Читать книгу Dancers in Mourning - Margery Allingham - Страница 4

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Afterwards, when the tide of circumstance had reached its flood and there was no telling what were the secrets beneath its turbulent waters, Mr. Campion tried to remember every moment of that long and catastrophic day. Details which had seemed unimportant at the time flitted about in his mind with exasperating vagueness and he strove to catch at them in vain.

Yet the whole story was there, so clear to read if only he had been looking for it.

On the momentous Sunday Mr. Campion went to White Walls in the morning. On that day Chloe Pye plumbed the final depth of inconsideration, entirely outclassing all her previous efforts. This, in itself, was a remarkable feat since her total disregard for those who entertained her was a byword among the host of near friends who composed her circle.

Uncle William Faraday sat beside Mr. Campion in the Lagonda and pointed out the way with most of the pride of ownership. It was July and the roads were hot and scented, cow parsley making a bridal avenue of every lane. Uncle William sniffed appreciatively.

“Twenty miles from London. Nothing in a car. But feel you’re in the heart of the country. He runs a flat, of course, but gets down here most evenings. Don’t blame Sutane. Sensible feller, at heart.”

He glanced at his companion to make sure he was attending.

“Dear old place,” he went on, receiving a nod of encouragement. “You’ll like it. Used to belong to his wife’s uncle. Girl wanted to keep it when it came to her and Sutane suddenly thought, ‘Why not?’ That music writer, Squire Mercer, who did the stuff for my show, has a little house on the estate. Had it for years. Matter of fact, it was at his place that Sutane met Linda, his wife. She was stayin’ with her uncle up at White Walls and Jimmy came down to see Mercer. They fell in love and there you are. Funny how things work out.”

He was silent for some little time, his old eyes speculative and his lips moving a little as though he rehearsed still further details of Sutane’s private life. Mr. Campion remained thoughtful.

‘This persecution business has got on his nerves, has it? Or is he always as excitable as he was last night?”

“Always a bit mad.” The old man pulled the large tweed cap he affected for motoring more firmly over his ears. “Noticed that as soon as I saw him. Don’t think he’s very much worse than usual. Of course you can understand it when you see the life the feller leads. Most unnatural ... overworked, thinks too much, no peace at all, always in the thick of things, always in a hurry ...”

He hesitated as though debating on a confidence not quite in good taste.

“It’s a rum ménage for a decent house,” he remarked at last. “Don’t know what the old servants make of it. My own first experience of Bohemia, don’t you know. Not at all what I thought.”

He sounded a little regretful and Campion glanced at him.

“Disappointing?” he enquired.

“No, my boy, no, not exactly.” Uncle William was ashamed of himself. “Freedom, you know, great freedom, but only in the things that don’t matter, if you see what I mean. Very rational, really. Like you to meet ’em all. Turn down here. This is the beginnin’ of the estate. It’s a modern house on an old site. This is the park.”

Mr. Campion turned the nose of the car down a flint lane leading off the secondary road. High banks, topped by a chase of limes and laurels so dear to the privacy-loving hearts of an earlier generation, rose on either side. His passenger regarded these screens with satisfaction.

“I like all this,” he said. “Since it’s a right of way, very sensible. Notice this?”

He waved a plump hand towards a high rustic bridge overgrown with ramblers which spanned the road ahead of them.

“Pretty, isn’t it? Useful too. Saves havin’ steps down to the road. The house, the lawns and the lake are over here to the right and there’s an acre or two of park on the other side. Must cost him a pretty penny to keep up.”

They passed under the bridge and came on to the drive proper, wide and circular, leading up to the house. Campion, who had entertained misgivings at the term “modern,” was reassured.

Standing on high ground, its wide windows open to catch a maximum of sun, was one of those rare triumphs of the sounder architects of the earlier part of the century. There was nothing of the villa in its white walls and red-tiled roof. It possessed a fine generosity of line and proportion and succeeded in looking somehow like a great white yacht in full sail.

“French-looking,” commented Uncle William complacently. “Take the car through into the yard. Like you to see the stables.”

