Dancers in Mourning (5 page)

‘Corny old stuff,' said Mercer. He seemed a little irritated.

‘No, you're to listen.' Chloe was insistent. Over the piano's broad back they could see her looking up into his face while she played the song execrably, separating the chords and lingering sickeningly on each sentimental harmony.

She went right through the tune, playing the verse as well as the chorus. Mercer seemed to have resigned himself, but when she had finished he edged her gently off the seat and went back to his little half-born melody.

Miss Pye walked over to Sock and perched herself on the arm of his chair. She was still angry with Campion and Uncle William, it seemed, for she ignored them pointedly. Sock pulled her down on to his knee.

‘What a nasty little girl,' he said, managing to convey that he was a man of experience, that she was a nuisance, and that while he knew perfectly well that she could give him at least ten years she was a pretty little female thing and he forgave her. ‘So precipitate,' he continued. ‘You met us all for the first time last night and now here you are crawling all over us in a bathing suit.'

Miss Pye got out of his arms and settled herself on the edge of the chair again.

‘You're rude,' she said. ‘Jimmy and I are old friends anyway, and I met you once at the theatre.'

‘That's no excuse.' Sock was only partially playful so that the scene was not without its embarrassment. ‘That is Mr Mercer, the composer, you've been talking to over there. He's a bachelor and a misogynist. He saw you for the first time late last night. If you work too fast you'll give him blood pressure.'

Chloe laughed. She was childishly excited.

‘Squire, shall I?'

‘What? Sorry, I wasn't listening.'

‘Shall I give you blood pressure?'

Mercer blushed. His dark face looked odd suffused with sudden colour.

‘I don't think so,' he said carelessly and began to play loudly, making an interesting addition to the tune at last. This development seemed to absorb him and came as a blessed relief to everyone else in the room.

Miss Pye became dignified with a lightning change of mood which comforted Uncle William, who had been watching her with growing dismay. She left Sock and walked across to the window with conscious grace.

‘Jimmy has quite a charming estate, hasn't he?' she remarked. ‘I do think surroundings have a definite effect upon one. He's losing all his old
joie de vivre
. Here comes Mrs Sutane. Poor woman, she's not used to you all yet, even now, is she? How long have they been married? Seven years? I like her. Such an unassuming soul.'

Footsteps sounded on the path, and Mr Campion rose to his feet to meet his hostess and the only woman of whom Chloe Pye had ever publicly approved. He never forgot the moments. Long afterwards he remembered the texture of the arm of the chair as he put his hand upon it to pull himself up, the formation of the fat cumulus clouds in the half-oval of the window, and a purely imaginary, probably incorrect vision of himself, long and awkward, stepping forward with a foolish smile on his face.

At that point his memories of the day and the chaotic weeks which followed it became unreliable, because he never permitted himself to think about them, but he remembered the instant when Mrs Sutane came into the living-room at White Walls because it was then that he gave up his customary position as an observer in the field and stepped over the low wall of the impersonal into the maelstrom itself and was caught up and exalted and hurt by it.

Linda Sutane came in slowly and as though she was a little shy. She was a small gold girl trimmed with brown, not very beautiful and not a vivid personality, but young and gentle and, above all, genuine. With her coming the world slipped back into its normal focus, at least for Mr Campion, who was becoming a little dizzy from close contact with so many violent individualists.

She welcomed him formally in a comforting voice, and apologised because lunch was going to be late.

‘They're still so busy,' she said. ‘We daren't disturb them. Besides, no one can get into the dining-room. There's a piano across the door.'

Sock Petrie sighed.

‘I am afraid we all disorganise your house, Mrs Sutane,' he said.

He spoke with genuine regret and it was the first intimation Mr Campion had of the curious relationship between Linda Sutane and the brilliant company which surrounded her husband. It was a perfectly amicable arrangement based on deep respect on both sides, but kept apart by something as vital and unsurmountable as a difference in species.

