Death and the Dancing Footman (4 page)

“But you’re on leave from the front, aren’t you?” he asked William.

“Oh, yes,” said William.

“My son Nicholas—” Mrs. Compline became quite animated as she spoke of Nicholas. She talked about him at great length, and Mandrake wondered if he only imagined there was a sort of defiance in her insistence on this awkward theme. He saw that Miss Wynne had turned pink and William crimson. Jonathan drew the spate of maternal eulogy upon himself. Mandrake asked Miss Wynne and William if they thought it was going to snow again, and all three walked over to the long windows to look at darkening hills and vale. Naked trees half lost their form in that fading light and rose from the earth as if they were its breath, already frozen.

“Rather menacing,” said Mandrake, “isn’t it?”

“Menacing?” William repeated. “It’s very beautiful. All black and white and grey. I don’t believe in seeing colour into things. One should paint them the first colour they seem when one looks at them. Yes, I suppose it is what you’d call menacing. Black and grey and white.”

“What is your medium?” Mandrake asked, and wondered why everybody looked uncomfortable when William spoke of his painting.

“
Very
thick oil paint,” said William gravely.

“Do you know Agatha Troy?”

“I know her pictures, of course.”

“She and her husband are staying with the Copelands at Winton St. Giles near Little Chipping. I came on from there. She’s painting the Rector.”

“Do you mean Roderick Alleyn?” asked Miss Wynne. “Isn’t he her husband? How exciting to be in a house-party with the handsome Inspector. What’s he like?”

“Oh,” said Mandrake, “quite agreeable.”

They had turned away from the windows but a sound from outside drew them back again. Only the last turn of the drive as it came out of the Highfold woods could be seen from the drawing-room windows.

“That’s a car,” said William. “It sounds like—” he stopped short.

“Is anyone else coming?” asked Miss Wynne sharply, and caught her breath.

She and William stared through the windows. A long and powerful-looking open car, painted white, was streaking up the last rise in the drive.

“But,” stammered William, very red in the face, “that’s— that’s—”

“Ah!” said Jonathan from behind them. “Didn’t you know? A pleasant surprise for you. Nicholas is to be one of our party.”

Nicholas Compline was an extremely striking version of his brother. In figure, height, and colouring they were alike. Their features were not dissimilar, but the suggestion of fumbled drawing in William was absent in Nicholas. William was clean-shaven but Nicholas wore a fine blond moustache. Nicholas had a presence. His uniform became him almost too well. He glittered a little. His breeches were superb. His face was not unlike a less dissipated version of the best-known portrait of Charles II, though the lines from nose or mouth were not so dominant, and the pouches under the eyes had only just begun to form.

His entrance into the drawing-room at Highfold must have been a test of his assurance. Undoubtedly it was dramatic. He came in, smiling, missed his brother and Miss Wynne, who were still in the window, shook hands with Jonathan, was introduced to Mandrake, and, on seeing his mother, looked surprised but greeted her charmingly. Jonathan, who had him by the elbow, turned him towards the windows.

There was no difficult silence because Jonathan talked briskly but there was, to a degree, a feeling of tension. For a moment Mandrake wondered if Nicholas Compline would turn on his heel and walk out, but after checking, with Jonathan’s hand still at his elbow, he merely stood stock-still and looked from William to Chloris Wynne. His face was as pale as his brother’s was red and there was a kind of startled sneer about his lips. It was Miss Wynne who saved the situation. She unclenched her hands and gave Nicholas a coster’s salute, touching her forehead and spreading out her palm towards him. Mandrake guessed that this seriocomic gesture was foreign to her, and applauded her courage.

“
Oi
,” said Miss Wynne.

“
Oi, oi
,” said Nicholas, and returned her salute. He looked at William and said in a flat voice, “Quite a family party.”