They passed under the archway of the stable buildings on the left of the house and came into a brick yard where several cars were already parked. Apart from Sutane’s own black Bentley there were two small sports cars and one remarkable contraption of considerable age on which a young man in overalls and a cloth cap was at work. He grinned at Uncle William.

“It’s back again, sir,” he said. “Universal joint gone this time.” He nodded to Campion with impartial friendliness, indicated a parking spot, and returned to his work.

“See what I mean?” said Mr. Faraday in one of his disastrous asides. “No formality in the whole place. That’s Petrie’s car he’s at work on. Feller they call ‘Sock.’ Can’t quite understand him. Like your opinion.”

As they emerged from the archway Mr. Campion became aware of a certain hesitation in his companion’s manner and, looking up, he saw the cause coming down the drive towards them. It was Chloe Pye.

She was dressed in a small white swim suit, high-heeled shoes and a child’s sunbonnet, and managed to look every one of her forty-odd years. Off the stage she, too, presented some of that self-exaggeration which had been so noticeable in Sutane. Her body was hard and muscular and one saw that her face was old rather because of the stuff it was made of than because of any defect of line or contour. She was swinging a long bright scarf and carried a book and a deck chair.

At the sight of the visitors she threw the scarf round her shoulders and stood hesitating, arch and helpless.

“How providential!” she called to Uncle William as soon as he was within earshot. “Come and help me, darling.”

Mr. Faraday bustled forward, self-conscious and incompetent. He raised his cap to her carefully before taking the chair.

“And who’s this?” Chloe Pye managed to pat Uncle William’s arm, hand him the chair and indicate that she was waiting for his companion to be introduced all in one movement.

Campion came up and was conscious of pale green eyes, a trifle too prominent, which looked up into his face and found him disappointing.

“They’re all in the house,” she said. “Shop, shop, nothing but shop the whole time. Shall I have the chair under the trees, Mr. Faraday? Or do you think it would be better by the flower bed?—that one over there with the silly little red thingummies in it.”

It took some little time to get her settled and themselves out of the reach of her tenacious conversational openings, but they broke away eventually and once again headed for the front door.

“You won’t believe a word they tell you, will you?” she shouted as they reached the path. “They’re all quite mad, my dears. They’re just seeing insults on all sides ... Tell somebody to bring me some ice water.”

The front door stood open and from it came the sound of a piano. The unsuspecting Mr. Campion had just set foot on the lowest step when there was a roar above him and a gigantic Dane, who had been sleeping on the mat just inside the hall, leapt down, his neck bristling and his eyes uncompromisingly red.

“Hoover!” protested Mr. Faraday. “Down, sir! Down! Somebody call the dog!”

The thunderous barking shook the house and a woman in a white linen coat appeared in the doorway.

“Lie down, you little beast,” she said, hurrying down the steps and cuffing the animal with a broad red hand. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Faraday? He ought to know you. Get back, Hoover. Go in and watch your mistress.”

The authority in her voice was tremendous, and Campion was not surprised to see the brute cower obediently and slink into the house, his tail drooping.

The newcomer came down another step towards them and suddenly became a much shorter, stockier person than he had supposed. She was forty-five or so, with red untidy hair, a boiled pink face and light eyelashes. Campion thought he had never seen anyone more self-possessed.

“He’s working in the hall,” she said, lowering her voice and giving the personal pronoun a peculiar importance. “Would you mind going round through the sitting-room windows? He’s been at it since eight o’clock this morning and hasn’t had his massage yet. I’m waiting to get hold of him.”

“Of course not. We’ll go round at once, Miss Finbrough.” Uncle William was deferential. “This is Mr. Campion, by the way.”

“Mr. Campion? Oh, I’m glad you’ve come.” Her blue eyes grew interested. “He’s depending on you. It’s a thoroughgoing shame. Poor man, he’s got enough worry in the ordinary way with this new show he’s producing without having all this trouble. You run along. He’ll see you soon.”

She dismissed them with a finality that would have daunted a newspaperman. It had done so, of course, on many occasions.

