Final Curtain (38 page)

‘That explanation doesn't quite cover the discovery of a tin of rat-bane in her suitcase, does it?'

‘Then there must be some other explanation.'

‘The only one that occurs to me,' Alleyn said, ‘is that the tin was deliberately planted, and if you accept that you accept something equally serious: an attempt to place suspicion of murder upon an innocent person. That in itself constitutes—'

‘No, no,' she cried out. ‘No, you don't understand the Ancreds. They plunge into fantasies of their own making, without thinking of the consequences. This wretched tin must have been put in the suitcase by a maid or have got there by some other freakish accident. It may have been in the attic for years. None of their alarms ever means anything. Mr Alleyn, may I implore you to dismiss the whole thing as nonsense? Dangerous and idiotic nonsense, but, believe me, utter nonsense.'

She had leant forward, and her hands were pressed together. There was a vehemence and an intensity in her manner that had not appeared before.

‘If it's nonsense,' he said, ‘it's malevolent nonsense.'

‘Stupid,' she insisted, ‘spiteful, too, perhaps, but only childishly so.'

‘I shall be very glad if it turns out to be no more.'

‘Yes, but you don't think it will.'

‘I'm wide open to conviction,' he said lightly.

‘If I could convince you!'

‘You can at least help by filling in some of the gaps. For instance, can you tell me anything about the party in the drawing-room when you all returned from the little theatre? What happened?'

Instead of answering him directly she said, with a return to her earlier manner, ‘Please forgive me for being so insistent. It's silly to try and ram one's convictions down other people's throats. They merely feel that one protests too much. But, you see, I know my Ancreds.'

‘And I'm learning mine. About the aftermath of the Birthday Party?'

‘Well, two of our visitors, the rector and a local squire, said goodnight in the hall. Very thankfully, poor darlings, I'm sure. Miss Orrincourt had already gone up. Mrs Alleyn had stayed behind in the theatre with Paul and Fenella. The rest of us went into the drawing-room and there the usual family arguments started, this time on the subject of that abominable disfigurement of the portrait. Paul and Fenella came in and told us that no damage had been done. Naturally, they were very angry. I may tell you that my daughter, who has not quite grown out of the hero-worship state-of-affairs, admires your wife enormously. These two children planned what they fondly imagined to be a piece of detective work. Did Mrs Alleyn tell you?'

Troy had told Alleyn, but he listened again to the tale of the paintbrush and finger-prints. She dwelt at some length on this, inviting his laughter, making, he thought, a little too much of a slight incident. When he asked her for further details of the discussion in the drawing-room she became vague. They had talked about Sir Henry's fury, about his indiscretions at dinner.

Mr Rattisbon had been sent for by Sir Henry. ‘It was just one more of the interminable emotional parties,' she said. ‘Everyone, except Cedric and Milly, terrifically hurt and grand because of the Will he told us about at dinner.'

‘Every one? Your daughter and Mr Paul Ancred too?'

She said much too lightly: ‘My poor Fen does go in a little for the Ancred temperament, but not, I'm glad to say, to excess. Paul, thank goodness, seems to have escaped it, which is such a very good thing, as it appears he's to be my son-in-law.'

‘Would you say that during this discussion any of them displayed singular vindictiveness against Miss Orrincourt?'

‘They were all perfectly livid about her. Except Cedric. But they're lividly angry with somebody or another a dozen times a month. It means nothing.'

‘Mrs Ancred,' Alleyn said, ‘if you've been suddenly done out of a very pretty fortune your anger isn't altogether meaningless. You yourself must surely have resented a little your daughter's position.'

‘No,' she said quickly. ‘I knew, as soon as she told me of her engagement to Paul, that her grandfather would disapprove. Marriage between cousins was one of his bugbears. I knew he'd take it out of them both. He was a vindictive old man. And Fen hadn't bothered to hide her dislike of Miss Orrincourt. She'd said…' She stopped short. He saw her hands move convulsively.

‘Yes?'

‘She was perfectly frank. The association offended her taste. That was all.'

‘What are her views of all this business—the letters and so on?'

‘She agrees with me.'

‘That the whole story is simply a flight of fancy on the part of the more imaginative members of the family?'

‘Yes.'

‘I should like to see her if I may?'

The silence that fell between them was momentary, a brief check in the even flow of their voices, but he found it illuminating. It was as if she winced from an expected hurt, and poised herself to counter it. She leant forward, and with an air of great frankness made a direct appeal.

