The Skeleton in the Clock shm-18 Read online

  Ruth reached up and disengaged his hand from her shoulder; rather quickly, he thought She did not admit or deny that she had thought of asking any such question. She looked straight ahead, unseeingly, at the music on the piano-rack.

  "What did you think," she asked, "of our friend tonight?"

  "Stannard?" Martin Drake's face clouded. "Stannard's a damn good fellow. I'm sorry I called him pompous. Nerves. If he can really get permission to spend the night in the execution shed at that prison…"

  "If you two go there," Ruth interrupted quickly, "I'm going too. Did you notice that Mr. Stannard seemed rather-embarrassed?"

  Drake was startled.

  "The Great Defender? Embarrassed? Why?"

  "Oh, no reason," said Ruth, with a lift of her head that-made the soft brown hair gleam. "No reason! No reason at all!"

  And again her fingers moved over the piano-keys.

  Downstairs, under the moon, the sleek black car still waited before the door of number 16. Inside the car, his thick arms round the steering-wheel, John Stannard sat where he bad been sitting for some time. Once more he heard the strains of Someday I’ll Find You drifting down from the lighted windows on the top floor.

  This time Stannard trod on the starter. As the motor throbbed into life, he revved it to a hum which deepened into a roar. Then, very gently, he put the car in gear and drove off towards Kensington High Street.

  Chapter 2

  On the following morning, Friday July 11th, the blue-and-white flag was up at Willaby's in Bond Street to show that there would be an auction that day.

  Martin Drake saw it as he turned out of Brook Street at a quarter to eleven. London in 1947, dazzling under its first really warm summer since the beginning of the war, winked with show-windows against dingy brick or stone. It heated the body and strengthened the spirits. Martin, freshly shaven and as well-dressed — as clothes-coupons permitted, felt his own spirits lift.

  But that always happened on a sunny morning. It was the night he dreaded.

  He hadn't, Martin reflected, been drunk at Ruth Callice's flat last night. Merely a trifle muzzy, and blackly depressed. He had an impression that some remark, some reference made by Stannard (he could not remember it now) ought to have had significance. But his mind was closed to so many things. He had almost become maudlin in the presence of Ruth Callice's obvious sympathy. He was so fond of Ruth that under any other circumstances… but there were no other circumstances.

  Jenny!

  The silent oration he addressed to himself ran something like this:

  You are London's prize fool. You admit that At the age of thirty-four you have had, to put it very conservatively, some slight experience. Your conduct is not made more supportable by those people, two or three friends at the Savage Club, who know about it

  "My dear old boy," one of them had said, "all you need is thus-and-so. With so many willing dames about…"

  Or old Hook, with his touch of grey side-whisker and his twinkling eyeglass, who always quoted Leigh Hunt:

  Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in—

  And this, though you had to smile, touched a raw spot It was, in so many ways, expressive of Jenny, Jenny, blonde and, slender, in the blue uniform and hat which at first glance made her seem unapproachable. Jenny's eagerness, her sincerity, almost her naivete.

  "A station-buffet at Edinburgh?' Ruth had said. "A station platform. A train tearing through the blackout, with you two kissing and swearing you loved each other."

  Hell!

  When such things happened to other people, Martin reflected, or even happened in stories, they had at least a trace of dignity. This hadn't

  In the hush just before dawn on a summer morning, the express from Edinburgh stops at Rugby. Heavy boots clump and bumble along the wooden platform. Misshapen shadows, interweaving, loom up against the dim blue station lights and the faint glow from the services' tea-canteen. Captain Drake of the Gloucesters, and (rank and unit unknown) Jenny, hand in hand, stumble out to get a cup of vile tea. In the confusion and milling on that dark platform — every private's kit seems to swing and bang for a yard in each direction — you lose Jenny's hand.

  That was all.

  Eight minutes later, when the whistle blew and the doors slammed, Martin jumped into the train. He staggered along the corridors, over kit and luggage and bodies, calling Jenny's name. Two or three times he was answered, not seriously. There were cheers. The drugged dawn-wind blew drowsily. When they reached King's Cross, be swore to himself, it would be all right But, when that mob charged through the barriers, he couldn't find her either.

