Landed Gently (11 page)

‘It’s a superior method?’ hazarded Gently.

‘Not on your life – just slower and more
back-aching
. But all through the centuries the Gobelins factory was turning out class tapestry on high-warps, and a sort of legend has grown round this type of loom. So when Brass sets up, blast his feeble-mindedness, he has to have a high-warp to satisfy his ego …’

Energetically the artist whipped off the dust-sheet. The high-warp loom, simple, massive, was provided for a far larger web than the horizontal machines with their treadles. And such a web was spread across it, awesome in its complexity, an irregular third of it woven in and beginning to be taken up on the lower roller. Here was obviously something different from anything they had seen before. The weaving was so
infinitely fine and close, the colours so subtly
graduated
, that one had to look at it closely to establish that it was a shuttle and not a brush that had achieved such effects.

‘Recognize it?’

Brass was quizzing Gently in his sardonic way.

‘There’s something vaguely familiar …’

‘It’s Rubens’
Rape
, my son, done in the best Gobelins style. I made the cartoon a year ago, and that’s how far I’ve got, working off and on.’

‘You mean that’s taken you a year?’

‘With my other jobs – designing, dyeing,
overlooking
and what have you.’

‘And when will it be finished?’

‘In eighteen months, perhaps … It makes you think, doesn’t it? On an economic basis I should have to ask at least a couple of thou for it, and that’s mere sweated labour.’

They stood together silently looking at it, glorious but monstrous in its witness of unbelievable effort. Only a Brass could have set his hand to such a crushing burden of labour, only a man galvanized with
prodigious
and unquenchable self-confidence! ‘And do you think it’s worth it?’

‘Of course not, you bloody bourgeois.’

‘At the best, it’s only a copy …’

‘You don’t know the worst, sonny. In twenty years four hundred of the tints I’m using there will have faded or darkened. I give that piece ten years after I take it down.’

‘Then what’s the object in doing it?’

Brass shrugged his shoulders. ‘Christ, a man has got his ego. There’s nobody else in this country can do a job like that, probably nobody else in the world. How do you think I prove I’m boss around here?’

Gently shook his head. ‘It’s as good a way as any … I daresay Somerhayes is duly impressed.’

‘Somerhayes!’ Brass chuckled. ‘Didn’t he call you to a session last night? I could see it coming off from the moment he clapped eyes on you.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Why, you’re his natural soul-mate. Our lordship just yearns for some Tiresias or Christ-type to pour out his sorrows to. I’m no bloody good – he knows I’d laugh my head off. But you, well you’re born to it, with that father-confessor look of yours. How far am I wrong? Go on – you tell me.’

Gently put a match to his pipe, which was as cold as the prevailing climate. ‘And you fancy him?’ he said. ‘You fancy him for a suspect?’

Brass was pulled up in a moment. His expression changed completely. ‘Enough!’ he replied severely. ‘Enough, Mr Chief Inspector. I’m still eating his salt, and I’m not prepared to discuss business. The most I’d say about his lordship is that he’s as barmy as a coot … Now if you’ll just come through here, I’ll show you how a craftsman dyes his wool.’ 

G
ENTLY LEFT BRASS
amongst his vats and turned his steps towards the north-east wing again. The omnipresent chill seemed to be eating into his bones, and he yearned to straddle before a really scorching fire. A grave of a house. Had it ever been warmed? Would the crater of Etna suffice to make habitable its dead and frozen beauty? Even its brilliant architect had admitted the futility of trying to live in it, had tucked the inhabitants away in possible but inconvenient annexes …

Coming back to the great hall, he hesitated, and then mounted the marble stairs and pushed his way through the portal into the saloon. Here, if Johnson was to be believed, an argument had taken place … but arguments, alas, rarely left visible traces. The carpet was down, certainly, and given a particular set of
circumstances
, some marks here near the door might have told a suggestive story. But the circumstances did not obtain. Numerous feet had passed through the door
since early Christmas morning. And in real life at all events, people did not drop initialled handkerchieves at convenient spots, or otherwise make easy the lives of half-frozen policemen …

He shook his head and moved to go firewards once more, but as he turned he became aware of a figure that had suddenly and silently materialized in the portal behind him. It was Mrs Page. Her face was blanched and her eyes staring horribly. And as they stood facing each other she gave a queer little moan, and began slowly to slide down the side of the marble doorway.

‘I’m all right … Just give me a minute.’

Gently had caught her before she fell, and now she lay a dead weight in his arms, the lids fluttering convulsively over her closed eyes.

‘I came to find you … It’s stupid … I didn’t expect to see you there.’

The breath was coming quickly, turning to vapour in the nipping air.

‘You see, Henry says you’re the one … you’re the one it’s going to be …’

Gently made a move to carry her to a convenient chair, but she clutched his arm violently, and by a tremendous effort managed to brace her limp body. Her eyes flickered open, the pupils large and wild. Something like a ghastly smile twitched at her lips.

‘I’ll be all right … really.’

‘Shall I call your maid, Mrs Page?’

‘No … just hang on … This is really too silly.’

