Dancers in Mourning Read online

  The Round the World in a Four-in-Hand number was at its height as they approached. Over Mr Faraday’s shoulder Campion caught a glimpse of the two figures, so familiar to the fashionable audiences of both continents. Slippers Bellew was a pale gold flame flickering over a twilit stage, while beside her moved Sutane, faithful as a shadow, and contriving by his very sympathy of movement to convey the mute adoration which the song demanded of him and which was so great a part of his appeal.

  The roar of the audience at the end was tremendous. The harsh sound swept in on them like a great hot breath, and they stepped back through the crowd of girls and small-part folk coming down for the Little White Petticoats finale.

  The excitement which is never wholly absent from the theatre, even on the three hundredth night, forced itself upon Campion and he, too, was aware of the power of the Sutane personality which dominated the house, both before and behind the curtain. He tried to analyse it as he followed Uncle William to the dressing-room. There was grace and skill personified in the man, but that alone was not sufficient to make so deep an appeal. It was the sophisticated, amused but utterly discontented intelligence which constituted the real attraction, he decided, an ease and dignity which was yet emotionally unsatisfied – the old pull of the hero in love, in fact.

  His companion was still talking.

  ‘Wait for him in here,’ he remarked, tapping at a door with a One on it. ‘Wants to see you. Promised I’d bring you along.’

  They were admitted to a large room, overlit to the point of discomfort, by a stolid young man in a white coat and spectacles with very thick pebbles.

  ‘Come in, sir. Glad to see you,’ he said, conducting the elder man to an arm-chair beside the dressing-table.

  Uncle William grunted gratefully and sat down.

  ‘This is Henry, Campion,’ he said with a wave of a pudgy hand. ‘Good feller, Henry.’

  The young man beamed and set a chair for the other guest. He managed to convey at once that he was not at all sure if he was behaving like a first-class manservant, but thought that there was a very good chance that he was.

  ‘A nice drop of whisky, sir?’ he ventured hopefully.

  Uncle William looked interested. ‘Good idea,’ he said consideringly and Henry coloured as if he had received a compliment.

  While the decanter was forthcoming Campion had leisure to observe the room, which displayed three different influences in sharp contrast. There was the florid taste of the original furnisher, which ran to turkey carpet and a day-bed with gilded legs; the somewhat militaristic neatness and a feeling for gadgets as expressed by the bar concealed in an old gramophone cabinet, which was obviously Henry’s contribution; and something else, not so easy to define. Apart from a mass of papers, photographs and telegrams mostly, there were several odd indications of Jimmy Sutane’s personal interests. Two or three cheap mechanical toys lay upon the dressing-table beside a box of liquorice allsorts and a bunch of white flowers, while on a shelf in the corner sat a very nice white Ho-Tei and a tear-off calendar, complete with an astrological forecast for each day of the year.

  Uncle William sat back in his chair, the bright lights glinting on the double row of near-white curls at the nape of his plump pink neck. He looked worldly and benign, and somehow bogus, with his watery blue eyes serious and his expression unwontedly important.

  ‘Well,’ he demanded, ‘anythin’ new?’

  Henry paused in the act of laying out a suit but did not turn round.

  ‘It just seems funny to me, sir,’ he said sulkily. ‘Miss Finbrough may take it seriously but I don’t.’

  ‘Miss Finbrough, eh?’ Uncle William cleared his throat. ‘Things have to be pretty bad for her to get the wind up, I should think.’

  ‘You’d say so, sir.’ Henry was deliberately non-committal and still did not turn round.

  The elder man was silent for a moment or so.

  ‘May be nothin’ in it,’ he said at last.

  Henry swung round, his face red and unhappy.

  ‘Theatrical people aren’t like ordinary people, sir,’ he burst out, blushing with shame at his own disloyalty. ‘I’m new to it and I notice it. They’re theatrical. Things mean more to them than they would to you or me, little things do. There’s not a nicer gentleman than Mr Sutane anywhere; no one’s denying that. But he’s been in the theatre all his life and he hasn’t been about like an ordinary person. Suppose little things do happen now and again? … aren’t they always happening? Being in the theatre is like living in a little tiny village where everybody’s looking at everyone else and wondering what they’re going to be up to next. It’s small, that’s what it is. And Miss Finbrough …’ he broke off abruptly. Someone turned the door-handle with a rattle and Jimmy Sutane came in.

