Gaudy Night (52 page)

“Thank you very much. Arthur Robinson. Do you think he can possibly have anything to do with it?”

“Well, it’s rather a far cry. But it’s a fact that until Miss de Vine came here there were no disturbances, and the only thing she has ever mentioned that might suggest a personal enmity is the story of Arthur Robinson. It seemed just worth while following up.”

“Yes, I see.... I hope you’re not going to suggest that Miss Hillyard is Arthur Robinson in disguise, because I’ve known her for ten years.”

“Why Miss Hillyard? What’s she been doing?”

“Nothing susceptible of proof.”

“Tell me.”

Harriet told him the story of the telephone call, to which he listened with a grave face.

“Was I making a mountain out of a molehill?”

“I think not. I think our friend has realised that you are a danger and is minded to tackle you first. Unless it is a quite separate feud—which is just possible. On the whole it’s as well that you thought of ringing back.”

“You may take the credit for that. I hadn’t forgotten your scathing remarks about the thriller-heroine and the bogus message from Scotland Yard.”

“Hadn’t you?... Harriet, will you let me show you how to meet an attack if it ever does come?”

“Meet a—? Yes, I should like to know. Though I’m fairly strong, you know. I think I could cope with most things, except a stab in the back. That was what I rather expected.”

“I doubt if it will be that,” said he, coolly. “It makes a mess and leaves a messy weapon to be disposed of. Strangling is cleaner and quicker and makes no noise to speak of.”

“Yeough!”

“You have a nice throat for it,” pursued his lordship, thoughtfully. “It has a kind of arum-lily quality that is in itself a temptation to violence. I do not want to be run in by the local bobby for assault; but if you will kindly step aside with me into this convenient field, it will give me great pleasure to strangle you scientifically in several positions.”

“You’re a gruesome companion for a day’s outing.”

“I’m quite serious.” He had got out of the car and was holding the door open for her. “Come, Harriet. I am very civilly pretending that I don’t care what dangers you run. You don’t want me to howl at your feet, do you?”

“You’re going to make me feel ignorant and helpless,” said Harriet, following him nevertheless to the nearest gate. “I don’t like it.”

“This field will do charmingly. It is not laid down for hay, it is reasonably free from thistles and cow-pats, and there is a high hedge to screen us from the road.”

“And it is soft to fall on and has a pond to throw the corpse into if you get carried away by your enthusiasm. Very well. I have said my prayers.”

“Then kindly imagine me to be an unpleasant-faced thug with designs on your purse, your virtue and your life.”

The next few minutes were rather breathless.

“Don’t thrash about,” said Peter, mildly. “You’ll only exhaust yourself. Use my weight to upset me with. I’m putting it entirely at your disposal, and I can’t throw it about in two directions at once. If you let my vaulting ambition overleap itself, I shall fall on the other side with the beautiful precision of Newton’s apple.”

“I don’t get that.”

“Try throttling me for a change, and I’ll show you.”

“Did I say this field was soft?” said Harriet, when her feet had been ignominiously hooked from under her. She rubbed herself resentfully. “Just let me do it to you, that’s all.”

And this time, whether by skill or favour, she did contrive to bring him off his balance, so that he only saved himself from sprawling by a complicated twist suggestive of an eel on a hook.

“We’d better stop now,” said Peter, when he had instructed her in the removal of the thug who leaps from in front, the thug who dives in from behind, and the more sophisticated thug who starts operations with a silk scarf. “You’ll feel tomorrow as if you’d been playing football.”

“I think I shall have a sore throat.”

“I’m sorry. Did I let my animal nature get the better of me? That’s the worst of these rough sports.”

“It would be a good bit rougher if it was done in earnest. I shouldn’t care to meet you in a narrow lane on a dark night, and I only hope the Poison-Pen hasn’t been making a study of the subject. Peter, you don’t seriously think—”

“I avoid serious thought like the plague. But I assure you I haven’t been knocking you about for the fun of it.”

“I believe you. No gentleman could throttle a lady more impersonally.”

“Thank you for the testimonial. Cigarette?”