‘Oh, but I like it,' she said, and might have added that she was profoundly used to it.

She sat down near Campion and bent forward to speak to him.

‘You've come to see about all the trouble?' she said. ‘It's very kind of you. I hope you won't decide that we're all neurotic, but little things do get round one's feet so. If they were only big obvious catastrophes one could get hold of them. Sock showed you the paragraphs? Don't mention them to Jimmy. It makes him so angry and we can't do anything until the newspaper people get back to their offices.'

Chloe cut into the conversation.

‘Don't say you're going to start in on it all over again?' she said plaintively. ‘Ever since I've come to this damned house I've heard nothing but “persecution”, “practical jokes”, “someone's making fun of Jimmy”. Don't you let it get you down, my dear. Actors are like that. They always think someone's after their blood.'

Mr Campion looked up into her face, which was so distressingly raddled on that strong, trim body, and controlled a sudden vicious desire to slap it. The impulse startled him considerably. Linda Sutane smiled.

‘I think you're probably right,' she said. ‘Mr Campion, come and see my flower garden.'

She led him out on to the terrace and into a formal old English garden, walled with square-cut yews, and ablaze with violas and sweet-scented peonies.

‘I ought not to have forgotten she was there,' she said as they walked over the turf together. ‘Naturally she doesn't find it interesting, but someone must tell you all about it or you'll be wasting your time. This is a very difficult house to get anything done in in the ordinary way, but just now, while they're all at work on this
Swing Over
show, it's worse than usual. You see
The Buffer
has been such a great success that Jimmy and Slippers are anxious not to leave it. They were under contract to do
Swing Over
, though, and finally they came to an agreement with the Meyers brothers whereby Jimmy produces it and goes in on the business side, and in return they let him out personally. Unfortunately negotiations took such a long time that they're late with production. They've got the principals here now, rehearsing. That's why Jimmy couldn't see you at once. They had to work in the hall because of the stairs. Ours are particularly good for some reason or another. Jimmy had them copied for
Cotton Fields
last year. I think you ought to know all this,' she added breathlessly, ‘otherwise it's very confusing and you might think us all mad.'

He nodded gravely and wondered how old she was and what her life had been before she married.

‘It makes it clearer,' he agreed. ‘What do you think about the business – the trouble, I mean? It hasn't actually touched you personally, has it?'

She seemed a little surprised.

‘Well, I've
been
here,' she said dryly. ‘We may have imagined most of it. We may have thought all the odds and ends of things were related when they weren't. But a great many irritating things have happened. There are people in the garden at night, too.'

Campion glanced at her sharply. She had spoken casually and there was no suggestion of hysteria in her manner. She met his eyes and laughed suddenly.

‘It's ridiculous, isn't it?' she said. ‘I know. I've been wondering if I live too much alone or if the hypersensitiveness of the stage is catching. But I assure you there are people in this garden after dark. Plants are trampled in the morning and there are footmarks under the lower windows. The servants get unsettled and I've heard whispers and giggles in the shrubs myself. You see, in the old days when my uncle was alive – I used to come and stay with him sometimes – the village policeman would have been warned and he would have watched the place, but we can't do that sort of thing now. When a man's name is part of his assets he can't afford to do the simplest thing without taking the risk that it will be seized on, twisted and made into an amusing story, so we just have to sit still and hope it all isn't true. That's not fun with Jimmy in his present nervy state. He's beginning to feel it's a sort of doom hanging over him.'

She spoke wistfully and Campion looked away from her.

‘It's all rather indefinite, isn't it?' he said severely. ‘Mercer tells me Sutane has no enemies.'

She considered. ‘I think that's true, but Mercer wouldn't know if he had. Mercer's a genius.'

‘Are geniuses unobservant?'

‘No, but they're spoilt. Mercer has never had to think about anything except his work and now I don't think he's capable of trying to. You don't know everybody yet. When you do you'll find you know them all much better than they know you.'

