Читать книгу The Wind Blows Death - Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark - Страница 5

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The year advanced; the evenings drew in—not, as in Pettigrew’s youth, in decent, ordered gradualness, but with the snap of an elastic band as summertime came to an end and the clocks went back; and the first concert of the season was at hand. The day before the concert was, for Pettigrew, one of acute anxiety, and this for reasons quite unconnected with music as such. The performance was fixed for eight o’clock on Thursday evening, and the rehearsal with soloist and full orchestra (including the professional wind instruments as to which there had been such a pother) for three in the afternoon. At the meeting in Mrs. Basset’s drawing room, when the date had been arranged, it had quite escaped his attention that Markhampton Assizes were due to begin at the City Hall on the preceding Monday. To his fellow members on the committee, to whom the course of justice merely meant a few paragraphs in the local paper and a blurred photograph of a bewigged figure emerging from the cathedral, this was a matter of supreme unimportance; but Pettigrew saw in it the possibility of sheer disaster. Four days were normally allotted to the Assize. If the Judge was still sitting on Thursday afternoon, while Ventry was letting himself go on the organ in the same building, there would be a very nasty scene. It was Mr. Justice Perkins, too—a notoriously testy and self-important fellow. Almost equally unpleasant to contemplate would be the reactions of Clayton Evans, his nerves strung to the pitch always produced by a final rehearsal, on being told by an usher or a constable that his lordship required this noise to stop. It did not bear thinking of, but he could not help thinking of it, all the same.

When he was first made aware of the position, by the delivery of two or three briefs, it was already too late to do anything about it. Inquiries from the circuit officials, however, reassured him. The calendar was a short one and the criminal business should be easily disposed of in a couple of days. As to the civil work, there was only one effective action, and he was engaged in it himself. Pettigrew estimated its duration at a day and a half at the most. With anything like luck the Judge should be out of harm’s way by midday on Thursday. He decided to say nothing to anybody about his fears but let matters take their course, with a silent vow never to make such a floater again.

Then things began to go wrong. On the Monday, two prisoners who had hitherto disclosed no defense elected to plead “Not Guilty,” and two woodenheaded Markshire juries took an unconscionable time to come to perfectly obvious conclusions. This threw the timetable out of gear, but it was still possible for the Judge, by sitting an extra hour in the afternoon, to finish his list on Tuesday. Vain hope! In a fit of geniality as unwonted as it was untimely, Perkins J. acceded to a request to fix the last criminal case for Wednesday morning, for the convenience of counsel. Wednesday morning came, and Perkins dallied lovingly with a perfectly simple case, like a cat with a morsel of fish, while Pettigrew writhed impotently on his seat in the well of the court. With six witnesses on either side and a solid and slow-moving opponent, there was now not the remotest chance of finishing his own case until well into Thursday afternoon.

Pettigrew took stock of the situation during lunch and decided that it called for heroic methods. He was briefed for the defendant and he was reasonably confident that he would succeed on the facts of the case. But there was a slim chance—one that he had never seriously envisaged before—of winning the action on a technical point before any evidence had been called. It was a desperate gamble. The argument would take up most of the afternoon. If it failed—or if Perkins decided, as he well might, to reserve his decision on it until he had heard the witnesses—the orchestral rehearsal was irretrievably ruined. He took the risk, and at the earliest possible moment rose and submitted with every appearance of calm that on the pleadings he had no case to answer.

It was, he realized, a thoroughly unpopular thing to do. The Judge, having reconciled himself to sitting next day, would not like having his arrangements disturbed. Pettigrew’s lay client, like all lay clients, would be deeply distrustful of technical points and quite convinced that the facts were all in his favor. His instructing solicitor would naturally disapprove of a course which had never been hinted at in the brief and be seriously worried as to the prospects of getting the witnesses’ expenses allowed on taxation, should the case collapse without their being called. He could almost feel the pressure of these unexpressed emotions as he developed his argument, but it was abundant consolation to be aware at the same time that the most perturbed and disgusted man in court was his opponent, whom he had taken completely by surprise.

Spurred on by dire necessity, Pettigrew made his submission with a warmth and earnestness quite unusual to him. Never was a legal quibble argued with such passionate emphasis. His solicitor remarked afterwards that he didn’t know Pettigrew had it in him. Neither, for that matter, did Pettigrew. Apt illustrations and analogies flew to his tongue of their own accord; cases he had not looked at for years sprang unbidden to his memory; every forensic weapon came ready to his hand, from ironic jests at the expense of the plaintiff to deep organ notes appealing to the basic principles of the Common Law. It was a performance that could not fail of its effect. Mr. Justice Perkins was dragged against his will from boredom to attention and from attention to eager interest. When Pettigrew at last sat down he looked over his pince-nez to counsel for the plaintiff and said: “What have you to say, Mr. Flack?” And Mr. Flack, for once in his loquacious existence, had very little to say, and nothing to the point. The gamble had succeeded.

Pettigrew reached home about six, triumphant and exhausted.

“How did your case go today?” Eleanor asked him.

“Darling, it was magnificent! I feel exactly like the Dutch boy who stopped the leak with his finger.”

