Death of a Peer (20 page)

“Crikey!” said Alleyn.

“That’s what I thought,” said Fox.

It was in a sort of trance that Roberta offered to spend the rest of an endless night in an unknown house with the apparently insane widow of a murdered peer. Lord Charles had displayed an incisiveness that surprised Roberta. When Charlot said she would go to Brummell Street he had said: “I absolutely forbid it, Immy,” and rather to Roberta’s surprise Charlot had at once given in. Frid offered to go, but not with any great show of enthusiasm, and Charlot looked dubious. So Roberta, wondering whether she spoke out of turn or whether at last here was something she could do for the Lampreys, made her offer. With the exception of Henry they all seemed to be gently relieved. Roberta knew that the Lampreys, persuaded perhaps by dim ideas of pioneering hardihood, were inclined to think of all colonials as less sheltered and more inured to nervous strain than their English contemporaries. They were charmingly grateful and asked if she was sure she wouldn’t mind.

“You won’t see a sign of Aunt V.,” said Frid, and Charlot added: “And you really ought to see the house, Robin. I can’t
tell
you what it is like. All Victorian gloom and glaring stuffed animals.
Too
perfect.”

“I don’t see why Robin should go,” said Henry.

“Robin says she doesn’t mind,” Frid pointed out. “And if Nanny goes she’ll feel as safe as a Crown jewel. Isn’t Robin sweet, Mummy?”

“She’s very kind indeed,” said Charlot. “Honestly, Robin darling, are you
sure
?”

“I’m quite sure if you think I’ll do.”

“It’s just for
somebody
to be there with the nurses. If Violet should by any chance make some sort of scene you can ring us up. But I’m sure she won’t. She needn’t even know you are there.”

And so it was arranged. P. C. Martin, no longer in his armchair, stared fixedly at a portrait of a Victorian Lamprey. Lord Charles went off for his interview with Alleyn. Frid did her face; the twins looked gloomily at old
Punch
es; Charlot, having refused to go to bed until the interviews were over, put her feet up and closed her eyes.

“Every moment,” said Henry, “this room grows more like a dental waiting parlour. Here is a particularly old
Tatler
, Robin. Will you look at it and complete the picture?”

“Thank you, Henry. What are you reading?”

“The Bard. I am reading ‘Macbeth.’ He has a number of very meaty things to say about murder.”

“Do you like the Bard?”

“I suppose I must, as quite often I find myself reading him.”

“On this occasion,” Stephen said. “I call it bad form t-to read ‘Macbeth.’ ”

“‘Night thickens,’ ” said Frid in a professionally deep voice.

“You
would
,” said Colin bitterly.

Roberta turned over the pages of the
Tatler
, unsolaced by studio portraits of ladies looking faintly nauseated and by snapshots of the same or closely similar ladies, looking either partially concussed or madly hilarious. She would have liked to put down the
Tatler
but was prevented from doing so by the circumstance of finding, whenever she looked up, that Henry’s eye was upon her. Strange thoughts visited Roberta. She supposed that many of the ladies in the
Tatler
were personally known to Henry. Perhaps the mysterious Mary was one of them. Perhaps she was long-limbed, with that smooth, expensive look so far beyond the reach of a small, whey-faced colonial. So why, thought Roberta, with murder in the house and nobody being anything but vaguely kind, and with smooth ladies everywhere for Henry, should she be feeling happy? And before she could stop herself she had pictured the smooth ladies gliding away from Henry because he was mixed up in murder while she, Roberta Grey, dawned upon him in her full worth. With these and similar fancies her mind was so busily occupied that she did not notice the passing of the minutes, and when Lord Charles and Nigel Bathgate returned she thought that Alleyn must have kept them a very short time in the dining-room. She roused herself to notice that Lord Charles looked remarkably blank and Mr. Bathgate remarkably uneasy.

“Immy, darling,” said Lord Charles, “why haven’t you gone to bed?”

“If any one else tells me to go to bed,” said Charlot, “knowing full well that my bed is occupied by a mad woman, I shall instantly ask Mr. Martin to arrest them.”

“Well, it won’t be occupied much longer. Alleyn says she may go home and that Robin and Nanny may go with her. He’s sending a policeman too, so you’ll be quite safe, Robin, my dear. The rest of us are—” Lord Charles fumbled for his glass—“are free to go to bed.”

“Except me,” said Frid. “Mr. Alleyn will want to see me. He’s evidently saved me for the last.”

“He didn’t say anything about you.”

“Wait and see,” said Frid, touching her hair.

