He’s gone to pieces. No more showing-off for poor old Nick,” said Chloris with a catch in her voice. “There couldn’t be any doubt at all that it was suicide, and he agreed that Dr. Hart should be asked to see her. Pretty queer, wasn’t it? They all agree that he murdered Bill, and yet there he was working at artificial respiration, and snapping out orders with everybody running round obeying them. I think the world’s gone mad or something. He’s given me a list of things we’re to get at the chemists in Chipping. It’s not far beyond Winton St. Giles. I could take the car on if you like while you see Mr. Alleyn. And the police surgeon. We’ve got to try and find him, but the important thing is to get back as quickly as possible.”

“Does Hart think…?”

“I’m sure he thinks it’s pretty hopeless. I wasn’t in the room. I waited by the door for orders. I heard him say something about two hundred grains of veronal alone. He was barking out questions to Lady Hersey. How much had she given? How dared she give it? If it wasn’t so frightful it’d be funny. She’s in a pretty ghastly state herself. She feels she’s responsible.”

“I took the stuff away from Hart,” said Mandrake. “God, that’s a touch of irony for you! I was afraid he might try something on himself.”

“You needn’t go all remorseful,” said Chloris quickly. “Dr. Hart said the aspirin alone would have been disastrous. I heard him say that to Lady Hersey.”

They had reached the woods where the drive ran between steep banks. Here the surface, no longer gravelled, was soft, laced with runnels of water and littered with broken twigs and with clods of earth that had been carried away from the banks. In one place there was a miniature landslide across their route. Mandrake drove hard at it in second gear, and felt his back wheels spin and then grip on the chains.

“That’s a taste of what we may expect in Deep Bottom, I suppose,” he called to James Bewling.

“ ’Twill be watter down-along, I reckon, sir.”

“If we stick…” Chloris began.

“If we stick, my dear, they can damn’ well produce a farm animal to lug us out on the far side.”

“It’s dogged as does it,” said Chloris.

Beyond Highfold Wood the drive, where it crossed the exposed parklands, was furrowed and broken by pot-holes. James Bewling remarked that he and Thomas had been telling the master for a matter of ten years that he did ought to lay down a load of metal. The rain drove full on the wind-screen, checking the wiper, splaying out in serrated circles and finding its way in above the dashboard. The thrust of the wind made the car fight against Mandrake’s steering. He drove cautiously towards the edge of Deep Bottom, peering through the blear of water. He recognized in himself an exhilaration, and this discovery astonished him, for he had always thought that he loathed discomfort.

Snow still lay in Deep Bottom. When they reached the lip of the hollow and looked down, they saw the drive disappear under it and rise again on the far side like a muddy ribbon.

“She be gone down a tidy piece,” said James. “Not above two foot now, I reckon, but happen thurr’ll be watter underneath. Happen us’d do better with sack over radiator, sir.”

Mandrake pulled up and James plunged out with his sack. Mandrake stumbled after him. He didn’t want to sit in the car while James fixed up the sack. He wanted to be knowledgeable and active. He tied the sacking over the radiator cap, using his handkerchief to bind it. He looked critically at the way James had tied the corners of the sack. Swinging his heavy boot briskly he came back to the car, smiling through the rain at Chloris. The warmth in her returning glance delighted him and he innocently supposed that it was inspired by his activity. It was the glance, he told himself, of the female, approving, dependent, and even clinging. He would never know that Chloris was deeply touched, not because she saw him as a protector, but because suddenly she read his thoughts. And from that moment, in her wisdom, she let herself be minded by Mandrake.

The car began its crawl down into Deep Bottom.

“For a tidy ten yurr and more,” said James Bewling in the back seat, “my wold brother Thomas and me been telling master as ’ow’ee did oughter put a dinky lil’ bridge across this-yurr bottom. Last winter ’er was in a muck with raging torrents and floods. Winter afore, ’er fruz. Winter afore that, ’er caved in sudden.” Here the car lurched in and out of a pot-hole and James was thrown about in the back seat. “Winter afore that, ’er flooded again. Bean’t no proper entrance to gentlemen’s ’state, us tells ’un. Ay, and us tells bailiff tu. Puff over to your right, sir, by this-yurr puddlesome corner, or us’ll sink to our bottoms.”

