Читать книгу Black Plumes - Margery Allingham - Страница 6

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“WHERE ARE THEY NOW? in the garden room? Oh, Frances, how could you do this? How could you?”

Phillida Madrigal lay among the cushions on her day bed and wept.

“It’s the strain, the intolerable strain,” she whispered. “Wasn’t it enough for me to be annihilated by the impossible scene with Gabrielle without you rushing in and starting another with Robert and David Field?”

Frances stood on the hearthrug of the white-panelled bedroom.

“I had no idea that Granny had come here, let alone that she was still in the house,” she said, twisting the new ring round her finger. “It never occurred to me that she might actually drive out and tackle Robert. She’s so terrifyingly old. I didn’t think she understood a word I said this afternoon.”

“Oh, she understood.” Phillida Madrigal forgot her tears in her anger. “She’s as strong as a horse and as obstinate as a mule. I wish to God I had her strength. When she came in on old Dorothea’s arm she positively dominated the entire house. Robert was mad to be rude to her. She listened to him, she let him rage, she let him say the most unforgivable things, and then she simply sat down and sent Dorothea out to prepare Meyrick’s bedroom for her. Naturally Robert protested—I did myself. She said it had been her room for thirty years and she was going to bed in it. What could one do? There was nothing to say. Finally Dorothea took her up. Gabrielle ignored Robert. She simply looked through him. But she had heard what he said. She’s dangerous, Frances. A hard, selfish, proud old woman. And she’s in the house. It’s your fault. You may have killed her. You may have started up anything. Oh, don’t you think you ought to go down?”

She was sitting up now, and the faint light was kind to her, taking out the petulant lines round her mouth and deepening the shadows round her eyes, burnishing the copper lights in her smooth hair.

“How can I?” The younger girl spoke wearily. “Robert said he wanted to talk to David alone. He could hardly have made himself more clear.”

Phillida got up and walked down the room, her lace negligee trailing.

“Frances,” she said suddenly, “have you ever thought that Robert might be mad?”

The question would have been remarkable if only because it came from Phillida and concerned the state of mind of somebody other than herself, but up in the dark bedroom, with the firelight flickering and the wind chattering round the house, its very directness shot a chill to Frances’ diaphragm.

“Why? Why do you say that?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m nervy. I hate this insufferable house. I’ve only been married to him two years, Frances. He’s always been queer and difficult, but just lately he’s much, much worse. He watches me, he watches you. He’s made up his mind that you shall marry Lucar.”

“Then I’m afraid he’s doomed to disappointment, my dear.”

Phillida did not answer for some minutes, and when at last she spoke her remark was unexpected.

“Did you know that David Field had a dreadful row with Gabrielle once over me? It was years ago, of course, long before he became known.” She laughed abruptly and threw up her arms in a sudden gesture. “Oh, why did I marry Robert?” she said. “I was secretly engaged to Dolly Godolphin when they went out on that ghastly expedition, and then when poor Dolly was lost and I was brokenhearted Robert just happened to be there. I was mad. Oh, Frances, be careful who you marry.”

She went back to the day bed and, throwing herself down upon it, began to cry. Frances was staring into the fire. So it had been Gabrielle who had called him a fortune hunter and raised the devil in him.

Phillida’s muffled voice cut into her thoughts with a startling suggestion.

“For God’s sake go down to them. What can they possibly be doing all this time? They’ve both got insane tempers. Go down and see.”

Frances looked up sharply. “Perhaps I’d better,” she said and found that her breath was uneven.

Just outside the door she ran into Dorothea, Gabrielle’s elderly maid. The plump old woman was pale with unaccustomed excitement and she laid a hand on the girl’s arm.

“I can’t do a thing with her,” she said. “She won’t go to bed and she won’t take any drops. He didn’t ought to have said those things to her, Mr Robert didn’t. She wouldn’t have stood it from one of her own and she certainly won’t from him. She’s angry, that’s what she is. I’ve only seen her like it twice before in my life, once when Mr Meyrick’s first wife, Miss Phillida’s mother, ran off and left him, and once when she had some words with a young gentleman who came to the house. She’s angry and she’s old. She’s brooding. I wondered should I send for a doctor.”

“I don’t see what he could do, do you?” said Frances. “I’m afraid all this is my fault, Dorothea. I’m so sorry.”

The old woman regarded her with the stern common sense of her kind.

“Well, it hasn’t done a lot of good, has it, miss?” she said. “I’ll go down in a minute and get her a mite of hot milk. She may take that and go to sleep. He has upset her. They make me wild, these nervy men. There’s something very wrong in this house. I notice it if you don’t. Something very wrong.”

She went off down the corridor. Frances went on downstairs. The house was quiet and almost dark.

The garden room was at the end of the passage off the main hall. There were two doors side by side, one leading to the room and the other giving out onto an iron staircase running down to the flagged yard, which was all that encroaching London had left of an eighteenth-century rosary.

At the mouth of the corridor she hesitated. A man was hurrying down it towards her. To her astonishment she recognised Lucar. She was so surprised to find him in the house at that time of night that she did not move, and he came up to her. He was shaking with fury and his red face was patched with white where taut muscles had banished the blood. Also he was smiling. He paused in front of her. She attempted to pass him with a conventional murmur. He shot out a hand, however, and, catching her arm, swung her round. She was not prepared for his strength. He lifted her hand and looked for the ring on it. When he saw it he flung her away from him and strode off down the hall into the shadows of the porch, leaving her angry and breathless.

She went on down the corridor, her courage up but her knees shaking. Outside the door of the garden room she paused. There was an ominous silence within, and her outstretched hand drew away from the latch. Disliking herself for the subterfuge, she turned to the other door and let herself out onto the iron steps. The yard was a well of darkness.

