The Studio Crime (3 page)

Mrs. Wimpole, opening her placid eyes to find Newtree and Serafine deep in conversation, remarked suddenly and confidentially to Christmas:

“I do wish, John, you could persuade Serafine to have her hair waved and not to wear such
outré 
clothes. And not to think so much. It makes her thin and prevents her from getting married. It's no use my talking to Serafine. I might as well be a pelican crying from the house-tops...”

Laurence, glancing around at his guests, felt that his little party was not going so badly. Their voices rose and fell in a subdued, pleasant hum. No sound of traffic or footsteps penetrated into quiet Madox Court. The studio was a little oasis of warmth and chatter in a world of chill fog and silence.

Suddenly, from somewhere outside the oasis, breaking with uncanny effect across its gay atmosphere, there came a long muffled sound that broke at the end like a gasping cry. Long after it had died away it seemed still to go on, spreading fainter and wider waves of sound through Newtree's studio as a stone spreads ripples in a pond.

In the sudden hush Dr. Simon Mordby's voice went on with an effect of shouting:

“Lord Shottery was much impressed with the scheme. 
If I may, Sir Marion, I will send you—”

He became suddenly aware that Sir Marion was inattentively gazing upwards and that everybody but himself had fallen silent. He left his sentence hanging in mid-air and looked like the others up at the blank white ceiling. John Christmas was the first to recover himself.

“The pelican crying from the house-tops,” he murmured softly. “Listen for the sparrow answering from the wilderness.”

Laurence removed his glasses and looked round at the hesitant faces of his guests.

“It sounded to me,” he said diffidently, “rather like a chair being pushed back. Frew has a parquet floor. I often wish he'd have castors put on his chairs.”

“Why,” said Sir Marion gently, as if to help Laurence to dispel any disquietude the ladies of the party might be feeling, “I thought it was a loud yawn. The sort of loud yawn a person gives when he's alone and can take pleasure in yawning.”

Mrs. Wimpole, wide-eyed and placid, asked of the world in general:

“What was that?”

And Dr. Mordby, puzzled and rather annoyed at this interruption, of her in particular:

“What was what?”

Serafine said nothing. She was looking from under her lashes at Dr. Merewether, whose self-contained personality seemed to have great interest for her. He was the least excited of the party, remarking with polite professional calm:

“I'll go up and see if everything's all right, Newtree. I know Frew. He's a patient of mine.”

Mordby, seeing him move without haste towards the door, began:

“Let me accompany you...” but Merewether answered tranquilly:

“No, thanks. It would be too much of an inquisition if two of us went, I think. I shan't be long.”

“Tell him to put rubber castors on his chairs,” said Newtree cheerily. He still felt that it was his duty to dispel the slight chill, the sense of something wrong which that muffled sound had projected into the studio. His guests, however, did not seem to want it dispelled. Their talk was desultory, and they watched the door for Merewether's return. When he appeared after a moment or two, as composed and leisurely as ever, there was a perceptible disappointment in the faces turned towards him.

“Well?”

“Frew says he heard nothing,” said Merewether in his low, deliberate voice. “He said it was probably the wind in the chimney. And he's expecting us all to go up in half an hour or so.”

“The wind!” echoed Dr. Mordby. “My dear sir, there's no wind to-night!”

“That,” replied Merewether sedately, “is just what I told him. And he said in that case it was probably a banshee.”

“Oh, very likely, very likely!” murmured Mordby absent-mindedly and returned with zest to the conquest of Sir Marion Steen. Otherwise the conversation languished half-heartedly for a moment or two, as if they were all thinking of something else.

“What children we all are!” thought Serafine, half amused, half disgusted. “How we love a sensation! How we hate to be cheated of one!”

She turned towards Merewether, who had gone back to his place at the mantelpiece; and at that moment she herself had a sensation, one of those sensations that were the breath of life to her as a novelist. On the doctor's calm and rather arrogant face there were tiny beads of sweat, and the cigarette he was holding between his fingers was quite flattened out by the pressure of his half-clenched hand.

“Dr. Merewether,” she said softly.