“An extraordinary woman,” confided Uncle William as they went round the side of the house. “Devoted to Sutane. Looks after him like a nurse. Come to think of it, that’s just about what she is. Went in the other day and she’d got him on a mattress, stark as a plucked chicken, pummellin’ the life out of him. Henry, the feller we saw last night at the theatre, is terrified of her. Believe they all are. Wonder if we’ll get in here.”

He paused outside a pair of very high french windows which gave out onto the terrace on which they stood. Here, too, there was music, but softer, the beat less insistent than the other which still sounded faintly from the hall. It ceased abruptly as a man at the piano caught sight of the visitors, and a voice so slovenly that the words were scarcely articulated welcomed them in.

Campion followed Mr. Faraday into a large light room whose original style of decoration had followed a definite modern scheme embracing pearl-grey panelling and deep, comfortable black chairs, but which now resembled nothing so much as a playroom devoted to some alarmingly sophisticated child.

Temporary tables ranged round the room supported piles of manuscript, sheaves of untidy papers, model sets, and whole hosts of glossy photographs.

In the centre of the polished floor was a baby grand and behind it, nodding at them, sat the man who had spoken. He was an odd-looking person; yet another “personality,” thought Mr. Campion wryly. He was extraordinarily dark and untidy, with a blue chin and wide bony shoulders. The jut of the great beak of a nose began much higher up than usual so that his eyes were divided by a definite ridge and his mild, lazy expression sat oddly on a face which should have been much more vivid.

He began to play again immediately, a mournful little cadence without beginning or end, played over and over with only the most subtle of variations.

The other two people in the room rose as the newcomers appeared. A large rawboned person who could only be described as disreputable disengaged himself from the chair in which he had been sprawling amid a heap of newspapers and came forward, a pewter tankard in his hand. He shook himself a little and his creased woollen clothes slipped back into some semblance of conventionality. He was very tall, and his cheekbones were red and prominent in his square young face.

“Hallo, Uncle,” he said. “This is Mr. Campion, is it? Sorry James is so very much engaged, but it can’t be helped. Sit down, won’t you? I’ll get you some beer in a minute. Oh, you won’t? All right, later on then. Do you know everyone?”

He had a pleasant but powerful voice and a natural ease of manner very comforting to a stranger. His black hair was strained off his forehead and appeared to be plastered with Vaseline, while his small deep-set eyes were sharp and friendly.

Uncle William plumped himself in a chair and looked at Campion.

“This is Sock Petrie,” he said in much the same tone as he might have pronounced “Exhibit A.” “Oh, and this is Eve. Sorry ... I didn’t see you, my dear.”

He struggled to get up out of the low chair and was defeated.

A girl came forward to shake hands. She was obviously Sutane’s sister. Campion had never seen a resemblance more clearly marked. He guessed that she was seventeen or eighteen. She had her brother’s arched brows and deep-set, unhappy eyes, as well as a great deal of his natural grace, but her mouth was sulky and there was an odd sense of resentment and frustration about her. She retired to a corner immediately after the introduction and sat very still, her thin body hunched inside her plain cotton dress.

Sock glanced round.

“Let me present Squire Mercer,” he said. “Mercer, for God’s sake shut up a minute and say how-d’you-do.”

The man at the piano smiled and nodded at Campion, but his fingers did not cease their endless strumming. He looked pleasant, even charming, when he smiled, and his eyes, which were not dark, as they should have been, but a light clear grey, grew momentarily interested.

“He’s just a poor bloody genius,” said Petrie, flopping down among the newspapers again. He splashed his beer over himself as he swung one huge leg over the arm and exhibited a runkled sock with an inch or so of bare leg above it. The visitors got the impression that Mercer’s lack of hospitality embarrassed him.

Campion found a chair and sat down. Petrie grinned at him.

“Furious activity mingled with periods of damn-all, that’s what this life is,” he remarked. “What d’you make of this last business? Had time to consider it at all?”

There was a weary sigh from the corner.

“Must we go all over it again, Sock?” Eve Sutane protested. “Silly little odds and ends of rubbish that don’t mean anything. They’re all so petty.”

Petrie raised his eyebrows.