Fox came in.

“Excuse me, my lady,” Fox said. “Mr. Alleyn has asked me to thank you and his lordship and the other ladies and gentlemen for their patience and courtesy and to say he will not trouble you any further tonight.”

“Make a good exit out of that, if you can,” said Henry unkindly to Frid.
ii

Could it possibly, Robin pondered confusedly, be no longer than forty hours ago that she packed this little suitcase in her cabin? Time, she thought, meant nothing at all when strange things were happening. It was incredible that she had slept only one night in England. The bottom of the suitcase was littered with small objects for which she had not been able to find a place: the final menu card of the ship, with signatures that had already become quite meaningless, snapshots of deck sports, a piece of ship’s notepaper. They belonged to a remote experience but for a fraction of a second Roberta longed for the secure isolation of her cabin and thought of how in the night, sometimes, she would listen contentedly to the sound of the ship’s progress through the lonely ocean. She packed the suitcase, trying to keep her head about the things she would need and wondering how long she would have to stay with the Lampreys’ mad aunt in Brummell Street. There were sounds of activity next door in Charlot’s room and presently Roberta heard the door open. A dragging, clumsy footstep sounded in the passage and the nurse’s voice, professionally soothing: “Now, we shall
soon
be home and tucked up in our own bed. Come along, dear. That’s the way.” Then that deep grating voice: “Leave me alone. Where’s Tinkerton?” And Tinkerton: “Here, m’lady. Come along, m’lady. We’re going home.” Roberta heard them pass and go out to the landing. She had fastened down the lid of her suitcase but was still sitting on the floor when the curtains of her improvised room rattled and, turning quickly, she saw Henry.

He wore a great-coat and scarf and in his hands he held a small heap of clothes.

“Oh, Robin,” Henry said, “I’m coming to Brummell Street instead of Nanny. Do you mind?”

“Henry! I don’t mind at all. I’m terribly glad.”

“Then that’s all right. I asked Alleyn. He seems to think it’s in order. I’ll just pack these things and then we’ll get a taxi and go. Mama has rung up Brummell Street and told the servants. Tinkerton has told Aunt V.”

“What did she say?”

“I don’t think she was particularly ravished at the thought. Patch is having nightmares and Nanny isn’t coming.”

“I see.”

Henry looked gravely at Roberta and then smiled. There was a quality in Henry’s smile that had always touched Roberta and endeared him to her. He made a comic family grimace, winked, and laid his finger against his nose. Roberta made the same grimace and Henry withdrew. With an illogical singing in her heart she put on her own overcoat and hat and took her suitcase out into the passage to wait for Henry. This time last night they had been dancing together.

It was not very pleasant crossing the landing where a policeman stood on guard by the dark lift but Henry lightened the situation by saying; “We’re not fleeing from justice, officer.”

“That’s quite all right, sir,” answered the policeman. “The Chief Inspector told us all about you.”

“Good night,” said Henry, piloting Roberta down the stairs.

“Good night, sir,” said the policeman and his voice rang hollow in the lift well.

Roberta remembered her last trip down the stairs when she went to fetch Giggle and Tinkerton and how like a nightmare it had seemed. Now the stairs seemed a way of escape. It was glorious to reach the ground floor and see the lights of traffic through the glass doors. It was splendid when the doors were opened to breathe the night air of London. Henry took her elbow and they moved forward into a blinding whiteness that flashed and was gone. A young man came up to Henry and with a queer air of hardened deference said: “Lord Rune? I wonder if you would mind?”

“I’m afraid I would, do you know,” said Henry. “Taxi!”

A cruising taxi drew up at once but before they could get in there was another flash and this time Roberta saw the camera.

Henry bundled her in and slammed the doors, keeping his face turned from the window. “Damn!” he said. “I’d forgotten about Nigel’s low friends.” And he yelled the address through to the driver.

“Lord Rune,” said Roberta’s thoughts. “Henry is Lord Rune. The Earl of Rune. Press-men lie in wait for him with cameras. Everything is very odd.”

She was awakened by Henry giving her a little pat on the back. “Aren’t you the clever one?” he said.

“Am I?” asked Roberta. “How?”

“Tipping us the wink about what you’d told Alleyn.”

“Do you think that policeman noticed?”

“Not he. You know I didn’t exactly enjoy lying to Alleyn.”

“I hated it. And, Henry, I don’t think he believes it — about your Uncle G. promising the money.”

