Scandal at High Chimneys (23 page)

No reply.

“Please! Did it never occur to you?”

“It occurred to me that there might have been an accomplice. But—!”

“You know, you must know, Kate could never, never, never have fired a revolving pistol and hoped to shoot someone as my father was shot. She is not strong enough to hold a pistol steady. She needed a man to fire and kill. If any witness had ever seen that man inside the house, ever once glimpsed his face without a mask …” Clive blundered back against the side of the chimneypiece.

“What is the matter, Mr. Strickland? Did
you
see him?”

“No!”

“Not at any time? Are you sure? Kate’s lover, Lord Albert Tressider—”

It would be far from true to think that Celia did not or could not use cold reason. But this outpouring of words, as she stood white-faced on the far side of the table, seemed to come less from reason than from an inspired guess flying to the heart of truth. She hated it; she feared what she said; yet she screamed it aloud.

“Kate’s lover, Lord Albert Tressider—”

“Miss Damon, stop! No more of this! Are you mad?”

“You shall not call me mad,” and now Celia was paler yet in the black costume, “until you can say what else could have happened, or explain the how and the why. Kate’s lover, Lord Albert Tressider—”

Abruptly Clive turned away.

Towards the front of the sitting-room, looking out over Brook Street from the parlour-floor above it, there were two large windows with many rectangular panes. Clive had not drawn the curtains, though he now saw the lamplighter must have come and gone unperceived.

A yellow glow of street-lamps shone up from outside. A four-wheeler rattled past towards Grosvenor Square. The red, blue, and yellow glass vats in an apothecary’s window kindled spectral colours against the dusk.

Presently London would wake up at nightfall. Presently there would be crowds and a roar of noise towards Evans’s, towards Astley’s, towards the Alhambra….

Clive, still in his greatcoat and sweating, went over blindly to draw the curtains.

The sight of the street was blotted out as wooden rings swung together. Clive remained there for a moment, his face turned to the curtains. Celia continued to talk, but he did not hear her.

The image of Tress, the ever-triumphant, being triumphant with Kate too …

Clive turned back.

“Miss Damon.”

Celia ceased to speak, gloved fingers at her lips, grey eyes enormous. Only the thin singing of the gas-jet broke a hot silence.

“Miss Damon, you have accused your sister of conspiring in the murder of your father. There can be no denying that you present a case to be answered. Do you
wish
to believe this accusation?”

“No! No! No!”

“Then will you answer questions concerning it? Will you answer them calmly and rationally?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“How many times, to the best of your knowledge, has Kate so much as met Tress?”

“How can I say? Six times, eight times, when I was there. But how can I say what may not be within my knowledge?”

“Six times. Eight times. No more?”

“Mr. Strickland, you shall not bully me!”

“I will do what is necessary, madam. Have you any reason for thinking Kate is even interested in Tress, except for the somewhat curious reason that she says she is not?”

“I can only tell you—”

“Can you name one occasion when she has been alone with him?”

“No.”

“Then why do you state so positively that he is her lover?”

Trembling, and yet with a firmness and strength of will belying her delicate appearance, Celia put down the sealskin muff on the table and straightened up. The wooden paper-knife in the shape of a steel dagger lay beside the tea-tray. Celia saw it. She caught it up, holding it longways in both hands.

“Miss Damon, be good enough to answer me. You state in so many words that Tress, Tress of all people, is your sister’s lover.” So much did this thought affect Clive that he stressed it and hammered it all the more. “If you were to testify under oath—”

“I don’t testify under oath!”

“Then how can you say such a thing? Why?”

“I know what I feel.
Here.
That is all.”

“Has Penelope Burbage identified your sister as being the woman on the stairs? Has she? Shall we bring Penelope back and ask her?”

Celia’s fingers twisted on the paper-knife, which was long and heavy despite its flatness. Clive took a step forward.

“You accuse—”

“I do not accuse. Never think it. I wish to be reassured; no more!”

“You accuse Kate and Tress of a masquerade. Each, at different times, wears the same type of clothes, so that each may have an alibi for the murder of your father. Why should Kate want to kill your father?”

“I don’t know.”

“Suppose Tress had made an offer for Kate’s hand in marriage instead of yours? Would your father have objected or prevented that?”

Now Clive had gone too far.