“Like a Dutch boy?”

“Not a Dutch boy—the Dutch boy. You must know the story, surely. There was a hole in the dike, and—”

“Of course I know the story, but what on earth has it got to do with the Assizes?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. But I feel absolutely cooked. I must have a drink before I say another word.”

“You’ll be having plenty of drinks directly,” said Eleanor unsympathetically. “You’re not to have one now.”

“My dear girl, why on earth not? Are we short of gin or something?”

“As you might have noticed from my clothes, we are going out to a party. We shall have to start now if we’re not to be late.”

“A party? Are we? Where? You never told me.”

“Mr. Ventry,” said Eleanor patiently, “invited us two weeks ago to a pre-concert cocktail party. The whole orchestra is coming. I reminded you at breakfast this morning.”

“So you did. I’m sorry, I’d forgotten all about it. Sorry I didn’t notice your new frock, either. It’s charming. Goes well with the hat.”

“The frock, as you call it, is nearly two years old. It’s the hat that’s new. Don’t apologize, but I do think you might take a little interest in the concert. The orchestra might just as well not exist so far as you are concerned.”

“That,” replied her husband in measured tones, “is the greatest injustice I have ever heard perpetrated in my life—and I speak as an expert in these matters. By way of penance, I propose to occupy the time in going to the party by recapitulating all the arguments which I advanced to Perkins J. this afternoon, with special reference to the little Dutch boy and the Markhampton Orchestral Society.”

By the time that Pettigrew and a suitably chastened Eleanor reached Ventry’s house, the music room, in which the party was held, was already crowded with samples of almost every class in the highly stratified society of Markhampton. Ventry was a man who believed in mixing his guests as well as his drinks. From the door he could just be seen at the far end of the room. He was talking to a tall, striking young woman, whose thin, intense face, framed in masses of dark hair, seemed to Pettigrew faintly familiar. At her elbow was a lanky, red-haired man whom he had certainly not seen before. Pettigrew belonged to a generation that believed in recognizing the existence of one’s host, even at the most crowded assembly. With Eleanor at his heels, he plunged into the jostling mob, most of whom, adherents to the modern theory of self-determination for guests, had not bothered to go beyond the bar. Once past this traffic jam the going was comparatively easy. Ventry greeted them with his usual expansiveness.

“Good of you to come all this way!” he exclaimed. “I mean”—he indicated the mass of humanity between himself and the door—“as far as this end of the room. I know a host ought to mingle freely with his guests, like the Royal Family at a garden party, but I’m too fat to get about in crowds. So I stay up here and reward the faithful with a special drink”—here Pettigrew found a large glass pressed into his hand—“and an introduction to a special visitor. Miss Carless, I want you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew.”

Considering that he had seen her photograph outside the City Hall two or three times a day for the last week, Pettigrew felt somewhat ridiculous at not having recognized her. As to the lanky man with sandy hair, he had been quite right in thinking that his face was strange. He proved to be Mr. Sefton, whom Pettigrew recollected as having been mentioned at the committee meeting as Miss Carless’s husband and accompanist. “Accompanist” was the appropriate term in every respect, he thought. While the party lasted he was hardly ever separated from her, and when anybody came between them he followed her continually with his watery, narrow eyes. “Unattractive blighter,” thought Pettigrew, as he noted his efforts to show a decent interest in Eleanor’s conversation while looking over his shoulder in his wife’s direction. Just for the fun of it he contrived to edge the guest of the evening a little farther away and was rewarded in seeing Mr. Sefton execute contortions worthy of a wryneck.

“What do you play?” asked Miss Carless abruptly. She had a pleasant contralto voice, but the question was put in a somewhat perfunctory manner, as though she did not much care what answer she received.

“Apart from a little family bridge, nothing,” said Pettigrew, with a serious air. “I used to attempt golf, but when my game evoked protests even from the Bar Golfing Society I thought it was time to give up.”

A cheerful grin suddenly brought her masklike face to life.

“Thank God!” she said. “I’ve been doing nothing but talk to blasted amateurs of this and that the last half hour. Can you find me another drink?”

Once satisfied that Pettigrew had no musical pretensions whatever, Lucy Carless proved extremely good company. Her own work she took with becoming seriousness, but without conceit. She explained that she had decided to come to Markhampton overnight because she objected to traveling on the day of a concert if it could be avoided.

“Things are so rushed nowadays,” she complained. “No wonder the work suffers. If it could only be managed, I should always like an extra rehearsal with the orchestra the day before.”

“You couldn’t possibly have had a rehearsal today,” Pettigrew said. “And if it hadn’t been for me you wouldn’t have even got one tomorrow.”

Then, stimulated by another of Ventry’s potent cocktails, he launched into an account of his afternoon’s exploit. His imitation of Mr. Justice Perkins was passably good to anyone who did not know the original, and Miss Carless was pleased to be amused.

“I’ve never been so eloquent in my life,” he concluded. “It was an absolute Serjeant Buzfuz effort.”

“Buzfuz?” She frowned in an effort at recollection.

“Pickwick, you know.”

“Of course, yes—Pickwick. I hate Dickens.”