“That how you see it, poppet?” he said. “It’s getting James down, I can tell you that, and it’s bad for his reputation. I haven’t handled his publicity for five years without being able to say that definitely. It’s happening from the inside, you know, Campion. That’s the annoying part. ... Mercer, must you keep up that same silly little tune?”

The song writer smiled contentedly.

“It’s a funeral march for a dead dancer,” he said. “ ‘Mutes in Dance Time.’ I like it.”

“Very likely. But you’re giving me the pip.”

“Then go away.” There was unexpected fury in the tone and it startled everybody.

Petrie reddened and shrugged his shoulders.

“Go ahead.”

“I shall.”

Mercer continued his strumming. He was quiet and happy again, lost, it seemed, in his own private and particular world.

Petrie returned to Campion.

“There’s a par in the Cornet,” he said, “and another in Sunday Morning. Look at them.”

He took out a wallet which would have disgraced a lie-about and extracted two ragged scraps of newspaper. Campion read them.

GARLIC FOR THE STAR

was the Cornet’s heading.

There are many feuds in stageland. Once a star, of whatever magnitude, becomes really unpopular there is never a shortage of people anxious and able to let him know it. Among the tributes handed over the footlights at a certain West End theatre last night was a little bunch of white flowers. The star took them and pressed them to his nose. Only a long training in the art of self-control prevented him from flinging the bouquet from him then and there, for the white flowers were wild garlic. Somebody disliked him and chose this graceful way of saying so.

Sunday Morning treated the matter in its own way.

DANCING WITH TEARS IN HIS EYES?

Who was the joker who sent Jimmy Sutane a bunch of garlic on the three-hundredth night of The Buffer? It could not have been a comment on his work. Jimmy’s flying feet don’t need encouragement of this sort. Maybe he made someone cry and they wanted to return the compliment.

“I can’t get a line on these until the Press boys get back to work.” Sock retrieved the paragraphs. “But you see what it means. Someone turned that information in early. It was the end of the show when James told that ass Blest about the flowers—far too late to make these rags. That leaves Henry, who I’d pin my shirt to, Richards the doorkeeper, who is beyond suspicion, and, of course, the chap who sent ’em.” He paused. “The information reached these blokes by phone. Any other paper would have rung up for confirmation, but these two print anything. The Cornet left out the name and Sunday Morning got round the libel with a compliment—not that they care for libel. If they don’t get five actions a week they think the rag’s getting dull.”

He grimaced and replenished his tankard from a bottle behind the chair.

“It may be all poppycock but it’s damned unfortunate,” he said. “If it came from outside it might be one of the poor lunatics who badger stage folk until some merciful bobby locks ’em up, but when it’s from inside, like this, there’s genuine malice in it and it’s not so funny.”

Mr. Campion was inclined to agree with him and his interest in the affair revived. Sock Petrie breathed an atmosphere of worldly common sense.

“Is Sutane likely to have any enemies?” he enquired.

Mercer cut in from the piano.

“Jimmy? Oh, no, everyone likes Jimmy. Why shouldn’t they? I mean, I do myself, and I shouldn’t if he wasn’t a good chap.”

The words were articulated so carelessly that the sense was only just clear. Campion glanced at him curiously, looking for some hint of sarcasm in the remark. He met the light grey eyes directly and was astonished. Mercer, he saw suddenly, was that rarity in a modern world, a simple literalist. His face was bland and innocent; he meant exactly what he said.

Sock smiled into his tankard and afterwards caught Campion’s eye.

“There’s a lot in that, Mercer,” he said, and there was more affection than patronage in his tone.

The man at the piano went on playing. He looked calm and happy.

A shadow fell across the threshold and Uncle William sat up abruptly.

“Ice water,” he ejaculated guiltily and Petrie groaned.

Chloe Pye came into the room, conscious of her figure and ostentatiously annoyed. She ignored both Campion and Uncle William, who had struggled out of his chair at great personal inconvenience to meet her, and spoke plaintively to Eve.

“Would it be too much trouble for me to have some ice water? I’ve been sweltering in the garden for hours.”

“Of course not. I’ll send for some, Chloe.” The girl pressed a bell push in the panelling. “By the way, this is Mr. Campion. You know Uncle William, don’t you?”