The front wheels plunged deep into a welter of slush. The back wheels churned, gripped, skidded and gripped again. Now they were into the snow with James Bewling roaring: “To tha right and rush ’er up.” The bonnet dipped abruptly and a welter of snow spurted over the wind-screen. Mandrake leant out of the driving window and took the whipping rain full in his eyes. “Keep ’er going, sir,” yelled James.

“I’m in a blasted hole or something. Come
up
.”

The car moved bodily to the left, churned, crept forward in a series of jerks and stopped. “Doan’t stop in-gine fur Lawk’s sake,” James implored and was out and up to his knees. He disappeared in the rear of the car.

“What’s he doing?” asked Mandrake. “He’s on your side.”

Chloris looked out on her side. “I can only see his stern. He seems to be stuffing something under the back wheel. Now, he’s waving. He wants you to go on.”

Mandrake engaged his bottom gear, pulled out his choke a fraction, and tried. The car gripped somewhere, wallowed forward and stuck again. James returned for his shovel and set to work in front of the bonnet. Mandrake got out, leaving instructions with Chloris to keep the engine going. The noise of the storm met him like a physical blow and the drive of rain on his face numbed it. He struggled round to the front of the car and found James shovelling with a will in three feet of snow. Mandrake wore heavy driving-gloves, and set to work with his hands. In the centre the snow was still frozen but at the bottom it had turned to slush and the earth beneath was soft and muddy. The front wheels had jammed in a cross-gut which, as they cleared it, began to fill with water. James roared out something that Mandrake could not understand, thrust his shovel into his hands, and plunged away behind the car. Mandrake toiled on, looking up, once, to see Chloris’ face pressed anxiously against the wind-screen. He grinned, waved his hand and fell to again with a will. James had returned, dragging two great boughs after him. They broke them up as best they could, filled in the gut with smaller branches and thrust the remaining pieces in front of the rear wheels.

The inside of the car seemed a different world, a world that smelt of petrol, upholstery, cigarettes and something that both Mandrake and Chloris secretly realized was peculiar to James Bewling, an aftermath of oilskin, elderly man, and agricultural activities. Mandrake slammed the door, sounded his horn as a warning to James, and speeded up his engine.

“Now then, you old besom,” Mandrake apostrophized his car, “up with you.” With a great crackling of branches, an ominous sinking and a violent lurch, they went forward and up, with James’s voice, raised to an elderly screech, sounding like a banshee in the storm. The chains bit into firmer ground. They were going uphill.

“That’s the first hurdle over, I fancy,” said Mandrake. “We’ll wait for James at the top.”

In the rectory at Winton St. Giles, Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn put his head round the study door and said to his wife: “I’ve been looking out of the top windows at the summit of Cloudyfold. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s raining over there. What do you say, Rector?”

The Reverend Walter Copeland turned his head to look out of the window. The lady behind the large canvas muttered to herself and laid down her brushes.

“Rain?” echoed the Rector. “It’s still freezing down here. Upon my word, though, I believe you’re right. Yes, yes, undoubtedly it’s pouring up round Highfold. Very odd.”

“Very odd indeed,” said Mrs. Alleyn grimly.

“My angel,” said her husband. “I apologize in fourteen different positions. Rector, for pity’s sake resume your pose.”

With a nervous start the Rector turned from the window, clasped his hands, tilted his fine head and stared obediently at the top left-hand corner of the canvas.

“Is that right?”

“Yes, thank you,” said the lady. Her thin face, wearing a streak of green paint across the nose, looked round the side of the canvas at her husband.

“I suppose,” she said with a surprising air of diffidence, “you wouldn’t like to read to us.”

“Yes, I would,” said Alleyn. He came in and shut the door.

“Now, that’s really delightful,” said Mr. Copeland. “I hope I’m not a bad parish priest,” he added, “but it
is
rather pleasant to know that there can be no more services today — Dinah and I had matins all to ourselves, you know — and that for once the weather is so bad that nobody is likely to come and visit me.”

“If I were on duty,” said Alleyn, looking along the book-shelves, “I should never dare to make those observations.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I did, as sure as fate I’d be called out into the snow, like a melodrama heroine, to a particularly disagreeable case. However,” said Alleyn, taking down a copy of
Northanger Abbey
, “I’m not on duty, thank the Lord. Shall we have Miss Austen?”

“This yurr be Pen Gidding,” said James Bewling. “Just to right, sir. We’m half-way theer. A nasty stretch she’ll be, round those-thurr hills, and by the looks of her thurr’s bin no rain hereabouts.”