Pettigrew was profoundly shocked.

“Hate Dickens!” he exclaimed. “Come, come! This won’t do. I can understand not liking Dickens—there are quite a number of people who say they don’t, though I find it hard to believe them. But one doesn’t—one can’t—hate him.”

“I do really,” Miss Carless persisted. “I had to read wads of him as a child and I simply can’t stand him.”

Pettigrew remembered that after all she was of foreign birth, and tried to find excuses for her.

“Perhaps you read him in translation,” he said. “I can quite believe—”

“Oh no. My mother was English, you know. I was brought up to be quite bilingual.”

“Then it’s time you gave him one more trial. Obviously you had him forced down your throat when you were too young. I can’t bear to think of your remaining in such utter darkness. Take my advice and make a fresh start on David Copperfield, and if you don’t—”

“But that’s the worst of the lot,” she interrupted. “All that silly business about Dora and Agnes! Just because Dickens had got it into his head that he’d married the wrong one of two sisters. And what a fuss he made about it! Nowadays, he’d have simply got a divorce and married the other one. The Victorians were so silly about that sort of thing.”

“As a matter of fact—” Pettigrew began. But at this moment the conversation, which had already lasted very much longer than any cocktail party conversation was entitled to do, was interrupted.

“My dear Miss Carless!” Mrs. Basset planted herself firmly between them and took control of the situation. “This is delightful! We are all so looking forward to the Mendelssohn tomorrow. Good evening, Mr. Pettigrew. And Mrs. Pettigrew”—for Eleanor, Mr. Sefton and half a dozen others had been drawn into the circle which Mrs. Basset always contrived to form around her whenever she appeared—“how well you are looking, dear! I had quite forgotten what a charming color that dress was! It suits you so well!”

Before Eleanor had had time to recover from this body blow Mrs. Basset had swept on, carrying with her Miss Carless and the rest of her attendants. Pettigrew looked up and caught Ventry’s eye. He was chuckling cheerfully.

“Have another drink, old boy,” he said. “And give one to your missus. She looks as though she needs it. Wonderful creatures, women, aren’t they? By the way,” he went on, emptying his glass and putting it down on the organ console, “you seemed to make quite a hit with Lucy. How did you manage it?”

“We were talking about Dickens,” said Pettigrew rather stiffly. Ventry’s brand of conversation was not one that appealed to him. He looked round to Eleanor for a means of escape, but she had been buttonholed by Mrs. Roberts, and for the moment he could see no excuse to leave him.

“Dickens? Well, that’s a gambit that’s never occurred to me, and I’ve tried a good few in my time. Still, if you have any Great Expectations in that direction, you want to look out for her husband. He’s the green-eyed monster, if ever there was one.” He peered through the haze of cigarette smoke at his guests. “Which reminds me, the Dixons haven’t turned up yet. That ought to be quite an amusing encounter.”

“Oh, you’ve asked them, have you?” Much though he longed to get away, Pettigrew found himself oddly fascinated by this gross creature. He began to wonder if he had not underestimated him. Perhaps he was not such a simple bundle of appetites as he seemed. There was a malevolent gleam in his large blue eyes that hinted at something more than appeared on the surface.

“Asked them?” Ventry was saying. “Yes. Why not? They’re all sensible people—at least, I know that two of them are. As for Nicola—well, she ought to be pleased enough with life. I suppose you saw in the paper that it was a girl?”

“That what was a girl?” asked Pettigrew in complete bewilderment.

“The widow’s child—born a couple of weeks ago. Surely Mrs. Basset must have told you. She’s been talking about nothing else since. Dixon’s booked for a peerage now. What a game, what a game!”

The next moment he was effusively greeting a golden-haired creature who proved to be the wife of the clarinet-playing young Clarkson, and Pettigrew drifted away.

It so happened that a little later Pettigrew was present at the meeting of the past and present Mrs. Dixons and their respective husbands, which took place under the watchful and disapproving eyes of Mrs. Basset. All four, he thought, behaved very well. Dixon and Lucy, in particular, acted with admirable sang-froid. There was a faint flush on Nicola’s cheeks as she said, “Nice to see you again, Lucy,” but Lucy’s “How well you’re looking, Nicola!” was perfectly spoken. The auburn hair and the dark were close together for a moment and then the encounter was over. As they moved apart Pettigrew caught a simultaneous glimpse of their profiles, and the ghost of an idea flickered to the surface of his mind, to be gone again in an instant.

It recurred to him just as he was getting into bed.

“By Jove, I wonder!” he exclaimed. “Do you think she could possibly be Agnes?”

“Who could be Agnes?” said Eleanor drowsily. “Do put the light out, darling. I want to get to sleep.”

“Mrs. Dixon,” answered Pettigrew, obediently switching off the bedside lamp.

“Her name’s Nicola,” said Eleanor, falling asleep at once. But her husband remained awake for some time longer, staring up into the darkness in which Ventry’s fleshly face loomed over him, dissolving into the pale, intense features of a woman who repeated the incredible words, “I hate Dickens.”

“Those cocktails must have been much too strong,” was his last conscious thought.