Harriet took the cigarette, which she felt she had deserved, and sat with her hands about her knees, mentally turning the incidents of the last hour into a scene in a book (as is the novelist’s unpleasant habit) and thinking how, with a little vulgarity on both sides, it could be worked up into a nice piece of exhibitionism for the male and provocation for the female concerned. With a little manipulation it might come in for the chapter where the wart Everard was due to seduce the glamorous but neglected wife, Sheila. He could lock her to him, knee to knee and breast to breast in an unbreakable grip and smile challengingly into her flushed face; and Sheila could go all limp—at which point Everard could either rain fierce kisses on her mouth, or say, “My God! don’t tempt me!” which would come to exactly the same thing in the end. “It would suit them very well,” thought Harriet, “the cheap-skates!” and passed an exploring finger under the angle of her jaw, where the pressure of a relentless thumb had left its memory.

“Cheer up,” said Peter. “It’ll wear off.”

“Do you propose to give Miss de Vine lessons in self-defence?”

“I’m rather bothered about her. She’s got a groggy heart, hasn’t she?”

“She’s supposed to have. She wouldn’t climb Magdalen Tower.”

“And presumably she wouldn’t rush round College and steal fuses or climb in and out of windows. In which case the hairpins would be a plant. Which brings us back to the Robinson theory. But it’s easy to pretend your heart is worse than it is. Ever seen her have a heart-attack?”

“Now you mention it, I have not.”

“You see,” said Peter, “she put me on to Robinson. I gave her the opportunity to tell a story, and she told it. Next day, I went to see her and asked for the name. She made a good show of reluctance, but she gave it. It’s easy to throw suspicion on people who owe you a grudge, and that without telling any lies. If I wanted you to believe that somebody was having a smack at me, I could give you a list of enemies as long as my arm.”

“I suppose so. Do they ever try to do you in?”

“Not very often. Occasionally they send silly things by post. Shaving cream full of nasty bugs and so on. And there was a gentleman with a pill calculated to cure lassitude and debility. I had a long correspondence with him, all in plain envelopes. The beauty of his system was that he made you pay for the pill, which still seems to me a very fine touch. In fact, he took me in completely; he only made the one trifling miscalculation of supposing that I wanted the pill—and I can’t really blame him for that, because the list of symptoms I produced for him would have led anybody to suppose I needed the whole pharmacopoeia. However, he sent me a week’s supply—seven pills—at shocking expense; so I virtuously toddled round with them to my friend at the Home Office who deals with charlatans and immoral advertisements and so on, and he was inquisitive enough to analyse them. ‘H’m,’ said he, ‘six of ’em would neither make nor mar you; but the other would cure lassitude all right.’ So I naturally asked what was in it. ‘Strychnine,’ said he. ‘Full lethal dose. If you want to go rolling round the room like a hoop with your head touching your heels, I’ll guarantee the result.’ So we went off to look for the gentleman.”

“Did you find him?”

“Oh, yes. Dear old friend of mine. Had him in the dock before on a cocaine charge. We put him in jug—and I’m dashed if, when he came out, he didn’t try to blackmail me on the strength of the pill correspondence. I never met a scoundrel I liked better.... Would you care for a little more healthy exercise, or shall we take the road again?”

It was when they were passing through a small town that Peter caught sight of a leather-and-harness shop, and pulled up suddenly.

“I know what you want,” he said. “You want a dog-collar. I’m going to get you one. The kind with brass knobs.”

“A dog-collar? Whatever for? As a badge of ownership?”

“God forbid. To guard against the bites of sharks. Excellent also against thugs and throat-slitters.”

“My dear man!”

“Honestly. It’s too stiff to squeeze and it’ll turn the edge of a blade—and even if anybody hangs you by it, it won’t choke you as a rope would.”

“I can’t go about in a dog-collar.”

“Well, not in the day-time. But it would give confidence when patrolling at night. And you could sleep in it with a little practice. You needn’t bother to come in—I’ve had my hands round your neck often enough to guess the size.” He vanished into the shop and was seen through the window conferring with the proprietor. Presently he came out with a parcel and took the wheel again.

“The man was very much interested,” he observed, “in my bull-terrier bitch. Extremely plucky animal, but reckless and obstinate fighter. Personally, he said, he preferred greyhounds. He told me where I could get my name and address put on the collar, but I said that could wait. Now we re out of the town, you can try it on.”