“What’s the time?” asked Chloris. Mandrake held out his wrist. “Have a look.” She pushed up his cuff. “Ten past eleven.”

“With any luck well be ringing the rectory doorbell before noon.”

“Nicholas,” said Madame Lisse, “come here to me.”

He had been staring through the windows of the green sitting-room at the rain, which still came down like a multitude of rods, piercing all that remained of snow on the drive, filling the house with a melancholy insistence of sound. After she had spoken, though not immediately, he turned from the window and slowly crossed the room.

“Well?” he asked. “Well, Elise?”

She reached out her hand to him, touching his wrist, compelling him with her fingers to come nearer to her. “I am deeply grieved for you. You know that?” she said.

He took the hand and rubbed it between his two palms as if he hoped to get some warmth from it. “If she goes,” he said, “I’ve no one else, no one at all but you.” He stood beside her, still moving her fingers between his hands and peering at her oddly, almost as if he saw her for the first time. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t understand.”

Madame Lisse pulled him down to the footstool beside her chair. He yielded quite obediently.

“We have got to think, to plan, to decide,” said Madame Lisse. “I am, as I have said, deeply grieved for you. If she does not live it will be a great loss, of course. Your mother having always favoured you, one is much puzzled that she should despair to extremity at the death of your brother. For myself I believe her action should rather be attributed to a morbid dread of publicity about the misfortune to her beauty.” Madame Lisse touched her hair with the tips of her fingers. “The loss of beauty is a sufficient tragedy, but to that she had become resigned. Your brother’s threat to expose Francis, as well as the shock she sustained on recognizing Francis, no doubt unhinged her. It is very sad.” She looked down at the top of his head. It was a speculative and even a calculating glance. “Of course,” she said, “I have not seen her letter.” Nicholas’ whole body seemed to writhe. “I can’t talk about it,” he muttered.

“Mr. Royal has taken it?”

“Yes. In case — he said…”

“That was quite sensible, of course.”

“Elise, did you know it was Hart who did it — to her — in Vienna?”

“He told me on Friday night that he had recognized her.”

“My God, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why should I? I was already terrified of the situation between you. Why should I add to your antagonism? No, my one desire was to suppress it, my one terror that she should recognize him and that we should be ruined.” She clenched her hands and beat the arms of her chair. “And now what am I to do! It will all come out. That he is my husband. That you are my lover. He will say terrible things when they arrest him. He will bring me down in his own ruin.”

“I swear you won’t suffer.” Nicholas pressed his face against her knees and began to mutter feverish endearments and reassurances. “Elise… when it’s over — it seems frightful to speak of it… everything different now… Elise… alone together.
Elise
.”

She stopped him at last, pressing her hands on his head.

“Very well,” she said. “When it’s all over. Very well.”

Dr. Hart leant back on his heels, looked at the prostrate figure on the mattress, bent forward again and slapped the discoloured and distorted face. The eyes remained not quite closed, the head jerked flaccidly. He uttered a disconsolate grunt, turned the figure on its face again, and placed his hands over the ribs. Sweat was pouring down his own face and arms.

“Let me go on,” said Hersey. “I know what to do.”

He continued three or four times with the movements of artificial respiration and then said suddenly: “Very well. Thank you, I have cramp.”

Hersey knelt on the floor.

“It is so long,” said Hart, “since I was in general practice. Twenty-three years. I cannot remember my poisons. The stomach should be emptied, that is certain. If only they can return soon from the chemist. If only they can find the police surgeon!”

“Is there any improvement?” asked Jonathan.

Hart raised his shoulders and arms and let them fall.

“Oh dear, oh dear!” cried Jonathan and wrung his hands. “What possessed her?”

“I cannot understand it. It is the other son to whom she gave her devotion.”

Hersey raised her head for a moment to give Dr. Hart a very direct stare. “Do not stop or hesitate,” he said at once, “steady rhythmic movements are essential — Where is the other son now?”

“Nicholas is downstairs,” Hersey grunted. “We thought it better to keep him out of this. All things considered.”

“Perhaps you are right.” He knelt again, close to Sandra Compline’s head, and stooped down. “Where is that woman? That Pouting, who was to prepare the emetic and find me a tube. She is too long coming.”

