The Skeleton in the Clock shm-18 Read online

  "But any criticism you might make of the weapons, of course!" said Lady Brayle, deliberately avoiding the issue and raising her eyebrows. The cold, shrewd grey eyes expressed astonishment "This cute little dagger, now, with the sheath!" she broke off. "Perhaps that might appeal to dear Ricky, Jennifer. Or here, better still…"

  Martin gritted his teeth. His glance wandered past her into the main auction-hall. For the most part the spectators, either in chairs or standing up, had pressed close to the long horseshoe table below the rostrum. In the cleared space outside and beyond them, approaching slowly and at a lordly pigeon-toed walk, moved a figure which sent Martin Drake's hopes soaring up. "It's the Old Man," he breathed.

  Chapter 3

  The auctioneer's voice was small, thin, and at this distance all but inaudible.

  "Lot 55… A fine Queen Anne table, grained mahogany, drawers richly gilt, date circa 1721, originally… "

  The figure Martin had seen was a large, stout, barrel-shaped gentleman in a white linen suit His spectacles, usually pulled down on his broad nose, were now in place because he held his head up. On his head was a Panama hat, its brim curiously bent, and in his mouth he clamped an unlighted cigar.

  As he advanced, his corporation majestically preceding him, there was on his face such a lordly sneer as even the Dowager Countess could never have imitated. Indeed, a close friend of Sir Henry Merrivale would have noticed something a little odd in his behaviour. The brim of the Panama hat, to an imaginative observer, might have been arranged so as to carry sweeping plumes. As he rolled the cigar round in his mouth to get a better grip, his left hand rested negligently in the air as though on the pommel of an imaginary sword. Aloof, disdainful, he sauntered towards the armour-room.

  "Or this, for instance!" cried Lady Brayle.

  Martin drew his gaze back. Into the room, unobserved, had slipped another figure: the tiny old man, with the white moustache, whom he had seen hunched over a catalogue in the outer room.

  From the table Lady Brayle had fished up a heavy iron shield — round, convex, its outer side scored with dull embossments — and balanced it on the edge of the table.

  "Really, Jennifer, I might defy you to find a better present than this shield of our lives and homes! This monument of antiquity, this holy…"

  The apologetic little man cleared his throat

  "I trust you will forgive the intrusion, madam," he whispered in a soft and creaky voice. "But the shield is not genuine." "Not genuine!"

  "No, madam. I could give you reasons at length. But if you will look in the catalogue you will find it described only as 'Scottish type,' which of course means.. "

  "Scotland," said Lady Brayle. "I believe the Fleets were originally Scottish. That will serve well enough. Look at it, Jennifer! Observe its beauty and strength of purpose!"

  Lady Brayle was really thrilled. Also, she must have been a powerful woman. She caught up the shield with one hand on each side of the rim. Inspired, she took two sweeping steps backwards and swung up the shield with both arms — full and true into the face of Sir Henry Merrivale just as he entered the room.

  The resulting bong, as H.M.'s visage encountered the concave side of the shield, was not so mellifluous as a temple-gong. But it was loud enough to make several persons in the auction-room look round. The Dowager Countess, for a moment really taken aback, held the shield motionless before H.M.'s face as though about to unveil some priceless head of statuary.

  Then she lowered it

  "Why, Henry!" she said.

  The great man's Panama hat had been knocked off, revealing a large bald head. Through his large shell-rimmed spectacles, undamaged because the concavity of the shield had caught him mainly forehead and chin, there peered out eyes of such horrible malignancy that Jenny shied back. His cigar, spreading and flattened, bloomed under his nose like a tobacco-plant.

  He did not say anything.

  "I suppose I must apologize," Lady Brayle acknowledged coolly. "Though it was really not my fault You should look where you are going."

  H.M.'s face slowly turned purple.

  "And now," continued Lady Brayle, putting down the shield, "we must not be late. Come, Jennifer!" Firmly she took Jenny's arm. "I see Lord Ambleside and it would be most discourteous not to speak to Lord Ambleside. Good day, Captain Drake."

  All might still have been well, perhaps, if she had not turned for a last look at Sir Henry Merrivale. Mention has been made of Lady Brayle's sense of humour. She looked at H.M., and her face began to twitch.

  "I am sorry, Henry," she said, "but really—!" Suddenly she threw back her head. The once-pure contralto laughter, refined but hearty, rang and carrolled under the roof.

