Читать книгу Masks Off at Midnight - Valentine Williams - Страница 7

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She was twenty minutes late for lunch. The large party was already at the table on the glassed-in verandah of the Yacht Club when, with a hasty ‘Frightfully sorry, everybody!’ she scrambled into the vacant place. Paul Kentish, with his crisp light hair and sunny smile, was beside her to draw back her chair. She was glad of his presence, it lent her confidence. She was furious with herself for being late. The Tallifers were giving this lunch for the Waverlys’ guests from London and, with all his indulgence towards her shortcomings, her father was punctilious on the subject of manners. She was conscious now of his heavy red face glowering at her as her mother, with a vexed ‘Oh, Jenny!’ introduced her to their guests. Mrs. Dene was a New-Yorker who had married an Englishman and Jenny identified her at once as the very attractive-looking girl placed between her father and Cousin Anthony—the husband, in her embarrassment, she failed to locate. Then she sat down to her cocktail which they had brought in from the lounge and, unfolding her napkin, glanced covertly round the table.

If she had not seen the list of guests, she could have recited it blindfold. The Waverlys, of course, and Cousin Anthony, and Paul Kentish, and the Partons from Laurel Inlet, and Miss Foxley and the General (whom you would take to be the oldest human being alive until you saw his sister who kept house for him up on the Ridge), and Joan van Bossche and her mother, and Cooper Wargrave who had the training stables over at Manhasset and judged at horse shows all over the Island. The family circle was pretty restricted, although she, like all the younger members of her set, had her own crowd of acquaintances, quite a cheery bunch to play around with, but not the sort you would ever dream of asking to meet the family—people like Brent Hordern, for example.

Hordern had his nerve, she reflected, moving her bag out of the waiter’s way. But he was right about the old order, as represented by her father and Cousin Anthony, being doomed. Doomed? It was dead and buried. To get anywhere nowadays, you had either to have money or be famous, in the public eye—this exclusive racket was out. These family parties were too ghastly, she mused, while her dissatisfied gaze roved round the circle of preoccupied faces—a man like Brent Hordern, intelligent and really quite presentable, was a great improvement on a nitwit like Sonny Parton, for instance.

Her father, chatting with Barbara Waverly, kept his profile sternly turned from his daughter; but Cousin Anthony shot her a mute, twinkling glance out of his faintly supercilious eyes as he listened to pretty Mrs. Dene. With disfavour Jenny pushed her plate from her—ye gods, she was bored! At her side Paul, across her mother, was talking to Randolph Waverly about the ball—Paul, she gathered, had spent the morning over at Heathfield making the final arrangements. To ensure absolute secrecy the masqueraders and properties figuring in the surprise procession were to use the garden entrance in the southeast turret and assemble in the Blue Room which opened direct on the great hall where the ball was being held.

Thus left to her own devices, Jenny was aware of an unfamiliar voice speaking in her ear. ‘Now I know why Columbus wanted to discover America!’ it said. She turned her head to find herself looking into the face of a young man with an untidy crop of very coppery hair and large, horn-rimmed spectacles. His rather pink-and-white complexion was barred with freckles, his mouth frankly humorous, his manner bland and slightly cynical. This, she told herself, must be Trevor Dene. His clipped, rather drawling accent proclaimed the Englishman.

She laughed. ‘It sounds like Amos ‘n’ Andy. But I suppose I’ll have to ask you. Well, why did Columbus want to discover America?’

‘Because he’d heard about the hot clams and fried bacon,’ her neighbour replied triumphantly. ‘I’ve never tasted anything quite so marvellous in my life!’

She gave her plate a little push. ‘Won’t you have mine, then? I never eat clams...’

‘You bet,’ he remarked calmly as she passed her plate across. ‘Shall we get it over at once and be done with it?’ he observed, spearing a clam with his fork.

‘Get what over?’

He gave her a comic glance. ‘How I like America...’

She gurgled a little laugh. ‘As a matter of fact, I was just going to ask you...’

