‘Hi!’ exclaimed Jim.
Timothy released the tourniquet. ‘Sorry! Wouldn’t take many seconds, if that was round your neck, would it? In the actual murder, picture-wire was used – bought, earlier in the day, by Beulah, on Mrs Haddington’s instructions, and left on a shelf in the cloakroom. No secret about that – a fact which I trust our old friend has assimilated. I should think he would have: he’s got a damned intelligent face.’
‘Hemingway? Got any reason to think he suspects the girl?’
‘Not sure. He came here to get the low-down on what he calls the dramatis personæ. Noticeable that he asked me no questions about Beulah. That might be because he guessed I was an interested party, or it might be that your arrival interrupted him. If Beulah treated him to her talented impersonation of a clam, which is all too likely, I should imagine that he’s fairly bristling with suspicion. I wanted to muscle in on that interview, just to prevent her behaving like the silly little cuckoo she is, but she wasn’t having any. What happened I really don’t know. I motored her home to her digs when it was over, but she wasn’t com municative, and I didn’t press her. I’m going round to Charles Street this afternoon, ostensibly to make kind enquiries. If I can do it, I shall get Beulah to dine with me tonight. Some quiet place – Armand’s. You come and join us, Jim! Eightish, and morning dress. I’ll be there anyway.’
‘All right,’ Jim said, hoisting himself awkwardly out of his chair. ‘I’ve got to meet a man at the Savoy for lunch, but I don’t think my business with him will take me long. If I get away in decent time, I’ll nip down to Chamfreys this afternoon, administer a large soporific to Mother, and come back.’
‘What a bloody pest I am to you!’ said Timothy remorsefully.
‘You are, and always have been. I’m punch-drunk!’ said Mr Kane. ‘I’ll tell Mother I’m going to see Beulah for myself: that’ll hold her for a bit. But she’ll want to know what I made of her, so bring her along tonight! She sounds pretty alarming, but better than the blonde, if Mother’s description is anything to go by!’
‘Good God, did Mamma get the wind up over Cynthia Haddington? What a rare turn she is, to be sure! The mildest of flirtations! She wouldn’t look at me anyway: out for big game, Cynthia Haddington!’
This lighthearted conviction was destined to be shaken. Upon his presenting himself in Charles Street that afternoon, at an hour when he judged that Mrs Haddington would still be resting, Timothy was led by Thrimby to the drawing-room, where he found Cynthia huddled in a chair beside the fire, a litter of periodicals at her feet, and an expression of the deepest discontent on her lovely face. At sight of Timothy, she sprang up, and flung herself in an embarrassingly uninhibited way upon his chest. ‘Oh, Timothy, thank God you’ve come!’ she cried, and burst into tears.
Young Mr Harte blenched, but he kept his head. Bracing treatment seemed to be called for, and he applied it. ‘Well don’t make such a song and dance about it!’ he said. ‘Pull yourself together, Cynthia!’
‘It’s all been so awful !’ sobbed Cynthia, unresentful of this cavalier response.
‘I’m sure it has,’ said Timothy, detaching her clasp about his neck. ‘You’d better not cry about it, though: it’ll make your nose red. Sit down, and tell me what’s been happening since last night!’
‘Nothing! ‘ she said. ‘That’s what makes it utterly frightful ! Everything’s ghastly, and Mummy wouldn’t let me go to Meg’s party, and she says I’ve got to wear this filthy black frock, which makes me look a hag, and Aunt Violet’s here, and I can’t find my powder-compact anywhere, and there’s nothing to do, and that beastly radio’s got nothing but Choral Services and Forces’ Educational, and I wish I was dead ! And on top of that I’m so utterly upset about Dan, but nobody understands, or cares! He wouldn’t have wanted me not to go to any parties! It isn’t as though he was a relation! Mummy ought to want me to go out, to take my mind off it all!’