“I’ll see,” said Jonathan, and hurried out of the room.

For a time Hersey worked on in silence. Then Hart took the patient’s pulse and respiration. Jonathan came panting back with a tray covered by a napkin. Hart looked at the contents, “A poor substitute,” he said. “We can but try it. It will be better, perhaps, if you leave us, Mr. Royal.”

“Very well.” Jonathan walked to the door, where he turned and spoke in a high voice. “We are trusting you, Dr. Hart, because we have no alternative. You will remember, if you please, that you are virtually under arrest.”

“Ah! ah!” Hart muttered. “Go away. Don’t be silly. Go away.”

“
Honestly
!”said Hersey, and then: “You’d better go, Jo. ”

Jonathan went, but no further than the passage, where he paced up and down for some ten minutes. It is a peculiarity of some people to sing when they are agitated or annoyed. Jonathan was one of these. As, with mincing steps, he moved about his guest-wing passage, he hummed breathily: “
Il était une bergère
…” and beat time with his finger-tips on the back of his hand. Past the niche in the wall where the brass Buddha had stood, as far as the grandfather clock and back down the whole length of the passage, he trotted, with closed doors on each side of him and his figure passing in and out of shadows. Once, he broke off his sentry-go to enter Hart’s room, where he stood at the window, tapping the pane, breathily humming, staring at the rain. But in a moment or two he was back and down the passage, pausing to listen outside Mrs. Compline’s door and then on again to the grandfather clock. Hersey found him at this employment when she came out. She took his arm and fell into step with him.

“Well, Jo,” said Hersey, and her voice was not very steady, “I’m afraid we’re not doing much good. At the moment nothing’s worked.”

“Hersey, she
must
recover, I–I can’t believe — what’s happening to us, Hersey? What’s happening?”

“Oh, well,” said Hersey, “it’ll be worse in the air raids. Dr. Hart’s doing his best, Jo.”

“But is he? Is he? A murderer, Hersey. A murderer, to stand between our dear old friend Sandra and death! What an incredible — what a frightful situation!”

Hersey stood stock-still. Her hand closed nervously on Jonathan’s arm and she drew in a long breath. “I don’t believe he is a murderer,” she said.

Jonathan pulled his arm away as violently as if she’d pinched it.

“My dear girl,” he said loudly, “don’t be a fool. Great Heaven…!” He checked himself. “I’m sorry, my dear. I was discourteous. You will forgive me. But to suggest that Hart,
Hart
, who has scarcely attempted to conceal his guilt—”

“That’s not true, Jo. I mean, if he did it, he managed to provide himself with an alibi that none of us can easily break.”

“Nonsense, Hersey.
We have
broken it. He committed his crime after William had turned on the news, or else he himself turned it on and waited his chance to dart out of the room.”

“Yes, I know. Why didn’t you run into him?”

“Because he took very good care to avoid me.”

“He seems to have done a tidy lot of dodging,” said Hersey dubiously. Jonathan uttered an exasperated noise.

“What has come over you, Hersey? You agreed that he had done it. Of course he did it. Of course he killed William. Killed him brutally and deliberately, believing him to he his brother. Aubrey has made that much clear.”

“I don’t believe he did it,” Hersey repeated, and added shakily: “After all it’s not an easy thing to say. I don’t enjoy facing the implication. But I—”

“
Don’t say it again
,” whispered Jonathan, and took her by the wrists. “Who else? Who else? What has come over you?”

“It’s seeing him in there, working over Sandra. Why, I believe he’d even forgotten he was accused until you reminded him just now. It’s the one or two things that he’s said while I’ve been in there. I don’t think he was saying them to me so much as to himself. I believe he’s got an idea that if he can save Sandra, it’ll atone, in a queer sort of way, for what he did to her beauty.”

“Good God, what rubbish is this? He wants to save her because he thinks he’ll impress us, as it seems he has impressed you, with his personal integrity. Of course he doesn’t want Sandra to die.”

“If he was guilty of murdering her son? That’s not good reasoning, Jo. Sandra would be one of the most damaging witnesses against him.”

“You must be demented,” Jonathan said breathlessly, and stood looking at her and biting his fingers. “What does all this matter? I suppose you agree that whoever set the booby-trap committed the murder? Only Hart could have set the booby-trap. But I’ll not argue with you, Hersey. You’re distracted, poor girl, distracted, as we all are.”