His nod was solemn. ‘Next time I come to America I intend to have a small brochure printed setting forth my impressions of the United States. I shall carry a few copies around with me and distribute them at the parties I go to. It’ll kill a perfectly good conversational opening, of course; but look at the saving of overhead! In the meantime, if you really want to know whether I like Americans, there’s your answer!’ He jerked his tawny poll in the direction of his wife across the table.

Jenny smiled. ‘You said that very nicely!’ She was gazing appreciatively at Nancy Dene’s charming profile revealed under the choicest of little hats. ‘I think Mrs. Dene’s lovely...’

‘So do I,’ he agreed enthusiastically. ‘Imagine a girl like that throwing herself away on a cop!’

‘A cop?’ She giggled. ‘Oh, you mean because you’re at Scotland Yard? Daddy calls you a criminologist...’

He wrinkled his nose disdainfully. ‘Why use one syllable when five will suffice? Once a cop, always a cop. You know it makes Swain, the Waverlys’ butler, most frightfully matey with me, my having been a bobby. He’s English, too: he was once in service in Belgrave Square, he tells me, and the policeman on the beat used to drop in for supper regularly. No one ever gave me any supper when I was a policeman, but that was probably because I never got beyond the grimmer of the suburbs...’

She laughed merrily. ‘And you really mean to tell me you used to be a London bobby?’

‘Certainly I was. That was the rule when I first joined: everybody had to go through the uniformed ranks. I went into the force straight from Cambridge—you wouldn’t believe the thrill I used to have, pounding the beat. Now the Yard’s gone high hat, as you call it here, and we’re taking the laddies right out of the ’Varsity into the Plain Clothes Branch via the Police College. But I started at the bottom of the ladder. P. C. Dene, of the X Division—I looked no end of a dog in my helmet and whistle!’

‘But it’s too fascinating! And did Mrs. Dene take and marry you off the beat?’

He grinned. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her. As a matter of fact I’d already graduated from the Uniform Branch into the Finger Prints, where I am still...’

She laughed. ‘I hoped you were going to tell me that her horse ran away with her in the Park and that you saved her life—you know, “Handsome Cop Rescues Lovely American”...’

He wagged his head smilingly. ‘As a matter of fact, I met her over here two years ago when I was having a busman’s—or rather, a policeman’s—holiday...’[1]

She sighed. ‘The other way would have been much more romantic...’

With a musing air he straightened a fork beside his plate. ‘There was a certain element of romance about our meeting, nevertheless,’ he remarked quietly.

‘Tell me!’ she bade him.

He laughed. ‘Ask Nancy! She makes it a better story than I do. But then crime investigation is too much like hard work to me...’

‘All the same, it must be thrilling...’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing but rule of thumb. Criminals are dull dogs for the most part. No imagination. You’ve no idea how glad I am to get away from it all for a bit. We only arrived yesterday. I’m on a fortnight’s holiday and I don’t care if I never print a fellow again. Are you going to the ball tomorrow night?’

‘Rather!’

‘Randolph Waverly wants me to think up some kind of police uniform for myself...’

She furrowed her brow prettily. ‘Did they have policemen under Louis the Sixteenth?’

‘They had the watch, or something, didn’t they? I’m pretty vague about it, really. I suggested to Ran that I might go as the house detective at the Palace of Versailles...’ He put his hands to his head. ‘Five thousand rooms, isn’t it? Can you imagine it? And if all these memoirs of the times are true...’

Her amused laugh cut him off—she found the young man unexpectedly refreshing. ‘You say the craziest things. But you’ll adore the ball. You know, Ran and Barbara give one every year, each time a different period, and people come in groups from miles around. For two years now Paul Kentish, who’s sitting on the other side of me, has got up a surprise pageant. Last year ancient Egypt was the period and Paul arranged the arrival of the Queen of Sheba on a visit to Pharaoh. It was loads of fun!’

‘And what’s it to be this time?’