‘Mr Alleyn,' she said, ‘I'm going to ask a favour. Please let Fenella off. She's highly strung and sensitive. Really sensitive. It's not the rather bogus Ancred sensibility. All the unhappy wrangling over her engagement and the shock of her grandfather's death and then—this horrid and really dreadful business: it's fussed her rather badly. She overheard me speaking to you when you rang up for this talk and even that upset her. I've sent them both out. Please, will you be very understanding and let her off?'

He hesitated, wondering how to frame his refusal, and if her anxiety was based on some much graver reason than the one she gave him.

‘Believe me,' she said, ‘Fenella can be of no help to you.'

Before he could reply Fenella herself walked in, followed by Paul. ‘I'm sorry, Mummy,' she said rapidly and in a high voice. ‘I know you didn't want me to come. I had to. There's something Mr Alleyn doesn't know, and I've got to tell him.'

A
FTERWARDS, WHEN HE
told Troy about Fenella's entrance, Alleyn said the thing that struck him most at the time was Jenetta Ancred's command of
savoir-faire
. Obviously this was a development she had not foreseen and one which filled her with dismay. Yet her quiet assurance never wavered, nor did she neglect the tinge of irony that was implicit in her good manners.

She said: ‘Darling, how dramatic and alarming. This is my girl, Fenella, Mr Alleyn. And this is my nephew, Paul Ancred.'

‘I'm sorry to burst in,' said Fenella. ‘How do you do? Please may we talk to you?' She held out her hand.

‘
Not
just at this moment,' said her mother. ‘Mr Alleyn and I really are rather busy. Do you mind, darling?'

Fenella's grip on his hand had been urgent and nervous. She had whispered: ‘Please.' Alleyn said: ‘May we just hear what this is about, Mrs Ancred?'

‘Mummy, it's important. Really.'

‘Paul,' said her mother, ‘can't you manage this firebrand of yours?'

‘I think it's important too, Aunt Jen.'

‘My dearest children, I honestly don't think you know—'

‘But Aunt Jen, we do. We've talked it over quite cold-bloodedly. We know that what we've got to say may bring a lot of publicity and scandal on the family,' said Paul with something very like relish. ‘We don't enjoy the prospect, but we think any other course would be dishonest.'

‘We accept the protection of the law,' said Fenella rather loudly. ‘It'd be illogical and dishonest to try and circumvent justice to save the family face. We know we're up against something pretty horrible. We accept the responsibility, don't we, Paul?'

‘Yes,' said Paul. ‘We don't like it, but we do it.'

‘Oh,' Jenetta cried out vehemently, ‘for pity's sake don't be so heroic! Ancreds, Ancreds, both of you!'

‘Mummy, we're
not
. You don't even know what we're going to say. This isn't a matter of theatre; it's a matter of principle, and, if you like, of sacrifice.'

‘And you both see yourselves being sacrificial and high-principled. Mr Alleyn,' Jenetta said, and it was as if she added: ‘After all, we speak the same language, you and I. I do most earnestly beg you to take whatever these ridiculous children have to say with a colossal pinch of salt.'

‘Mummy, it's important.'

‘Then,' said Alleyn, ‘let's have it.'

She gave in, as he had expected, lightly and with grace. ‘Well, then, if we must be instructed…Do at least sit down, both of you, and let poor Mr Alleyn sit down too.'

Fenella obeyed, with the charm of movement that was characteristic of all the female Ancreds. She was, as Troy had told him, a vivid girl. Her mother's spareness was joined in Fenella with the spectacular Ancred beauty and lent it delicacy. ‘Nevertheless,' Alleyn thought, ‘she can make an entrance with the best of them.'

‘Paul and I,' she began at once, speaking very rapidly, ‘have talked and talked about it. Ever since those letters came. We said at first that we wouldn't have anything to do with it. We thought people who wrote that kind of letter were beyond everything, and it made us feel perfectly beastly to think there was any one in the house who could do such a thing. We were absolutely certain that what the letter said was an odious, malicious lie.'

‘Which is precisely,' her mother said without emphasis, ‘what I have been telling Mr Alleyn. I really do think, darling—'

‘Yes, but that's not all,' Fenella interrupted vehemently. ‘You can't just shrug your shoulders and say it's horrid. If you don't mind my saying so, Mummy dear, that's your generation all over. It's muddled thinking. In its way it's the kind of attitude that leads to wars. That's what Paul and I think anyway. Don't we, Paul?'