He knew it.

Celia’s eyes, bright in the fluttery gaslight, were fixed on him unwaveringly.

“You know my father would have prevented it, Mr. Strickland,” she answered in a clear voice. “At High Chimneys, just before you went to speak with him in the study, you told Kate and me he had something to tell you concerning one of us. Which one? Mr. Strickland, what did he have to tell you?”

Silence.

“You taunt me again and again,” said Celia in a loud but steady voice, “and say I will not answer your questions. Will you answer mine? Did you at any time, either on Tuesday or Wednesday night, see Lord Albert Tressider at High Chimneys?”

“No.”

“That is a lie, is it not?” inquired Celia, gripping the paper-knife. “I see it in your face.”

“Miss Damon …”

Celia’s voice went up.

“Unless you believe my poor sister conspired with that man to kill my father, and perhaps destroyed his last will so that she might inherit money not due to her and leave High Chimneys forever, how else can you explain all that happened?”

Beyond the still-unlocked outer door of the rooms, past the dark little entry now on Clive’s right, a board creaked and a footstep stirred. Somebody was listening.

Kate?

It could not be Kate. The footstep had been that of a man, and of a large and heavy man as well. From the corner of his eye Clive glanced towards the outer door. Celia neither heard nor saw.

“I ask for reassurance,” she cried. “And I ask on more counts than those. Inspector Whicher—”

The footstep creaked again.

“What did you say of Inspector Whicher?”

“I have seen him twice,” replied Celia, gripping the paper-knife harder and blinking back tears. “I saw him this morning at High Chimneys. But I saw him last August, when all of us except Cavvy were gathered there for my twentieth birthday. Mr. Strickland, has Kate never told you her childhood’s ambition?”

“No, she has not. How could she? I had scarcely exchanged twenty words with Kate before I met her again on Tuesday evening….”

“And carried her away on Wednesday. Poor man!”

“You were saying?”

“Her ambition was to be a dancer, like that woman Lola Montez. Until Cavvy slapped her so hard, when she mentioned it, Kate never spoke of the wish afterwards. But she was to be a dancer, and Victor was to be a general covered with decorations and leading cavalry-charges, and I was only to be a good wife and mother, as indeed I still wish. Why shouldn’t I be? Why shouldn’t I be?”

“There is no reason why you should not be, Miss Damon. But you were saying? Of Inspector Whicher?”

Outside in the passage, a floorboard squeaked sharply. There was no noise, however, when the outer door opened.

Dr. Rollo Thompson Bland, cat-footed despite his weight, stepped into the narrow entry. He was watching Celia, head turned partly sideways, his bright blue eyes fixed on her face.

Celia did not even notice him. But in just such a manner, Clive vividly remembered, Dr. Bland had looked at Matthew Damon from the doorway at the study not long before the murder; and at a time, according to Whicher, when Mr. Damon had been half out of his mind and not very clear about what he was saying.

A pang of dread touched Clive Strickland now. Dr. Bland remained motionless, and so did Celia.

“Inspector Whicher? Oh!” She drew her thoughts back. “He—he was announced when we were all at table for my birthday dinner.”

“And what happened at the birthday dinner?” Clive asked in what seemed to him a very loud voice.

“Well! Georgette had been going on, as usual, about one of us getting married. All of a sudden my father got up and said none of us was going to get married without ‘the truth being known first.’ I don’t know what he meant; he spoke in the middle of simply a—a general discussion, that’s all.

“At that very second, as though by a kind of dreadful stage-signal, Burbage came into the dining-room and said there was a Mr. Whicher, an Inspector of the Detective Branch at Great Scotland Yard, calling to see him. My father put his knuckles on the table and told Burbage to show Mr. Whicher into the dining-room. That astonished everyone still more.”

Celia, her gloved hands twisting at the wooden dagger, swallowed hard.

“Inspector Whicher came into the dining-room. He said, ‘Sir, I’ve brought you a letter from a dead woman, written nearly nineteen years ago; but I think you’ll find it’s good news.’ Then he looked round at all of us. My father swayed as though he might faint. All he said was, ‘Let us go into my study.’ He spoiled my birthday dinner. It was hard to forgive him for spoiling my birthday dinner.”

Once more Celia’s voice rose piercingly.