She then dragged her reluctant visitor to the sofa by one hand, pulled him down on to it, and sobbed gustily into his shoulder. It was quite impossible to discover which item of the catalogue of disasters, so movingly recited, affected her most. Timothy did not even try, but applied his energies to the task of soothing her distress. To his intense discomfort, she acquired a limpet-like grip on the lapel of his coat; he guessed that the shoulder of his coat would shortly become impregnated with her expensive powder, and mentally registered a resolve to send the coat to the Express Cleaners without loss of time. She said that if she had to wear black until after the funeral Mummy might at least buy her some new frocks, instead of sending for that dim Miss Spennymoor to convert two frocks of her own to her daughter’s use; she said that even Aunt Violet, whom she detested, thought it was ridiculous to wear mourning for anyone outside one’s family; she said that in all probability Mummy’s disgusting maid had stolen her favourite powder-compact; and she demanded corroboration from Timothy that she was quite too terribly sensitive, and liable to be upset by the least little thing. Whether she included the ugly murder of an old friend in this category, Timothy did not trouble himself to enquire. He assured her that no one could doubt her sensibility, and tried to induce her to sit up. She said: ‘Oh, Timothy, you’re so sweet ! I do love you so! I thought I was going mad, till you walked in, and now I feel quite different!’
Mr Harte was convinced that he felt the hair rising on his scalp. His saner self told him that it would be foolish to refine too much upon this artless speech; but his male instinct bade him fly from such a dangerous locality. He was never more glad to be interrupted in the middle of a tender passage. Interrupted he was: the door opened to admit Mrs Haddington, and her sister; and, since Cynthia relaxed her grip on his coat sufficiently to enable her to turn to see who had come into the room, he was able to free himself from her hold, and to rise from the sofa.
It was evident that both the elderly ladies had had ample opportunity to observe the touching scene, and equally evident that both regarded Timothy with approval. Mrs Haddington, trailing clouds of black chiffon, smiled, and put out her hand, saying: ‘How sweet of you to have come, dear Timothy! No one could do more good to my poor little daughter, I know! The child is dreadfully upset: Dan was like an uncle to her!’
‘Mummy, he was not!’ hotly declared Cynthia.
‘Nonsense! Of course he was, and if he wasn’t he ought to have been!’ said Miss Pickhill sharply. ‘So you are Mr Harte, are you? I’ve heard a lot about you, and I’m very glad to meet you, very! Goodness, child, dry your face! That disgusting stuff you put on your eyelashes has made a black mark on your cheek! I’m sure I don’t know what young girls are coming to! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lily, encouraging her to ruin the face the Almighty gave her!’
‘You simply don’t understand !’ Cynthia said.
‘Very likely I don’t, or want to!’ said her aunt, the asperity of her voice tempered by the indulgent gleam in her eyes as they rested on the lovely but woe-begone countenance before her. ‘All I understand is that you’ve plunged yourself into the most disgraceful scandal, just as I always knew you would! Whatever my private feelings may be, blood is thicker than water, and I sent a message to dear Mr Broseley, excusing myself from attending the Meeting today, and came straight up to London. I some times think my poor father must turn in his grave!’
‘Lord Guisborough!’ announced Thrimby from the doorway, enacting providence.
‘Lance!’ shrieked Cynthia, hurling herself upon him, to the profound relief of Mr Harte. ‘You angel !’
‘Cynthia dear!’ said Mrs Haddington, her smile more than ordinarily mechanical.
Miss Pickhill grasped the pince-nez which hung from a sort of button pinned to her spare bosom, pulled out a length of gold chain, and fixed the glasses on the bridge of her nose. ‘Oh!’ she said discouragingly. ‘So this is the young man I’ve heard so much of, is it? Well!’