Miss Pye regarded the strangers with open hostility. Her lips were petulant and, Campion was amazed to see, there were actual tears in her eyes.

“We met in the drive,” she said and, turning her back on them, leant on the piano to talk to Mercer.

It was an odd little display and Campion, whose experience did not include many women of forty who dressed and behaved like sulky six-year-olds, was a little shocked. He felt elderly and out of his depth.

An unexpectedly correct manservant appeared in answer to the bell and was dispatched for the water. When it came Miss Pye took it modestly.

“I hate to be so much trouble,” she said, making big eyes over the rim of the glass, “but poor Chloe was t’irsty. Move up, Squire darling. She wants to sit on the music bench too. What are you going to play for me?”

Campion, who had expected a minor explosion, was relieved to see Mercer make room for her. He was not pleased but did not seem to be disposed to make a fuss. The woman put her glass down and thrust an arm round his shoulders.

“Play some of the old songs,” she said. “The ones that made you famous, sweetheart. Play ‘Third in a Crowd.’ It makes me cry whenever I hear it, even now. Play ‘Third in a Crowd.’ ”

Mercer appraised her with his frank eyes.

“But I don’t want to make you cry,” he said and played again his little half-finished melody, which was beginning to irk even the iron nerves of Mr. Campion.

“Don’t you, darling? You are sweet. Play ‘Waiting’ then. ‘Waiting’ reminds me of happy days in the sun at Cassis. Or ‘Nothing Matters Now.’ ‘Nothing Matters Now’ was pure genius, pure, unadulterated genius.”

Mercer, who seemed to accept the tribute without surprise or embarrassment, played through the chorus of the song, which had captured the great hairy ears of the unfastidiously musical a few years before. He guyed it gently but without bitterness and when he had finished nodded thoughtfully.

“One of the better of my Wurlitzer numbers. Pure Vox Humana,” he observed.

“You’re not to make fun of it,” protested Chloe. “It’s got the sexual urge, or whatever they call it. It grips one in the tummy ...”

“Whether it makes one sick or not,” put in Petrie. “How right you are, Miss Pye.”

“Oh, Sock, is that you, darling? I saw a heap of smelly old clothes in the chair. Don’t interrupt me. We’re getting off quietly. Play something else, Squire.”

Eve rose to her feet.

“Lunch in half an hour if it’s not postponed,” she said. “I’m going to wash.”

She slouched off and Chloe looked after her.

“Like Jimmy, but no lift—no lift at all,” she said. “An odd little face, too. Squire, I’ll play you one of your own songs that you’ve forgotten. Get your hands out of the way.”

She wriggled closer to him and began to play a melody which was only faintly familiar. It had been popular in the early post-war days, Mr. Campion fancied, somewhere about the time of “Whispering” and “K-K-K-Katie.” The name came back to him suddenly—“Water-Lily Girl.”

“Corny old stuff,” said Mercer. He seemed a little irritated.

“No, you’re to listen.” Chloe was insistent. Over the piano’s broad back they could see her looking up into his face while she played the song execrably, separating the chords and lingering sickeningly on each sentimental harmony.

She went right through the tune, playing the verse as well as the chorus. Mercer seemed to have resigned himself, but when she had finished he edged her gently off the seat and went back to his little half-born melody.

Miss Pye walked over to Sock and perched herself on the arm of his chair. She was still angry with Campion and Uncle William, it seemed, for she ignored them pointedly. Sock pulled her down onto his knee.

“What a nasty little girl,” he said, managing to convey that he was a man of experience, that she was a nuisance, and that while he knew perfectly well that she could give him at least ten years she was a pretty little female thing and he forgave her. “So precipitate,” he continued. “You met us all for the first time last night and now here you are crawling all over us in a bathing suit.”

Miss Pye got out of his arms and settled herself on the edge of the chair again.

“You’re rude,” she said. “Jimmy and I are old friends, anyway, and I met you once at the theatre.”