  He stood for a moment smiling at them and Campion was aware of that odd quality of over-emphasis which there is about all very strong personalities seen close to for the first time. Confronted suddenly, at a distance of a couple of yards, Sutane presented a larger-than-life edition of his stage self. The lines of his famous smile were etched more deeply into his face than seemed possible in one so thin and the heavy-lidded eyes beneath the great dome of a forehead were desperately weary rather than merely tired.

  ‘Hallo, Uncle,’ he said. ‘This is Mr Campion? Awfully good of you to come along. God, I’m exhausted! Henry, give me a drink. ’Fraid it’s got to be milk, damn it.’

  The pleasant boyish voice was unexpectedly resonant, and as he closed the door and came into the room the place seemed to have become smaller and the walls more solid.

  While Henry brought a glass of milk from the bar cupboard and assisted him out of his clothes and into a dressing-gown there was a constant stream of interruptions. Excitable dinner-jacketed figures put their heads in, apologised, and disappeared. More notes and telegrams arrived and the phone bell clamoured incessantly.

  Campion sat back in his chair in the corner and watched. After the urbanity of his greeting Sutane seemed to have forgotten his guests. There was a nervous tension, a suppressed excitability about him, which had not been noticeable on the stage. He looked harassed and the nervous force which exuded from him like vibrations from a dynamo was not directed at any one thing, but escaped abortively, creating an atmosphere which was uneasy and disquieting.

  A minor climax came when he turned on an unsuspecting newcomer who was pushing the door timidly open and sent him scuttling off with a passionate protest.

  ‘For God’s sake, Eddie! – give me ten minutes …’

  The explosion embarrassed him and he grimaced at Campion, his temporary audience.

  ‘I’m going to pieces,’ he said. ‘Henry, get on the other side of that door and put your back against it. Tell them I’m saying my prayers. Unhook the phone before you go.’

  As the door closed behind the obedient dresser he turned to Campion.

  ‘Come down tomorrow, can you? I’ve got conferences and things about this Swing Over show for the Orient, but Sunday is more of a breather than any other day. I don’t know what you’ll think of it all. Something’s going on; I know that. This fat ass here says I’ve got persecution mania … my hat, I wish I had!’

  He laughed and although the familiar gaiety was there the man watching him saw suddenly that it was a trick of line and feature rather than an expression of genuine feeling. It was typical of him, Campion reflected. His very skin and bone was make-up. The man himself was within, intelligent still but different.

  ‘It began with the “House Full” boards,’ Sutane said slowly. ‘Someone stuck “Last Week” slips across them. That was irritating but it didn’t mean anything. Then, as far as I remember, there was an outburst of the bird in the gallery one night. It was a claque and the rest of the house was annoyed. That didn’t matter in itself but little paragraphs about it got into the press. I put “Sock” Petrie on to it at once and he traced one or two of them to phone calls put through the same night.’

  He paused.

&
nbsp; ‘It’s nothing much to talk about, I know, but it’s been so continuous. We’ve had to put fresh glass over my photographs outside almost every other day. Someone smashes it regularly. Never a trace of him. There have been dozens of other trivial little things too; nothing in themselves, you know, but alarming when they mount up.’

  His dark eyes grew sombre.

  ‘It’s now that it’s spread out to our place at home that it’s getting me down. Finding strangers in the garden with silly excuses and that sort of thing.’

  He broke off lamely and turned to the elder man.

  ‘That woman Chloe Pye is going down there tonight,’ he said. ‘She says my wife asked her and she’s going. I told her I’d rather she didn’t, but she laughed at me. Can’t chuck her out, can I?’

  Uncle William made a depreciatory sound and Mr Campion retained his habitual expression of polite interest. Sutane paused and reddened suddenly under his grease-paint.

