Dancers in Mourning Page 10

  Although Sutane was nude, save for a face towel, his dignity was unshaken.

  ‘If I did I should be talking to the girl,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘If she was alive,’ murmured Konrad from the floor.

  The words shot glibly from his tongue, almost, it seemed, by accident. He became pale with alarm as soon as he had spoken and went on with his training at redoubled speed.

  ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ Sock swung round upon him, outraged. ‘Chloe’s handwriting was like Chinese algebra – you know that as well as I do. What are you getting at?’

  Konrad did not answer. The colour had returned to his face. He appeared to be deaf as he swung backwards and forwards.

  ‘Have you seen Chloe’s handwriting or not?’ Sock persisted.

  ‘Perhaps I wasn’t talking about Chloe Pye,’ Benny Konrad muttered without looking at his persecutor.

  ‘Who else then?’ Sock was inclined to shout. ‘Sit up and stop dithering. Sit up, damn you!’

  The slender figure on the floor came slowly and gracefully upright, his bare legs spread out in front of him. He looked meek and a trifle hurt and had adopted a sort of maidenly dignity which was infuriating.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘What were you hinting at?’

  ‘I wasn’t hinting at anything.’ Konrad wriggled. ‘I’m not that kind of person. I wish you’d let me get on with my work, Petrie. I’ve got to keep right, you know.’

  ‘Keep right –!’ Sock gurgled over the words. ‘Look here, Konnie, what did you infer just now when you suggested that the woman who wrote these invitations might be dead?’

  Konrad bridled. ‘I’m not going to sit here and be shouted at,’ he said. ‘I didn’t infer anything. A remark came into my head and I let it out.’

  ‘Through the blowhole!’ The untidy young man was beside himself. ‘You ought to have your head tied up inside a little silk rubber bag. Can’t you control your tongue at all?’

  Konrad closed his eyes.

  ‘I know you don’t mean it,’ he said, ‘but you’re doing me a lot of harm. I’ve got a serious responsibility tonight. I must keep my nerves cool. It’s not so easy to step into a big part at a moment’s notice when one’s been thoroughly upset already, even if one has been understudying for months, ruining one’s reputation in obscurity. You wouldn’t understand it, but there’s an emotional strain.’

  Sock opened his mouth but he was forestalled by Sutane, who had paused in the act of climbing on to the massage table again. He turned and they had a momentary impression of his intense irritation. His face was not expressive but the muscles of his lean torso flexed and a flood of colour spread over his chest and up his neck to the cheeks.

  ‘No need to excite yourself, my dear chap,’ he said. ‘I’m not deserting you tonight.’

  ‘What?’ Konrad forgot his dignity. His face puckered and he sat up in an unconsciously theatrical pose, his knees drawn up under him. ‘You’re not going on tonight, Sutane?’ he said, his voice unsteady in his helpless disappointment. ‘You can’t! Poyser said –’

  Sock picked him up by the back of his neck and landed him neatly on his feet. Sutane had become very white but he climbed on to the bench and signalled to Miss Finbrough to begin work again. Konrad was trembling violently under Sock’s hand.

  ‘Poyser said –’ he began again.

  Sock glowered at him.

  ‘Think of something else,’ he advised in a dangerously level tone. ‘James has told you he’s made up his mind to go on with the show and it’s very decent of him.’

  There were tears in Konrad’s eyes, and his mouth grew red and ugly as he struggled to control it.

  ‘But I’d understood that I was to rehearse this afternoon,’ he stammered.

  ‘This afternoon you’ll stand up in the Coroner’s court and explain why you left Chloe at the lake. You were the last person to see her alive. You know that, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’ve told the superintendent all about it once this morning. I put on a couple of records for her and I began to dance myself, but she was sarcastic, frightfully offensive and jealous, and so naturally I left her and came in. I lay on my bed and listened to Mercer playing downstairs. I knew I should have to stay for the inquest. That’s what was worrying me.’

  Sock showed his teeth in an unamused smile.

  ‘Now you needn’t worry any more,’ he said. ‘You’ve told the superintendent, have you? Did he believe you?’