She went softly down the staircase and took a step or two across the flags. Around her were dim forms in the faint light from the sky where scudding clouds raced across the moon. There was a packing case containing one of Meyrick’s Chinese purchases standing like a gun emplacement behind her, and beyond, in the angle of the wall, was a little shed where some of the wood for the gallery’s casemaking was kept. Frances looked up at the great bulwark of the house. The curtains of the garden room had not been drawn and she saw David distinctly. He was standing behind the table, leaning on it and looking down. The scene had the brilliant unreality of a stage-set. He was not talking but might have been listening or merely looking, and his expression was curiously blank.

It was that blankness which first terrified her; it was so unlike him. His lazy smile might never have existed, and his eyes were hard and apparently unseeing.

The moment seemed to drag out intolerably and then, just when she was on the point of screwing up her courage to break in on them, came the sound.

It was a little stir, a little shuffling which was not quite the wind, and it was behind her. She swung round, her heart rising. The shaft from the window made a narrow angle of light which ran right across the door of the shed, cutting it in two and passing directly through the latch. As she turned she could have sworn that the handle moved and the door cracked inwards.

Panic, unreasoning and uncontrollable, descended upon her. She ran. She fled up the iron staircase, through the corridor, across the hall, mounted the main stairs and rushed over the upper landing into her own room.

She was still there, crouching on the dressing-table stool, trying to pull herself together and to force the terror which had seized her out of her mind, when David knocked and put his head in.

“I took a chance on finding the right door,” he said, coming over to her. “Well, my dear, we’re still engaged.”

The words were meant to be reassuring, but he was speaking with an uncharacteristic jerkiness, and she stared at him in panic.

“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

“Nothing.” The denial came a little too quickly and he laughed to cover it. “I just thought I’d see you before I went, to tell you it’s all okay in spite of our Robert’s unendearing manners. He’s going off for a walk, by the way. It’s not a bad idea. The night air may cool him down a bit.”

“What did he say?”

“Just about what you’d think,” he said. “Forget him. We’re engaged. Good night.”

She thought he was going to kiss her, but he merely touched her hand abruptly and went out, closing the door behind him.

She stood where she was for some time and then, on an impulse, followed him out into the upper hall. It was quite dark and silent, and she crept forward to lean over the balustrade. The hall below was an inky pit, and the sound of the front door closing startled her. She waited but there was still no light and no sound of a returning servant, so she took it that David had let himself out.

And then, while she stood there, something happened. Someone walked sharply down the corridor from the garden room, crossed the hall with a brisk, light step, and strode out of the house, closing the front door firmly behind him. She saw no one. There was not a shadow in the dusk. The sounds were so sharp and decisive that they should have struck a reassuring note in that world of creaks and whispers, yet to the girl clinging to the slender balustrade they were so horrifying that she almost screamed, and as she crept back to the light of her own room they sank into her mind with a vividness which she was afterwards to regard as prophetic.

“It’s only Robert going out for his walk,” she said aloud to herself in the mirror. “Only Robert going out, you fool.”

Yet on the following morning when Norris, Meyrick’s butler, announced with casual urbanity that Mr Robert had not been in the house all night but that his hat and coat were missing, and enquired a trifle slyly if his letters had not best be sent down to his club, no one was particularly alarmed.

Relief came first: relief for Frances, relief for Phillida, relief for Gabrielle holding court in her great tapestry-hung bed.

Fear came later. It began on the third day when it was discovered that Robert was not sulking in Jermyn Street, and fear deepened and grew into dull terror when discreet enquiries at Blue Bridges, the Surrey country house, brought no news of him, and when the valet at the Paris flat wired back to say that Monsieur was not there.

Fear came with the letters to Frances, pouring in after the announcement of the engagement. Fear came with the discreet enquiries from Robert’s few friends. Fear came with a hundred and one little demands for Robert’s decision in business matters.

Fear came from Lucar’s sullenness, from Phillida’s hysterics and from the odd, preoccupied expression in David’s eyes.

And then one morning seven days after Robert’s disappearance two things happened. One was the news wired from the wilds of the Northwest province of India and flashed into every newspaper office in the world. The curt message appeared on the evening-paper boards. Phillida read them from her bedroom window as they stood propped up against the railings of the square.

GODOLPHIN SAVED

FAMOUS EXPLORER

ESCAPES FROM

FORBIDDEN

TERRITORY

She was standing there staring at the display when the second event occurred which forced the first into obscurity, focussed the attention of the entire city on Sallet Square, and brought Meyrick racing back from China as fast as train and plane could carry him.

Frances came into her half sister’s room without ceremony. She was trying to keep very quiet, very calm, and her grey eyes were dark with the effort of control.

“Phillida,” she said huskily, “something’s happened. You’ve got to pull yourself together, darling. You’ve got to be incredibly brave and—and—— Oh, for God’s sake, keep your head.”

The woman swung round. “They’ve found Robert?”

Frances regarded her steadily.

“Yes,” she said. “Did you know?”

“I? No, of course not. I don’t know anything. Where is he? What’s he done?”

“Oh, darling.” The young voice quivered and broke. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I thought. He—he’s been down in the garden room all the time. His coat and hat were there too, lying on top of him. That cupboard’s never opened, you know. There’s nothing in it in the ordinary way. They’ve just found him. Norris called me.”

The words were tumbling out of her mouth in a helpless stream, and she struggled to restrain them.

Phillida came quietly across the room towards her. She laid her hand on her half sister’s shoulder and shook her.

“Frances, are you telling me that Robert is dead?”

The girl met her eyes and her own were panic-stricken. She nodded.

Phillida’s hand dropped. Her face was calm and her tone rather horribly matter of fact.

“Thank God,” she said simply.