  "Haw, haw, bawl" warbled the Dowager Countess. "Haw, haw, haw, HAW!"

  "Easy, sir!" begged Martin Drake.

  He seized H.M's quivering shoulders. Taking the squashed cigar out of H.M.'s mouth, in case the great men should swallow it, he threw the cigar away.

  "Easy!" he insisted. "Are you all right?"

  With a superhuman effort, no one knows bow great, H.M. controlled himself or seemed to control himself. His voice, which at first appeared to issue in a hoarse rumble from deep in the cellar, steadied a little.

  "Me?" he rumbled hoarsely. "Sure, son. I'm fine. Don’t you worry about my feelin's."

  "You — er — don't hold any malice?"

  "Me?" exclaimed H.M., with such elaborate surprise that Chief Inspector Masters would instantly have been suspicious. "Oh, my son! I'm a forgivin’ man. I'm so goddam chivalrous that if I was ever reincarnated in mediaeval times, which I probably was, some old witch must 'a' copped me in the mush with a shield practically every day. You lemme alone, son. I just want to stand here and cogitate."

  Martin, so intent on Jenny that he could think of little else, for the moment forgot him. Jenny and her grandmother were standing on the outer fringe of the crowd, their backs to the arms-room: though Jenny, peering round over her shoulder, tried some lip-message which he could not read.

  H.M., cogitating deeply with elbow on one thick arm and fingers massaging his reddened chin, let his gaze wander round. Presently it found the halberds and guisarmes, their long shafts propped upright against the wall. Slowly his gaze moved up to their points. Then, musingly, the gaze travelled out into auction-room and found the ample, flowered posterior of the Dowager Countess.

  "Ahem!" said the great man.

  Elaborately unconcerned, he adjusted his spectacles and took down one of the weapons. Holding it horizontally on both hands, he ran his eye along the shaft with the critical air of a connoisseur. But it was obvious, from his blinkings, that he needed more tight. That was why he strolled out into the auction-room.

  "One hundred and fifty.: Sixty?… Seventy?… Eighty?…"

  The auctioneer, a sallow dark man with a pince-nez and a cropped moustache, had an eye that could follow lightning. He never missed; he never misinterpreted. A nod, a mutter, a pencil or catalogue briefly raised: the bidding flickered round that horseshoe table, or out into the crowd, more quickly than the senses could determine. Nobody spoke; all bent forward in absorption.

  "Two hundred? Two hundred? Do I hear…"

  "Oh, my God!" breathed Martin Drake.

  That was where he saw what was approaching, on stealthy and evilly large feet, the unconscious back of Lady Brayle.

  The only other person who noticed was the timid little man with the white moustache, who had observed all these proceedings in silence. But the little man did not cover, ground like Martin. Silently, in loping strides, he reached the side of the avenger; firmly he gripped the other side of the shaft, and looked at H.M. across it

  H.M.'s almost invisible eyebrows went up.

  "I dunno what you're talkin' about" he said in a hollow voice — though Martin, in fact had not uttered a word. He uttered one now.

  "No," he said.

  "Hey?"

  “No."

  H.M. altered his tactics.

  "Looky he
re, son," he pleaded. "It's not as though I'm goin' to hurt her, is it? I'm not goin' to_hurt the old sea-lion. Just one little nip and bob's-your uncle."

  "H.M., don't think I disapprove of this. I'd give a year's income to do it! But one little nip and I may lose the girl."

  "What girl?"

  "Two hundred poundst Do I hear more than two hundred pounds?"

  "The girl I told you about! There! She's Lady Brayle's granddaughter!"

  "Oh, my son! You stick Sophie in the tail and this gal's goin' to adore you."

  "No!"

  Faintly the hammer tapped. "Lord Ambleside, for two hundred pounds."

  "Sold!" cried Lady Brayle, in the midst of that shuffling and mist of murmurs which greet the tap of the hammer. "Did you hear that, Jennifer? And to our good friend Lord Ambleside too! Here's three che-ah-s!"

  Playfully Lady Brayle threw up her arm like an opera star. She took two swinging steps backwards. And she landed full and true against the point of the shaft gripped by Martin and Sir Henry Merrivale.

