Jumping Jenny (8 page)

“Now come along, my dear,” said Dr. Chalmers.

“But Margot isn’t here. I must say good night to her.”

“Off with you, woman! Margot will be back by the time you’ve got your things on.”

Mrs. Chalmers, who had known it was hopeless all the time, consented to go.

“Now, Sheringham, what about that drink?” said Dr. Chalmers.

They strolled into the other room, to the bar.

Dr. and Mrs. Mitchell decided that it was high time for them to go too, and husband and wife divided in the same directions as the Chalmers.

The other dancers, realising that the party was breaking up, drifted automatically towards the bar.

“Oh, there you are, Mike,” said Margot Stratton. “I was looking for you. We’d better go, too, I suppose?”

“Had a good party, Margot?” asked her late husband.

“A marvellous party, Ronald, thank you.”

“It’s been a grand party,” Colin Nicolson chimed in. “Have another drink before you go, Margot.”

“Well, it is getting cold out now,” Margot agreed.

Mike Armstrong said nothing.

“Wonderful, our Margot, isn’t she?” Dr. Chalmers appealed to Roger. “Getting on for three in the morning, and not a hair out of place. I believe if Margot was in a liner that sunk, she’d be found sitting on a life-belt, perfectly powdered and waved, and looking as if she’d stepped straight out of a band-box.”

“Thank you, Phil,” said Margot affably.

“Ha, ha!” said Mike Armstrong suddenly, and blushed.

“What was that you said just now, Colin?” asked Mr. Williamson thoughtfully. “Another drink, eh? Was that it? Well, that’s not a bad idea. Eh? That isn’t a bad idea at all, is it?”

“It’s a magnificent idea, Osbert.”

“It is,” affirmed Mr. Williamson, much struck. “It
is
a munificent idea, Colin. Mine’s whisky.”

“Oh, Osbert,” said Mrs. Williamson tentatively, “do you really think you’d better?”

“I said, mine’s a whisky,” repeated Mr. Williamson firmly. “Yes, and make it a double one. Thanks, Colin. Well, cheerio Margot!”

“Cheerio, Osbert.”

“Osbert, you are awful,” said Mr. Williamson’s wife, and removed herself, somewhat huffily.

The women took their usual time to get their things on, delayed in this case longer than usual by the arrival of Margot Stratton in the bedroom just as they were ready to leave. At last, however, they presented themselves, cloaked and be-furred, and the chorus of farewells arose.

“Well, good night, Ronald. … It’s been a lovely party. … Good night, Mr. Sheringham. … Good night, I’ll ring you up tomorrow. … Perhaps you and Ronald would dine with us one night, Mrs. Lefroy? … Say good night to Mrs. Williamson for me. … Don’t forget that book you promised me, Mr. Nicolson. … Well, good night, Sheringham. … Good night. … It’s been a marvellous party, Ronald, darling. … Well, good night. …”

At last and at last only the house-party remained.

“We are seven,” said Ronald, looking round the circle of faces. “Or should be, I think. Do we go to bed, or not? I think not. Then help yourselves to more drinks, everyone, and be merry. Seven has always struck me as absolutely the ideal number for a party.”

The party complied.

“I don’t want to dance any more,” announced Mr. Williamson, suddenly and weightily.

“No,” agreed Mrs. Lefroy. “Let’s turn out the lights and sit round the fire, while Mr. Sheringham tells us about his murders.”

“Oh yes, Roger!” said Celia with enthusiasm.

“That’s a good idea,” Ronald backed them up. “In the strictest confidence, Roger, of course.”

“I really ought not,” said Roger happily.

“Oh
do,
Mr. Sheringham!” begged Mrs. Lefroy.

“Come along, Roger, be a man,” added Colin Nicolson. “It won’t go any farther.”

“Oh, very well,” said Roger.

Mr. Williamson went to the landing and roared like a bull.

“
Lilian!”

“Hullo?” came a faint and distant voice.

“You’re wanted!”

“What for?”

“
Murder!”
howled Mr. Williamson, and left it at that. Certainly it brought him his Lilian, hot foot; but then he had all the bother of explaining.

In the meantime chairs were being pulled into a semicircle round the fire which still glowed on the big open Jacobean hearth, and the party settled down to enjoy itself.