  Konrad blinked. ‘Of course he did. Why ever shouldn’t he? I told him I wasn’t going to stay putting on records for a woman who was rude when I wanted to dance myself and he quite understood.’

  ‘What records did you play?’ put in Mr Campion from his corner.

  ‘Delius’s “Summer Night on the River”, ’ said Konrad promptly. ‘It wasn’t at all suitable for dancing and I told her so. It was then that she was so rude to me. So I told her that if she wanted to stand about looking like a sentimental crane she could jolly well wind up her own gramophone. As I came away she put on something else – a piece of Falla, I think.’

  ‘I see. You went straight into the house then and up to your room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anyone see you?’

  ‘I passed Hughes in the hall.’

  ‘How long did you stay in your room?’

  ‘Until I heard all the rumpus downstairs. I was about an hour and a half, I suppose. I came along to find Mrs Sutane phoning for the police.’

  Campion nodded. ‘All this time you were listening to Mr Mercer playing in the small music-room beneath you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I was. I’ve told the police this once.’

  Campion would have soothed his irritation but Mercer forestalled him. He turned in his chair and eyed Mr Konrad thoughtfully, as if an idea had occurred to him.

  ‘What did I play?’

  Konrad stiffened and his manner became wary.

  ‘Your new tune,’ he said promptly.

  ‘Yes, I did in the beginning. What else?’

  Konrad hesitated. ‘Odds and ends of stuff, mostly. Old tunes of your own and a lot of beginnings of melodies. Nothing outstanding. The kitchen wireless set was bleating away as well.’

  Mercer laughed. It was an explosive, uncharacteristic sound which made Campion realise with surprise that he had never heard him laugh before.

  ‘Good enough,’ he said. ‘Bear him out, Uncle William?’

  ‘Eh?’ Mr Faraday looked thoughtful. ‘Yes, I do. Not musical myself, of course, but it sounded very nice, don’t you know. Couldn’t actually identify the tunes by name. Never could. But very melodious, attractive sounding stuff. Can’t be more explicit. Wish I could.’

  Sock looked down at Konrad. There was a puzzled expression on his weary face.

  ‘In fact Mercer played just what you’d expect him to,’ he said. ‘One of his typical recitals. Thinking out loud on the piano.’

  ‘Well, I can’t help that, can I?’ Konrad’s golden head was thrown back defiantly. ‘I don’t know what it matters. I didn’t see the accident, if that’s what you mean. I only know what everybody knows and what Sutane will find out if he insists on going on in The Buffer this evening. He killed Chloe Pye, he ran over her, and he murdered her.’

  Sock hit him. The blow caught him just under the jaw-bone, lifted him an inch or so off the ground and sent him flat on his back on the carpet. Campion and Uncle William reached Petrie at the same moment and Mercer edged his chair a little further away from the fracas. Konrad tottered to his feet. He was livid and quite speechless with rage and pain. But his histrionic gift had not deserted him. With his eyes closed and his face tragic he took three staggering steps forward and would have fallen into a more graceful position, his golden head pillowed on his arm, had not interference come from a most unexpected quarter.

  Miss Finbrough left her position behind the massage table and swooped down upon him like a Valkyrie. Her plump plain face was a glistening crimson int
o which her light brows and lashes had entirely disappeared. She took Konrad by the soft part of the arm and her metal-hard fingers touched his bone.

  ‘You dirty venomous little beast!’ she said and shook him. Surprise and pain startled the young man out of his histrionics. He opened his eyes and stared at her.

  ‘Don’t you dare –’ he said, and the ridiculous words were embarrassing in his mouth. ‘You’re trying to protect him too, are you? You’re all trying to protect him and make him think he can go roaring round the roads killing people without getting into trouble for it, just because he’s got his name in lights outside a theatre. You’ll soon find you’re wrong. He murdered that woman. Her blood is on his head. Thousands of helpless cyclists are killed every year by people like him who drive cars as though they’re on a railway track.’

  His final pronouncement came by way of an anti-climax. Mercer emitted a shrill crow of delight and even Sock smiled. Miss Finbrough gripped her captive afresh.