  The sound which issued from the lips of Lady Brayle at that moment would be difficult phonetically to describe. If we imagine the scream of bagpipes, rising on a long skirling note of shock to burst high in a squeal and squeak of outrage, this somewhat approximates it For about ten seconds it petrified the whole room.

  Jenny, after one horrified look, put her hands over her eyes.

  The auctioneer, in the act of saying, "Lot 71," stopped with Jus mouth open. Two blue-smocked attendants, who carried each exhibit into the open space inside the table so that it could be exhibited during the bidding, dropped a Sheraton writing desk bang on the floor.

  "Mr. Auctioneer!"

  Shaken but indomitable, Lady Brayle made her voice ring out

  "Mr. Auctioneer!"

  Up from a hidden cubicle, to the auctioneer's right, popped that bald-headed gnome who at Willaby's takes your cheque or bobs up at intervals to see whether you are one whose cheque may be taken. He and the auctioneer seemed to hold a flashing pince-nez conference.

  "Mr. Auctioneer," screamed Lady Brayle, and pointed dramatically, "I demand that these two men be ejected from the room!"

  The auctioneer's voice was very soft and clear. "Have the gentlemen been guilty of unbecoming conduct my lady7" "Yes, they have!"

  "May I ask the nature of the conduct?"

  Truth, stern truth, will not be denied.

  "This old trout" bellowed Sir Henry Merrivale, snatching the weapon from Martin's hands, "thinks we stuck her in the behind with a halberd."

  The meek little man with the white moustache, appearing at H.M.'s elbow, tapped him softly on the shoulder.

  "No, no, no!" he protested. "No, no, no, no!"

  H.M. turned round an empurpled visage.

  "What d'ye mean, no?" he thundered. "Didn't you hear Beowulf’s Mother yellin’ for the chuckers-out?" "Not a halberd, my good sir! Not a halberdl" "Ain't it?'

  "No, I assure you! A fine seventeenth-century guisarme."

  H.M., his feet wide apart, the shaft of the weapon planted on the floor like a noble Carolean soldier, now made the situation perfectly clear.

  "This old trout," he bellowed, "thinks we stuck her in the behind with a seventeenth-century guisarme."

  Through the audience ran a sort of suppressed shiver. Martin Drake noted, with amazement and pleasure, that it was not a shiver of horror. It was the spasmodic tension of those who try, by keeping face-muscles rigid, to avoid exploding with mirth. One elderly man, with an eyeglass and withered jowls, had stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth. Another lay face downwards across the table, his shoulders heaving. Even with the auctioneer it was a near thing.

  "I feel sure, my lady, that there has been an unfortunate accident." He made a slight gesture to the blue-smocked attendants. His voice grew thinly colourless. "Lot 71. Here we have …" And H.M. and Lady Brayle were left alone in a sort of closed ring, surreptitiously watched.

  "Henry," the old lady said calmly.

  "Uh-huh?"

  "I am compelled to tell you something. For nine generations," declared Lady Brayle in a shaky voice, "your family have held the baronetcy in a direct line. Yet speak I must — Henry, you are not a gentleman."

  "So I'm not a gentleman, hey?" inquired H.M., getting a firmer grip on the guisarme.

  "No, you are not."

  "Listen, Sophie," said H.M… tapping her on the shoulder. "I'm going to show you just how goddam gentlemanly I really am. I've had a reincarnation. Got it?"

  Lady Brayle, whose confused mind evidently connected this with some sort of surgical operation, stared at him. Swiftly, silently, the bidding rippled round the table, followed by the tap of the hammer. It was the Words, "Lot 72," followed by a sudden loud murmur to drown out the next part, which galvanized Lady Brayle. The spectators, though interested, seemed reluctant to bid.

  "Shall we start it at five pounds?… Five? … Will anyone say five?"

  "I really," cried Lady Brayle, "cannot continue this childish discussion any longer." In haste and anxiety, which often happens at such moments, her contralto rang loudly. "Five pounds!"

  "I was a Cavalier poet," said H.M. "TEN POUNDS!"

  A horrible suspicion seemed to strike Lady Brayle as she whirled round.

  "Henry, you are not bidding? — Twenty!"

  "Lord love a duck, what d'ye think I'm here for? — Thirty!" "Henry, this is too much. —Forty!"

  "It's no good gettin' mad, Sophie. — Fifty!"

  Lady Brayle, instead of directing her bids at the auctioneer, advanced her face towards H.M.