Her tone led no one to suppose that his lordship met with her approval, but, happily for his self-estee
m, he was so dazed and transported by the flattering behaviour of the most beautiful girl in London that he scarcely noticed Miss Pickhill. Nor did the rapid recapitulation of Cynthia’s grievances in any way shake his besotted admiration of her. He asserted, on what grounds no one could imagine, that in Russia mourning was a thing of the past, such senseless conventions belonging to an outworn bourgeoisie; and uttered a slightly involved but vehement speech, the gist of which seemed to be that the only right and proper course for Cynthia to pursue, in recognition of the hideous fate which had overtaken her old friend, was to plunge instantly into as much gaiety as London could offer, preferably in his company.
‘Young man,’ said Miss Pickhill, ‘you are talking nonsense, and, what is more, objectionable nonsense! It is one thing to rush into exaggerated mourning, and quite another to racket about London before that unfortunate man is even buried!’
None of his advanced ideas had ever quite succeeded in quelling in Lord Guisborough an instinctive respect for the conventions of the bourgeoisie in which he had been reared. He hesitated, and then said: ‘I thought you could come and dine quietly with Trixie and me, at the studio, Cynthia. Just ourselves!’
‘Oh, no, Lance darling, don’t let’s!’ begged Cynthia. ‘Of course I adore Trixie, but she’s so dim and drab, and it’s no use her telling me I should love living in Russia, being called Comrade by ghastly people I don’t even want to know, and being ordered about all over the place, and not having any more money than anyone else, because I should loathe it! And I particularly couldn’t stand it tonight!’
‘But it’s not like that at all!’ Guisborough assured her. ‘You’ve got a wholly false idea of the Communist State, derived from prejudice, and preconceived –’
‘I don’t see why my idea should be any falser than yours,’ argued Cynthia. ‘You can’t possibly know, because you haven’t been there, and, anyway, I do think it’s too boring and lethal to go on and on and on about some rotten foreign country that probably isn’t half as nice as England, if you only knew!’
‘Not half as nice as England!’ echoed Guisborough, in a stunned voice.
‘Of course it isn’t! I daresay the Russians like it, but I never can see, and I never shall see why people like you and Trixie have to put on that Holy, Holy, Holy expression whenever anyone so much as mentions Russia, exactly as if you’d got religion! You’ll have somebody thinking you are a Russian if you’re not careful! Too degrading, Lance darling!’
His lordship’s eyes kindled; he became very pale; and it was plain that his infatuation for Cynthia was not strong enough to induce him to swallow blasphemy without protest. Before he could give utterance to the words trembling on his lips, Timothy intervened to take leave of his hostess. Mrs Haddington bestowed her most gracious smile upon him, indicating in a subtle style that she perfectly understood that he was being driven away by Lord Guisborough’s presence. She held his hand between both of hers for a pregnant moment, and said: ‘You know you are always sure of a welcome here! Perhaps in a day or two – just a little intime party: nothing formal!’
He managed, by murmuring a few polite and unmeaning phrases, to avoid giving a definite answer to this; begged Mrs Haddington neither to ring for the butler nor to accompany him downstairs herself; and escaped, feeling much like a stag who had contrived, for a short breathing-space, to throw off the hounds.
He ran downstairs, wondering how to find Beulah. The faint clack of a typewriter led him to the library. He walked in, softly closing the door behind him, and said cheerfully: ‘Hallo, ducky! How do you find yourself today?’
‘Timothy!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here? Does Mrs Haddington know?’
‘Not that I’m here, and let us hope that she won’t track me down,’ he replied, bending over her to drop a kiss on the top of her head. ‘You look rather sweet: what are you up to?’
‘Writing a rude letter to a hat-shop.’
‘Enjoying yourself, in fact. Listen, my heart, are you going to be kept here till all hours, or will you dine with me?’
‘No, I don’t think so, but – Oh, I’d better not!’
‘Well, I think you better ‘ad,’ said Timothy.
She smiled faintly. ‘Don’t be so vulgar! Timothy, I don’t know what to do! This is all wrong!’
‘Well, don’t worry, my love: we’ll thrash it out at Armand’s,’ he said encouragingly. ‘I may as well break it to you at once that you’ve dam’ well got to marry me, to save me from the Haddington clutches. I’ve just had that infernal wench weeping all over my coat, not to mention the harridan making unmistakable, if vicarious, passes at me. What they see in the fellow! Look, will eight o’clock suit you?’
