Murder in Piccadilly (2 page)

The net result had been the tightening of the tension between uncle and nephew that had never really slackened. In vain had Ruby pointed out that Bobbie owed something to the uncle who avoided matrimony as carefully as he avoided generosity. “No woman would have him,” was Bobbie's contemptuous retort, and so the guerilla warfare had continued.

Now, however, Bobbie was in the position of suppliant and a very humble suppliant at that. He was in love and an uneasy, tremulous, agitating love it was, too. Whoever this Nancy Curzon might be it was evident that she had many admirers and that competition for her hand in matrimony was keen. Only the fear of losing her prevented Bobbie meeting his uncle's fussiness and contempt with insolence and ill-temper. Well, that was to the credit of the night club dancer. Ruby sighed. She wished she could do something, but then since Bobbie had begun to talk vaguely of “doing something” on his own account she had been helpless. Perhaps, Massy was right and where Bobbie was concerned she was foolish. But could she help it?

She half-wished there was no Cheldon estate and no entail. The zeal of Jonathan Cheldon had become a curse after a century, a curse to herself and a danger to her son. How often had Bobbie grumblingly adverted to the fact that every day his uncle lived he, the misunderstood heir, lost a day's income. There lay the explanation of his unwillingness to study, his failure to pass the preliminary examinaton for the Bar, his diurnal dissatisfaction with all the world and its inhabitants except a small coterie of imitation intellectuals which infested the purlieus of Fulham and Chelsea.

“What's the use, mother, when I'll have ten thousand a year when Uncle Massy dies of overeating?” had been his invariable rejoinder to her mild suggestions that a more active life would make him happier.

“Your uncle may live another thirty years,” was a checkmate which he always refused to admit.

She was rescued from further depression by the voice of her brother-in-law.

“There are other risks in marriage besides financial ones,” he was saying in that pedestrian, self-opinionated manner of his which had earned for him the petrified dislike of all the other bores ensconced in armchairs in St. James's Street, Piccadilly and Pall Mall. “How can you be sure that you are marrying the right woman? You can't tell until you've married her and then it's too late if you've made a bloomer.”

“I suppose that's the reason you've remained a bachelor, Massy?” said his sister-in-law with a laugh that did not lighten the atmosphere.

“I cannot afford to marry,” he answered gravely. “With a Socialist government composed of alleged Conservatives in power the landowner is a prisoner within his paltry income. It's all very well to quote Harry, but he was lucky, Ruby.”

“Thank you,” she said, merrily. Massy Cheldon's compliments were rare, omitting, of course, those he paid daily to good wines and good food.

“But how would the world get along without women?” Bobbie asked with an earnestness that indicated that he believed he was the first to coin that question.

“We are not talking of the world—we are talking of you,” was the unexpected retort. “You want to marry and you haven't a shilling. At twenty-three you've still got to earn your first week's salary.” He very nearly said wages but recollected in time he was speaking to a Cheldon. The tone and manner were bitter, even savage, and Ruby trembled, but the spirit of Nancy Curzon was there although none of them knew it. “I quite agree, uncle,” said Bobbie, humbly, “and that's why I want you to put me in the way of earning my own living.”

At this unexpected surrender Massy Cheldon, suspecting that the victory was not actually his, moved uneasily. He was too accustomed to lecturing and hectoring his nephew to be able to fit in with a state of affairs in which friendliness and politeness predominated.

“Didn't Schopenhauer say that love was a species of insanity because it made a young man unable to keep himself voluntarily undertake to keep another man's daughter for the rest of her life?” he asked, falling back on sarcasm.

“Well, anyhow, uncle, you're sane enough, according to the Schopenhauer standard,” said Bobbie with a laugh.

Massy Cheldon scrutinised him again, and again resented the frank youthfulness of his open, sunny manner, and the flushed, animated cheeks and shining happiness of expression. Resentment deepened into something lower than mere jealousy when he reminded himself that all this youth and vivid enjoyment might one day—perhaps, soon—be allied with wealth. A street accident, poisoned food, any of the ordinary ills of life—the middle-aged man who was obsessed by meanness shuddered at the thought of being parted from his museum of coins, banknotes, share certificates and rents. Hitherto he had disliked Bobbie, and Bobbie had gone out of his way to justify his dislike, but now with his nephew apparently reforming and shedding all his weaknesses Massy Cheldon realised that there was nothing left for him to do except to hate his heir, nakedly and primitively.

