Surfeit of Lampreys (36 page)

Lord Charles did not rise. He looked up with an air of hesitancy. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “there's one other thing that rather bothers us, Alleyn. Tinkerton, my sister-inlaw's maid, you know, came into the dining-room just now in a great state. It seems that my sister-in-law, whom I may say we all thought was safely asleep in my wife's bed, has now waked up and is in a really appalling frame of mind. She says she must have something or another from their house in Brummell Street and that Tinkerton and only Tinkerton can find it. Some patent medicine or another, it seems to be. Well now, your men are allowing no one to leave the flat. I explained all that to Tinkerton and she went off only to return saying that Violet was out of bed trying to dress herself and proving too big a handful for the nurse. The nurse, for her part, says she won't tackle the job singlehanded. We've rung up for a second nurse but now Tinkerton, although she's perfectly willing to carry on with the nurses, has obviously taken fright. It's all a frightful bore, and Imogen and I are both at our wits' end. I won't pretend we wouldn't be most relieved to see the last of poor Violet, but we also feel that if you allowed her to go she ought to have somebody who is not a servant or a strange nurse to be with her in that mausoleum of a house. Imogen says she will go but that I will not have. She's completely fagged out and where she is to sleep if Violet stays here for the rest of the night I simply don't know. I—really the whole thing is getting a little more than we can reasonably be expected to endure. I wonder if you could possibly help us?”

“I think so,” Alleyn said. “We can arrange for Lady Wutherwood to go to her own house. We shall have to send some one along to be on duty there, but that can easily be done. I can spare a man from here.”

“I'm extraordinarily relieved.”

“About somebody else going—who do you suggest?”

“Well…” Lord Charles passed his hand over the back of his head. “Well, Robin Grey—Roberta Grey, you know—has very nicely offered to go.”

“Rather a youthful guardian,” said Alleyn with a lift of his eyebrow.

“Ah—yes. Yes, but she's a most resourceful and composed little person and says she doesn't mind. My wife suggests that Nanny might go to keep her company. I mean she will be perfectly all right. Two trained nurses and Tinkerton, who for all her fright insists that she can carry on as usual and says Violet will be quite quiet when she has had this medicine of hers. You see Frid, my eldest girl, may be a bit shaken, and of course Patch—Patricia—is too young. And we feel it ought to be a woman—I mean just for the look of things. You see, the nurse says that without some one besides Tinkerton she feels she can't take the responsibility until the second nurse comes. So we thought that if Robin—I mean, of course, with your approval.”

Alleyn remembered a steadfast face, heart-shaped and colourless, with wide-set eyes of grey. His own phrase “a courageous little liar” recurred to him. But it was no business of his who the Lampreys sent to keep up the look of things in Brummell Street. Better perhaps that it should be the small New Zealander who surely did not come into this tragicomedy except in the dim role of confidante and wholehearted admirer of the family. With a remote feeling of uneasiness Alleyn agreed that Miss Grey and Nanny Burnaby should go in a taxi to Brummell Street; that Lady Wutherwood, Tinkerton, and the nurses, should be driven there by Giggle with Gibson as police escort. Lord Charles hurried away to organize these manoeuvres. Nigel, with a dubious look at Alleyn, murmured something about returning in a minute or two and slipped out after Lord Charles. Alleyn, left alone, walked restlessly about the dining-room. When Fox returned Alleyn instantly thrust the notes of Lord Charles's statement at him.

“Look at that,” he said, “or rather don't. I'll tell you. He said that when they got to the far end of the drawing-room his brother promised in a mumble to help him. He said that none of his precious brood could have heard it. He was in a fix. He didn't know what they'd told me. I tripped him, Br'er Fox.”

“Nicely,” said Fox, thumbing over the notes.

“Yes, but, damn him, it still might be true.
They
may have lied but he may have spoken the truth. I'll swear he didn't, though.”

“I know he didn't,” said Fox.