“ ’More do I. Oh well, we could but try.” He put his arm round Roberta. “Brave old Robin Grey,” said Henry. “Going into the witch’s den. What have we done to deserve you?”

“Nothing,” said Robin with spirit. “Without the word of a lie you’re a hopeless crew.”

“Do you remember a conversation we had years ago on the slope of Little Mount Silver?”

“Yes.”

“So do I. And here I am still without a job. I daresay it would have been a good thing if Uncle G. had lived to chortle at our bankruptcy. It would take a major disaster to cure us. Perhaps when the war comes it will do the trick. Kill, as they say, or cure.”

“I expect you’ll manage to slope through a war in the same old way. But don’t you call this a major disaster?”

“I suppose so. But you know, Robin, somehow or another, although I feel very bothered and frightened, I don’t, inside myself, think that any of us are bound for the dock.”

“Oh
don’t
. How
can
you gossip away about it!”

“It’s not affectation. I ought to be in a panic but I’m not. Not really.”

The taxi carried them into Hyde Park Corner. Roberta looked up through the window and saw the four heroic horses snorting soundlessly against a night sky, grandiloquently unaware of the less florid postures of some bronze artillerymen down below.

“We shan’t be long now,” said Henry. “I can’t tell you how frightful this house is. Uncle G.’s idea of the amenities was a mixture of elephantine ornament and incredible hardship. The servants are not allowed to use electricity once the gentry are in bed so they creep about by candlelight. It’s true, I promise you. The house was done up by my grandfather on the occasion of his marriage and since then has merely amassed a continuous stream of hideous
objets d’art
.”

“I read somewhere that Victorian things are fashionable again.”

“So they are, but with a difference. And anyway I think it’s a stupid fashion. Sometimes,” said Henry, “I wonder if there is such a thing as beauty.”

“Isn’t it supposed to exist only in the eye of the beholder?”

“I won’t take that. There are eyes and eyes. Fashion addles any true conception of beauty. There’s something inherently vulgar in fashion.”

“And yet,” said Roberta, “if Frid dressed herself up like a belle of 1929 you wouldn’t much care to be seen with her.”

“She’d only be putting her fashion back eleven years.”

“Well, what do you want? Nudism? Or bags tied round the middle?”

“You are unanswerable,” said Henry. “All the same…” and he expounded his ideas of fashion, giving Roberta cause to marvel at his detachment.

The taxi bucketed along Park Lane and presently turned into a decorous side-street where the noise of London was muffled and the rows of great, uniform houses seemed fast asleep.

“Here we are,” Henry said. “I
think
I’ve enough to pay the taxi. How much is it? Ah yes, I can just do it
with
the tip. So that’s all hotsy-totsy. Come on.”

As Henry rang the front doorbell, Roberta heard a clock chime and strike a single great note.

“One o’clock,” she said. “Where is it striking?”

“I expect it was Big Ben. You hear him all over the place at night-time.”

“I’ve only heard him on the air before.”

“You’re in London now.”

“I know. I keep saying so to myself.”

“It’s a damn shame you should be landed in our particular soup. Here comes somebody.”

The great door swung inwards. With the feeling that an ominous fairy tale was unfolding, Roberta saw a very old woman dressed in black satin and carrying a lighted candle in a silver candlestick. She stood against a dim background of stuffed bears, marble groups, gigantic pictures and a wide staircase that ascended into blackness. Henry said: “Good morning, Moffatt,” to this woman and added, “I expect Tinkerton has explained that Miss Grey and I have come to stay with her ladyship.” The woman answered: “Yes, Mr. Henry. Yes, my lord.” And like all the portresses of elfland she added: “You are expected.”

They followed her, crossing a deep carpet and ascending the stairs. They climbed two flights up to a muffled landing. The air was both cold and stuffy. Moffatt whispered an apology for her candle. A detective had arrived and insisted that the light should not be turned off at the switchboard but at least they could keep his poor lordship’s rule and not go using the lights before, as Moffatt said with relish, he was scarcely cold. Great shadows marched and stooped across unseen walls as Moffatt walked ahead with her candle. There was no sound but the stealthy whisper of her satin hem. Sometimes, as she held the candle before her, she was a black figure with a golden rim, but sometimes she turned to light them, and then her shadow sprang up beyond her. They came at last to a doorway which Moffatt opened. With a murmured apology she went in before them. Roberta, pausing on the threshold, saw a dim reflection of Moffatt in a dark looking-glass. Branched candlesticks stood on an immense dressing-table. Moffatt lit the candles and looked at Roberta, who on this hint entered her new bedroom. Henry followed.