  ‘Be quiet!’ she said. ‘You’ve done enough harm as it is. Think what he’s gone through already. He’s over-worked. tired, exhausted –’

  ‘Finny, shut up.’ Sutane bounded to his feet. He stood draped in his towel, cold, irritable and infinitely more intelligent than either of them. ‘Oh, dear God, what a pack of apes!’ he said. ‘What is this? – a nightmare in rehearsal? Pull yourselves together, for heaven’s sake. Konrad, I don’t know what you’re doing in my dressing-room at all. Get out. And as for you, Finny, my dear good girl, stick to your damned job, do.’

  Miss Finbrough released her quivering victim. She stood for a moment looking at Sutane, a plain middle-aged woman, very red and hot with unaccustomed emotion.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Sutane,’ she said meekly, and turned away. As she stumbled towards the door a sob, which embarrassed them all because it was so genuine and at the same time so hideous, escaped her.

  Konrad glanced after her and shook himself. He was still quivering.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been rude, Sutane,’ he said with a touch of bravado, ‘but I feel these things. Other people do too,’ he added.

  ‘Exit line,’ said Sock.

  Konrad picked up his sweater and walked over to the door. On the threshold he paused.

  ‘You can end my engagement whenever you like,’ he said. ‘But I still maintain that from a humane point of view Chloe Pye was murdered.’

  There was a moment’s silence after the door had closed. Mercer moved at last.

  ‘Suppose she was?’ he said.

  They all stared at him, but he was looking at Sutane, and his eyes were questioning and amused.

  The spell was broken by the arrival of Hughes, who announced somewhat surprisingly that Doctor Bouverie was below and would be glad if he might have a word with Mr Campion.

  8

  WHEN Mr Campion followed Hughes downstairs he descended into a small world of chaos.

  White Walls normally contained an excitable household whose everyday balance was only maintained by the nicest of adjustments, so that this morning, when the proverbial monkey wrench had landed squarely in the heart of the brittle machinery, the very building seemed in danger of disruption and all its people to suffer in some degree from mild confusional insanity.

  On reaching the hall the butler looked about him helplessly. At the front door a flustered parlourmaid was coping inadequately with a persistent young man who carried a camera, while in the alcove beneath the stairs Linda Sutane was talking to someone on the telephone, her soft, deep voice sounding strained and pathetic.

  Of Doctor Bouverie there was no trace.

  ‘He wanted to see you most particularly, sir.’ Hughes seemed put out. ‘He was here a moment ago,’ Even while he spoke his glance wandered anxiously to the front door, where the maid was weakening.

  At that moment the whole house heard the doctor’s voice on the floor above. The old man was bellowing and apparently with rage.

  ‘Ah, of course,’ said Hughes with relief. ‘It slipped my mind, sir. He’ll be up with Miss Sarah. I forgot.’ He glanced down the hall again and quivered. The unwelcome caller was almost in the house. ‘Would you mind going up to him, sir? I think I really ought —’

  The finish of the sentence was lost as the impulse proved too strong for him, and he bore down upon the intruder like a bulldog who has burst his collar.

  Mr Campion went upstairs again and, guided by the doctor’s voice, which had now sunk to a menacing rumble, turned a corner in the upper hall and came upon the fiery old gentleman. He was absorbed in conversation with the nurse Campion had seen on the evening before.

  ‘Bring the maid to me,’ shouted the doctor. ‘Don’t stand there like an imbecile. Bring the maid to me — and the dog, don’t you know.’

  The woman hesitated. She was elderly and in figure what is somewhat obscurely called ‘comfortable.’ Her face was plain and sensible, but there was a particularly obstinate gleam in her brown eyes which reminded Mr Campion vividly of certain important personalities of his own early youth.

  ‘The child is afraid,’ she began for what was all too evidently the third or fourth time.

  Doctor Bouverie’s jowls quivered and swelled.

  ‘Do as you’re told, woman.’

  She gave him a single defiant glare and strode off, her starched apron crackling.

  The old man turned and peered at Campion.

  ‘’Morning. I’d like to see you in a moment,’ he said, and glanced over his shoulder into the room upon whose threshold he stood. He made a vast imposing figure in his loose clothes. His wide collar was cut to lie almost flat, so that his many chins should not be discommoded, and there was a cluster of Little Dorrit rosebuds in his buttonhole.