She laughed. ‘Hush, it’s a deadly secret! Nobody will know until we make our grand entry into the ballroom at eleven o’clock. And nobody will know who’s who in the procession, either, because we shall be masked, like everybody else. Of course, Ran and Barbara will be spotted because they’re to be the King and Queen of France—Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette: it’s supposed to be a fête at the Court of Versailles, you know...’

‘So Ran was telling me. And the masks come off at midnight, eh?’

‘Yep. After the procession arrives there’ll be a show of sorts, dances and what not, quite short, so that those of us who are in the pageant can share in the fun. Myself, I think that eleven o’clock is much too late for the procession, but people are so tiresome about being on time at affairs like this.... At any rate, on the stroke of midnight the distinguished visitor will be invited to remove his mask and that will be the signal for everybody to follow suit...’

The boyish face lit up. ‘It sounds like a tremendous lark. How many of you are in the cortège?’

‘I don’t know exactly, but quite a hundred, with the band and everyone. Paul Kentish is a marvel at getting people to work for him. Why, he’s even roped in our chauffeur!’

She turned to find Paul, on her other side, speaking to her.

‘Will you get a load of H. T.?’ he said, moving his head towards her father. ‘He’s as mad as the devil with you, Jen. You know what he is about unpunctuality at meals. What made you so late?’

She sniffed forlornly. ‘It was that darned rain. It caught me on the way to the thirteenth hole and I had to run for shelter to the hut. I wasn’t going to ruin a perfectly good crêpe frock for Dad or anyone else...’

‘Look here,’ he broke in, ‘I’m as busy as a wet hen, what with this pageant and the paper going to press tomorrow—I shall have to dash back to the office the moment lunch is over. Are you going to Cousin Anthony’s this afternoon?’

‘Why?’

‘He asked the Denes in for a cocktail...’

‘Mercy, I’d forgotten. I’m glad you mentioned it...’

‘Come a bit early. Round half-past five. I’ll be down by the stream in the garden...’

She nodded. ‘Okay...’

They had coffee on the lawn under the umbrellas. A telephone call from New York fetched her away. As she left the telephone booth in the hall of the clubhouse she came face to face with Mrs. Barrington who was just taking leave of her guest.

Jenny always had the feeling that Constance Barrington very definitely did not ‘belong’ in Laurel. It was not that she was a stranger, a newcomer, about whose eligibility there could be any question. She was from an old New Orleans family and, as the widow of a diplomatist who had served with distinction in foreign capitals, her social presentability was unassailable.

The barrier lay rather in the woman herself. She did all the usual things. She played a little golf, gave small teas or dinners for bridge at her charming house, visited a little. But she encouraged no intimacies. She lived her own life. She steered clear of all cliques, moving in and out of Laurel society with her slow, enigmatic smile and strange, questioning regard which Jenny was very sure missed nothing. With her dead white skin, almond-shaped eyes as green as any cat’s, and reddish gold hair—the authenticity of its tint was the subject of inexhaustible surmise in Laurel drawing-rooms—and the rather picturesque style of dressing she affected, Constance Barrington would have stood out against any background. But at Laurel the women—at any rate, as far as the married set was concerned—bothered little about clothes and still less about their complexions. To be a Tallifer, a van Bossche, a Parton, or a Foxley was sufficient to secure recognition—to rely upon dressmaker or beauty specialist smacked of the plebeian. And so against the roughened skins and sensible tweeds of the Laurel matrons Mrs. Barrington’s vivid, exotic beauty, her floppy hats and trailing frocks, were by contrast as striking as a blackbird in a field of snow.

‘The trouble about Constance,’ Paul Kentish confided to Jenny, ‘is that she looks like a vamp and people expect her to act like one. What makes ’em so mad is that they can’t pin anything on her!’

Which was no more than the truth. It was not for want of trying. The married women hated her. And with reason. Particularly the younger women. With their firm background of family tradition and, in many cases, of riches as well, they felt themselves fully capable of dealing with the cruder type of husband-snatcher. But Constance Barrington was in no sense crude. Or could she in any way be described as a husband-snatcher. To all appearances she was not even very interested in men. For that, as every young wife in Laurel realized long before the men were aware of it, she was all the more dangerous. The charm she exercised was the more deadly for being effortless and seemingly unconscious.