He drew in to the side of the road for this purpose, and assisted her (with, Harriet fancied, a touch of self-satisfaction), to buckle the heavy strap. It was a massive kind of necklace and quite surprisingly uncomfortable. Harriet fished in her bag for a hand-mirror and surveyed the effect.

“Rather becoming, don’t you think?” said Peter. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t set a new fashion.”

“I do,” said Harriet. “Do you mind taking it off again.”

“Will you wear it?”

“Suppose somebody grabs at it from behind.”

“Let go and fall back on them—heavily. You’ll fall soft, and with luck they’ll crack their skull open.”

“Bloodthirsty monster. Very well. I’ll do anything you like if you’ll take it off now.”

“That’s a promise,” said he, and released her. “That collar,” he added, wrapping it up again and laying it on her knee, “deserves to be put in a glass case.”

“Why?”

“It’s the only thing you’ve ever let me give you.”

“Except my life—except my life—except my life.”

“Damn!” said Peter, and stared out angrily over the windscreen. “It must have been a pretty bitter gift, if you can’t let either of us forget it.”

“I’m sorry, Peter. That was ungenerous and beastly of me. You
shall
give me something if you want to.”

“May I? What shall I give you? Roc’s eggs are cheap today.”

For a moment her mind was a blank. Whatever she asked him for, it must be something adequate. The trivial, the commonplace or the merely expensive would all be equally insulting. And he would know in a moment if she was inventing a want to please him....

“Peter—give me the ivory chessmen.”

He looked so delighted that she felt sure he had expected to be snubbed with a request for something costing seven-and-sixpence.

“My dear—of course! Would you like them now?”

“This instant! Some miserable undergraduate may be snapping them up. Every day I go out I expect to find them gone. Be quick.”

“All right. I’ll engage not to drop below seventy, except in the thirty-mile limit.”

“Oh, God!” said Harriet, as the car started. Fast driving terrified her, as he very well knew. After five breath-taking miles, he shot a glance sideways at her, to see how she was standing it, and slacked his foot from the accelerator.

“That was my triumph song. Was it a bad four minutes?”

“I asked for it,” said Harriet with set teeth. “Go on.”

“I’m damned if I will. We will go at a reasonable pace and risk the undergraduate, damn his bones!”

The ivory chessmen were, however, still in the window when they arrived. Peter subjected them to a hard and monocled stare, and said:

“They
look
all right.”

“They’re lovely. Admit that when I do do a thing, I do it handsomely. I’ve asked you now for thirty-two presents at once.”

“It sounds like
Through the Looking-Glass.
Are you coming in, or will you leave me to fight it out by myself?”

“Of course I’m coming in. Why?—Oh! Am I looking too keen?”

“Much too keen.”

“Well, I don’t care. I’m coming in.”

The shop was dark, and crowded with a strange assortment of first-class stuff, junk, and traps for the unwary. The proprietor, however, had all his wits about him and, recognising after a preliminary skirmish of superlatives that he had to do with an obstinate, experienced and well-informed customer, settled down with something like enthusiasm to a prolonged siege of the position. It had not previously occurred to Harriet that anybody could spend an hour and forty minutes in buying a set of chessmen. Every separate carved ball in every one of thirty-two pieces had to be separately and minutely examined with finger-tips and the naked eye and a watchmaker’s lens for signs of damage, repair, substitution or faulty workmanship; and only after a sharp catechism directed to the “provenance” of the set, and a long discussion about trade conditions in China, the state of the antique market generally and the effect of the American slump on prices, was any figure mentioned at all; and when it was mentioned, it was instantly challenged, and a further discussion followed, during which all the pieces were scrutinised again. This ended at length in Peter’s agreeing to purchase the set at the price named (which was considerably above his minimum, though within his maximum estimate) provided the board was included. The unusual size of the pieces made it necessary that they should have their own board; and the dealer rather reluctantly agreed, after having it firmly pointed out to him that the board was sixteenth-century Spanish—clean out of the period—and that it was therefore almost a condescension on the purchaser’s part to accept it as a gift.

The combat being now brought to an honourable conclusion, the dealer beamed pleasantly and asked where the parcel should be sent.