Fire, Burn! Page 5

  “You usually detain him, don’t you? Still! On this occasion?”

  “Oh, most particularly on this occasion!”

  “Lady Cork’s affairs, you know, are rather important.”

  “I’m sure they are,” Flora agreed sweetly. “So are mine. Exactly one minute, then?”

  Cheviot, about to protest, swung round and for the first time saw Flora in a bright light.

  She was taller than he had imagined; taller, more fully developed of figure. Perhaps he had imagined her as very small, in the carriage, because of her soft voice and small hands. The light shone on the smooth, glowing skin of her face and shoulders. There was a provocative smile on her mouth. Her appearance took his breath away.

  At the same moment the double-doors behind Miss Renfrew, doors plainly leading to Lady Cork’s boudoir, opened and closed softly.

  Out slipped an olive-skinned girl of eighteen or nineteen. Her lace cap covered her ears; her long apron was of lace. She was pretty, with those shining brown eyes which often seem black, and are at all times expressive.

  To Margaret Renfrew the girl murmured, “Beg-pardon-miss.” Then she hastened towards the stairs at the front of the passage. On the way she dipped a curtsey to Flora, with a furtive and sidelong glance of sheer adoration.

  “Mr. Cheviot!” said Miss Renfrew. “Don’t you think, after all—?”

  “Madam!” interrupted a portentous voice.

  Cheviot had completely forgotten Mr. Henley, who had followed them upstairs. But he was glad of that stocky, sturdy presence.

  “By your leave, madam,” the chief clerk went on, addressing Miss Renfrew and hobbling towards her, “I’ll take the liberty of going in first. Mr. Cheviot won’t be long, I promise.”

  “As you please, then.”

  She opened one side of the door and marched in. Mr. Henley, after a brief, appealing glare from between his red side-whiskers, followed her and closed the door. Cheviot was alone with Flora in the gaudy, painted passage.

  “What is it?” he asked. “Have you something to tell me?”

  Flora tossed her head, shrugged her shoulders, and would not meet his eyes.

  “We-el!” she murmured. “If it isn’t asking too much, and you could spare me one dance …?”

  “Dance? Is that all?”

  “All?” echoed Flora, opening her eyes wide. “All?”

  “I can’t, Flora! I’m on duty!”

  He said this. But he couldn’t resist her, and very well she knew it. And, because of this very reason, it seemed that her heart melted and she would not press him too far.

  “No,” she said, yielding with a wry-mouthed smile, “I suppose this dreadful police business must come first. Anyway the next dance will be a waltz, and some people still think the waltz is improper. Very well! In that event I shall sit down here,” and she did so, gracefully and languorously, in one of the black chairs, “to wait until you’ve had done.”

  “But you can’t wait here!”

  “Why ever not? I daren’t go into the ballroom; they’d think me unescorted! Why mustn’t I wait here?”

  “Because … well, I don’t know! But you mustn’t!” With a violent effort Cheviot regained his emotional balance. “However! If you still wish to help me—?”

  Instantly Flora straightened up eagerly. “Yes, yes! Anything!”

  “That dark-eyed girl in the lace cap. The one who passed through here a moment ago. Am I right in thinking she’s Lady Cork’s maid? What did you call her? Solange?”

  “Yes. What of her?”

  “This is what I want you to do.”

  He gave brief, concise instructions. Flora leaped to her feet.

  “Oh, I’ll do it,” she agreed, after biting at her lip. “Though it’s so—so embarrassing!”

  “Why on earth should it be embarrassing?”

  “No matter.” Her eyes, dark-blue and with a luminous quality under the lamp-glow, searched his face. “You seek something, don’t you? You find it suspect, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it? Who is it?”

  “I can’t tell. Not yet. I’m not even sure I’ve grasped the right thread. I must get round this dragon of a hostess; and there’s little time.” His memory brought back the image of the cold supper set out downstairs. “Flora! Does Lady Cork customarily join her guests at supper?”

  “Yes, of course. Always!”

  “At what time will they take supper?”