‘How do you mean?' Mr Campion was startled.

‘Well, they're all performers, aren't they? All mild exhibitionists. They're so busy putting themselves over that they haven't time to think about anyone else. It's not that they don't like other people; they just never have a moment to consider them.'

She paused and looked at him dubiously.

‘I don't know if you're quite the man to help us,' she said unexpectedly.

‘Why?' Mr Campion did his best not to sound irritated.

‘You're intelligent rather than experienced.'

‘What exactly do you mean by that?' Campion was surprised to find himself so annoyed.

Linda looked uncomfortable.

‘I don't mean to be rude,' she said. ‘But there are roughly two sorts of informed people, aren't there? People who start off right by observing the pitfalls and the mistakes and going round them, and the people who fall into them and get out and know they're there because of that. They both come to the same conclusions but they don't have quite the same point of view. You've watched all kinds of things but you haven't done them, and that's why you'll find this crowd so unsympathetic.'

Mr Campion regarded the small person at his side with astonishment. She returned his glance timidly.

‘It's all very upsetting,' she said. ‘It makes one rude and unnecessarily forthright. It frightens me though, you see. Do help us out if you can and forgive me.'

Her voice was quiet and had the peculiar quality of capitulation. Mr Campion nearly kissed her.

He came so near it that his common sense and natural diffidence combined, as it were, to jerk him back with an almost physical force only just in time. He stared at her, frankly appalled by the insane impulse. He saw her dispassionately for a moment, a little yellow and brown girl with a wide mouth and gold flecks in her eyes. All the same it occurred to him forcefully that it would be wise if he went back to London and forgot the Sutanes, and so he would have done, of course, had it not been for the murder.

C
HLOE
P
YE
tied a long red silk skirt and a kerchief over her bathing dress in honour of lunch, which was served with obstinate ceremony on the part of the servants at a quarter to four.

The two visiting stars had departed with apologies, already two hours late for other appointments, and Ned Dieudonne, Sutane's invaluable accompanist, had been given a drink and a sandwich and bundled off to return the borrowed score to Prettyman, in Hampstead, who was doing the orchestrations.

The rest of the party ate hungrily. Apart from those he had already met, Campion noticed only two newcomers at the table; the young man with the golden curls whom he had last seen fighting with the doorkeeper over a silver-plated bicycle, and the incomparable Slippers Bellew.

Slippers was a nice girl. As soon as he saw her Campion understood Uncle William's regret. In her short white practice dress, her warm yellow hair knotted high on the top of her head, she was about as alluring as any nice healthy child of twelve. She, Sutane, and the golden-haired boy, who turned out to be Benny Konrad, Sutane's understudy and the young man in the ‘Little White Petticoats' number in
The Buffer
, ate rather different food from the rest of the gathering and drank a great deal of milk.

Sock Petrie did most of the talking, skilfully keeping Chloe Pye occupied so that her attention was diverted from Mercer, whom she was inclined to tease.

Campion sat next to Sutane who talked to him eagerly, his thin mobile face reflecting every change of mood and lending every phrase an emphasis quite out of keeping with its importance.

‘We'll snatch half an hour after this,' he said. ‘I've got Dick coming down at half past four with a fellow I've got to meet. The chap wants to put some money into
Swing Over
, so we mustn't discourage him, bless his heart. Has Linda told you about the trouble down here?'

He used his hands as he talked and Campion was reminded again of the dynamo simile. The nervous force the man exuded was overpowering.

‘I heard about the people in the garden at night, but that might be just inquisitive villagers, don't you think? You're an exciting household, you know, to a quiet country community.'

‘It might be so.' Sutane glanced out of the window, his eyes, which seemed to be nearly all pupil, dark and resentful. ‘We're too near London,' he declared suddenly. ‘It's convenient, but there's a suburban note about the place. No one seems to realise we have work to do.'

He paused.