  "Sixty!" she hissed.

  H.M. also advanced his own unmentionable visage. "Seventy!" he hissed back.

  The buzz of voices, never before heard in such volume at Willaby's, rose like a locust-storm. Twisting and swaying, the crowd pressed forward to get a look at what was being' exhibited. It is recorded that one lady, maddened, climbed up on a stranger's back so that she could see. Martin, his own sight obscured, tugged at the great man's coat-tail.

  "Listen, sir! Take it easy! You don't even know what it is!"

  "I don't care what it is," yelled H.M. "Whatever it is, this old trout's not goin' to get it"

  "This, is malice," said Lady Brayle. "This is insufferable. This is pure childishness. I will end it." Her voice rose in calm triumph. "One — hundred — pounds."

  "Oh, Sophie!" grunted H.M. in a distressed tone. "You're playin' for monkey-nuts. Let's make it really interesting. — Two hundred pounds!"

  "Gentlemen," observed a voice in the crowd, "here we go again."

  "Two hundred and ten? Two hundred and ten?"

  But Lady Brayle, a very shrewd woman, clamped her jaws. Undoubtedly she knew that the old sinner in front of her, whose cussedness was without depth or measure, would cheerfully have gone to a thousand. Catching the auctioneer's eye, she shook her head. Then she adjusted the rakish fashionable hat on her grey-white hair.

  "Jennifer!" she called.

  But Jenny did not reply, nor was she in sight

  "You will meet me," her grandmother spoke carefully to the air, "at Claridge's for lunch. One o'clock." Then she turned for a final remark to H.M.

  "I must tell you something else," she continued. Martin

  Drake saw, for the first time, the very real ruthlessness of her mouth, and of the wrinkles round, mouth and eyes. "You, and in particular your friend Captain Drake, are going to regret. this for the rest of your lives."

  And, drawing a pair of white gloves from her handbag, she marched slowly towards the outer room and the stairs.

  There no longer appeared to be any comedy in this. Open war. All right!

  Searching round for Jenny, Martin saw her signal. Along the long right-hand wall where stood exhibits overflowing from those at the back, Jenny looked out from between a high lacquered wardrobe and a row of gilt-and-satin chairs. He went to her, and they regarded each other in silence.

  "I ought to be furious with you," Jenny said. "I ought
to say I'd never speak to you again. Only…"

  Again he saw the contrast between the placidness of her appearance and the extraordinary violence of her emotions. Ancient Willaby's was treated to the spectacle of a girl throwing her arms round a young man's neck, and the young man kissing her with such return violence as to endanger the equilibrium of the wardrobe.

  But the spectators had returned intently to their bidding. Nobody saw them except an attendant of thirty-five years' service, who shook his head despondently.

  "I do love you," said Jenny, detaching herself reluctantly. "But — however did you have the nerve to take that halberd or what-do-you-call-it, and…"

  "I didn't," he admitted. "When your grandmother let out that yelp—"

  "Darling, you shouldn't have done it." (This was perfunctory.)

  "— when she yelped, and everybody looked round, I felt about two inches high with embarrassment Then I took one look at H.M., and I felt about nine feet high. There's something about the old ba… the old boy's personality. It's like an electric current."

  The gentleman in question, having detached himself from the spectators, was now lumbering towards them in the aisle between bidders and wall From the arms-room he had retrieved his, Panama hat He carried the guisarme like a mighty man of war, thumping down its shaft at every step. But, when an attendant took it from him, it was with such a deferential, "If you please, sir," that H.M. only scowled. Then he surveyed Martin and Jenny.

  "Not for the world," he said querulously, "would I show any curiosity. Oh, no. But burn me, I'd like to have some idea of what it is I paid two hundred quid for. They say it's back mere somewhere," he nodded towards the rear of the room, "and I can't get it till the end of the sale."

  "Please," urged Jenny. "Lower your voice. I can tell you what it is."

  "So?"

  "It's a dock. A grandfather clock."

  "Well… now!" muttered the great man, and scratched his chin. A vast load seemed lifted from him. "That's not bad. That’s not bad at all. I was sort of picturing myself goin' home with a fine big bit of needlework labelled, 'Jesus give you sleep.'"

  "The clock," Jenny explained, "hasn't got any works inside it. There's only a skeleton, fastened upright to the back, with its skull looking out through the glass clock-dial"