Murder in Piccadilly (10 page)

He had the library to himself and kept it for ten minutes while he walked up and down as if his feet were on invisible wires.

“That revolver was meant for me,” he muttered again and again, and with each repetition a renewal of fear added fuel to his fiery anger. He had grown to despise his nephew and heir. “His desperation won't run to anything more desperate than making an apple-pie bed for me.”

The contemptuous testimonial to the innocuousness of Bobbie recurred with mocking deliberation. Yet he could not convince himself that he had been mistaken. Massy Cheldon was a student of human nature with a wide and a deep knowledge of his fellows. He paid himself that tribute once more and declined to modify it even with his pocket sheltering the ammunition removed from his guest's murderous-looking weapon.

“Could it be that woman?” The question brought him to a standstill. He recalled his own love affairs, and he had had several. But could Bobbie have been driven to murder by a pretty face? Yet these dancers, and the youth of today! What could you expect?

He was bemoaning the alleged vices of the youth of today when the first gong warned him that he must change his attire for the ritual of doing homage to the concoctions of his favourite employee. Bobbie, hearing that gong, uttered a curse on himself and raced to the room he always occupied when at the Manor. What an ass he had been to forget! What a complete prize idiot he had been not to have remembered his resolution to let no one open his bag! Was it possible he could have been so mad as to hand the key unthinkingly to Peters and never give a thought to danger until this moment!

He was flushed and his heart was beating so fast that he was in a condition of physical pain when he sprang at the bag and searched for the revolver beneath a layer of shirts and collars. A great breath of relief escaped him. Nosey Ruslin's property lay exactly where he had placed it. Evidently Peters, that prince of footmen, had done no more than his duty demanded. Peters had not been curious and had gone no further down than the layer of dress clothes. It was all right. He sank on to the bed to recover from the reaction. One thing was certain. Peters should be promoted and his salary doubled. Wages, he meant. The correction was pure Cheldonism. A servant who knew his place deserved reward in these days when Jack pretended to be as good as his master even when that master belonged to an ancient family.

He dressed to the accompaniment of toneless excerpts from the Cheldon saga.

Uncle Massy was already seated at the head of the oak table when he took the chair on his right with his back to the fireplace.

“Thought it better to have dinner alone tonight,” he heard him mumble as his own eyes wandered in a lazy review of the contents of the room, particularly the portraits.

Everything he saw generated temptation. The spacious luxury of the room, the panelled walls with their impressive family portraits, the massive silver adornments of the table, and the noiseless butler with something of the dignity of a High Priest ministering to the comfort and pride of the choicer members of the Cheldon family.

It was impossible for him to avoid contrasting his surroundings with what five years of Galahad Mansions had brought him. The humiliating economies, the revolting evidences all around him of the struggle for existence, the contemptible substitutes for pleasure, and the third-rate people with whom he was compelled to associate.

His rightful place in the scheme of things was here. He ought to be in that chair with Nancy facing him. Uncle Massy was undoubtedly a Cheldon, but he had not inherited the imposing figure, handsome features and determined expression of old Jonathan, whose portrait by Lawrence was just behind him. Uncle Massy should have been a younger son and in that event would probably have done quite well as a solicitor. He, Bobbie, would, of course, give him his legal business to do and there would be a considerable amount arising out of the manifold duties and responsibilities the ownership of Broadbridge Manor must entail.

He ate mechanically as he found solace in his thoughts. Meanwhile Uncle Massy meandered through a story in which apparently a colonel and a club servant figured together with an exciting interlude about a forgotten whisky and soda.

“We'll have some one to join us tomorrow night, Bobbie.” On hearing his name the guest sat up and tried to escape from his thoughts to his environment. West was filling his glass.

“That'll be fine.” He went a trifle red as he struggled to recall the remark which had evoked his commonplace rejoinder.

“General Maltby and his daughter, Lady Kester, have returned from the south of France. I'll ask them. And the Bellamys if they're at home.”

Bobbie smiled, grateful for the Bellamy cue.