“No,” said Hersey. “No, Jo, it’s not that.”

“Then God knows what it is,” cried Jonathan, and turned away.

“I think I heard him,” said Hersey. “I must go back.” In a moment she had gone and Jonathan was left to stare at the closed door of Sandra Compline’s room.

“Only five more miles to go,” said Mandrake. “If the snow’s frozen hard all the way I believe we’ll do it.”

They were in a narrow lane. The car churned, squeaked, and skidded through snow that packed down under the wheels, mounted in a hard mass between the front bumpers and the radiator, and clogged the axles. Their eyes were wearied with whiteness, Mandrake’s arms and back ached abominably, James Bewling had developed a distressing tendency to suck his teeth.

“Queer though it may seem in these surroundings,” said Mandrake, “the engine’s getting hot. I’ve been in bottom gear for the last two miles. Chloris, be an angel and light me a cigarette.”

“Downhill now, sir, every foot of her,” said Tames.

“That may or may not be an unmixed blessing. Why the
hell
is she sidling like this? What’s happened to the chains? Never mind. On we go.”

Chloris lit a cigarette and put it between his lips. “You’re doing grand, dearie,” she said in Cockney.

“I’ve been trying to sort things out a little for a quick news bulletin when we get there, always adding the proviso,
if
we get there. What’s best to do? Shall I, while you push on to the chemist, tell Alleyn in a few badly chosen words, as few as possible, what’s happened; and shall we implore him to come back at once, reading my notes on the way?”

“I suppose so. Perhaps he’ll insist on our going on to Great Chipping for the local experts. Perhaps he won’t play.”

“It’s a poisonous distance to Great Chipping. He can ring up. Surely the lines won’t be down all over this incredibly primitive landscape. We
must
get back with the things from the chemist.” The rear of the car moved uncannily sideways. “She’s curtseying again. Damn, that’s a bad one.
Damn
.”

They were nearly into the hedgerow. Mandrake threw out his clutch and rammed on the brake. “I’m going to have a look at those chains.”

“Don’t ’ee stir, sir,” said James. “I’ll see.”

He got out. Chloris leant forward and covered her face with her hands.

“Hullo,” said Mandrake. “Eye-strain?” She didn’t answer but some small movement of her shoulders prompted him to put his arm about them and then he felt her trembling. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “so terribly sorry. Darling Chloris, I implore you not to cry.”

“I won’t. I’m not going to. It’s not what you think, not sorrow. Though I am terribly sorry. It must be shock or something. I’ve been so miserable and ashamed about the Complines. I’ve so wanted to be rid of them. And now — look how it’s happened. It was foul of me to get engaged to Bill on the rebound. That’s what it was, no denying it. And I knew all the time what I was up to. Don’t be nice to me, I feel like a sweep.”

“I can’t be as nice as I’d like to because here, alas, comes Mr. Bewling. Blow your nose, my sweet. There’ll always be an England where there’s a muddy lane, a hoarding by a cowslip field, and curates in the rain. Well, James, what have you discovered?”

“Pesky chain on off hind-wheel’s carried away, sir. Which is why she’s been skittering and skiddling the last mile or so.”

“No doubt. Well, get in James, get in, and I’ll see if I can waddle out of the hedgerow. On mature consideration, perhaps you’d better watch me.”

James hovered over the now familiar process of churning wheels, short jerks and final recoveries. He stood within view of Mandrake and made violent gyratory movements with his hands, while an enormous drop swung from the tip of his nose.

“I have never responded in the smallest degree to rustic charm,” said Mandrake. “All dialects are alike to me. James seems to me to be an extremely unconvincing piece of
genre
. What does he mean by these ridiculous gestures?”

“He means you’re backing us into the other ditch,” said Chloris, blowing her nose. “Oh, do be careful. Don’t you see, he’s steering an imaginary wheel.”

“His antics are revolting. Moreover he smells. There, you unspeakable old grotesque, is that right?”

James, capering in the snow and unable to hear any of this, innocently nodded and grinned.

“I think you’re beastly about him,” said Chloris, “he’s
very
kind.”

“Well, he can get in again. Here he comes. Are you all right, James? Have a cigarette.”

“No, thankee, sir,” said James, breathing hard. “I’ve never smoked one of they since I was so high as yer elber. A pipe’s my fancy, sir, and that be too powerful a piece of work for the lady.”