“Marriage is expensive,” he said aloud, “unless, of course, you can manage it at someone else's expense.” He laughed alone.

“Now that I have Nancy to live for I am a different man, uncle,” Bobbie exclaimed, in his excitement rising and standing over him. “She's a girl in a million, beautiful, clever, original, a living poem. When you see her you'll not be surprised I fell for her at first sight. I wish I could describe her adequately, uncle.” The glowing face and the boyish enthusiasm made Ruby Cheldon tremble again, though not with fear.

“She's a dancer, isn't she?” Massy Cheldon shifted to the stance which intimated to the knowledgeable that he was about to talk about himself. A heavy gripping of the floor, slight drooping of the shoulders, far away look in his fish-like eyes, and the outline of a grin about his too thin lips—Ruby saw all these signs and sought consolation in the hope that however boring the reminiscence might be their simulated interest would wheedle him back into a good humour.

“A dancer, eh?” He seemed to fall into a reverie. “That reminds me of a girl I met when I was a fresher at Oxford. A wondrous specimen of female divinity minus any sort of intelligence. I used to rave about her, and so did others. I remember I nearly fought a duel with young Allen on her account the day before she chucked me in favour of Tubby Kelshaw, who succeeded to the family peerage the following year. Dolly is a grandmother now and a pillar of the High Church party, but I think she'd have married me if I hadn't been a pauper compared with Tubby. That was fifteen years before I succeeded to Broadbridge. A dancer? They haven't changed, Ruby, and neither has human nature.”

“You ought to have married, Massy,” said his sister-in-law, compelling herself to be complimentary. “I'm sure you'd have been a successful husband. But I suppose you've preferred to leave a trail of broken hearts behind you, and yet you're angry with Bobbie because he's in love.”

“I'm angry with Bobbie because he's talking of marriage when he ought to be doing some remunerative work.”

Bobbie moved away to hide his resentment and to stifle the retort which had sprung unaided to the tip of his tongue.

“But I'm not cut out for matrimony, Ruby, and that's a fact,” Massy Cheldon continued as soon as it was obvious that his nephew had no intention of turning the discussion into an argument. “Most of my pals have had a shot at it and missed badly. Look at Tom Hedley who's been married four times and—”

“Four times!” Ruby exclaimed. “Why, it's polygamy on the instalment plan.”

His smile of appreciation was confined to his mouth while he made a note of the remark for use later on.

“Tom wouldn't listen to me, and all four marriages were failures. No, Ruby, you must leave me to my lonely bachelorhood, and twenty or thirty years hence when Bobbie is older and wiser he can step into my shoes at Broadbridge and try and make something out of the Cheldon estate.”

“I'd rather have Nancy and poverty than all the wealth in the world,” said Bobbie with an earnestness pathetic rather than convincing.

“That's very romantic, Bobbie,” remarked his uncle almost tolerantly, “but would the young lady agree with you? My experience of dancers is that they prefer to love all the wealth of the world.”

“Nancy is different, uncle, quite different from the sordid, mercenary type you knew.” The enraptured speaker smiled pityingly at fifty-three years of ignorance. “She's a sprite, uncle, ethereal, all spirit, a child of nature. Every time I see her dance I think of a love poem, a sonnet. She's put life into me, uncle, and with her as my daily inspiration I feel I can achieve almost anything.”

“Can you achieve a job at five pounds a week?”

The rhapsodist crashed back to earth.

“That—that's what I—er—I hoped, uncle—I—er—” he stammered.

“In coherent language that means you want me to place you in a well paid position so that you can begin life in a style superior to that of Galahad Mansions.”

The hostility and contempt were having their effect on Bobbie's temper, but he strove hard to keep to his pact with his mother.

“I can only do my best,” he muttered.