“Is the girl married yet?” he asked without any interest.

Uncle Massy began to talk about the girl of today, and the dinner proceeded to the coffee stage. Bobbie was cracking his fifth walnut when his uncle arrived at what he considered the point of an illuminating anecdote, and having waited for the applause drew his chair closer to the table.

“Now we can talk undisturbed about your position,” he said, and there seemed to be so much feeling in his tone that Bobbie experienced a twinge of remorse.

“You must put your shoulder to the wheel.” The opening was ominous, but beggars cannot be critics. “The bottom rung of the ladder, my boy, to start with.”

“What does the bottom rung mean in this case, uncle?”

A frown was the first answer. Then Massy Cheldon reverted to his original plan, that of a cat playing with a mouse, and he stifled his annoyance.

“A stool in an office,” he said, and the younger man, aware that two small reddish eyes were fixed on him, defeated the attempt of his features to betray his thoughts.

“Will it be a—a—er—valuable stool, uncle?”

“Fifty shillings a week and you'll be lucky to get it.”

Bobbie's sense of humour had yet to develop, but when he tried to picture Nancy Curzon's expression when she heard of his “prospects” laughter would have been loud and prolonged had he not been well rehearsed in the art of self-control under difficulties.

“Fifty shillings isn't much,” his uncle resumed, “but it'll mean a great deal to you and your mother. For one thing it'll be as good as living rent free. Bobbie, you must from now onwards take a business view of things in general. Life isn't all loafing. The man with a purpose, with backbone, initiative…”

He knew the lay sermon by heart.

“…and within five years you ought to be earning at least four hundred a year. You have the advantage of being a Cheldon. A business training—a business career will be the best preparation for the day when you succeed me at Broadbridge…”

Bobbie surveyed the regiment of portraits again. They were meat and drink to his vanity and spurs to his ambition, but he differed from his uncle as to the meaning of ambition.

Nearly an hour passed before they rose and sauntered leisurely into the drawing room, and there in two enveloping armchairs they passed the time until somewhere between eleven and midnight the owner of Broadbridge Manor signalled his desire for sleep by a series of yawns and then departed abruptly to the upper regions of the old building.

When his own door closed behind him, Bobbie turned the key in the lock and flung himself on the bed. He was tired mentally rather than physically, and although West had been more than usually sparing with the wine, what he had drunk had produced a mellowness which left him limp. But he was determined not to sleep, persuaded that he had an immense amount of thinking to do.

He opened his eyes and was astonished to be informed by the clock on the mantelpiece that he had been asleep for hours. It was actually a quarter to two.

With the agitated, spasmodic movements of a man in a hurry he opened his bag and fumbled for the revolver. This he thrust into the right hand pocket of his dinner jacket, and almost in the same movement reached the door and unlocked it. Outside in the landing there was a silence consistent with the darkness that prevailed.

In his state of mind he really did not know what he was doing, though at the back of his brain there was a glimmering idea as to why he was doing it. He seemed to be under the control of a spirit alien to his weak, foolish character; it was as if he was suffering from daydream somnambulism and had become a creature taken captive by thoughts too dangerous to be expressed in words. But had he been able to think he must have rushed back to his room and barricaded himself against the terrors of the temptation assailing him. As it happened he actually crept to the door of his uncle's room, pushed it open slightly, and with his hand gripping the revolver, entered.

From where he stood the bed was indistinct, for the room was nearly equal to the entire floor space of 15, Galahad Mansions, or at least Bobbie had once remarked on this comparison between the genuine mansion and the imitation. Not a sound worried him except his own breathing, and it was because of this too audible evidence of his own existence that he took the revolver from his pocket. As he did so he thought he heard a shuffling sound to his left and wheeling round he presented the revolver at a shadow in true conventional style.

“What's that?” he gasped, terrified.

The shadow gave him no time even to try and answer his own question, for it materialised into a pyjama-clad figure, and as a hand stretched out towards the weapon a well known voice said, “Give me that.” The next moment the room was flooded with electric light, and Massy Cheldon, holding the weapon which he alone knew to be unloaded, gazed contemptuously at the form of his nephew stretched on the floor.