“That’s no excuse.” Sock was only partially playful so that the scene was not without its embarrassment. “That is Mr. Mercer, the composer, you’ve been talking to over there. He’s a bachelor and a misogynist. He saw you for the first time late last night. If you work too fast you’ll give him blood pressure.”

Chloe laughed. She was childishly excited.

“Squire, shall I?”

“What? Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

“Shall I give you blood pressure?”

Mercer blushed. His dark face looked odd suffused with sudden colour.

“I don’t think so,” he said carelessly and began to play loudly, making an interesting addition to the tune at last. This development seemed to absorb him and came as a blessed relief to everyone else in the room.

Miss Pye became dignified with a lightning change of mood which comforted Uncle William, who had been watching her with growing dismay. She left Sock and walked across to the window with conscious grace.

“Jimmy has quite a charming estate, hasn’t he?” she remarked. “I do think surroundings have a definite effect upon one. He’s losing all his old joie de vivre. Here comes Mrs. Sutane. Poor woman, she’s not used to you all yet, even now, is she? How long have they been married? Seven years? I like her. Such an unassuming soul.”

Footsteps sounded on the path, and Mr. Campion rose to his feet to meet his hostess and the only woman of whom Chloe Pye had ever publicly approved. He never forgot the moment. Long afterwards, he remembered the texture of the arm of the chair as he put his hand upon it to pull himself up, the formation of the fat cumulus clouds in the half oval of the window, and a purely imaginary, probably incorrect, vision of himself, long and awkward, stepping forward with a foolish smile on his face.

At that point his memories of the day and the chaotic weeks which followed it became unreliable, because he never permitted himself to think about them, but he remembered the instant when Mrs. Sutane came into the living room at White Walls because it was then that he gave up his customary position as an observer in the field and stepped over the low wall of the impersonal into the maelstrom itself and was caught up and exalted and hurt by it.

Linda Sutane came in slowly and as though she was a little shy. She was a small gold girl trimmed with brown, not very beautiful and not a vivid personality, but young and gentle and, above all, genuine. With her coming the world slipped back into its normal focus, at least for Mr. Campion, who was becoming a little dizzy from close contact with so many violent individualists.

She welcomed him formally in a comforting voice, and apologised because lunch was going to be late.

“They’re still so busy,” she said. “We daren’t disturb them. Besides, no one can get into the dining room. There’s a piano across the door.”

Sock Petrie sighed.

“I am afraid we all disorganise your house, Mrs. Sutane,” he said.

He spoke with genuine regret and it was the first intimation Mr. Campion had of the curious relationship between Linda Sutane and the brilliant company which surrounded her husband. It was a perfectly amicable arrangement based on deep respect on both sides, but kept apart by something as vital and unsurmountable as a difference in species.

“Oh, but I like it,” she said, and might have added that she was profoundly used to it.

She sat down near Campion and bent forward to speak to him.

“You’ve come to see about all the trouble?” she said. “It’s very kind of you. I hope you won’t decide that we’re all neurotic, but little things do get round one’s feet so. If they were only big obvious catastrophes one could get hold of them. Sock showed you the paragraphs? Don’t mention them to Jimmy. It makes him so angry and we can’t do anything until the newspaper people get back to their offices.”

Chloe cut into the conversation.

“Don’t say you’re going to start in on it all over again,” she said plaintively. “Ever since I’ve come to this damned house I’ve heard nothing but ‘persecution,’ ‘practical jokes,’ ‘someone’s making fun of Jimmy.’ Don’t you let it get you down, my dear. Actors are like that. They always think someone’s after their blood.”

Mr. Campion looked up into her face, which was so distressingly raddled on that strong, trim body, and controlled a sudden vicious desire to slap it. The impulse startled him considerably. Linda Sutane smiled.

“I think you’re probably right,” she said. “Mr. Campion, come and see my flower garden.”

She led him out onto the terrace and into a formal old English garden, walled with square-cut yews and ablaze with violas and sweet-scented peonies.

