Dancers in Mourning (9 page)

Sutane was the first to return. Campion was standing aimlessly by the Bentley when he came up. Overhead on the bridge there was the murmur of voices. Sutane was trembling with fury.

‘Surely that fellow's exceeding his job?' he began in a whisper. ‘The bobby treats him as though he was God Almighty. What's it matter to him if she committed suicide or not? Blithering old ass! – he's about ninety.'

‘Then he probably
is
omnipotent in this district.' Campion lowered his voice discreetly. ‘A personality like that would make an impression anywhere, given time. Look out; he's probably on the Bench.'

Sutane wiped his forehead. In the glare of the headlights he looked like one of his own photographs outside the theatre, a fantastic figure caught for an instant in a nightmare world of towering shadows.

‘This is the last straw,' he said. ‘It's got to be an accident, Campion. I see that now. Poyser's right. For all our sakes it's got to be an accident. Good God! What did she want to do it for? – and why here?'

‘What happened?' Sock came slithering down the bank behind them, a tousled scarecrow in the uncertain light. ‘Linda told me something frightful – I couldn't believe it. Jimmy, my dear old chap, what's up?'

They told him and he stood looking down at the rug-covered mound, his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets.

‘Oh, Lord,' he said, something like tears in his voice. ‘Oh, Lord.'

Campion touched him on the shoulder and, leading him a little to one side, made a request.

‘The old boy's going to be nasty, I'm afraid,' he finished. ‘He came to the party this afternoon and didn't understand it. I'd go myself, of course, but I want to be here when he comes back.'

‘My dear chap, anything I can do.' Sock's voice was still tremulous. Like many intensely virile men, he was bowled over by emotion of any sort. ‘I'll be back in a moment. Delighted to be able to do anything I can. I'll tell the others to stay up there, shall I? After all, they can't do much.'

He went off, clambering up the bank again, and footsteps down the lane announced the return of the others. Doctor Bouverie was still in charge.

‘Unless she was actually standing on the parapet, a thing no woman in her senses would do, surely, I don't see how she managed to fall.' The old voice, which was yet so powerful, made the statement for his companions' information. He implied no doubt whatever: he simply did not see how she managed to fall.

‘Oh, but she might easily have done that, Doctor. I knew her. She did that sort of thing.' Poyser's soothing tone was wearing thin.

‘Was she unbalanced? Her costume, or lack of it, does suggest that.'

‘Oh, no, nothing like that. She was impulsive – temperamental. She might easily have climbed up there to wave to Sutane.'

‘Indeed.' Doctor Bouverie was not impressed. He turned to the constable. ‘Well, I've finished, Doe. You know what to do. Treat it just like an ordinary accident. You can get some sort of conveyance, probably. I shall be at Birley about ten tomorrow morning. Probably Doctor Dean will be with me. Good night, gentlemen.'

He climbed into the car and pressed the starter. The Fiat did not respond.

The next fifteen minutes was devoted to the car by the whole company. Any man in an obstinately stationary car seems to be a responsibility to all about him, but Doctor Bouverie in that predicament was a sacred charge. Aware, no doubt, that a god in a machine that won't go may easily degenerate into an angry mortal, he kept his dignity and controlled his temper, but contrived nevertheless to appear somehow terrible in the more ancient sense of the word. The tragedy of Chloe Pye's death faded into obscurity for a moment or so.

Sock Petrie's arrival in Campion's Lagonda was nicely timed. As Poyser shifted the Bentley to let the grey car pass, Campion made his graceful suggestion.

‘Let me run you home, sir,' he murmured. ‘There's a good man up at the house who will put this right and bring your car along.'

Doctor Bouverie wavered. His keen eyes regarded Campion inquisitively and, seeing nothing to dislike in him, he accepted with unexpected charm.

‘Extremely civil of you,' he said. ‘It's my own fault. I ought to have got my man up, but he's done a hundred and twenty miles with me today, so I thought I'd let the feller sleep, don't you know.'

As they set off down the lane at a sedate pace Campion prepared himself for a delicate campaign.

‘Excellent roads,' he began cautiously. ‘This is my first visit to this part of the world. I noticed them at once.'