  “At midnight, to be sure.” She was regarding him curiously. “Then (as surely you know?) they’ll dance until one or two in the morning. We’re—awfully late, as I said. They did not even offer me a dance-programme, which I thought most ill-mannered. What’s the time now?”

  Automatically, without thinking, Cheviot thrust out his left arm, pulling back the sleeve to consult his wrist-watch. No wrist-watch was there. Flora stared at him still more strangely.

  He dived down for the heavy weight in his left-hand waistcoat pocket. The watch was a thick gold repeater, double-cased. However his finger-tips pried and probed, the case wouldn’t open to show the dial.

  “Jack!” She spoke in a low voice, but with sudden terror. “Can’t you even open your own watch?”

  If it had not been for her disturbing presence, he would never have made that blunder at all. He pressed down the watch-stem; the lid flew open.

  “It’s twenty-five minutes to midnight,” he said, and cleared his throat.

  “Oh, God,” Flora whispered, as though praying.

  She had shrunk away from him, both in body and spirit. Mentally he touched mist.

  “At first,” said Flora, breathing hard, “I thought you joked. You haven’t been—it can’t be—after all you promised—!”

  Then she fled from him. She ran lightly down the passage, over the dull-flowered carpet, between the black-lacquer walls and gold dragons, towards the staircase Solange had descended.

  “Flora! What have I done?”

  There was no reply. She had gone.

  Cheviot shut up the watch with a snap, conscious of the weight of watch-chain and seals as he put it into his pocket. He was sweating badly.

  He wished, even prayed, he could understand the emotional undercurrents which accompanied every word spoken tonight in this house. They were there; he could feel if not interpret them. They might be an undertow to sweep him away. And yet—

  “This won’t do!” he said aloud, and straightened up.

  He knocked sharply at the double-doors. He could not foresee that, partly because of his own words and actions that night, within twenty minutes there would be murder.

  5

  The Waltz Played Murder

  “COME IN!” CALLED a gruff voice.

  Cheviot turned the knob and pushed open one side of the door.

  He was greeted by so appalling and inhuman a screech, a screech like “Ha-ha-ha,” that for a second he thought it must have been uttered by the very old woman who sat by a fireplace at the opposite side of the room, her hand on a crutch-headed stick.

  She was short, thick-bodied rather than fat, with almost no neck. Her white cap, whose frills stuck straight up above a big head, crowned straggling grey-white hair. Her gown was white too. And yet, despite age, her skin was fair and retained some outline of a face which had once been pretty. Her little eyes were fixed on Cheviot with cunning and expectancy.

  “Well, well, shut the door,” she said in a loud voice.

  Cheviot closed it behind him.

  Just across the fireplace from her, like the beloved companion it was, a large red-and-green macaw stood on a wooden perch. The macaw was not caged; it was held to the perch by a thin chain round one leg. In its head, a colour between mauve and white, rolled a wicked eye. It fluttered its feathers, scraped its claws on the perch like a man cleaning his shoes on a doormat, and threw back its beak to utter the same inhuman screech Cheviot had already heard.

  The latter felt his flesh crawl.

  “Lady Cork, I
imagine?”

  “Imagine? God’s body! Don’t ye know?”

  “I am a police-officer, Lady Cork—”

  “Hey? What’s a p’leece-officer?”

  “—and I am here to ask a few—”

  “What’s this?” demanded Lady Cork. “And from George Cheviot’s son too? No pretty compliments? Not a word of how well or handsome I am for my years? Where’s manners these days?”

  Cheviot pulled himself together, controlling his temper.

  Lady Cork might sit in a room crammed with tables and consoles of tortoise-shell or ormolu, with spindly chairs and china vases. The pink walls might be covered with the paintings, the miniatures in gold or silver frames, of the year 1829. But she herself was as much of the eighteenth century as though her thick white gown smelled of it.

  He must find not only the proper attack, but precisely the right words too.

  “And yet, madam,” he smiled, “I had never heard that the late Dr. Sam Johnson paid you pretty compliments at your first meeting.”

  Lady Cork, who had opened her mouth, kept it open without speaking.