“Do you, by George?”

“Yes, sir. I've been talking to the parlour-maid.”

“With parlour-maids,” said Alleyn, “you stand supreme. What did she say?”

“She was in the pantry at the time,” said Fox, hauling out his spectacles and note-book. “The pantry door was open and she heard most of what was said between the brothers. I got her to own up that she slid out into the passage after a bit and had a good earful. I asked her why none of the other servants heard what she says she heard and her answer was that they all hung together with the family. She's under notice and doesn't mind what she says. Rather a vindictive type of girl with very shapely limbs.”

“That's nice,” said Alleyn. “Go on. What's her name?”

“Blackmore's the name. Cora. She says that the two gentlemen got very hot with each other and there was a lot of talk about the deceased cutting his brother out of everything he could. Blackmore says he went on something terrible. Called his present lordship everything from a sponger to a blackguard, and fetched up by saying he'd see him in the gutter before he'd give him another penny-piece. Then she says his present lordship lost his temper and things got very noisy until the boy—Master Michael—went into the drawing-room with a parcel. When Blackmore saw Master Michael she made out that she was doing something to the soda-water machine in the passage. He went in and they pulled up and said no more to each other. The deceased came away almost at once. As he got to the door he said, speaking very quiet and venomous according to Blackmore: ‘That's final. If there's any more whining for help I'll take legal measures to rid myself of the lot of you.' Now, sir,” said Fox, looking over the top of his spectacles, “Blackmore was playing round behind the soda-water machine which is close to the wall. She
says
she heard his present lordship say, very distinctly: ‘I wish that there was some measure, legal or illegal, by which I could get rid of
you
!”

“Crikey!” said Alleyn.

“That's what I thought,” said Fox.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I
T WAS IN A SORT
of trance that Roberta offered to spend the rest of an endless night in an unknown house with the apparently insane widow of a murdered peer. Lord Charles had displayed an incisiveness that surprised Roberta. When Charlot said she would go to Brummell Street he had said: “I absolutely forbid it, Immy,” and rather to Roberta's surprise Charlot had at once given in. Frid offered to go, but not with any great show of enthusiasm, and Charlot looked dubious. So Roberta, wondering whether she spoke out of turn or whether at last here was something she could do for the Lampreys, made her offer. With the exception of Henry they all seemed to be gently relieved. Roberta knew that the Lampreys, persuaded perhaps by dim ideas of pioneering hardihood, were inclined to think of all colonials as less sheltered and more inured to nervous strain than their English contemporaries. They were charmingly grateful and asked if she was sure she wouldn't mind.

“You won't see a sign of Aunt V.,” said Frid, and Charlot added: “And you really ought to see the house, Robin. I can't
tell
you what it is like. All Victorian gloom and glaring stuffed animals.
Too
perfect.”

“I don't see why Robin should go,” said Henry.

“Robin says she doesn't mind,” Frid pointed out. “And if Nanny goes she'll feel as safe as a Crown jewel. Isn't Robin sweet, Mummy?”

“She's very kind indeed,” said Charlot. “Honestly, Robin darling, are you
sure
?”

“I'm quite sure if you think I'll do.”

“It's just for
somebody
to be there with the nurses. If Violet should by any chance make some sort of scene you can ring us up. But I'm sure she won't. She needn't even know you are there.”

And so it was arranged. P. C. Martin, no longer in his armchair, stared fixedly at a portrait of a Victorian Lamprey. Lord Charles went off for his interview with Alleyn. Frid did her face; the twins looked gloomily at old
Punches
; Charlot, having refused to go to bed until the interviews were over, put her feet up and closed her eyes.

“Every moment,” said Henry, “this room grows more like a dental waiting parlour. Here is a particularly old
Tatler
, Robin. Will you look at it and complete the picture?”

“Thank you, Henry. What are you reading?”