“I ought not to have forgotten she was there,” she said as they walked over the turf together. “Naturally she doesn’t find it interesting, but someone must tell you all about it or you’ll be wasting your time. This is a very difficult house to get anything done in in the ordinary way, but just now, while they’re all at work on this Swing Over show, it’s worse than usual. You see, The Buffer has been such a great success that Jimmy and Slippers are anxious not to leave it. They were under contract to do Swing Over, though, and finally they came to an agreement with the Meyers brothers whereby Jimmy produces it and goes in on the business side and in return they let him out personally. Unfortunately negotiations took such a long time that they’re late with production. They’ve got the principals here now, rehearsing. That’s why Jimmy couldn’t see you at once. They had to work in the hall because of the stairs. Ours are particularly good for some reason or another. Jimmy had them copied for Cotton Fields last year. I think you ought to know all this,” she added breathlessly, “otherwise it’s very confusing and you might think us all mad.”

He nodded gravely and wondered how old she was and what her life had been before she married.

“It makes it clearer,” he agreed. “What do you think about the business—the trouble, I mean? It hasn’t actually touched you personally, has it?”

She seemed a little surprised.

“Well, I’ve been here,” she said dryly. “We may have imagined most of it. We may have thought all the odds and ends of things were related when they weren’t. But a great many irritating things have happened. There are people in the garden at night, too.”

Campion glanced at her sharply. She had spoken casually and there was no suggestion of hysteria in her manner. She met his eyes and laughed suddenly.

“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” she said. “I know. I’ve been wondering if I live too much alone or if the hypersensitiveness of the stage is catching. But I assure you there are people in this garden after dark. Plants are trampled in the morning and there are footmarks under the lower windows. The servants get unsettled and I’ve heard whispers and giggles in the shrubs myself. You see, in the old days when my uncle was alive—I used to come and stay with him sometimes—the village policeman would have been warned and he would have watched the place, but we can’t do that sort of thing now. When a man’s name is part of his assets he can’t afford to do the simplest thing without taking the risk that it will be seized on, twisted and made into an amusing story, so we just have to sit still and hope it all isn’t true. That’s not fun, with Jimmy in his present nervy state. He’s beginning to feel it’s a sort of doom hanging over him.”

She spoke wistfully and Campion looked away from her.

“It’s all rather indefinite, isn’t it?” he said severely. “Mercer tells me Sutane has no enemies.”

She considered. “I think that’s true, but Mercer wouldn’t know if he had. Mercer’s a genius.”

“Are geniuses unobservant?”

“No, but they’re spoilt. Mercer has never had to think about anything except his work, and now I don’t think he’s capable of trying to. You don’t know everybody yet. When you do you’ll find you know them all much better than they know you.”

“How do you mean?” Mr. Campion was startled.

“Well, they’re all performers, aren’t they? All mild exhibitionists. They’re so busy putting themselves over that they haven’t time to think about anyone else. It’s not that they don’t like other people; they just never have a moment to consider them.”

She paused and looked at him dubiously.

“I don’t know if you’re quite the man to help us,” she said unexpectedly.

“Why?” Mr. Campion did his best not to sound irritated.

“You’re intelligent rather than experienced.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?” Campion was surprised to find himself so annoyed.

Linda looked uncomfortable.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” she said. “But there are roughly two sorts of informed people, aren’t there? People who start off right by observing the pitfalls and the mistakes and going round them, and the people who fall into them and get out and know they’re there because of that. They both come to the same conclusions but they don’t have quite the same point of view. You’ve watched all kinds of things but you haven’t done them, and that’s why you’ll find this crowd so unsympathetic.”

Mr. Campion regarded the small person at his side with astonishment. She returned his glance timidly.

“It’s all very upsetting,” she said. “It makes one rude and unnecessarily forthright. It frightens me though, you see. Do help us out if you can and forgive me.”

Her voice was quiet and had the peculiar quality of capitulation. Mr. Campion nearly kissed her.

He came so near it that his common sense and natural diffidence combined, as it were, to jerk him back with an almost physical force only just in time. He stared at her, frankly appalled by the insane impulse. He saw her dispassionately for a moment, a little yellow-and-brown girl with a wide mouth and gold flecks in her eyes. All the same, it occurred to him forcefully that it would be wise if he went back to London and forgot the Sutanes, and so he would have done, of course, had it not been for the murder.