  “Indeed, as I have read, he named you a dunce. But he also called you ‘dearest’; and, some time afterwards, made handsome apology for calling you dunce. May I, madam, offer both compliment and apology at our first meeting rather than our second?”

  There was a pause. Lady Cork was startled, but not at all displeased. She stared at him, mouth open. Then, instantly, her whole speech and manner changed.

  “It gives me much pleasure, sir,” she intoned, rearing up with real dignity, “to entertain a gentleman who at times beguiles his leisure with books rather than at cards or dice. You speak a compliment the better for speaking it backwards, like a wizard.”

  “No wizard, madam, I beg! To the contrary, I would quote Mr. Boswell’s lines to you, ‘While I invoke the powers above, that I may better live.’”

  “Ecod!” cried Lady Cork. “Ecod!”

  (“Oh, lord,” Cheviot thought desperately, “what a ruddy fool of myself I’m making!”)

  He thought so the more because Margaret Renfrew, who was standing at the left of the marble mantelpiece, her elbow leaning on the edge of it, watched him with ironic eyes.

  Some distance back, as befitted a clerk, Mr. Henley sat unhappily at his writing-case, pen poised above a sheet on which he had written no word. But Cheviot’s tactics had been admirable.

  “My dear young man,” Lady Cork said cordially, “sit down! Pray sit down! Do sit down, there’s a dear!”

  She was beaming all over her face, as lively and animated as a girl.

  With her crutch-headed stick she pointed to a broad-backed, padded chair not far from the macaw’s perch. The macaw, alive with evil, scraped its claws on the perch and made bubbling noises. Cheviot eyed it with as little favour as the macaw eyed him.

  “Tush, have no fear!” scoffed Lady Cork. “He won’t fly at you, poor fellow, since I’ve had him chained. He has committed but one crime in his whole life.”

  “I rejoice to hear it.”

  “It is true he made a bit of an assault on the King’s stocking. But that was an offence merely,” Lady Cork pointed out with severity. “The crime was running away with a piece of Lady Darlington’s leg.”

  Nobody smiled, though she seemed to expect it. Evidently her words reminded her of Cheviot’s errand. Though the short, squat figure reared up with immense dignity in the chair, Lady Cork looked uncertain and even uneasy.

  “H’m. You’ve been told, I apprehend, of our—trifling problem here?”

  Cheviot sat down.

  “It may not be so trifling as you think,” he said.

  A queer, cold little stir went through the room. Lady Cork poked with her stick at the very small fire in the grate.

  “I have heard everything,” Cheviot went on, “except of the place from which the bird-seed was taken. From the kitchen, perhaps? The pantry? The scullery?”

  “No, no, no!” said Lady Cork. Beginning to point, she found no bird-cage in the boudoir. “From the thingumbobs. You know. The things that hold the seed on the side of the cages.”

  “Yes. I had supposed so. But we must make certain and not guess. Madam, how many bird-cages are there in the house?”

  “Well, there’s four parrots in me bedroom there.”

  Lady Cork pointed towards another door in the boudoir, well apart from the double-doors. If Cheviot had been just entering by the double-doors, this second door would have been on his right. Therefore her bedroom was one of the rooms opening on the passage outside.

  “Four parrots!” she said with emphasis. “There’s six more cages, birds all different but almighty exotic and wonderful, in the dining room beyond me bedroom. And eight canaries, as you must ha’ seen, in the passage. That’s all.”

  Twice more the stick jabbed. That, then, accounted for every room on this floor; the ballroom contained none.

  “Sir!” hissed Mr. Henley’s sibilant whisper from behind. “Do you want me to put this down in shorthand?”

  Cheviot nodded with decision, seeming only to nod at Lady Cork.

  “The seed-containers, I understand, were—were attacked twice?”

  “Ay! Once on Tuesday, that’s three nights ago; again on Thursday, that’s last night. Emptied out as clean as a hound’s tooth, not a bit o’ seed dropped on the floor, and in the middle of the night too.”

  “Thank you, madam. Then all eighteen bird-cages were robbed?”