‘Can I get you something – some brandy, perhaps?’

She signalled a feeble negative. ‘I’ve got some … back in my wing.’

For perhaps a minute she continued quite still, struggling to regain control of herself. Then a degree of strength seemed to surge back into her limbs, and she gently released herself from the arms that supported her.

‘Help me back to the wing, will you? … I think I can manage to walk.’

‘Don’t you think you should sit down for a little?’

‘No … help me back to my wing.’

She was inflexibly determined, so he tucked her arm under his and guided her slowly through the dreary labyrinth to the north-west wing. Here, in a small, very-feminine room, a fire was burning and a sniffling maid going round the ornaments with a feather-duster. Mrs Page allowed herself to be seated in a chair by the fire.

‘All right, Dorothy … you may leave the dusting now.’

‘I hadn’t really finished ’em, mum—’

‘Never mind. That will do for this morning.’

The maid disappeared, still sniffling, and Gently located a brandy-decanter in a cabinet in the corner of the room. He poured a stiff glassful. Mrs Page drank it eagerly.

‘You must forgive me for making such an exhibition, Inspector … Honestly, I don’t do these things as a rule.’

Gently hunched an ulstered shoulder. ‘You said you were looking for me?’

She nodded without meeting his eyes. ‘Yes, I was … I’ve been talking to my cousin. And then, seeing you there like that—’ She gave an involuntary shudder. ‘It just seemed as though you must know it all anyway – I can’t help it – it seemed uncanny.’

Gently found himself a chair to his liking and reversed it so that he could lean on the back. The brandy had brought colour back into Mrs Page’s cheeks, but not quite the composure to her manner.

‘And your cousin was saying about me …’

‘Oh – he says you’ll be the one who’ll understand this affair … He doesn’t think Sir Daynes has enough imagination.’

‘Do you know what he meant?’

‘No … except that he said he’d given you a background.’

‘He’s given me a background of some sort!’ Gently brooded over his chair-back. ‘My imagination must be getting rusty … it isn’t jumping to things like it used to. And he advised you to come clean?’

‘He … You know about it, then?’

Gently shook his head. ‘I can’t help intelligent guessing.’

‘He advised me … I would have to have told someone … He advised me to come to you.’

She had been lying, of course, when she was faced with Johnson’s statement. At the moment she had panicked,
and it had seemed the only thing to do. The circumstance was damnable. Who would believe, if once she admitted having been on the landing with him, that she had had nothing to do with the subsequent event? And it was Johnson’s word against hers – or rather, the implication of Johnson’s evidence against her direct assertion: why should she not lie to avert from herself an unwarranted suspicion?

‘You must not think too hardly of me, Inspector. I would have come out with it then and there if I thought it would serve a useful purpose. But all it explained was why Earle was on the landing, and I knew it wasn’t important, though you might have thought it was.’

Gently nodded pontifically. ‘I can appreciate your feelings, of course … but you really shouldn’t judge whether evidence is important.’

‘I know … I know that now. I’ve had time to think it over. I can see that one should make any sacrifice where someone … someone …’

She broke off with a tremor in her voice, and Gently politely looked in some other direction.

‘At the same time, Inspector … how
can
it be important? You know I left him there – you’ve got Johnson’s evidence …’

‘It could give a motive, you know.’

‘A motive?’ She looked across at him.

‘There’s Johnson, remember … You must know he was an admirer of yours.’

‘Johnson!’ She seemed genuinely surprised. ‘But that’s ridiculous, Inspector.’

‘But you knew he was an admirer?’

‘Yes – I suppose so – of a kind. But it’s too far-fetched. Johnson wouldn’t have killed him over me. A man would have to be frantically in love with a woman to go killing off a rival … and Johnson wasn’t like that about me. Besides, he could have thrashed Earle with one hand.’

‘Lovers are strange people, Mrs Page.’

‘I don’t care. I know Hugh.’

‘And you can be as certain about everyone else at Merely?’

‘As certain – what do you mean, Inspector?’

‘I mean there might be another admirer … one who
would
be in love enough to kill Earle.’

Mrs Page remained silent for a moment, but it was not the silence of confusion.

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘You’re on quite the wrong track, Inspector. There’s nobody here except Johnson who has shown that sort of interest in me. You must remember that I have not been long a widow. My husband was a man I have not easily been able to forget. People have been very kind to me, but there have been no advances … nor, I assure you, would they have been encouraged.’

‘Not even Lieutenant Earle’s, Mrs Page?’

She blushed. ‘Not even Lieutenant Earle’s, Inspector.’

Gently sighed imperceptibly and folded his arms over the chair-back. ‘Perhaps we’d better start from the beginning … It’s usually the shortest way in the long run.’