‘Think so?' A trace of satisfaction in the old voice warmed his heart. ‘They ought to be. We had the devil of a job getting the authorities to realise that a side road is as important to the residents of a district as the main ways that cater for all these damned trippers who do their best to ruin the country. Still, we hammered it into their heads at last. You're a stranger, you say? Were you at that gathering this afternoon?'

‘Yes.' Mr Campion sounded regretful. ‘A most unfortunate business. The mistake of a secretary. Dates mixed, you know.'

‘Really? Oh, I see. Thought it curious myself. These Londoners don't understand our country ways. Forgive me, I didn't catch your name?'

Mr Campion gave it and added that he was a Norfolk man. To his relief they discovered a mutual acquaintance and, as the old gentleman softened considerably, he took heart.

‘A frightful accident,' he ventured. ‘Miss Pye seemed in such good spirits all day.'

‘Ah, indeed. We turn to the left here if you don't mind. How pleasant the clover smells in the dark. Notice it?'

Campion took the hint and played his best card.

‘Isn't this a great district for roses?' he inquired, remembering the wedge-shaped box in the Fiat.

His passenger brightened noticeably.

‘Finest in the world. I take a little interest in roses myself.' He paused and added with an unexpected chuckle: ‘Twelve tickets out of fourteen at Hernchester yesterday. Five firsts for roses, and a cup. Not bad for an old 'un, eh?'

‘I say, that's extraordinarily good.' Mr Campion was genuinely impressed. ‘Do you believe in bone manure?'

‘Not on my soil. I've got a streak of the genuine clay.'

They discussed roses and their culture for several miles. Even Campion, who was used to strong contrasts, was aware of a certain nightmare quality in the drive. Doctor Bouverie talked of his hobby with knowledge and the passionate interest of a young man in his twenties. The brittle world of White Walls and the stage seemed a long way away.

By the time they pulled up in a darkened village the Doctor was engrossed in his subject.

‘I'll show you those Lady Forteviots. If you've missed 'em you've missed a treat,' he said. ‘Here we are.'

Campion discovered that the dark wall which he had taken to be the side of a rural factory was the front of a bleak Georgian house. A Victorian porch, fastened with solid wooden doors, stuck out into the road at an angle which no modern Council would dream of sanctioning.

The Doctor rang the bell and bellowed ‘Dorothy!' at the top of his surprising voice. At the sound a lamp appeared in a window on the first floor and Campion followed its passage through what seemed to be endless galleries, the faint beams flickering through window after window until they disappeared in the darkness directly above their heads. A moment later the doors began to rattle, and after a considerable delay wherein bolt after bolt was drawn they clattered open and an elderly woman appeared holding a paraffin lamp above her head. It was a Dickensian greeting. She did not smile or speak but stood back respectfully to allow them to pass. The Doctor strode into the darkness beyond the circle of light and Campion followed, very conscious that it was after midnight.

The old man clapped his hands, a Sultanic gesture curiously in keeping with his personality.

‘Whisky and water in the dining-room, and go down to the cottage and tell George I want him.'

‘He'll be in bed, sir.'

‘Of course he will, if he's a sensible feller. Tell him to put on a coat and a pair of trousers and meet me in the conservatory. I want to show this gentleman some roses.'

‘Yes, sir.' She set down the lamp and went off into the darkness.

Campion demurred feebly.

‘Oh, no trouble at all.' The old man sounded like a stage schoolboy out of a Victorian revival. Campion thought he had never seen anyone so gloriously happy. ‘We're up at all hours of the day and night here. A doctor's life, you know.'

He took up the lamp and Campion discovered that the thing he had been half-leaning against under the impression that it was the banister head was a full-sized stuffed wolf. He glanced round him and got a fleeting impression of narrow walls covered with cases of stuffed birds.

‘Do any shooting?' said his host over his shoulder. ‘A hundred and thirty-two heads, my own gun, walking alone last October. Not bad, eh? Ten hours of it and then the nightbell till dawn. I'm seventy-nine and don't feel it.'

He spoke boastingly but obviously without exaggeration.