  ‘I’m damned if it’s all coincidence!’ he burst out. ‘You come down tomorrow, Mr Campion, and see how it strikes you. It’s getting on all our nerves, these little petty digs at me. There was a rumour all over the place last week that I’d torn a muscle in my arm. Nine different people rang me up in one morning to sympathise.’

  His voice had an edge to it, and his long fingers drummed on the glass top of the dressing-table.

  ‘It doesn’t matter so far,’ he said, ‘but where’s it going to end? A reputation like mine, which depends on goodwill, can get pretty seriously damaged by a campaign like this. Yes?’

  The final word was addressed to the doorway, where an apologetic Henry stood hesitating.

  ‘It’s Mr Blest,’ he ventured ‘I thought …’

  ‘Blest! Come in.’ Sutane seemed relieved. ‘You know Mr Faraday. Mr Campion …’

  Ex-Inspector Blest grinned and nodded to the tall figure in the corner.

  ‘Evenin’,’ he said. ‘Didn’t expect to see you here, Mr Campion. It’s as serious as that, is it? Well, Mr Sutane, it’s all quiet tonight. Nothing to report at all. There’s not a word uttered out of place in the whole theatre. Ever since you engaged me to keep an eye on things I’ve been keeping my ears open and you can take it from me, sir, there’s nothing but friendliness towards you everywhere.’

  ‘Is that so?’ With a movement so sudden and angry that the detective stepped back involuntarily, Sutane took up a face towel from the table and wiped his cheek. ‘What about that?’

  The four men in the room looked at him curiously. From a point just below the left eye and following the line of the nose to the upper lip was a deep ragged scratch. Sutane ran his finger down it.

  ‘D’you know what that is, Blest? That’s the oldest, dirtiest little theatre trick in the bag. A pin in the grease-paint stick. God knows how long it’s been there. One day I was certain to work down to it. It happened to be tonight.’

  Blest was astonished in spite of himself. His round heavy face was crimson and he looked at Henry suspiciously.

  ‘D’you know anything about this?’ he demanded. ‘Who could have had access to your master’s paint?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a fool.’ Sutane’s tone was weary. ‘The show has run for three hundred performances. My dressing-room isn’t always locked. Hundreds of people have been in and out of here in the last eight months. It’s a long pin, you see, and it has been stuck up through the bottom of the stick. The head was buried in the silver-paper holder.’

  He began to pile cream on his face to get the rest of the paint off.

  ‘Then there’s the bouquet,’ he went on lazily, half enjoying the sensation he was creating. ‘There it is. A messenger boy handed it in at the stage door just before the show began.’

  ‘Flowers?’ The ex-inspector was inclined to be amused. ‘I can’t say I see anything funny about that, sir.’

  He took up the little white bunch gingerly and eyed it.

  ‘Not very grand, perhaps. Star of Bethlehem, aren’t they? Country flowers. You’ve got a lot of humble admirers, you know.’

  Sutane did not speak and, finding himself ignored, the ex-policeman raised the flowers to his nose and sniffed them idly. His sudden change of expression was ludicrous, and he dropped the bouquet with an exclamation.

  ‘Garlic!’ he ejaculated, his small eyes round with astonishment. ‘Garlic! Hey, what d’you know about that? A messenger brought it, did he? Well, I think I can check up there. Excuse me.’

  He retrieved the flowers and plunged out of the room with them. Sutane caught Campion’s eye in the mirror and turned round to face him.

  ‘It’s all trivial,’ he said apologetically. ‘Little tuppenny-ha’penny squirts of malice. They’re negligible on their own, but after a month or so they get one down.’

  He broke off and smiled. When he spoke again it was to reveal the essential charm of the man, a charm which was to puzzle and finally defeat an Albert Campion who was then barely in existence.

  ‘It’s worse for me,’ he said. ‘I’ve been such a blasted popular sort of fellow for so long.’ His grin grew lop-sided and his eyes were sad and childlike and intelligent.

  2

  AFTERWARDS, when the tide of circumstance had reached its flood and there was no telling what were the secrets beneath its turbulent waters, Mr Campion tried to remember every moment of that long and catastrophic day. Details which had seemed unimportant at the time flitted about in his mind with exasperating vagueness and he strove to catch at them in vain.