He turned towards her with a smooth, courteous movement, and smiled. But at her steady, thoughtful glance a queer expression came momentarily into his eyes—a look half appealing, half inimical, as though he defied her to read his thoughts. Serafine, whose curiosity about her fellow-creatures was insatiable, and who, at first sight of him, had thought the doctor easily the most unusual and interesting person in the room, beckoned him to her side. With a good deal of the novelist's complacent interest in other people's troubles and a little of the sympathy of a kindly if hard-headed woman, she wanted to hear him talk. He came, his face an agreeable if rather melancholy mask.

“Tell me,” said Serafine, making room for him on the settee, “something about Gordon Frew. What's he like?”

Merewether paused, then replied expressionlessly:

“Tall, with a black beard.”

“Have you read the book about Persia he published a month or two ago?”

“No. Have you?”

“Some of it. I thought it rather dull, to tell the truth.”

“Oh.”

“What does he do besides collecting rugs?”

The doctor smiled.

“Collects bronzes.”

“And?”

“Collects Buddhas.”

Serafine laughed.

“And is that all you can tell me?”

Merewether smiled politely, but his glance strayed as though this personal conversation displeased or bored him.

“Why, yes, that's all. I hardly know him, except—” He stopped a moment and went on levelly: “Except in my professional capacity.”

“Oh,” said Serafine, noting his restless glance and maliciously prolonging the conversation to punish him for it. “Now I'll tell you what you've told me. He's travelled a lot. He's acquisitive, like all of us. He has money, unlike most of us. And—you don't like him.”

Merewether said nothing. The lines of his face seemed to harden for a moment. Then a formal, constrained smile appeared upon his lips, and turning with cold politeness towards Miss Wimpole he seemed about to make some aloof, non-committal reply. He paused, looking with a sort of intent absent-mindedness at a carved cornelian ring on his finger, and then said quietly and surprisingly:

“No. I don't like him.”

Serafine felt a little embarrassed at this unexpected honesty, and her heart warmed to the doctor. He said no more, and she was rather relieved when Laurence summoned them all to the door. She took John's arm as they all went leisurely up the dim-lit staircase to Mr. Frew's studio. The fanlight over the door was open, and through it the fog drifted thinly in and up the staircase. Serafine sniffed.

“I hate the smell of fog. It's the worst part of it.”

“Worse than the murders?” asked Laurence, greatly daring, over his shoulder.

Serafine laughed. The little man was thawing.

On the landing Mrs. Wimpole withdrew her hand from Laurence's arm and stood panting gently with closed eyes.

“Oh dear!” stammered Laurence, almost perspiring with compunction. “I've rushed you up too fast.”

“Oh dear no!” murmured Imogen on a fluttering breath. “But if I might... just take a rest... before going in...”

Her voice died away on a sighing breath in which Laurence thought he could distinguish something about the importance of a good first impression. Watching the lady's gentle efforts to regain her composure, he felt an abject fool, and the amused grins he received from Christmas and Serafine did nothing to improve his state of mind.

“If your friend Mr. Frew heard us coming upstairs he'll be thinking we're a gang of burglars....”

“He's probably now barricading the door,” said John, “and sharpening a scimitar on the sole of his sandal. Come to think of it, old Merewether has rather a burglarious look about him. Gentleman George on the old lay...”

Serafine looked over the well of the stairs. Sir Marion Steen was treading lightly up, followed at one pace by Dr. Mordby, who had the solicitous enveloping air of a nurse keeping the draught off a baby. Some stairs behind them came George Merewether, alone and detached from the rest of the party, his hands in his trouser-pockets, looking at the stairs with a slight pre-occupied frown. His soft step, his detachment, something still and secret in his look gave an absurd aptitude to John's frivolous remark.

Taking a very small glass and a very large powder-puff from her handbag and using them with anxious care, Mrs. Wimpole sighed graciously:

“You may knock now, Mr. Newtree.”

The great old wrought-iron knocker with which Mr. Frew had replaced the small bar of brass provided by his landlord fell even to the slightest touch with a heavy, ominous, resounding noise.

