Читать книгу Black Plumes - Margery Allingham - Страница 3

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THE OCTOBER WIND hesitated in its reckless flight to hurl a handful of fine drops at the windows of the drawing room in the big Hampstead house. The sound was sharp and spiteful, so that the silence between the two women within became momentarily shocked, as if it had received some gratuitous if trivial insult.

Old Mrs Gabrielle Ivory continued to watch her granddaughter. Her eyes were bright still, as shrewd and black as they had been on an evening nearly seventy years before when they had refused to drop before the stare of another dominant woman who had sat on a little gilt throne at the first Court of the season. Gabrielle Ivory had been quite as forceful as Queen Victoria in her way and certainly very much more beautiful, but now, as she sat in her high chair, surrounded by a lacquer screen and swaddled in grey satin, she was very old.

The girl standing on the rug before her was barely twenty, yet there was a very definite likeness between them. The eldest and the youngest of the Ivorys both had the family’s beauty, the fine bones and that expression which was sometimes called “straightforward” and sometimes “arrogant.”

“Well?” said Gabrielle. “I’m an old woman, my dear, nearly ninety. It’s not much use coming to me. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

Frances Ivory’s long narrow grey eyes flickered. The old lady was devastatingly right, and it was not going to be easy to explain the sense of dismay which had crept over her at the discovery. Meyrick Ivory, a widower who adored his mother, had brought up his younger daughter to see the old Gabrielle as an almost legendary figure. To his child she had always been presented as the beloved beauty of a golden age, a link with the great Victorians, a creature larger than life in power and importance, so that all through these last perturbing weeks Frances had comforted herself with the recollection that if the worst came to the worst, even though Meyrick himself was half across the world, there was always Gabrielle up at Hampstead. It was hard to realise, now that the moment of appeal had come, that she was perhaps just a very old woman, too old and too tired to be disturbed.

The tiny figure in the high chair stirred impatiently.

“Meyrick is not expected back from China for some time, is he?” she remarked. “How is Robert Madrigal behaving without him? I never liked that young man. Why your insane half sister married him I cannot imagine. Not a very suitable person to be in charge of The Gallery.” She gave the title the capital letters which were its due. From the early years of the last century, when her own father-in-law, the famous Philip Ivory, had first purchased the fine house off St. James’s and had exhibited there the collection of Gainsboroughs, 39 Sallet Square had been The Gallery and so it was still, with a history of wealth and prestige behind it unequalled in Europe.

“Well?” The old woman was persistent. “How is he behaving?”

Frances hesitated. “He and Phillida are staying with me at 38, you know,” she began cautiously. “It was Meyrick’s idea. He wanted Robert to be near.”

Mrs Ivory’s narrow lips curled. The mention of the house next door to The Gallery, where she had reigned throughout her career, always stirred her.

“So Phillida’s at 38, is she?” she said. “Meyrick didn’t tell me that. You’re finding it difficult to live with her, I suppose? I don’t blame you. I could never abide a fool in the house. What has she done now?”

“No, it’s not Phillida,” said Frances slowly. “No, darling, I only wish it were.” There was a great deal more to worry about than the shortcomings of her elder half sister. “Granny,” she began awkwardly, realising that the words were childish and inadequate, “there’s something going on.”

Gabrielle laughed. It was a little tinkling sound, as gently malicious as ever it had been in the great drawing rooms of long ago.

“There always was,” she said.

“Yes, I know, but this is rather different.” Frances was taking the plunge. “This is deliberate malice and it’s dangerous. I’m terrified of sounding melodramatic and silly but I really do think that something irrevocable may happen at any minute and something must be done to stop it. There’s nobody to go to, you see. The staff at The Gallery is going to pieces. You can’t blame them in the circumstances ...”

“Oh, my dear, not business.” The old woman’s protest contained distaste. “Leave business to men. When I was your age we thought it rather indelicate for females to understand business. You should marry. Phillida has no children—a mercy, of course, if there’s anything in heredity—but someone must carry on. Come and talk to me about marriage, not business.”

Frances stiffened. Her suspicion was founded. There was going to be no help here. She turned away.

“Robert has just told me I ought to marry Henry Lucar,” she said. It had not occurred to her that Gabrielle might recognise the name, since Meyrick would hardly have mentioned so unimportant a member of the firm to his mother. The rustle in the high chair came as a surprise therefore.

“Wasn’t that the man who was rescued from Godolphin’s expedition?” demanded the old lady. “I thought he was a baggageman in charge of the camels, or was it mules?”

The girl laughed in spite of herself. “Oh no, darling,” she said. “Be fair. He did go out as Robert’s batman, as a matter of fact, but that’s nothing to do with it. He came back a hero and he’s in the firm now. I don’t like him. Since Daddy’s been away I’ve liked him less. He was always a bit of a smart aleck but just lately he’s surpassed himself, cocky little beast. Still, it really isn’t snobbery that’s made me go on turning him down. I wouldn’t care what he was if I liked him. I just don’t, that’s all.”

She was speaking defensively, repeating the argument she had used to Robert at that astonishing interview just before lunch.

Gabrielle sat up. Marriage was a subject which her generation had entirely understood, and her bright eyes were hard.

“Did this person have the impudence to ask you to marry him?” she enquired.

Frances writhed. The démodé snobbery embarrassed her. It was so like great age to get the whole thing out of perspective and to pounce upon a single aspect.

“There was nothing impudent about it, darling,” she protested. “It was only that when Robert began to badger me to take the horrid little brute seriously I added it to these other more serious things that have been happening and I got the wind up. You can’t blame Lucar for merely asking. Why shouldn’t he?”

“Why? Don’t be a fool, girl, and don’t forget yourself. This man Lucar is a servant, or was a servant until a gratuitous piece of good fortune saved his life and made him notorious. You are a pretty, well-bred, well-educated girl with a great deal of money. It is a ridiculous modern affectation to pretend to disregard money. It does not deceive anybody. No one thinks of anything else at heart. Your mother left you two hundred thousand pounds. That is a fortune. Of course it’s impudence for the man Lucar to ask you to marry him. Any man who proposes to you is going to be in an embarrassing position unless he is either very wealthy himself or has some special advantage which makes the exchange fair and respectable. Robert appears to be out of his mind. I shall certainly speak to Meyrick when he returns.”

She lay back, closing her eyes after the effort, and the girl stood looking at her, her cheeks flaming. A great deal has been written about the forthrightness of the moderns shocking the Victorians, but there is no shock like the one which the forthrightness of the Victorians can give a modern.

Frances came away.

Meyrick’s Rolls had never seemed more comfortingly magnificent. The interview had been worse than useless, and she reproached herself for attempting it. She was frightened. That discovery was alarming in itself. It is one thing to go on from day to day with a growing feeling of unrest and suspicion, but quite another to find oneself suddenly convinced of serious trouble and to be in charge, especially when one is not quite twenty and one is alone.

The chauffeur drew up outside 38, but she signalled to him not to ring. If Phillida was still there the chances were that she was still in bed with drawn blinds and her latest medico in attendance.

She left the car and walked on down to The Gallery, which opened austere arms to greet her. At first blush 39 Sallet Square, where one could negotiate anything from a castleful of Rembrandts to a humble modern woodcut, was a cool and lovely private house. At the moment, however, the normal elegance of the building was ruffled. The girl, who was already apprehensive, noticed the changed atmosphere as soon as she set foot in the hall.