  That was all too, except for the long waiting.

  Ahead of him now, on this brilliant morning of July 11th, loomed the dun-coloured premises of Willaby's. Sedate and solid, hushed and holy, Willaby's yet wore an air of expectancy. How many treasures from the houses of the great and the near-great, of furniture and china and silver, of tapestries and pictures and armour: how many of these have passed under the hammer at Willaby's, perhaps, no man can compute. The porter — who recognized Mr. Martin Drake as a black-and-white artist of something more than national reputation — respectfully held open one door. "Morning, sir!"

  "Good morning." The image of Jenny, held in abeyance, started up again like a toothache we think vanished overnight "Er-have they started yet?"

  The porter eyed him reproachfully.

  "Not till eleven, sir. As usual, Got your catalogue?’

  "No. I'm just looking on today. What’s up this morning?"

  "Furniture and carpets, sir. Mainly seventeenth and eighteenth century."

  To judge by the subdued murmur of voices from upstairs, there must be a fair-sized crowd. A number of persons were mounting the broad, dingy staircase. At the top it opened into a large, square room, walls panelled in some material which resembled faded brown burlap, where they displayed specimens of future auctions. Beyond it lay another large room, with towering bookshelves. Both of these rooms opened, at right-angles, into the main auction-room.

  "Hel-lo, Drake!"

  A face, half-remembered, drifted past and was lost Martin returned the greeting vaguely. He heard a fashionably dressed woman talking, with greed and not for antiquarian reasons, about the display of carpets. An old man with a. white moustache, obviously a dealer, stood hunched over his catalogue.

  The main auction-room was long and high. Sunlight sparkled against its grimy glass roof. At the rear, blue-smocked attendants lounged or stood with arms folded in front of a line of ticketed exhibits. The auctioneer's desk, like a high-set rostrum, faced out over a very long horseshoe-shaped table, covered with green felt round which would gather the chairs of the eagerest bidders. Martin had loathed crowds — no matter how soft-voiced or shuffling — ever since that night on the train. The whole room seemed to hiss at him.

  "Get it dirt-cheap if the dealers don't…"

  "Jump in at the beginning! That's when people are cautious, and…"

  No!

  Just off the main hall, at the right, opened another showroom smaller and narrower than the others. Here were displayed the items for the next sale, which would be on Monday. Arms and armour, of course! That was why he was here!

  On two tables along the narrow sides of the room, and a long one down the centre, they had thrown rapiers, daggers, hand-and-a-half swords, even two-handed swords. Many were tied in bundles, most of them. unpolished. Round the walls there hung, very highly polished, the more obvious of the choice items. The only other person in the room was a girl, at the other end of the centre table, her back towards him, searching through a handbag.

  Martin looked round.

  The walls glittered with steel in low, dim-burning electric light. Halberds and guisarmes with long light shafts and undulled points. A wicked-looking main-gauche. What seemed to be — he took a step forward — a Thomas cup-hilt This was Martin's hobby; he wished he had a Monday's catalogue.

  Then the girt at the other end of
the table turned round. And he saw that it was Jenny.

  Silence.

  Martin Drake was faintly conscious of a murmur of voices from the other room, and the ticking of his wrist-watch. But he felt alone, and amid the stuffiness of the arms-room, with Jenny. At first his chest seemed light, light and hollow; then he felt a sensation almost like physical sickness.

  Jenny, blonde and slender. Jenny, with the wide-spaced blue eyes, the eagerness and the — not, not naivete! some other expression! With intolerable vividness he remembered her, in the corner of the railway compartment her arms round his neck, and moonlight draining colour from her face, the rattlety-clack of the train dimming speech. Even now she was wearing a dark-blue tailored suit with a white blouse. Martin tried to speak. All he could force out was the inanity of, "Hello."

  "Hello," said Jenny in a voice hardly above a whisper.

  He started to walk towards her. Though they were separated only by the length of the green-felt-covered table with its weapons, it seemed an enormous distance. Then he noticed something else.

