Читать книгу Crime at Christmas - C. H. B. Kitchin - Страница 12
ОглавлениеChristmas Day—10.30 a.m.
Sheila came running down the Louis Quinze stairs of the terrace to meet me.
“Good morning, Malcolm. Mother’s fussing frightfully about you. She’s been told, of course. We all know everything now. She sent me to make sure that you’ve really had a proper breakfast, to ask how you are, and say how sorry she is about your room. Come along, I’m having breakfast myself. You can talk to me while I eat. Amabel and Leonard aren’t down yet.”
She led the way into the dining-room through a french window opening on to the terrace, and sat down.
“Have some more coffee? No? Well, pass me the marmalade. I say, isn’t it awful about Mrs. Harley? The ambulance has just been. I saw the stretcher carried down the steps. Father isn’t back yet. I dare say he’s taken a drive round the Heath. Do tell me everything you know. Mother said Dr. McKenzie said the body was on the balcony outside your room? Was it?”
She turned an excited gaze upon me. If she was so lighthearted over the catastrophe, how would Amabel behave? Perhaps the season was destined to be festive after all.
“I don’t think I ought to tell you anything about it.”
“Oh, rubbish!”
She made a face, her mouth half full of toast and marmalade.
“Well, I haven’t much to tell you. I got up to pull up the blind, and saw the body against the railings.”
“What did it look like?”
“I didn’t stop to notice. I sent Edwins at once for Dr. Green. Then he took charge, and bundled me out of the room.”
“Oh, was that all? Then what did you do?”
“Had breakfast and walked in the garden. What time is Church?”
“Church? Oh, I don’t think we shall go to-day. Mother might have, perhaps, but——”
The door opened and Dixon came in.
“Hullo, Sheila. Mornin’, Warren. Seen anything of the others, anybody?”
“Amabel’s dressing,” Sheila replied. “She ought to be down any minute. What time did you two go to bed, anyhow?”
“That’s nothing to do with you,” he answered, settling himself at the table. “How’s the wrist, Warren?”
“Better, thank you.”
“I suppose,” Sheila asked him, “you’ve heard the bad news?”
“Bad news? No. What bad news?”
“Mrs. Harley was found outside Malcolm’s bedroom window with a broken neck.”
He whistled.
“Lord love a duck! It isn’t April Fools’ Day or anything, is it?”
“No, it’s perfectly true.”
“Well, I’m damned. Who found the body?”
“Malcolm.”
“What a jolly affair! What are we going to do about it, anyhow? Shall we have to put off to-night’s beano, do you think?”
“What beano?” I asked.
“Didn’t you know? There was going to be a supper-party, a fancy-dress and fireworks stunt.”
“Fireworks?”
“Yes, why not? There’s a whole stack of them in the shed next to where Amabel keeps her car. Old Q. wouldn’t have ’em in the house in case of fire. Any objection to fireworks, Warren?”
“Who’s objecting to fireworks?” said a voice behind me. It was Amabel, looking very radiant and blonde. “ ’Morning, Len. Good morning, Mr. Malcolm Warren. How’s our wrist to-day? No, don’t move. I say, it is pretty rough luck about Mrs. Harley, isn’t it?”
She went to the side-table, helped herself to a couple of poached eggs, and sat down beside Dixon.
“Has anybody seen our beloved brother Clarence this morning?” she went on. “Flora—yes, Mr. Malcolm Warren, we really have a housemaid called Flora—that’s my pat, you beast—Flora said he had a teeny-weeny little roll and a teeny-weeny little cup of tea in his bedroom, and went out about half past eight.”
“Perhaps he went to early service,” suggested Dixon facetiously.
“Not Clarence. He’s frightfully agnostic and all that. He’s probably gone for one of Nature’s rambles round the Heath. Talking of Clarence, I found a find last night.” She opened her bag and drew out a folded sheet of paper.
“What is it, and where did you find it?”
“I regret to say I stole it! It was in a book—one of Clarence’s books, obviously—The Place of Lytton in Literature, or something of the kind—on the table in the terrace room. I wanted a bit of paper to put under the post of the ping-pong net, and pulled it out. Then I saw Clarence’s writing. What on earth do you make of it, Malcolm? Is it poetry?”
“That isn’t always a very easy question to answer,” I said. “Have any of us any business to read it? Oughtn’t you to give it back to him? Why didn’t you give it back to him?”
“Don’t catechize me like that. I just didn’t. I meant, as a matter of fact, to bring it out during the evening, but your sad accident, Mr. Malcolm Warren, clouded our high spirits.”
Again she used the special drawl reserved for me.
“Give it to me,” said Dixon. “I’ll soon tell you if it’s poetry or not. I bet I know more limericks than anyone in the house.”
He made as if to snatch the paper from her.
“No you don’t. Here, Malcolm, catch it, quickly.”