“How feudal!” said Serafine. “The draw-bridge will be lowered at half-past nine precisely.”

“Like the walls of Jericho,” murmured her aunt, with some obscure association of ideas lost on her hearers. “But artists are always such original people, aren't they? I mean,” she explained gently as Laurence looked puzzled but humble, “there's always something peculiar about their front doors.”

“The peculiar thing about this front door,” remarked Christmas, after a short expectant pause, “is that it doesn't open.”

“Queer,” muttered Newtree, and knocked again, diffidently at first, then loudly and repeatedly.

“The whole court must have heard that,” said Serafine, but there was no sound on the other side of the door.

Newtree turned a distressed, disappointed face over his shoulder. It seemed as if his little party were going to fall flat after all.

“He did say he was expecting us, didn't he, Merewether?”

“Certainly.”

“He must have forgotten and gone out,” said Mrs. Wimpole comfortably. “Never mind, Mr. Newtree. Let's go back to your lovely fire.”

She shivered slightly and drew her fur stole closer about her fine shoulders.

“I second the resolution,” said Mordby with a smile, and there was a slight movement towards the stairs.

“I think I'll just knock again,” murmured Laurence. “You see”—he lowered his voice and spoke confidentially to Christmas—“there's a light in the studio.”

Inside the studio, as the reverberations of Newtree's attack on the knocker died away, sounded a fine clear note, a soft silvery ping! like the plucking of a wire. In the silence behind that locked door it was a secret, unearthly sound that held them all still and breathless for a moment, looking at one another with startled eyes. Then Merewether said quietly, looking at his wrist-watch:

“A clock striking the half-hour,” and there was a movement of relief.

“Come,” said Dr. Mordby heartily. “Our friend has forgotten us. Let us forget him. Let us go back to warmth and light and talk and the pleasant things of life in Newtree's studio.”

But Sir Marion Steen opposed him.

“I think,” he said in his hesitating, apologetic way, “I do really think, considering that the light's still on, and that he was expecting us, and—and one or two other things, that we ought to get into this place somehow. I do really think so.”

“The key,” said Christmas, stooping to look through, “is in the lock, so we can't use the ancient and honourable key-hole method.”

There was a very slight movement at Serafine's side, as though somebody had given a start. She glanced round, but Dr. Merewether was leaning unconcernedly against the wall and smoking a cigarette.

“What do you think, Merewether?” asked Newtree, deferring to the doctor as the one silent and patient member of the party.

“I?” Merewether raised his brows and smiled. “If I had not seen Frew since we heard that queer sound half an hour ago, I should say: Break open the door by all means. As it is, I hardly like to take the responsibility of advising you to break into his flat. Still, a lock is easily repaired.”

“Oh, come along, Mr. Newtree!” said Serafine breezily. “If we're going to smash in the door, let's do it! I can see you're dying to!”

“Dying to? I? Oh, my dear Miss Wimpole!” stammered Laurence, flushing a little at this accusation. “I do assure you... But the whole thing is so very queer! Do you really think we might?”

“Oh, certainly! Why not? However pained Mr. Frew may be over the wreck of his front door, he'll have to be grateful for our solicitude.”

“Now my dear young lady,” said Dr. Mordby with heavy playfulness, “do you realize that you are advising Newtree to perform a criminal act? Personally, I have no desire to be the recipient of Mr. Frew's gratitude. I think it will be tempered with other less agreeable sentiments.”

“Why not simply inform the police?” suggested Sir Marion unheeded, for John, who shared Serafine's dislike of the suave, successful doctor, remarked simply:

“Here goes!” and flung his weight heavily against the side of the door nearest the lock. Laurence impulsively followed suit, and Merewether, having handed his cigarette to Serafine, joined in more sedately. Dr. Mordby shrugged and frowned a little. He was not used to having his advice lightly set aside. He turned towards Sir Marion, but that gentleman had deserted him for Imogen Wimpole, who had taken a seat on the stairs and was endeavouring to feel warm and comfortable by a process of auto-suggestion.