“Sheringham!” said Mr. Williamson, in a confidential tone.

“Hullo?”

“Before you begin, will you promise me one thing?”

“What?”

“That if I murder Lilian, you won’t give me away. You won’t, will you? Eh?”

“That,” said Roger, “depends entirely on the amount of provocation you’ve had.”

“Oh, I’ve had plenty. You see,” said Mr. Williamson, still more confidentially, “I can’t bear her wearing my trousers.” And having delivered himself of this complaint, Mr. Williamson leaned back in his chair and instantly went to sleep.

“Carry on, Sheringham,” Ronald Stratton ordered comfortably.

Roger was clearing his throat while he wondered on which case to begin, when a voice from the doorway checked him.

It was David Stratton, changed and in a lounge suit.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but can I speak to you a minute, Ronald?”

Ronald was only out of the room for a couple of minutes, before he returned with his brother.

“David says Ena doesn’t seem to have gone home. He thinks she may still be here. We’re just going to have a look round.”

“Magnificent!” said Nicolson, jumping up. “We’ll help you.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” David demurred. “Don’t you bother. Ronald and I can manage.”

“Not a bit of it; of course we’ll give you a hand. Come along, Osbert, you lazy devil.”

“Eh? What? What’s up?”

“Hide-and-seek,” said Nicolson. “You’re seeking. Get up and do it.”

Under his rousing energy the whole party was stirred into action.

Roger noticed that, after a first few moments of uncertainty, everyone seemed to be taking the search as a huge joke. Even David’s deprecatory air did not check the growing hilarity. No doubt it was the best way to treat the situation, and really, for David’s own sake, the most tactful. It was no good going about with long faces, silently sympathising with the unfortunate Stratton in his possession of an almost insane wife. Ena was after all a joke, if rather a bad one. Come out in the open and laugh with David, instead of weeping with him.

In twos and threes the search-party worked through the various rooms.

Ronald Stratton’s house was Jacobean and spacious. It had belonged to the Stratton family for nearly three hundred years, almost ever since its erection as the dower-house of a mansion nearly six miles away. Ronald had inherited it, but not the land and the farms which had once belonged to it, or the money to keep it up properly. He had made the latter, and bought back the former.

Since it had come into his hands Ronald had spent a great deal on it. In a thoroughly dilapidated condition, it had been actually in danger of collapsing altogether. Ronald had reroofed it, replanned it, and almost rebuilt it. The top of the three stories, where the party had been held, had been completely reorganised by him. Originally this had consisted of almost a dozen small bedrooms; Ronald had ruthlessly knocked more than half of these into one huge room, running from front to back of the house, and one other almost as big; the former, with a parquet door added, had become the ballroom; the other, with one of its walls knocked completely out to open on to the lovely well-staircase, was anything from a studio to a music-room. To-night it had done duty as a bar-parlour. The rest of the top floor, served by another staircase, constituted the servants’ quarters.

Ronald had been as ruthless with the roof as with the top story. He had kept only the main gables in the front of the house. The rest he had levelled and put in a concrete roof with an asphalt surface, which was just large enough for a badminton court. The game was a little windy at such a height, but Ronald played it with zest. This evening the net and posts had been stowed away, and the rather gruesome triple gallows erected in their place. Over a subsidiary roof, a few feet lower than the main roof and reached from it by a short flight of steps, had been erected a fair-sized hot-house, where Stratton amused himself with growing certain exotic plants, or it might be more accurate to say, trying to grow them. It was called the sun-parlour and furnished with wicker chairs and tables, and was usually in considerable use at dances.

As for the rest of the house, the main bedrooms and bathrooms occupied the first floor, while the library and a small morning-room opened off one side of the big hall on the ground floor, the drawing-room off the other. The kitchens were stowed away somewhere at the back, with access to the hall and through a service-door to the dining-room.

To search such a house thoroughly was no small task. At first the party confined itself to the top floor and the roof, in spite of the extreme unlikelihood of the lady being stowed away in either. Roger himself felt a little perfunctory in his seeking. He had no expectation that Mrs. Stratton really was on the premises. Most probably she had gone off to knock up some unfortunate friend and explain, with sobs and heroic gestures, and complete untruth, that her husband had practically barred her own door against her.