  Yet the whole story was there, so clear to read if only he had been looking for it.

  On the momentous Sunday Mr Campion went to White Walls in the morning. On that day Chloe Pye plumbed the final depth of inconsideration, entirely outclassing all her previous efforts. This, in itself, was a remarkable feat since her total disregard for those who entertained her was a byword among the host of near-friends who composed her circle.

  Uncle William Faraday sat beside Mr Campion in the Lagonda and pointed out the way with most of the pride of ownership. It was July and the roads were hot and scented, cow-parsley making a bridal avenue of every lane. Uncle William sniffed appreciatively.

  ‘Twenty miles from London. Nothing in a car. But feel you’re in the heart of the country. He runs a flat, of course, but gets down here most evenings. Don’t blame Sutane. Sensible feller, at heart.’

  He glanced at his companion to make sure he was attending.

  ‘Dear old place,’ he went on, receiving a nod of encouragement. ‘You’ll like it. Used to belong to his wife’s uncle. Girl wanted to keep it when it came to her and Sutane suddenly thought, “Why not?” That music-writer, Squire Mercer, who did the stuff for my show, has a little house on the estate. Had it for years. Matter of fact, it was at his place that Sutane met Linda, his wife. She was stayin’ with her uncle up at White Walls and Jimmy came down to see Mercer. They fell in love and there you are. Funny how things work out.’

  He was silent for some little time, his old eyes speculative and his lips moving a little as though he rehearsed still further details of Sutane’s private life. Mr Campion remained thoughtful.

  ‘This persecution business has got on his nerves, has it? Or is he always as excitable as he was last night?’

  ‘Always a bit mad.’ The old man pulled the large tweed cap he affected for motoring more firmly over his ears. ‘Noticed that as soon as I saw him. Don’t think he’s very much worse than usual. Of course you can understand it when you see the life the feller leads. Most unnatural … overworked, thinks too much, no peace at all, always in the thick of things, always in a hurry …’

  He hesitated as though debating on a confidence not quite in good taste.

  ‘It’s a rum ménage for a decent house,’ he remarked at last. ‘Don’t know what the old servants make of it. My own first experience of Bohemia, don’t you know. Not at all what I thought.’

  He sounded a little regretful and Campion glanced at him.

  ‘Disappointing?’ he inquired.<
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  ‘No, my boy; no, not exactly.’ Uncle William was ashamed of himself. ‘Freedom, you know, great freedom, but only in the things that don’t matter, if you see what I mean. Very rational, really. Like you to meet ’em all. Turn down here. This is the beginnin’ of the estate. It’s a modern house on an old site. This is the park.’

  Mr Campion turned the nose of the car down a flint lane leading off the secondary road. High banks, topped by a chase of limes and laurels so dear to the privacy-loving hearts of an earlier generation, rose on either side. His passenger regarded these screens with satisfaction.

  ‘I like all this,’ he said. ‘Since it’s a right-of-way, very sensible. Notice this?’

  He waved a plump hand towards a high rustic bridge overgrown with ramblers which spanned the road ahead of them.

  ‘Pretty, isn’t it? Useful too. Saves havin’ steps down to the road. The house, the lawns and the lake are over here to the right and there’s an acre or two of park on the other side. Must cost him a pretty penny to keep up.’

  They passed under the bridge and came on to the drive proper, wide and circular, leading up to the house. Campion, who had entertained misgivings at the term ‘modern,’ was reassured.

  Standing on high ground, its wide windows open to catch a maximum of sun, was one of those rare triumphs of the sounder architects of the earlier part of the century. There was nothing of the villa in its white walls and re-stiled roof. It possessed a fine generosity of line and proportion and succeeded in looking somehow like a great white yacht in full sail.

  ‘French-looking,’ commented Uncle William complacently. ‘Take the car through into the yard. Like you to see the stables.’

  They passed under the archway of the stable buildings on the left of the house and came into a brick yard where several cars were already parked. Apart from Sutane’s own black Bentley there were two small sports cars and one remarkable contraption of considerable age on which a young man in overalls and a cloth cap was at work. He grinned at Uncle William.