  “No, no, no, no!” Lady Cork eyed him with a slight change of manner. “Only five in all. Four on Tuesday night, in me very bedroom where I was sleeping. One canary cage last night, in the passage out there. That’s not much, you say? But it made me mad. God’s body, it made me mad!”

  “Aunt Maria—!” began Miss Renfrew as though in protest.

  “You be silent, m’gel!”

  Cheviot remained unruffled.

  “May I ask, madam, whether any person in particular attends on the cages? Cleans them, and so on?”

  Lady Cork looked pleased and proud, her white frilled cap waggling.

  “You may, and there is. Ay! Jubilo!”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Jubilo! Black boy,” explained Lady Cork, holding her hand about four feet up from the floor. “Me personal servant, special green livery, and cap with black plumes. Lady Holland, or Lady Charleville either,” she added, with a majestic sneer as she mentioned London’s other two leading society hostesses, “can’t match him, I’ll be bound!”

  “No doubt, madam. I believe you never keep money in the house?”

  “Money? Money? Down with the Rich!” shouted the wealthy Lady Cork, who was a radical Whig. She hammered her stick on the floor. “If they put up a Reform Bill, I’ll hang flags out of the windows to cheer ’em. Ecod I will!”

  “But you do keep jewels—Madam, may I see the strong-box?”

  Lady Cork, eighty-four years old, did not hesitate.

  She rose up from the chair, and bustled across the room with great animation. From inside the neck of her gown she drew out a string on which hung two keys.

  With one key she unlocked a Boule cabinet, and opened it. From a shelf inside she took out the strong-box. Though it was not large, and seemed to be made of ivory, it was lined with iron. She lifted it out and plumped it down on the top of the cabinet, pushing a blue vase to one side.

  Cheviot hurried after her.

  She unlocked the box and opened the lid.

  “There!” she announced, and bustled back to her chair as though dusting her hands of an unpleasant duty.

  “My most humble thanks, madam.”

  Hitherto there had been hardly a sound except the scratching of Mr. Henley’s pen, or an occasional click as he dipped the pen too deeply into the ink-pot. Lady Cork was oblivious to this. But Margaret Renfrew glanced at him several times, shaking back her glossy ringlets. Now the pen stopped.

  Cheviot could hear his watch ticking in his pocket. Time, tim
e, time!

  The box was not filled or even heavily lined. Except for a tiara and a number of bracelets, most of the pieces were small despite their large value in rubies, emeralds, and especially diamonds. There were rings, pendants, a tiny diamond-crusted watch. He counted them, setting out each on the cabinet as he did so.

  Then, in the midst of a silence stretching out unendurably, out smote the music of a waltz from the ballroom.

  He would never have believed that fiddles and a harp could make so much noise, or that the one-two-three beat of a waltz could go so fast. With joyous cries the dancers flung themselves into it. He could picture them dipping, swaying, whirling like lunatics across a waxed floor.

  But Cheviot, as well as his three companions, heard the soft insistent knocking at the double-doors to the passage.

  “Forgive me,” he said politely.

  He hastened across to the doors, over the thick carpet, and opened one door only a dozen inches.

  Outside stood Flora. She would not or at least did not look at him. But her hand (the left hand in a glove, he noted vaguely) thrust out a folded piece of paper.

  He took the paper, closed the door, and went back to the cabinet. Jewel colours burnt in a shifting glitter under the low light, reflected back from pink walls crowded with pictures. Opening the paper, he ran his eye slowly down what was written there.

  “Well?” demanded Lady Cork from her chair. “What’s to do now?”

  Since Mr. Henley was craning round against one high point of his collar, Cheviot made a sign for him to continue the shorthand.

  Smiling, he sauntered back towards his chair.

  “Lady Cork,” he said, “I count thirty-five pieces of jewellery there. And yet, according to my information, there should be forty. Where are the other five?”

  “Why, as to that—” She stopped.

  “Come, madam!” He spoke in that persuasive manner he had used so often. “Wouldn’t it be better to tell me the truth?”

  The loud waltz-music rose and fell.

  “Where’d you get that bit o’ paper?”

  “Information received, madam. The other five jewels have been stolen, have they not?”