  You are not permitted to smoke at Willaby's. Fumbling in her handbag, Jenny found a tortoise-shell cigarette case, the kind that contained only very small cigarettes. Jenny took, out a cigarette; and automatically he reached in his pocket for a lighter. But her hand was shaking so badly, as she lifted it, that she hastily put back the cigarette in the case.

  Emotion caught these two like a net; it made them flounder; it kept them half deaf and partially blind. "Where were you on that train? I couldn't find you!" The blue eyes flashed up.

  "I–I stayed behind on the platform. I thought you would too, so we shouldn't miss each other. — But it's too late!" she added. "It's too late!"

  "How do you mean, it's too late?"

  Jenny turned away from him, but he swung her back again. The softness of her shoulder under the blue coat, the brushing of the yellow hair in a long bob against his hand: he had to remember where he was. Then he lifted her left hand. Though there was no wedding-ring on the third finger, it held an engagement ring both costly and in good taste.

  (Well, you've been expecting this, haven't you? You've been prepared for it? Steady!)

  "Do you love him?"

  Jenny looked away.

  "No. But I'm afraid he's very much in love with me. And then grandmother — and, of course, Aunt Cicely—" "Do you love him?"

  Still without looking round, Jenny shook her head violently. "Who is he?"

  "He's awfully nice. He was one of the original Battle-of-Britain pilots. And his record since then…" The soft, sweet voice, perhaps over-cultured in accent, trailed away. "Did you ever try to find me?" Jenny asked accusingly.

  "Jenny, I've done nothing else ever since that night! But all I knew was your nickname!"

  "Jenny is short for Jennifer. Surely you could have guessed that?"

  "Yes, of course. Only I thought.."

  "You thought — you thought I gave that name on some kind of casual adventure." She clenched her fists.

  "No, so help me! But it was the only clue I had. Did you ever try to find me?"

  "Yes, of course. And I did: easily."

  "Oh?"

  "You’re Martin Drake. You're a famous artist You live at the Albany, and you're not married. Only grandmother said— and, of course, Aunt Cicely—"

  "Look here," said Drake with restraint. "Who the devil are these two powerful jujus, grandmother and Aunt Cicely? Can't they be tipped over like any other savage idols?" He glanced round. "And, by the way, can't we get out of here?"

  "No! Please. Sh-h!"

  "Why Sh-h?’

  "Grandmother's here. She wants to get something at the auction. How on earth did you know I was here?"

  "As a matter of fact, I didn't I came here for a preview, to recommend one or two rapiers for Sir Henry Merrivale."

  "Sir Henry Merrivale!" exclaimed the girl.

  Jenny raised one hand as though to shade her eyes. On her flushed face, with the short nose and the rather broad mouth, was an expression be could not read. Martin noticed, absently, that beyond her was a stand of armour — a Cavalier half-suit, much blackened, with lobster-tail helmet — and behind it on the wall, a picture depicting one of the loves of Aphrodite.

  "Sir Henry Merrivale!" Jenny exclaimed. "You know him?"

  "Slightly, yes. I went to him last week about tracing you. He said he'd help, but just for the moment he was too much engrossed in studying the subject of reincarnation."

  "The subject of… what?"

  "Reincarnation," explained Martin. "He thinks he may be the reincarnation of— Hold on! Wait! I've got it!"

  For the rush of happiness at seeing Jenny, it seemed to him, had loosed a spell from his wits. He knew now why a certain cloudy reference should have been clear.

  "Got what?" asked Jenny, with that eagerness he knew so well.

  "Last night a barrister named Stannard mentioned a place in" Berkshire: Fleet House, I think it was. He said there'd been some ugly business, twenty years ago, which was either an accident or a supernatural murder. And that's it, of course!"

  "How do you mean?"

  "A friend of Sir Henry's, Chief Inspector Masters, has been pestering him to take up the case. Masters wants to re-open it. It seems there's new evidence, anonymous letters or the like." Martin stopped short. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  He interpreted Jenny's expression, now. It was fear. Again he became conscious of the room's stuffiness, and the weapons glittering round the walls: Jennifer said:

  "Richard Fleet my fiancé, is the son of the Sir George Fleet who died. Aunt Cicely, who's only an aunt by courtesy, is Lady Fleet My grandmother is their closest friend."