His mother held out her hand to him. He moved swiftly towards her and sat on the arm of her chair. Mandrake saw adoration in her eyes and mentally rubbed his hands together. “The mother-fixation,” he thought, “is
not
going to let me down.” And he began to warn himself against the influence of Eugene O’Neill. William and his Chloris remained in the window. Jonathan, after a bird-like glance at them, embarked on a comfortable three-cornered chat with Mrs. Compline and Nicholas. Mandrake, sitting in the shadow, found himself free to watch the lovers, and again he gloated. At first William and Chloris stared out through the windows and spoke in undertones. She pointed to something outside, but Mandrake felt certain the gesture was a bluff and that they were discussing hurriedly the arrival of Nicholas. Presently he observed a small incident that he thought curious and illuminating. It was a sort of dumb show, an interplay of looks subdued to the exigencies of polite behaviour, a quartette of glances. William had turned from the window and was staring at his mother. She had been talking with an air that almost approached gaiety to Nicholas. She looked into his face and a smile, painful in its intensity, lifted the drooping corners of her mouth. Nicholas’ laugh was louder than the conversation seemed to warrant and Mandrake saw that he was looking over his mother’s head full at Chloris Wynne. Mandrake read a certain insolence in this open-eyed direct stare of Nicholas. He turned to see how the lady took it and found that she returned it with interest. They looked steadfastly and inimically into each other’s eyes. Nicholas laughed again and William, as if warned by this sound, turned from his sombre contemplation of his mother and stared first at Nicholas and then at Miss Wynne. Neither of them paid the smallest attention to him but Mandrake thought that Nicholas was very well aware of his brother. He thought Nicholas, in some way that was clearly perceived by the other two, was deliberately baiting William. Jonathan’s voice broke across this little pantomime.

“…a long time,” Jonathan was saying, “since I treated myself to one of my own parties, and I don’t mind confessing that I look forward enormously to this one.”

Miss Wynne joined the group round the fire and William followed her.

“Is this the party?” she asked, “or are we only the beginning?”

“The most important beginning, Miss Chloris, without which the end would be nothing.”

“Who else have you got, Jonathan?” asked Nicholas, with his eyes still on Miss Wynne.

“Well, now, I don’t know that I shall tell you, Nick. Or shall I? It’s always rather fun, don’t you think,” Jonathan said, turning his glance towards Mrs. Compline, “to let people meet without giving them any preconceived ideas about each other? However, you know one of my guests so well that it doesn’t matter if I anticipate her arrival. Hersey Amblington.”

“Old Hersey’s coming; is she?” said Nicholas, and he looked a little disconcerted.

“Don’t be too ruthless with your adjectives, Nick,” said Jonathan mildly. “Hersey is ten years my junior.”

“You’re ageless, Jonathan.”

“Charming of you, but I’m afraid people only begin to compliment one on one’s youth when it is gone. But Hersey, to me, really does seem scarcely any older than she was in the days when I danced with her. She still dances, I believe.”

“It will be nice to see Hersey,” said Mrs. Compline.

“I don’t think I know a Hersey, do I?” This was the first time Chloris had spoken directly to Mrs. Compline. She was answered by Nicholas.

“She’s a flame of Jonathan’s,” Nicholas said. “Lady Hersey Amblington.”

“She’s my third cousin,” said Jonathan, sedately. “We are all rather attached to her.”

“Oh,” said Nicholas, always to Chloris. “She’s a divine creature. I adore her.”

Chloris began to talk to William.

Mandrake thought that if anybody tried to bury any hatchets in the Compline armoury it would not be William. He decided that William was neither as vague nor as amiable as he seemed. Conversation went along briskly under Jonathan’s leadership with Mandrake himself as an able second, but it had a sort of substratum that was faintly antagonistic. When, inevitably, it turned to the war, William, with deceptive simplicity, related a story about an incident on patrol when a private soldier uttered some comic blasphemy on the subject of cushy jobs on the home front. Mrs. Compline immediately told Jonathan how few hours of sleep Nicholas managed to get and how hard he was worked. Nicholas himself spoke of pulling strings in order to get a transfer to active service. He had, he said, seen an important personage. “Unfortunately, though, I struck a bad moment. The gentleman was very liverish. I understand,” said Nicholas with one of his bright stares at Chloris, “that he has been crossed in love.”

“No reason, surely,” said Chloris, “why he shouldn’t behave himself with comparative strangers.”

Nicholas gave her the shadow of an ironical bow.

Jonathan began an account of his own activities as chairman of the local evacuation committee and made such a droll affair of it that with every phrase his listeners’ guardedness seemed to relax. Mandrake, who had a certain astringent humour of his own, followed with a description of a member of the chorus who found himself in an ultra-modern play. Tea was announced and was carried through on the same cheerful note of comedy. “Good Lord,” Mandrake thought, “if he should bring it off after all!” He caught Jonathan’s eye and detected a glint of triumph.