“That’s what happened. I can’t say what it means; I don’t know. But that’s what happened. Don’t you believe me? Ask Uncle Rollo! He was there. Ask—”

Dr. Bland took one step into the room.

“Celia,” he said gently.

Except for Celia’s gasp, as her large eyes turned sideways and she saw the doctor, a hush held the curtain-muffled room. Dr. Bland’s brown moustache and beard stood out against a face far less florid.

“At Mivart’s Hotel, my dear, they said you had inquired after Kate. They also said you had inquired after Mr. Strickland.” The doctor’s gaze moved round. “Ah. Mr. Strickland. May I ask, sir, whether you will be at home this evening after dinner?”

“No! That is to say, I shall not be at home.”

“It is vitally necessary, sir, that I see you this evening.”

“That’s impossible. I am going to the Alhambra—”

“To the Alhambra?” repeated the startled Dr. Bland. He did not speak loudly, but there was a jump in his voice. “I tell you, sir, that I am obliged to see you. By your leave, then, I must meet you even there.”

“And I tell
you,
sir, it is quite impossible. Don’t come there! Don’t try! In the meanwhile,” and Clive still watched Celia’s face, “did you hear what Miss Damon was saying?”

“Yes,” replied Dr. Bland.

“What part of it?”

The doctor’s rich voice, full and hypnotic, took on rounded utterance.

“If you refer to a murder-plot conceived and executed by Kate Damon and Lord Albert Tressider, I heard all of it.”

“Is her explanation the true one?”

“Alas!” smiled Dr. Bland. “Or, rather, the word should be ‘happily.’ Celia is the best and dearest girl on earth. But she is sometimes fanciful. Happily (I say happily!) she was utterly mistaken from beginning to end.”

Celia’s expression changed. Dr. Bland stretched out his hand.

“You should not have left Devonshire Place, my dear,” he said gently. “Come home now. Come home to your aunt and uncle. You are weary, Celia; come home.”

What happened then, as Celia’s expression changed still more and her grip tightened on the painted dagger, toppled Clive into a realm of nightmare.

“Celia!”

The girl did not reply. There was a splintering crack of wood, like the cracking of a neck, as she broke the paper-knife in two pieces and flung them across the room. Then, dodging under the doctor’s arm, she ran out through the entry. Clive had a last glimpse of her face, wistful and tragic, before she ran out into the passage and frantically down the stairs into the dark.

I
NTO THE DARK.

But it was light now, with the lines of misty gas-lamps stretching down towards the Regent’s Quadrant and beyond to Leicester Square, as a hansom took Clive to a rendezvous that might mean everything or nothing.

He was late. Not too late, he hoped, but late all the same.

“No, sir,” the liveried hall-porter at Mivart’s had assured him for the sixth time. “Miss Kate Damon has not yet returned.”

Nearly all theatrical performances commenced at a quarter to eight, or with a curtain-raiser which began at that time. The customary dinner-hour was at seven; but it was wiser to dine far earlier if you meant to be punctual.

Clive, taking dinner at Mivart’s after hastily donning evening-clothes, could no more hurry the waiters than he could hurry the seven courses. He declined three of the courses. He declined four different wines so as to keep his head. But the steam of cooking rose, in the stately dining-room with the looped curtains of blue and canary silk. When he hailed a hansom in Brook Street, it was twenty-five minutes to nine.

Fortunately, the roar and crush of crowds had partly dwindled away into theatres or music-halls or public-houses. There would not be much yelling or carousing until nearly eleven; the streets lay reasonably clear. Even so …

“Cabby!”

The roof-trap flew open.

“Make haste! Twice your fare if we’re at the Alhambra by a quarter to nine.”

“Dunno, governor. ’Tain’t easy. I’ll try.”

The long whip cracked as the hansom tried a less crowded approach by way of Piccadilly instead of Regent Street. The danger of delay was caused by omnibuses, which pulled up wherever a passenger elected to call out to the conductor and get down. If you were caught behind one of those, you could be infuriated and lost.

Furthermore, Clive decided as they passed the Burlington Arcade with its vast amount of female flesh, the West End seemed to be preparing for a large night. A new law, attempting somewhat to purify the night-haunts by forbidding the sale of spirituous liquors after midnight, could not be enforced; it only delighted robust souls by providing opportunities for breaking it.