Surfeit of Lampreys (37 page)

He wore a great-coat and scarf and in his hands he held a small heap of clothes.

“Oh, Robin,” Henry said, “I'm coming to Brummell Street instead of Nanny. Do you mind?”

“Henry! I don't mind at all. I'm terribly glad.”

“Then that's all right. I asked Alleyn. He seems to think it's in order. I'll just pack these things and then we'll get a taxi and go. Mama has rung up Brummell Street and told the servants. Tinkerton has told Aunt V.”

“What did she say?”

“I don't think she was particularly ravished at the thought. Patch is having nightmares and Nanny isn't coming.”

“I see.”

Henry looked gravely at Roberta and then smiled. There was a quality in Henry's smile that had always touched Roberta and endeared him to her. He made a comic family grimace, winked, and laid his finger against his nose. Roberta made the same grimace and Henry withdrew. With an illogical singing in her heart she put on her own overcoat and hat and took her suitcase out into the passage to wait for Henry. This time last night they had been dancing together.

It was not very pleasant crossing the landing where a policeman stood on guard by the dark lift but Henry lightened the situation by saying; “We're not fleeing from justice, officer.”

“That's quite all right, sir,” answered the policeman. “The Chief Inspector told us all about you.”

“Good night,” said Henry, piloting Roberta down the stairs.

“Good night, sir,” said the policeman and his voice rang hollow in the lift well.

Roberta remembered her last trip down the stairs when she went to fetch Giggle and Tinkerton and how like a night-mare it had seemed. Now the stairs seemed a way of escape. It was glorious to reach the ground floor and see the lights of traffic through the glass doors. It was splendid when the doors were opened to breathe the night air of London. Henry took her elbow and they moved forward into a blinding whiteness that flashed and was gone. A young man came up to Henry and with a queer air of hardened deference said: “Lord Rune? I wonder if you would mind?”

“I'm afraid I would, do you know,” said Henry. “Taxi!”

A cruising taxi drew up at once but before they could get in there was another flash and this time Roberta saw the camera.

Henry bundled her in and slammed the doors, keeping his face turned from the window. “Damn!” he said. “I'd forgotten about Nigel's low friends.” And he yelled the address through to the driver.

“Lord Rune,” said Roberta's thoughts. “Henry is Lord Rune. The Earl of Rune. Press-men lie in wait for him with cameras. Everything is very odd.”

She was awakened by Henry giving her a little pat on the back. “Aren't you the clever one?” he said.

“Am I?” asked Roberta. “How?”

“Tipping us the wink about what you'd told Alleyn.”

“Do you think that policeman noticed?”

“Not he. You know I didn't exactly enjoy lying to Alleyn.”

“I hated it. And, Henry, I don't think he believes it— about your Uncle G. promising the money.”

“ 'More do I. Oh well, we could but try.” He put his arm round Roberta. “Brave old Robin Grey,” said Henry. “Going into the witch's den. What have we done to deserve you?”

“Nothing,” said Robin with spirit. “Without the word of a lie you're a hopeless crew.”

“Do you remember a conversation we had years ago on the slope of Little Mount Silver?”

“Yes.”

“So do I. And here I am still without a job. I daresay it would have been a good thing if Uncle G. had lived to chortle at our bankruptcy. It would take a major disaster to cure us. Perhaps when the war comes it will do the trick. Kill, as they say, or cure.”

“I expect you'll manage to slope through a war in the same old way. But don't you call this a major disaster?”

“I suppose so. But you know, Robin, somehow or another, although I feel very bothered and frightened, I don't, inside myself, think that any of us are bound for the dock.”

“Oh
don't
. How
can
you gossip away about it!”

“It's not affectation. I ought to be in a panic but I'm not. Not really.”

The taxi carried them into Hyde Park Corner. Roberta looked up through the window and saw the four heroic horses snorting soundlessly against a night sky, grandiloquently unaware of the less florid postures of some bronze artillerymen down below.

“We shan't be long now,” said Henry. “I can't tell you how frightful this house is. Uncle G.'s idea of the amenities was a mixture of elephantine ornament and incredible hardship. The servants are not allowed to use electricity once the gentry are in bed so they creep about by candlelight. It's true, I promise you. The house was done up by my grandfather on the occasion of his marriage and since then has merely amassed a continuous stream of hideous
objets d'art
.”

“I read somewhere that Victorian things are fashionable again.”

“So they are, but with a difference. And anyway I think it's a stupid fashion. Sometimes,” said Henry, “I wonder if there is such a thing as beauty.”

“Isn't it supposed to exist only in the eye of the beholder?”

“I won't take that. There are eyes and eyes. Fashion addles any true conception of beauty. There's something inherently vulgar in fashion.”

“And yet,” said Roberta, “if Frid dressed herself up like a belle of 1929 you wouldn't much care to be seen with her.”

“She'd only be putting her fashion back eleven years.”

“Well, what do you want? Nudism? Or bags tied round the middle?”

“You are unanswerable,” said Henry. “All the same…” and he expounded his ideas of fashion, giving Roberta cause to marvel at his detachment.

The taxi bucketed along Park Lane and presently turned into a decorous side-street where the noise of London was muffled and the rows of great, uniform houses seemed fast asleep.

“Here we are,” Henry said. “I
think
I've enough to pay the taxi. How much is it? Ah yes, I can just do it
with
the tip. So that's all hotsy-totsy. Come on.”