After tea Jonathan proposed a brisk walk and Mandrake, knowing his host shared his own loathing for this sort of exercise, grinned to himself. Jonathan was not going to risk another session in the drawing-room. With any luck there would be more arrivals while they were out and a new set of encounters would take place in the propitious atmosphere of sherry and cocktails. When they assembled in the hall Jonathan appeared in a sage-green Tyrolese cape. He looked a quaint enough figure — but Chloris Wynne, who had evidently decided to like her host, cried out in admiration, and Mandrake, who had decided to like Chloris Wynne, echoed her. At the last moment Jonathan remembered an important telephone message and asked Mandrake to see the walking party off. He flung his cape over Nicholas’ shoulders. It hung from his shoulder straps in heavy folds and turned him into a Ruritanian figure.

“Magnificent, Nick,” said Jonathan, and Mandrake saw that Mrs. Compline and Chloris agreed with him. The cloak neatly emphasized the touch of bravura that seemed an essential ingredient of Nicholas’ character. They went out of doors into the cold twilight of late afternoon.

“But,” said Dr. Hart in German, “it is an intolerable position for me — for
me
, do you understand?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Madame Lisse in English. “And please, Francis, do not speak in German. It is a habit of which you should break yourself.”

“Why should I not speak in German? I am a naturalized Austrian. Everybody knows that I am a naturalized Austrian and that I detest and abhor the Nazi regime with which we—
we
British — are in conflict.”

“Nevertheless, the language is unpopular.”

“Very well, very well. I now speak in English. In plain English, I tell you that if you continue your affair with this Nicholas Compline I shall take the strongest possible steps to—”

“To do what?… You are driving too fast.”

“To put an end to it.”

“How will you do that?” asked Madame Lisse, settling down into her furs with an air of secret enjoyment.

“By taking you up to London next week.”

“With what object?… Here is Winton. I beg that you do not drive so fast.”

“On our return,” said Dr. Hart, shifting his foot to the brake, “we shall announce our marriage. It will have taken place quietly in London.”

“Are you demented? Have we not discussed it already a thousand times? You know very well that it would injure your practice. A woman hideous with wrinkles comes to me. I see that I can do nothing, cannot even pretend to do anything. I suggest plastic surgery. She asks me if I can recommend a surgeon. I mention two or three, of whom you are one. I give instances of your success, you are here in Great Chipping, the others are abroad or in London. She goes to you. But — can I say to my client, with the same air of detached assurance, ‘Certainly. Go to my husband. He is marvellous!’? And can you, my friend, whose cry has been the utter uselessness of massage, the robbery of foolish women by beauty specialists, the fatuity of creams and lotions — can you produce as your wife Elise Lisse of the Studio Lisse, beauty specialist
par excellence
? The good Lady Hersey Amblington would have something to say to that, I promise you, and by no means to our advantage.”

“Then give up your business.”

“And halve my income, in effect
our
income? And besides, I enjoy my work. It has amused me to win my little victories over the good Lady Hersey. The Studio Lisse is a growing concern, my friend, and I propose to remain at the head of it.”

Dr. Hart accelerated again as his car mounted the steep road that climbed from the Vale of Pen Cuckoo up to Cloudyfold.

“Do you see the roofs of the large house up in those trees?” he asked suddenly.

“That is Pen Cuckoo. It is shut up at present. What of it?”

“And you know why it is shut up? I shall remind you. Two years ago it housed a homicidal lunatic, and her relatives have not returned since her trial.”

Madame Lisse turned to look at her escort. She saw a sharp profile, a heavy chin, light grey eyes, and a complexion of extreme though healthy pallor.

“Well,” she murmured. “Again, what of it?”

“You have heard of the case, of course. She is said to have murdered her rival in love. They were both somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five. The dangerous age in both sexes. I am myself fifty-two years of age.”

“What conclusion am I supposed to draw?” asked Madame Lisse tranquilly.

“You are to suppose,” Dr. Hart rejoined, “that persons of a certain age can go to extremes when the safety of their — shall I call it love-life? — is in jeopardy.”