When with her languid, delicate air she drifted into the Yacht Club or the clubhouse at the golf course or a cocktail party, it was devastating. She might have been deaf and dumb and blind for all the effort she made, but she drew the men into her ambit as surely as did the lighthouse on Laurel Point the gulls. Out of the circle of men surrounding her at such functions, during the four months she had been at Laurel, one after the other had emerged to ‘give her a rush,’ as Paul Kentish put it, and set all tongues wagging. They wagged the more actively and maliciously in that there was so little to wag about. There was smoke, but no fire. Whether it was Mervyn Klein, or Andy Harper, or Sonny Parton who in turn danced attendance on her, Constance Barrington seemed to receive the homage of all men, singly and collectively, as her due. But she gave the critics no loophole. The men might lose their heads, but not she. Her meetings with her admirers were invariably chaperoned, and if there were any clandestine rendezvous, they never leaked out. Composedly and always circumspectly, she went her way in Laurel society as though unconscious of the tears and bitter recriminations which the attentions showered upon her evoked in the nuptial chambers.

Even her latest affair, her friendship with Brent Hordern, while it gave the gossips abundant material for surmise, furnished little in the way of concrete proof. An affair with a married man, living apart from his wife—at first it seemed like a gift. But actually the most astute intelligence work on the part of Miss Foxley and the rest failed to reveal a single instance of the proprieties being disregarded. If Hordern called at the Yellow Bungalow, other guests were invariably present, and when Mrs. Barrington went to the Ridge House, it was merely to act as hostess for the large parties he was fond of giving. Gossip had to fall back upon the whisper that the couple met clandestinely in New York and this story rested on no firmer basis than the fact that they had been observed once or twice to descend from the train together on its arrival at Laurel.

Jenny liked Constance, although she never felt she knew her very well. She admired everything about her—her looks, particularly, the fineness of her skin, which Constance exposed to the sun as little as possible, the exquisite taste with which she had furnished her small house. Jenny would have liked to make a friend of this rather lonely, reserved woman; but there was something about her that forbade a closer approach, even though, in the free-and-easy modern way, they called one another by their first names—there was perhaps five years in age between them.

Jenny smiled brightly. ‘’Lo, Constance! That’s a new hat, isn’t it?’

The other made no answer and Jenny then perceived that she was eyeing her with an odd, unsmiling air. ‘You’ve a luncheon party on, haven’t you?’ Mrs. Barrington observed rather tensely. ‘Could you spare me a moment? There’s something I want to say to you!’

Jenny looked at her wonderingly. ‘Why, Constance, of course!’

‘There’s no one in here,’ her companion said and led the way into the ladies’ drawing-room. Shutting the door behind them, she turned and faced the girl, tall and elegant in her long white frock with a jade-green belt and a band of the same shade about the fine Leghorne hat she wore—Constance loved green. ‘Listen,’ she said, addressing Jenny in a husky, hurried voice. ‘I was in the garden at home this morning and I saw you with Brent Hordern on the links. You’ve got to leave him alone, do you hear?’

The girl was amazed, wounded, too, and shocked by the naked hostility in the other’s tone. ‘Why, Constance!’

‘I don’t want any excuses, Jenny,’ Mrs. Barrington went on. ‘I make allowances for you, but you’ve got to get this straight. Brent’s no good to you—he’s not your class, he’s too old. Besides, he’s a married man...’

‘If I didn’t know you, I should say you’d been drinking,’ Jenny broke out hotly. ‘Have you gone crazy or what? Brent Hordern’s nothing to me...’

‘That’s a lie. He’s always talking about you...’ The oddly tilted eyes shot her a rapier glance. ‘I believe he wants to marry you. Does he? Does he? What was he talking to you about all the time you were in that shelter this morning? I saw you from my verandah—you were in there alone together for ages.’