“You fainted,” he said five minutes later. “But finish your drink first. It'll be a tonic.”

“Uncle,” the penitent began and stopped to hide his face in his hands.

“Feeling better?” Massy Cheldon, glowing with triumph, stretched out a hand to the soda siphon on the table between his own and his nephew's chair. That it had contained glasses for two and an assortment of drinks might have given Bobbie occasion for an essay in the art of deduction had he been in a normal condition of mind, but it was not his uncle's intention to admit that he had been expecting him. That would have been a foolish weakening of his own position and would of a certainty have lessened the effect of his confrontation in the darkness of an intruder with a harmless weapon.

“I don't know what to say—I must have been mad,” Bobbie groaned.

“Of course, you were mad.” The tone was extraordinarily good-humoured in the circumstances. And Uncle Massy had never shown a predilection for good humour even in the most favourable conditions.

“I've behaved like a cad, uncle.”

“You've behaved like a fool. You forgot the Cheldon motto, ‘Courage and Loyalty.''' He purred a chorus to his self-esteem.

“You certainly showed courage, uncle.” Bobbie raised his head and disclosed scarlet cheeks. “It was the pluckiest act I've known or heard of. I couldn't have done it. But I shouldn't have harmed you. I swear I wouldn't. I was only bluffing.”

“Would a bench of magistrates believe that?” The voice was for the first time harsh, even threatening. “Would a judge and jury at the Sussex Assizes accept that explanation?” He rose and stood over him, all the mean little soul of the man palpitating with triumph. “Had I been one of the nervy sort the shock might have killed me, but I think I proved that all the courage of the Cheldons isn't expended on the battlefield, that even a food controller can be brave.”

“I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say. I must have been in a dream. Uncle, I swear, I didn't mean it. I was just pretending.” The boyish apology came in detached sentences, and Massy Cheldon knew that every word was true.

“You see, Bobbie, you made the mistake of measuring me by your own standard. You naturally judged me as a coward. It never dawned on you that a loaded revolver pointed at me at a distance of a couple of feet would have no more effect on me than the threat of a blow from a toy balloon. Men of my calibre do not parade their courage. They conceal it. But, damme, why am I talking like this when I ought to be rousing West and telephoning for the police?”

Bobbie turned to stone.

“Uncle!” he gasped weakly.

“Oh, I know what that whine means. You were going to remind me that you had a mother and that I am fond of her. Well, you would have been right. I am fond of your mother, Bobbie. She's a woman in a million, and her husband, my brother, was a man in a million. For the sake of both of them I will forgive.”

A delicate hand was stretched out and as hastily withdrawn when it failed to find a companion.

“Now don't talk until I give you permission.” The lord of Broadbridge Manor began to strut. “The problem is one which must be solved here and now, Bobbie. For your mother's sake I shall forgive. It will depend on your future conduct whether I forget.” He pursed his lips and looked profound, rather taken aback by his own eloquence.

All the fight had gone out of Bobbie, supposing any had ever been in him. But certainly all his powers of retort, anger, sarcasm and even resentment were banished too. He could only be conscious of the enormity of his stupidity.

“You idiot!” Uncle Massy cried, suddenly gripping him by the shoulders and shaking him. “What do you think you'd have got out of my murder except a rope around your neck? It is possible that it never occurred to you that if I were found dead in suspicious circumstances the only man who could profit by my death would be the first to be suspected? Didn't it cross what you are pleased to call your mind that had I died a few minutes ago you would have been arrested before breakfast? Faugh!” He sought the consolation of his armchair and the assistance of another whisky and soda to restore his composure.

“Damn you, I must have a few hours' sleep before Peters comes in with the morning tea.” There was a mask of evil which a return of his sense of triumph banished before Bobbie could look him in the face for a second or two. “Now listen to me, and answer my questions. First, who gave you that murderous weapon?” The adjective was introduced to minister to vanity.