  "Listen, Jenny," said Martin, after a pause during which his throat felt dry. "There's only one question I'm going to ask you, but it's got to be answered."

  "Yes?"

  "Do you still feel as you did — in the train? Do you?" "Yes," replied Jenny and lifted her eyes. "Yes!"

  "Jennifer, dear!" interrupted a calm, authoritative female voice. It cracked their idyll to bits. Jenny started; Martin swung round guiltily. "

  And it is now time, in this chronicle, to introduce none other than Sophia, Dowager Countess of Brayle.

  She had approached unheard. She was a large, commanding woman, her grey-white hair confined under a rakish fashionable hat, and her body so compressed into a dress of garish design that it almost, but not quite, failed to make her seem fat Her voice, which forty-odd years ago had been called a 'pure contralto' as her nose had been called 'sweetly aquiline,' could often be heard speaking on public platforms.

  The Dowager Countess, in fact, occasionally showed habits rakish and even skittish. At these same public meetings, for instance, she had a trick of taking two sweeping steps backwards, while raising her right arm and exclaiming, "Here's three chee-ah-s." Sometimes she even did this in private, to the mild-voiced protest of Aunt Cicely.

  All her friends would testify to her good qualities: that she was fair, that she was generous, that she even had a sense of humour. She had perhaps every good quality except that of being likeable. But that did not matter. The Dowager Countess meant to get her own way, always got her own way, and accepted this as naturally as she expected a lamp to light at the click of a switch. Whether you liked her, or didn't like her, simply did not matter.

  "When you see my composure ruffled," she would say comfortably, "then will be the time to criticize."

  This imposing lady, a faint smile on her face and an auction-catalogue in her hand, stood before the two culprits and waited with endless patience for someone to speak.

  Jenny, pushing back her yellow hair, blurted it out

  "C–Captain Drake," she said, "may I present you to my grandmother? Captain Drake, Lady Brayle."

  The latter's nod and glance flickered over Martin as though he had not been there at all.

  The auction," she said to Jenny, "has begun. Lot 72 should come up in a few minutes. I feel sure, Jennife
r, that you will wish to be present? Follow me, please."

  She swung round, her somewhat ample posterior conspicuous in the flowered dress, and moved majestically away. Jenny, on the other side of the long centre table, followed her almost parallel. Martin, with a raging heart, could only follow Jenny. At the far end of the table, however. Lady Brayle wheeled round with her back to the open arch into the main auction-hall. She glanced at the weapons on the table.

  "Ah — Jennifer dear," she continued with a sort of cold archness. "It occurs to me we must not forget our fiancé Now must we?'

  Jenny made an incoherent noise.

  "Richard, or dear Ricky as we call him.." Lady Brayle paused. "Captain Drake. Let me see. You were in the Guards?"

  "No. The Gloucesters."

  "Oh. The Gloucesters." Her eyebrow indicated that she had momentarily scanned the army-list and found no such name. "How interesting. Richard, or dear Ricky as we call him, is one of our new breed of chivalry: our heroic and fearless knights of the air. Don't you think so, Jennifer?"

  "Grandmother, he'd pass out if he heard you talk like that!"

  But grandmother's contralto was now warming up with platform eloquence.

  "You might give him, I think, some small present of arms. This fine old English blade," exclaimed Lady Brayle, picking up a Turkish scimitar of about 1885, and waving it in the air, "would surely be suitable. I am informed that the air-force seldom carry swords. But the spirit of it! You agree, Jennifer?"

  "Yes, grandmother. But…"

  "You agree, Captain Drake?"

  Martin swallowed a heavy lump in his throat. This calm and indomitable old lady was trying to get his goat He longed to take one dig at her, just one. But he feared its effect on Jenny. Just how much influence this doubtless-benevolent Gorgon exercised over Jenny, who three years ago had given her age as twenty-two, he could not yet estimate.

  "Quite," he agreed.

  "It is no use, Captain Drake," she smiled at him. "It really is no use." "I beg your pardon?"