Paul, with a red determined face, said: ‘What Fen means, I think, Aunt Jenetta, is that one can't just say “Jolly bad form and all ballyhoo,” and let it go at that. Because of the implications. If Sonia Orrincourt didn't poison Grandfather, there's somebody in the house who's trying to get her hanged for something she didn't do, and that's as much as to say there's somebody in the house who's as good as a murderer.' He turned to Alleyn: ‘Isn't that right, sir?'

‘Not necessarily right,' Alleyn said. ‘A false accusation may be made in good faith.'

‘Not,' Fenella objected, ‘by the kind of person who writes anonymous letters. And anyway, even if it was in good faith, we know it's a false accusation, and the realistic thing to do is to say so and, and…' She stumbled, shook her head angrily and ended with childish lameness, ‘and jolly well make them admit it and pay the penalty.'

‘Let's take things in their order?' Alleyn suggested. ‘You say you know the suggestion made in the letters is untrue. How do you know this?'

Fenella glanced at Paul with an air of achievement and then turned to Alleyn and eagerly poured out her story.

‘It was that evening when she and Mrs Alleyn drove down to the chemist's and brought back the children's medicine. Cedric and Paul and Aunt Pauline were dining out, I'd got a cold and cried off. I'd been doing the drawing-room flowers for Aunt Milly and I was tidying up in a sink-room where the vases are kept. It's down some steps off the passage from the hall to the library. Grandfather had had some orchids sent for Sonia and she came to get them. I must say she looked lovely. Sort of sparkling, with furs pulled up round her face. She swept in and asked in that ghastly voice for what she called her bokay, and when she saw it was a spray of absolutely heavenly orchids she said: “Quite small, isn't it? Not reely much like flowers, are they?” Everything she'd done and everything she meant at Ancreton seemed to sort of ooze out of her and everything I felt about her suddenly boiled over in me. I'd got a cold and was feeling pretty ghastly, anyway. I absolutely blazed. I said some pretty frightful things about even a common little gold-digger having the decency to be grateful. I said I thought her presence in the house was an insult to all of us, and I supposed that when she'd bamboozled Grandfather into marrying her she'd amuse herself with her frightful boy-friends until he was obliging enough to die and leave her his money. Yes, Mummy, I know it was awful, but it just
steamed
out of me and I couldn't stop it.'

‘Oh, my poor Fen!' Jenetta Ancred murmured.

‘It's the way she took it that's important,' Fenella continued, still gazing at Alleyn. ‘I must admit she took it pretty well. She said, quite calmly, that it was all very fine for me to talk, but I didn't know what it was like to be on my beam-ends with no chance of getting anywhere in my job. She said she knew she wasn't any good for the stage except as a showgirl, and that didn't last long. I can remember the actual words she used. Fifth-rate theatrical slang. She said: “I know what you all think. You think I'm playing Noddy up for what I can get out of him. You think that when we're married I'll begin to work in some of the funny business. Look, I've had all that, and I reckon I'll be as good a judge as anybody of what's due to my position.” And then she said she'd always thought she was the Cinderella type. She said she didn't expect me to understand what a kick she'd get out of being Lady Ancred. She was extraordinarily frank and completely childish about it. She told me she used to lie in bed imagining how she'd give her name and address to people in shops, and what it would sound like when they called her m'lady. “Gee,” she said, “will that sound good! Boy, oh boy!” I really think she'd almost forgotten I was there, and the queer thing is that I didn't feel angry with her any longer. She asked me all sorts of questions about precedence; about whether at a dinner-party she'd go in before Lady Baumstein. Benny Baumstein is the frightful little man who owns the Sunshine Circuit shows. She was in one of his No. 3 companies. When I said she would, she said “Yip-ee” like a cow-girl. It was frightful, of course, but it was so completely real that in a way I respected it. She actually said she knew what she called her “accent” wasn't so hot, but she was going to ask “Noddy” to teach her to speak more refined.' Fenella looked from her mother to Paul and shook her head helplessly. ‘It was no good,' she said, ‘I just succumbed. It was awful, and it was funny, and most of all it was somehow genuinely pathetic.' She turned back to Alleyn: ‘I don't know if you can believe that,' she said.