“The Bard. I am reading ‘Macbeth.' He has a number of very meaty things to say about murder.”

“Do you like the Bard?”

“I suppose I must, as quite often I find myself reading him.”

“On this occasion,” Stephen said. “I call it bad form t-to read ‘Macbeth.' ”

“ ‘Night thickens,' ” said Frid in a professionally deep voice.

And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood:

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,

While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.

“You
would
,” said Colin bitterly.

Roberta turned over the pages of the
Tatler
, unsolaced by studio portraits of ladies looking faintly nauseated and by snapshots of the same or closely similar ladies, looking either partially concussed or madly hilarious. She would have liked to put down the
Tatler
but was prevented from doing so by the circumstance of finding, whenever she looked up, that Henry's eye was upon her. Strange thoughts visited Roberta. She supposed that many of the ladies in the
Tatler
were personally known to Henry. Perhaps the mysterious Mary was one of them. Perhaps she was long-limbed, with that smooth, expensive look so far beyond the reach of a small, whey-faced colonial. So why, thought Roberta, with murder in the house and nobody being anything but vaguely kind, and with smooth ladies everywhere for Henry, should she be feeling happy? And before she could stop herself she had pictured the smooth ladies gliding away from Henry because he was mixed up in murder while she, Roberta Grey, dawned upon him in her full worth. With these and similar fancies her mind was so busily occupied that she did not notice the passing of the minutes, and when Lord Charles and Nigel Bathgate returned she thought that Alleyn must have kept them a very short time in the dining-room. She roused herself to notice that Lord Charles looked remarkably blank and Mr. Bathgate remarkably uneasy.

“Immy, darling,” said Lord Charles, “why haven't you gone to bed?”

“If any one else tells me to go to bed,” said Charlot, “knowing full well that my bed is occupied by a mad woman, I shall instantly ask Mr. Martin to arrest them.”

“Well, it won't be occupied much longer. Alleyn says she may go home and that Robin and Nanny may go with her. He's sending a policeman too, so you'll be quite safe, Robin, my dear. The rest of us are—” Lord Charles fumbled for his glass—“are free to go to bed.”

“Except me,” said Frid. “Mr. Alleyn will want to see me. He's evidently saved me for the last.”

“He didn't say anything about you.”

“Wait and see,” said Frid, touching her hair.

Fox came in.

“Excuse me, my lady,” Fox said. “Mr. Alleyn has asked me to thank you and his lordship and the other ladies and gentlemen for their patience and courtesy and to say he will not trouble you any further tonight.”

“Make a good exit out of that, if you can,” said Henry unkindly to Frid.

Could it possibly, Robin pondered confusedly, be no longer than forty hours ago that she packed this little suitcase in her cabin? Time, she thought, meant nothing at all when strange things were happening. It was incredible that she had slept only one night in England. The bottom of the suitcase was littered with small objects for which she had not been able to find a place: the final menu card of the ship, with signatures that had already become quite meaningless, snapshots of deck sports, a piece of ship's notepaper. They belonged to a remote experience but for a fraction of a second Roberta longed for the secure isolation of her cabin and thought of how in the night, sometimes, she would listen contentedly to the sound of the ship's progress through the lonely ocean. She packed the suitcase, trying to keep her head about the things she would need and wondering how long she would have to stay with the Lampreys' mad aunt in Brummell Street. There were sounds of activity next door in Charlot's room and presently Roberta heard the door open. A dragging, clumsy footstep sounded in the passage and the nurse's voice, professionally soothing: “Now, we shall
soon
be home and tucked up in our own bed. Come along, dear. That's the way.” Then that deep grating voice: “Leave me alone. Where's Tinkerton?” And Tinkerton: “Here, m'lady. Come along, m'lady. We're going home.” Roberta heard them pass and go out to the landing. She had fastened down the lid of her suitcase but was still sitting on the floor when the curtains of her improvised room rattled and, turning quickly, she saw Henry.