They went into a small, over-crowded dining-room whose red and gold paper was almost hidden behind execrable sporting oils and yet more cases of wildfowl. The Doctor looked less extraordinary in these surroundings. He stood on the hearthrug, so much a part of his own world that it was his visitor who felt himself the oddity. His host stared at him with professional interest, and Campion, who wondered what he was thinking, was suddenly enlightened.

‘Can you fight?'

The younger man was surprised to find himself nettled.

‘I'll take on anyone of my weight,' he said.

‘Ha! Go through the war?'

‘Only the last six months. I was born in nineteen hundred.'

‘Good!' The last word was spoken with tremendous emphasis, and there was a pause. Doctor Bouverie looked sad. ‘I was considered old even then,' he said regretfully.

The woman returned with the decanter and glasses.

‘George is waiting, sir.'

‘Very well. You can go to bed now.'

‘Yes, sir.' There was no expression at all in her voice.

Campion sipped his drink and thought of Chloe Pye, Sutane and the newspapers. He supposed he had driven the old man five miles at the most. It seemed a little space to separate such different worlds.

‘Now these roses —' the Doctor set down his glass, ‘– they're extraordinary. There's not a rose to touch 'em for exhibition, unless it's the old Frau Karl Druschky. They've got the body. That's the important thing in an exhibition rose – body.'

He led his guest through a drawing-room which was chilly in spite of the heat of the night and appeared from the fleeting glimpse Campion got of it to be literally in rags.

The conservatory was a magnificent sight, however. It was overcrowded, but the show of begonias and gloxinias was astonishing. A tall, thin, depressed figure in a felt hat and a raincoat awaited them with a hurricane lantern.

‘Ready, George?' The Doctor sounded as if he were going into battle.

‘Yes, sir.'

They came out into a dark garden which felt and smelled like a paradise, but which was, unfortunately, completely invisible. The roses were found, golden yellow blossoms fading into apricot on long, carefully disbudded stems. Little white canvas hoods on stakes protected them from the weather.

The two old men, the Doctor and the gardener, pored over them like mothers. Their enthusiasm was both tender and devout. The Doctor put his blunt fingers under a blossom and tilted it gently.

‘Isn't she lovely?' he said softly. ‘Good night, my little dear.'

He rearranged the canvas hat.

‘You won't see a better rose than that in the county,' he boasted.

As they walked back to the dark house Campion took his courage in his hands.

‘I suppose it was hitting her head on the road that really killed that woman?' he said.

‘Yes, the skull was fractured. You noticed that, did you?' The old Doctor sounded pleased. ‘What I don't see is how she came to fall, don't you know, unless she threw herself over. That's a matter which must be cleared up, because of the inquest. I – ah – I didn't notice any reek of alcohol.'

‘No, she wasn't drunk,' said Campion slowly. ‘Not technically.'

To his surprise the old man followed his thought.

‘Hysterical type?' he inquired.

Campion saw his chance. ‘There's not a great deal of difference between hysteria and what is usually called temperament, don't you think?' he said.

The old man was silent. He was considering.

‘I haven't had much experience of temperament,' he said at last, admitting it as though it were a fault. ‘I attended an opera singer once, close on fifty years ago. She was insane. I didn't like that bathing-dress this evening. Had she been walking about like that all day? We're forty miles from the sea.'

Campion launched into a careful explanation. He did his best to convey Chloe Pye in elementary terms. She was vain, he said; hard-working, physically active and anxious to appear younger than she was.

‘So you see,' he finished, ‘she might easily have climbed the parapet and waved to Sutane, who was looking at the road and did not see her.'

‘Yes.' The old man sounded interested. ‘Yes. I see that. But if she was sufficiently active to get up there, and was, as you say, practically an acrobat, why should she have fallen?'

It was a reasonable argument but without inspiration. Campion felt sure he must be on the Bench.

‘Something may have frightened her,' he said lamely. ‘Her foot may have slipped on the crushed stems.'

‘But there were no crushed stems,' said Doctor Bouverie. ‘I looked for them. Still, I thank you for your information. The woman isn't so incomprehensible to me now. I shall go over her carefully in the morning. I may find something to account for sudden faintness, or something like that. It's been extremely civil of you. Come and see my roses in the daylight.'