Nevertheless, slightly annoyed as he was at having been cut short so abruptly in his story-telling, his sense of the picturesque appreciated the appropriateness of its setting for such a search. The heavy oak beams which formed the fire-place opening and studded the unevenly-plastered walls, gleamed with age and generations of elbow-grease as they threw back the red glow of the log fire; and the carefully-placed electric lights left the quaint angles of the ceiling, which Ronald had thrown up from its original seven feet to a dozen or more to show off the roof-timbers, dim and mysterious. On the outside walls long casement windows, with the original tiny diamond panes of greenish, much-scratched glass, heavily leaded, looked out over the blackness which covered that part of the grounds lying between the house and the main road a hundred yards away. Roger opened one and leaned out. Everything was still and remote and obscure. It was odd to remember that London was within eighteen miles.

“Now then, Roger. She’s not out there, you know. Why, man, this ought to be a job after your own heart.”

Roger drew back guiltily and looked round.

“Well you see, Colin, I don’t believe she’s here at all.”

“What does that matter?” demanded Nicolson robustly. “A game of hide-and-seek’s a game of hide-and-seek, wherever the person’s hiding. Off with you, and search like a man.”

“Has anyone tried the sun-parlour?” Roger asked languidly.

“I expect so, but no one of your skill. Who knows? She may have dug into the big bed and be disguised as a sweet-pea by now.”

“More probably a cactus,” said Roger sourly, and went up to look.

Electric light was laid on to the sun-parlour, but the place was in darkness when Roger reached it. He was about to turn on the switch when a slight movement on the farther side of the room made him jump violently. There is nothing more disconcerting than a human movement in the darkness when one has been quite sure there is nothing human there. The next instant he smiled.

“I’ve got her!” he said to himself.

He could see now the figure whose movement had startled him. It was leaning out of an opened window, just as he had been leaning out of the room below two minutes ago, and evidently it had not heard his approach. It was small and slight, and quite obviously feminine.

“I’ve a jolly good mind to smack her hard, as she stands,” thought Roger vindictively. “She deserves a fright.”

It was Roger, however, who got the fright; for the figure shifted its position slightly, and Roger saw that it was not a woman at all. The faint moonlight gave just enough illumination to throw up the whitewashed wall underneath the windows, and Roger could now see white wall between the figure’s legs. Moreover, those legs were clothed in unmistakable trousers.

Roger stared at it with something like alarm. No man in the party was nearly so small or so slight as that. Who on earth could it be?

He solved the problem by switching on the light—and the rather witch-like face of Mrs. Williamson shot round over her shoulder with a little exclamation.

“Oh, how you frightened me!”

“Not before you’d already frightened me. I thought you must be an elf or a hobgoblin or something, brooding out of that window.”

Mrs. Williamson laughed. “The night was so perfect. I simply had to get away from everyone and drink a little of it in.”

Funny, thought Roger; she can say that sort of thing and one accepts it, because she’s natural, whereas exactly the same words from Ena Stratton would sound just nauseating.

“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” he said. “I was sent up, by Colin, to search this place.”

“She’s not here. I looked round before I turned the light out. All I could find here was someone’s pipe.” She nodded towards one of the wicker tables, on which lay a briar pipe.

Roger picked it up. “I expect someone’s missing this. I’d better take it to Ronald.”

“They haven’t found her yet, then?”

“No. I suppose I must go and help look. Shall I turn out the light again and leave you and the night together?”

“No, I feel better now. Do people ever make you feel like that—that you simply must get away from everybody, to get the bad taste out of your mouth?”

“I can quite believe that Ena Stratton would leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth,” said Roger, as he stood aside for Mrs. Williamson to precede him up the steps.

In the house the search had now spread to the lower floors.

Roger could hear Colin Nicolson, in one of the bedrooms, protesting his fears to his hostess.

“It’s no good, Celia, I won’t be able to get a wink of sleep to-night, and that’s the truth. Each time I shut an eye I’ll imagine the pestilential woman ready to pop out at me from every nook and cranny.” He pulled open the bottom drawer of a chest of drawers and peered hopefully inside.