  ‘Where’s the mother? D’you know?’ he demanded. ‘Telephoning? Ridiculous. Perhaps you can help me. Come in here, will you?’

  Campion followed him into a large white room furnished as a nursery. Superimposed upon the original modern décor, with its gaily painted screens and educational pictures, were evidences of an older school of thought, a chair in hideous brown wicker, an ancient fireguard and an extraordinary quantity of airing laundry.

  Doctor Bouverie pointed to a low bedstead beneath the window on the far side of the room.

  ‘The child’s under that,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to drag her out, don’t you know, and if I pull the bed I may hurt her. Raise it gently. Take the foot, will you?’

  Campion did as he was told and together they lifted the cot on to the middle of the linoleum. Sarah Sutane crouched in the angle of the wall. She was kneeling, her plump arms over her head and the soles of her little round feet completely visible beneath the arc of her many petticoats. Doctor Bouverie walked over to her.

  ‘Where did the brute bite you?’ he inquired conversationally.

  Sarah quivered but did not stir, and when he stooped down and picked her up she remained rigid, so that he carried her, still in her original kneeling position, to the bed.

  ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of now.’ The old man was not unkind, but not unduly sympathetic. ‘We must see the abrasion, don’t you know. It simply wants a little lukewarm water on it. Dog-bite is not dangerous. You won’t go mad or any rubbish of that sort. Where did he catch you?’

  Mr Campion suddenly felt very young himself. That half-contemptuous tone which yet carried such absolute conviction reminded him of a time long ago when he had first heard it, and the thought ‘That’s how God talks’ had come to him with the awful certainty of truth.

  Sarah relaxed cautiously and peered at them through a tangled mass of tear-wet hair. She was very white and her jaws were set rigidly. There was a scratch on the inside of her upper arm and the doctor looked at it with professional interest.

  ‘That all he gave you?’ he inquired.

  A commotion behind them silenced any reply the child might have made. The nurse reappeared, angry and sullen, and with her came a bright-faced country girl in an untidy uniform. The maid’s round e
yes were shining with excitement as she carried a little black-and-white mongrel terrier by the scruff of its thin neck. Her manner suggested both triumph and daring. Doctor Bouverie surveyed the trio.

  ‘Put the dog down, don’t you know.’

  ‘It might fly at her, sir.’ The maid spoke brightly, almost, it seemed, hopefully.

  ‘Put it down.’

  Sarah gulped and the nurse could restrain herself no longer.

  ‘She’s frightened, poor lamb,’ she said. ‘Hark at her. Put the dangerous thing outside the door. You’re frightening her to death, sir. She’ll have a convulsion.’

  There seemed to be a certain amount of truth in her prophecy. Sarah was sitting upright on the bed, her eyes fixed on the dog and her face working horribly. Doctor Bouverie took her wrist in his hand and his eyebrows rose, yet, as the maid turned to the door he shouted at her with irritable obstinacy: ‘Put the dog down.’

  Unwillingly and with considerable dramatic effect the girl set the dog on the floor and darted backwards. The terrier remained crouching, his eyes bright and frightened. Doctor Bouverie picked him up and ran his hands over the trembling body.

  ‘Not a very fierce little dog,’ he said. ‘Now, you, little girl –’ he looked at Sarah, ‘– why did he bite you?’

  The maid stepped forward, eager to talk.

  ‘They were running in the field, sir, and he leapt at her,’ she said breathlessly. ‘The dog’s shut up when Miss Bellew’s Dane is here, and he’s always very fierce when he’s first let out. Miss Sarah began to scream, so I ran up to hold him off.’ She swelled at the recollection of her own bravery. ‘Then I saw he’d bitten her, so I shouted for Nurse.’

  Mr Campion cleared his throat and ventured a question at the risk of annoying the doctor.

  ‘Did you tell her they’d have the dog destroyed?’ he inquired.

  The girl started and stared at him as though he had exhibited supernatural powers.

  ‘Well, yes, sir, I did,’ she said after a pause. ‘I wanted to comfort her,’ she added hastily. ‘I told her that Mr Spooner, the groom, would shoot him.’