“That's something anyhow,” said Massy Cheldon sarcastically. “Though it's a pity you didn't think of trying to do your best a little sooner. You might have been at the Bar now or in a well paid post in the Civil Service, and—”

“Need we have all this again, Massy?” his sister-in-law asked in the gentlest tone she could assume. “We want to discuss Bobbie's future—not his past.”

“Do you really wish him to marry?” he asked in astonishment.

“I want him to be happy,” she replied, giving Bobbie an affectionate glance. “I know my son better than anyone else knows him, and he'll do the family credit yet.”

Massy Cheldon made a dramatic gesture by flinging his hands in the air.

“Oh, you mothers!” he cried, as if helpless and hopeless. “You'd march to hell with your sons rather than go to heaven without them.”

Bobbie took his mother's arm in his, and the sight infuriated the friendless, warped, self-centred miser.

“ 'Pon my word, Ruby, you almost persuade me that you're more to blame than the young cub himself.”

Bobbie released his arm and took a step forward.

“Bobbie!” His mother's exclamation was a piteous cry of terror which restrained him in time.

“Oh, all right,” he said and threw himself on the sofa.

Massy Cheldon, believing that his personality had triumphed, reverted to his usual role of crabbed, critical and sarcastic relative.

“I won't waste any more of my time,” he said fussily. “That reminds me, Ruby, to ask you a question which I can't find the answer to. Why is it always orange peel time in Fulham?” She laughed. “I'm serious. It goes on all the year round. The entrance to Galahad Mansions was strewn with orange peel and children when I arrived, and it'll be orange peel and children the next time and the time after that. It can't be pleasant for you.”

“Galahad Mansions is not Broadbridge,” Bobbie retorted and strode out of the room in a rage.

When they were alone Massy Cheldon laughed harshly.

“I'll tell you what we'll do, Ruby,” he said. “Invite this Nancy Curzon to enable me to see her. Not a dinner party, for I won't put you to the expense and the trouble. Make it an evening party, as informal as you can. Don't give it the appearance of a court martial on the girl. Get some young people and make it a jolly affair with nothing suggestive of an ulterior object.”

“I think I'll try it,” she murmured, and sighed. “But what will happen, Massy, if she passes the test?”

He smiled to himself.

“When the unexpected happens it is wise to do the unexpected,” he replied, oracularly.

“You mean you would make Bobbie an allowance—a generous allowance?” She stared at him with a sort of dazed wonder.

“Exactly.” He smiled again, but this time it was a smile expressing his contempt for her ignorance of the world and its worldlings. He could have laughed at her unsophistication. Fancy, not being intelligent enough to envisage the type represented by “Nancy Curzon!” He always clothed the name in inverted commas. The girl would of a certainty prove as false and as artificial as her acquired cognomen. She would giggle, talk and think at the top pitch of her voice, betray herself in a dozen different ways in as many minutes, and in the very act of struggling to conceal her vulgar origin ostentatiously expose it.

“The party shall take place,” she said, suddenly ending the unnecessary silence. “I'll ask Sylvia, Freddie Neville, Mrs. Carmichael and one or two others.”

“And no reference to me, please.” Massy Cheldon gathered himself together preparatory to departure and in a moment changed from the intimate friend and relation to the patronising, rather pompous visitor from another region.

“Not at all a bad little place this,” he said, without taking his eyes off his gloves. “Used to know Fulham in my youth but had forgotten it. Nice neighbours, I hope?”

“The flat overhead is occupied by a conjurer who beats his wife and the one opposite by a retired doctor. We have a dipsomaniac on the floor beneath, and there's a man and wife with nine children next to that.” Ruby Cheldon laughed. “We're all living beyond our means in Galahad Mansions.” She tried to laugh and failed. “But that can only bore you, Massy, and, after all, nothing matters except Bobbie's future. I haven't slept through a night since he told me about her.”

“I'm glad you called me in,” he said after the manner of a doctor. “But now we'll forget the worst side of it and try to think of the best. I must be off. I have a new chauffeur and he isn't conversant with the shortest route to Broadbridge. Good-bye, Ruby.” He took the extended hand and raised it in a finicky, affected manner to his lips. “You can rely on me once I hear from you the date of the party.”