She sat silent, staring down at the keys of the type writer. He tickled the back of her neck with one finger. ‘Well?’
Suddenly she slewed round in her chair, her face quivering, and flung up an arm round his neck. ‘All right! Yes!’ she jerked out. ‘I don’t care! I’m going to marry you!’
She was subjected to a breath-taking hug. ‘Fine!’ Timothy said. ‘Champagne all round. Jim shall stand it. Oh, I didn’t tell you, did I? My brother’s up in town, and wants to meet you. I told him to roll along to Armand’s.’
She disengaged herself. ‘Oh! Has he come to stop you marrying me?’
‘No, my child, he has not. Lay all those quills! He’s a very nice chap, and if you’re polite to him he’ll very likely give us his blessing. I think I’d better push off now, in case I’m discovered philandering with you. No more visits from the police?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, if you get any, be polite to Hemingway too! He’s another nice chap – and by no means a fool!’ said Timothy.
A few hours later, Mr James Kane rang up his chambers. ‘That you, Timothy? Well, I’m back, and it didn’t go too badly, taken all round.’
‘Bless you! How were they?’
‘Fair. Mother seemed fit enough, but your father’s had one of his bronchial attacks. Am I going to meet Beulah?’
‘You are, and you meet her as my betrothed.’
‘I do, do I? Well, I warned Mother it was very much on the cards.’
‘What did you say to Mamma?’
‘A good deal of what you said to me.’
‘What! ‘
‘That’s all right: you ought to know Mother by now! You’ve only got to show her a lame dog, and she starts helping it over the nearest stile. Mind, I don’t say she’s in favour of this marriage, but she’s willing to wait and see what I think of Beulah; and she’s even gone so far as to say that if I put in a favourable report, she’d like Beulah to go down to Chamfreys to stay for a week-end, so that she can try to get to know her.’
‘Jim, this is terrific! No, really, I’m hellish grateful to you! You shan’t stand the champagne tonight: I will!’
Thanks largely to the easy manners of Mr James Kane, and to the conversational powers of his young half-brother, the dinner party was moderately successful. Beulah was ill-at-ease, and said very little, but she was in good looks, and if she held Jim at arm’s length at least she did not treat him with hostility. He studied her without seeming to, and noted various points in her favour. His own fancy was for fair women, but he could perceive that Beulah had distinction. He liked the way her hair sprang from a peak in the centre of her forehead, approved of her slender hands, and of the nape of her neck. In repose, her face wore almost a sulky look, but if she smiled she became transformed. He thought that it had probably been her smile which had captivated Timothy. It was rare, but when it came it swept across her face, lighting the sombreness of her eyes, making her appear suddenly years younger. She had a well-modulated voice, too, and neither pinched her vowels, nor cultivated the high-pitched, nasal delivery so lamentably fashionable amongst her contemporaries. But she was sadly deficient in social graces or charm, making no attempt to keep the ball of conversation rolling, and often answering remarks addressed to her with unnecessary curtness. She was not
at all the type of girl Mr Kane had imagined would attract his lively half-brother, and more than once during the course of the meal he found himself wondering what could have possessed Timothy to give his heart to so cold and brusque a woman. Then he saw her raise her eyes, and meet Timothy’s across the table, and he was startled. There could be no mistaking the significance of that glowing look; the girl was head over ears in love with Timothy.
When coffee and liqueurs were on the table, Timothy perceived a party of friends seated at the other end of the room, and, in response to a wave, went across to exchange a few words with them. Beulah looked Jim squarely in the eyes, and said: ‘Sorry! I’m no good at small talk. You don’t want me to marry him, do you?’
This disconcerting question took Jim aback for a moment; then he laughed and said: ‘What am I supposed to reply to that?’
‘You have replied. Your mother disliked me very much.’