She threw it across the table. Rather reluctantly I picked it up. Dixon stretched out a hand, but she smacked his arm away.
“No you don’t, you bully. Remember, he’s maimed and can’t protect himself. Now, Malcolm, read it through like a good boy, and tell us what it’s all about. If you don’t, I shall loose Len upon you.”
Fearing that this indeed might happen, I took the document to the window-seat, and read it while the others wrangled at the breakfast-table. The words were written in pencil, with more than one erasure.
“To—
“Ah! Moon of my delight, that knowst no wane!
Thy frozen fire hath quite consuméd me,
Till I am grown too weak to worship thee
Or urge the suit I once had hoped to gain.
“Have mercy! Make an end of thy disdain
And smile once more. Let not thy victory
Be tarnished by the victim’s agony.
Have mercy, grant assuagement of my pain.
“To thee possessing all, what can I give
For tribute, save myself who am rejected?
Thou art my strength. From thee my thoughts derive
Their substance, while my ravish’d soul discovers
Solace in thee alone, all else neglected—
Thy mirror, and most faithful of thy lovers.”
I was surprised at verse in so conventional a manner proceeding from anyone so advanced as Clarence. Was it a joke, an experiment, a parody, or a real utterance of the heart? In case it was the latter, I felt bound to safeguard the absent author’s interests, and was about to ask Amabel quite seriously if she minded my keeping the poem and giving it back to Clarence myself, when the breakfast party was further swollen by the entry of Mrs. Quisberg and Dr. Green.
“Oh, there you are, Malcolm,” she said. “I told Sheila to bring me news of you. I do hope the poor arm is better. Is it really better, Doctor? Now Amabel, and you, Mr. Dixon, you ought to have been out of the dining-room long ago, so that they can lay the Christmas dinner. Not that it can be a gay one, I’m afraid. I’m still so dazed by this terrible news that I keep forgetting it. Poor Malcolm, what a sad shock for you, and to be turned out of your bedroom and all.... I can’t think what we shall do with poor little Harley. I almost feel as if we were responsible, sending him down to sleep in London, the one and only night his mother comes here. Why couldn’t it have happened anywhere but here, if it had to be?”
She pulled out a handkerchief.
“Now, Mums,” said Amabel. “Pull yourself together. You won’t make things any better by giving way. Besides, you’re making everyone feel uncomfortable.”
Perhaps to relieve her feelings, Mrs. Quisberg turned almost savagely on her daughter.
“Uncomfortable! Why shouldn’t we be uncomfortable? I suppose you’d be perfectly comfortable if it happened to me. You and your cocktails and your rowdy dancing! You’re a hard-natured girl, that’s what you are.”
Amabel flushed angrily.
“At any rate I can keep my head. What are you going to do? Sit here all sobbing till they come in and find you?”
“What can I do?”
“Make some arrangement to catch Papa privately, so that he can tell Harley without any fuss.”
“It won’t be so easy to tell Papa even,” said Sheila.
“Well,” answered her sister, “I dare say Dr. Green will do that. If he won’t, I will.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Dixon, who had been shut out from the conversation too long for his taste.
Dr. Green turned to Amabel.
“It may interest you to know, most charming of young ladies, that I have already tried to speak to your father on the subject. Unfortunately he had left the Carlton just before I telephoned, and as he hasn’t a portable wireless on his motor-car, I have not been able to get into communication with him since.”
He uttered each word in a tone of rude hostility. Dixon stepped forward angrily, and there might have been a most unpleasant scene if Amabel herself had not interposed.
“I’m sorry,” she drawled angrily, “I seem to have made myself so unpopular with the older generation this morning, especially as the situation is rather beyond their control. My feeling, for what it’s worth, is simply this. You can’t have Harley coming in here and finding us all chattering about him. What would you do, Mother, if he did? Run up to him and shriek, ‘Harley, your mother’s dead!’?”
She finished her unfortunate sentence with a sudden shout, which made us all look at her in dismay. Then a cry was heard at the other end of the room, and we saw Mr. Quisberg and Harley standing in the open french window. Mr. Quisberg gasped, and leant against the wall for support, while Harley, a miserable little figure, walked towards us through the long room. Then, seeing our grave faces, he paused pitifully and said in a husky voice that made our silence seem the more terrible:
“What’s this about my mother? What were you saying?”
Before Dr. Green or Amabel could prevent her, Mrs. Quisberg darted forward, her face streaming with tears, and caught the little secretary in her arms.
“Come with me, dear,” she said. “Come with me. I’ll help you to bear it. Come away.” Her voice at that moment was exquisitely compassionate. Like a child, he laid his head against her shoulder and moaned, while he allowed her almost to carry him from the room, “Oh, my poor mother. My darling mother.”
Then Quisberg, still by the terrace window, tottered and fell flat on the floor. While Dr. Green and Amabel rushed towards him, Sheila collapsed in sobs over the table, and my own eyes were filled with tears.