Earle being Earle, Mrs Page had failed to take him quite seriously when he first arrived at Merely. At once he had begun to pay her extravagant attention, but since he seemed to be in the habit of spreading himself over every female he ran against, this didn’t register as being particularly significant. It was just Earle’s way. He was a demonstrative American. If you laughed at him about it, he laughed with you, and then went out of his way to be even more extravagant and to laugh even louder. She didn’t know when it was that she first realized there was more to it. When she did, it came rather as a shock, and she didn’t know quite how to handle the situation. She liked Earle very much. He had brightened up her rather sombre existence at Merely. But she wasn’t in love with him, and she didn’t want him to fall in love with her, and now he had done so the situation was extremely awkward.

‘Under all that gay front of his he was a very sensitive person, and I was sure that he would be hurt very deeply if I snubbed him or tried to shake him off. He was such a boy, you know. I believe Americans mature more slowly than Englishmen. They like to talk loudly and seem worldly and tough, but just below the surface they are … well, bewildered. Earle wanted reassuring. He couldn’t quite believe in the act he was putting on. And if I had treated him roughly it would have shattered his confidence … He didn’t just love me, he needed me too.’

So she had continued on the same footing with him, trying to hold the balance. She accepted his
exaggerated behaviour as before, as though it were all a game and a jest. For some time it was enough. She was able to conceal from him that he was being held at arm’s length. Unfortunately, love affairs do not stand still, and Earle, in the end, began to find the Thou Shalt Not that was impeding his progress.

‘He got very silent sometimes when we were alone together. Naturally, I tried to avoid having a tête-à-tête with him, but in a place like this it isn’t easy to steer clear of them. He began to talk a lot about his people and his home in Missouri, and then he got that
idée fixe
about us going over there on a visit. I was the target there, I’m afraid. Les was very largely a stalking-horse to get me to agree. I expect poor Bill thought that once I was in Missouri my resistance would vanish – one plate of fried chicken, and another GI bride would be added to the tally.’

‘Did he make any passes at you?’

‘Only in a playful sort of way. Honestly, he didn’t know much about it, and evasive action was quite simple.’

‘In public, was that?’

‘No, he never did it in public. In public he kept up his Campus King act.’

‘Would anyone have cause to think you took him seriously … that’s what I’m trying to get at?’

‘I’m quite sure they wouldn’t. I’d say on the contrary.’

‘You made it plain that it was jest?’

‘Absolutely plain.’

‘And you were never alone with him in a way that might have been compromising?’

She shook her head. ‘He wanted me to meet him in London – you know, Christmas shopping! – but I squashed that flatter than a pancake, both in private and public.’

‘Ah well.’ Gently made a humorous face. ‘Go on, Mrs Page.’

The Christmas shopping idea had been a definite invitation. He had not been explicit, but the original suggestion had been for her to spend the night in town, on the excuse that they would need a full day at the shops. When she had turned this down he still persisted that she should accompany him, and she had then invented an unanswerable rush of workshop-business to put a final period to his importunity. He had taken this rather hardly. He had apparently built a good deal on that day in London. He had probably been under the impression that Mrs Page’s attitude was governed to a great extent by her environment, and that once she was got away from it opportunity might develop. However, he had her answer, and he had to accept it. He came back from his excursion with undiminished high spirits, and threw himself into the business of being the (slightly transatlantic) Spirit of Christmas at Merely. But there were obviously other things on his mind. His grand project, though halted, was only very temporarily postponed. After lunch he had jockeyed her into taking the walk to the folly with him, and on the way he had talked not entirely of Missouri and the old folks at home.

‘He told me right out that he was in love with me, and that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Part of the time he was jesting about, talking of Christmas being the time of love and goodwill, et cetera, when people ought to let their hair down and commit a few follies. But the rest of the time he was deadly serious. He told me that he had already written to his mother telling her that he had met the girl he was going to marry, and that if I had gone to London with him he would have bought the ring then and there. Well, I did my best to keep it all in a facetious vein, but I’m afraid it was getting very difficult. I saw that soon I should have to clamp down on Bill in sheer self-defence. I think, too, that he understood the way I felt about it. On the whole, I was just a little frightened.’

‘Frightened?’ queried Gently, lifting an eyebrow.

‘Yes – oh, I don’t mean in the sense of being scared. But Bill had gone so far, you see, that he probably felt he couldn’t go back, and I was trying desperately to keep the situation fluid, if you understand me.’

Gently nodded. ‘You wanted to let him keep his face.’

‘Exactly. And if I’d taken him seriously for a moment, it would have been all over. But I weathered that particular storm. I laughed at him all the way back to the house. When you laughed at Bill, he had to laugh back, and so we got over the walk without too much damage being done. There was just that little tension there. Once or twice, I caught him looking at me in a rather peculiar way. I felt that trouble was very
definitely brewing for some occasion in the future, and I was glad there was going to be a party to give me a respite.’

During the party Bill had had to behave, and he kept his credit up manfully. There had been nothing to reproach him for. He had been his old self as ever. He had sought no tête-à-têtes, dropped no equivocal phrases, looked no odd looks. He had given a magnificent performance. It had all been saved up until everyone except Somerhayes had retired. And then, under pretext of seeing her to the door – a natural act for Bill – he had fiercely told her that he must see her alone, then, that night, as soon as he could reasonably get rid of Somerhayes.