The girl was blazing. ‘I’ve told you already, Mr. Hordern’s nothing to me. But if he chooses to speak to me, that’s his affair or mine. It’s certainly not yours. And in any case I’m not used to being told whom I may speak to—not by you or anybody else...’ She took a step towards the door. ‘Now I must go—I have guests waiting for me...’

But the woman barred the way. ‘Don’t go, Jenny!’ she pleaded. ‘I’m sorry I spoke as I did...’ She put her hand to her head. ‘I’ve been so worried, I hardly know what I’m doing. Listen, dear, this means so much to me—has Brent asked you to marry him?’ Green eyes stared beseechingly out of a chalky face—she looked anguished.

The girl had flushed. ‘Look here, Constance,’ she said, not unkindly, ‘let it go at that. I’ve told you already that Brent Hordern means absolutely nothing to me...’

‘Did he ask you to marry him?’

The young face set obstinately. ‘I’m not going to be cross-examined any further...’

‘Jenny, for God’s sake... Jenny, I have to know!’

The girl shook her head firmly. ‘No more questions. Let’s get out of here...’

Mrs. Barrington recoiled. ‘He did ask you—I can see by your face he did...’ Her eyes flamed angrily. ‘You little fool,’ she sneered, ‘don’t you know that he’s married and that his wife won’t divorce him?’

Her companion stamped her foot angrily. ‘I’ve stood all I’m going to stand from you, Constance,’ she cried irately. ‘Now I’ll tell you something. Brent Hordern did ask me to marry him. And he’s not married any longer, if you want to know—he got a Paris divorce months ago...’

The colour drained out of the sensitive face like water pouring over a dam. The effort she made to retain her self-control was palpable, but it succeeded. Brushing her lips with her handkerchief, she plucked it away to disclose her secretive, inscrutable smile.

‘So he told you that, did he?’ she asked in carefully level tones.

‘Didn’t you know?’

She laughed. ‘Of course. I was only testing you...’ She was staring down at the point of her slipper. Now she raised her regard to the girl. ‘I’m sorry I made a fool of myself, Jenny. I was... well, jealous, I guess—you don’t know what jealousy does to you. You must let me apologize...’ She held out her slender white hand. ‘Won’t you please forget it?’

Impulsively the girl put her arm about her. ‘That’s all right, Constance...’

Mrs. Barrington looked up tremulously. ‘You won’t... you won’t say anything about it to Brent?’

‘Of course not...’ She paused. ‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘he did ask me to marry him. If it’s any satisfaction to you to know it, I laughed at him...’ She glanced at the other’s face, but the expression was veiled, immutable. Seeing that Mrs. Barrington remained silent, the girl went on, ‘Honestly, I must fly now. Mother will be raging. Coming?’

Her companion shook her head. ‘You go. I guess I’ll stay a minute and put on some powder...’

Jenny pressed her hand and ran out.

In the hall she was confronted by her mother. Jenny quailed before the look on Mrs. Tallifer’s face. One glance at the piercing blue eye, the firm line of jaw, would have told the stranger who was the effective head of the Tallifer family. In manner Mrs. van Stuivel Tallifer was a subtle blend of the grande dame and the efficient business woman. When she spoke it was jerkily, with an air of authority, and it was her habit to punctuate her sentences with a rap on the ground from the ivory-handled stick which, owing to an ankle injury, she always used for walking.

Two thoughts were uppermost in Jenny’s mind as she faced her mother. One was that she had not yet explained her late arrival at lunch, the other that Mrs. Tallifer cordially disliked Constance Barrington. The girl found herself devoutly hoping that Mrs. Barrington would not appear.

‘There you are!’ Mrs. Tallifer cried peremptorily. ‘I think it’s abominably rude the way you neglect our guests...’ The ferrule of her cane thumped the floor. ‘I’ve given orders to the steward not to call you away to the telephone any more. Kindly go back to the lawn at once and make yourself agreeable to Mrs. Dene!’

‘All right, Mother,’ Jenny replied submissively and slipped away, congratulating herself on having got off so lightly. As she emerged upon the lawn she saw Trevor Dene and another man crossing the grass ahead of her.

The other man was Brent Hordern.