As Henry rang the front doorbell, Roberta heard a clock chime and strike a single great note.

“One o'clock,” she said. “Where is it striking?”

“I expect it was Big Ben. You hear him all over the place at night-time.”

“I've only heard him on the air before.”

“You're in London now.”

“I know. I keep saying so to myself.”

“It's a damn shame you should be landed in our particular soup. Here comes somebody.”

The great door swung inwards. With the feeling that an ominous fairy tale was unfolding, Roberta saw a very old woman dressed in black satin and carrying a lighted candle in a silver candlestick. She stood against a dim background of stuffed bears, marble groups, gigantic pictures and a wide staircase that ascended into blackness. Henry said: “Good morning, Moffatt,” to this woman and added, “I expect Tinkerton has explained that Miss Grey and I have come to stay with her ladyship.” The woman answered: “Yes, Mr. Henry. Yes, my lord.” And like all the portresses of elfland she added: “You are expected.”

They followed her, crossing a deep carpet and ascending the stairs. They climbed two flights up to a muffled landing. The air was both cold and stuffy. Moffatt whispered an apology for her candle. A detective had arrived and insisted that the light should not be turned off at the switchboard but at least they could keep his poor lordship's rule and not go using the lights before, as Moffatt said with relish, he was scarcely cold. Great shadows marched and stooped across unseen walls as Moffatt walked ahead with her candle. There was no sound but the stealthy whisper of her satin hem. Sometimes, as she held the candle before her, she was a black figure with a golden rim, but sometimes she turned to light them, and then her shadow sprang up beyond her. They came at last to a doorway which Moffatt opened. With a murmured apology she went in before them. Roberta, pausing on the threshold, saw a dim reflection of Moffatt in a dark looking-glass. Branched candlesticks stood on an immense dressing-table. Moffatt lit the candles and looked at Roberta, who on this hint entered her new bedroom. Henry followed.

“If there is anything you require, Miss?” suggested Moffatt. “Perhaps I may unpack for you? We only keep two maids when the family is not in residence and they are both in bed.”

Roberta said that she would unpack for herself and Moffatt and the candle and Henry went away.

The bedroom had a very high ceiling with a central plaster ornament. The walls were covered with a heavily patterned paper and hung at intervals with thick curtains. Enormous pieces of furniture stood about the room, perpetuating some Victorian cabinetmaker's illegitimate passion for mahogany and low relief. But the bed was a distinguished four-poster with fine carvings, a faded French canopy, and brocaded curtains where gold threads shone among rose-coloured flowers. The carpet was deep and covered with vegetable conceits. Upon the walls Roberta found four steel engravings and one colour print of a child with a kitten. There was a great charm in this print, so artlessly did the beribboned child simper over the blue bow of the tiny animal. Beside her bed Roberta found a Bible, a novel by Marie Corelli, and a tin of thick, dry biscuits. She unpacked her suitcase and, too timid to hunt down back passages for a bathroom, washed in cold water provided by a garlanded ewer. There was a tap at the door. Henry came in wearing his dressing-gown.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Isn't it frightful? I'm over the way so if you want anything you've only to cross the passage. There's nobody else on this side. Aunt V. is across the landing in a terrible suite. Good night, Robin.”

“Good night, Henry.”

“You interrupted me,” said Henry. “I was going to add, ‘my darling.' ”

He winked solemnly and went out.

A wind got up during the small hours. It hunted desolately about London, its course deflected by sleeping buildings. It moaned about Pleasaunce Court Mansions, shaking the skylight of the lift well. The policeman on duty there stared upwards and wished the black, rattling panes would turn grey for the dawn. It blew the curtains of Patch's windows across her face, giving her another nightmare and causing her to make horrid noises in her throat. The rest of the family, hearing Patch, turned fretfully in their beds and listened for the thud of Nanny's feet as she stumped down the passage. Gathering strength in the open places of Hyde Park, the wind howled across Park Lane and whistled up Brummell Street so that the old chimney-cowls in No. 24 swung round with a groan and Roberta heard a voice in the chimney moaning “Rune—Rune—Rune.” Out at Hammersmith the wind ruffled the black waters of the Thames and the blameless dreams of Lady Katherine Lobe. Indeed the only actor in the Pleasaunce Court case who was not disturbed by that night wind was the late Lord Wutherwood who lay in a morgue awaiting his tryst with Dr. Curtis.

“Wind getting up,” said Fox in the Chief Inspector's room at Scotland Yard. “Shouldn't be surprised if we had rain before dawn.” He pulled a completed sheet and two carbons from his typewriter, added them tidily to the stacked papers on his desk, and took out his pipe.

“What's the time?” asked Alleyn.

“Five-and-thirty past two, sir.”

“We've about finished, haven't we, Fox?”

“I think so, sir. I've just got out the typescript of your report.”

Alleyn crumpled a sheet of paper and threw it at Nigel Bathgate, who was asleep in an office chair. “Wake up, Bathgate. The end's in view.”

“What? Hullo, are we going home? Is that the report? May I see it?” asked Nigel.

“If you like. Give him a carbon, Fox. We'll all have a brood over the beastly thing.” And for twenty minutes they read and smoked in a silence broken by the rustle of papers and occasional gusts that shook the window frames.