Dancers in Mourning Page 4

  Miss Pye got out of his arms and settled herself on the edge of the chair again.

  ‘You’re rude,’ she said. ‘Jimmy and I are old friends anyway, and I met you once at the theatre.’

  ‘That’s no excuse.’ Sock was only partially playful so that the scene was not without its embarrassment. ‘That is Mr Mercer, the composer, you’ve been talking to over there. He’s a bachelor and a misogynist. He saw you for the first time late last night. If you work too fast you’ll give him blood pressure.’

  Chloe laughed. She was childishly excited.

  ‘Squire, shall I?’

  ‘What? Sorry, I wasn’t listening.’

  ‘Shall I give you blood pressure?’

  Mercer blushed. His dark face looked odd suffused with sudden colour.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said carelessly and began to play loudly, making an interesting addition to the tune at last. This development seemed to absorb him and came as a blessed relief to everyone else in the room.

  Miss Pye became dignified with a lightning change of mood which comforted Uncle William, who had been watching her with growing dismay. She left Sock and walked across to the window with conscious grace.

  ‘Jimmy has quite a charming estate, hasn’t he?’ she remarked. ‘I do think surroundings have a definite effect upon one. He’s losing all his old joie de vivre. Here comes Mrs Sutane. Poor woman, she’s not used to you all yet, even now, is she? How long have they been married? Seven years? I like her. Such an unassuming soul.’

  Footsteps sounded on the path, and Mr Campion rose to his feet to meet his hostess and the only woman of whom Chloe Pye had ever publicly approved. He never forgot the moments. Long afterwards he remembered the texture of the arm of the chair as he put his hand upon it to pull himself up, the formation of the fat cumulus clouds in the half-oval of the window, and a purely imaginary, probably incorrect vision of himself, long and awkward, stepping forward with a foolish smile on his face.

  At that point his memories of the day and the chaotic weeks which followed it became unreliable, because he never permitted himself to think about them, but he remembered the instant when Mrs Sutane came into the living-room at White Walls because it was then that he gave up his customary position as an observer in the field and stepped over the low wall of the impersonal into the maelstrom itself and was caught up and exalted and hurt by it.

  Linda Sutane came in slowly and as though she was a little shy. She was a small gold girl trimmed with brown, not very beautiful and not a vivid personality, but young and gentle and, above all, genuine. With her coming the world slipped back into its normal focus, at least for Mr Campion, who was becoming a little dizzy from close contact with so many violent individualists.

  She welcomed him formally in a comforting voice, and apologised because lunch was going to be late.

  ‘They’re still so busy,’ she said. ‘We daren’t disturb them. Besides, no one can get into the dining-room. There’s a piano across the door.’

  Sock Petrie sighed.

  ‘I am afraid we all disorganise your house, Mrs Sutane,’ he said.

  He spoke with genuine regret and it was the first intimation Mr Campion had of the curious relationship between Linda Sutane and the brilliant company which surrounded her husband. It was a perfectly amicable arrangement based on deep respect on both sides, but kept apart by something as vital and unsurmountable as a difference in species.

  ‘Oh, but I like it,’ she said, and might have added that she was profoundly used to it.

  She sat down near Campion and bent forward to speak to him.

  ‘You’ve come to see about all the trouble?’ she said. ‘It’s very kind of you. I hope you won’t decide that we’re all neurotic, but little things do get round one’s feet so. If they were only big obvious catastrophes one could get hold of them. Sock showed you the paragraphs? Don’t mention them to Jimmy. It makes him so angry and we can’t do anything until the newspaper people get back to their offices.’

  Chloe cut into the conversation.

  ‘Don’t say you’re going to start in on it all over again?’ she said plaintively. ‘Ever since I’ve come to this damned house I’ve heard nothing but “persecution”, “practical jokes”, “someone’s making fun of Jimmy”. Don’t you let it get you down, my dear. Actors are like that. They always think someone’s after their blood.’

  Mr Campion looked up into her face, which was so distressingly raddled on that strong, trim body, and controlled a sudden vicious desire to slap it. The impulse startled him considerably. Linda Sutane smiled.

  ‘I think you’re probably right,’ she said. ‘Mr Campion, come and see my flower garden.’

  She led him out on to the terrace and into a formal old English garden, walled with square-cut yews, and ablaze with violas and sweet-scented peonies.

  ‘I ought not to have forgotten she was there,’ she said as they walked over the turf together. ‘Naturally she doesn’t find it interesting, but someone must tell you all about it or you’ll be wasting your time. This is a very difficult house to get anything done in in the ordinary way, but just now, while they’re all at work on this Swing Over show, it’s worse than usual. You see The Buffer has been such a great success that Jimmy and Slippers are anxious not to leave it. They were under contract to do Swing Over, though, and finally they came to an agreement with the Meyers brothers whereby Jimmy produces it and goes in on the business side, and in return they let him out personally. Unfortunately negotiations took such a long time that they’re late with production. They’ve got the principals here now, rehearsing. That’s why Jimmy couldn’t see you at once. They had to work in the hall because of the stairs. Ours are particularly good for some reason or another. Jimmy had them copied for Cotton Fields last year. I think you ought to know all this,’ she added breathlessly, ‘otherwise it’s very confusing and you might think us all mad.’

  He nodded gravely and wondered how old she was and what her life had been before she married.

  ‘It makes it clearer,’ he agreed. ‘What do you think about the business – the trouble, I mean? It hasn’t actually touched you personally, has it?’

  She seemed a little surprised.

  ‘Well, I’ve been here,’ she said dryly. ‘We may have imagined most of it. We may have thought all the odds and ends of things were related when they weren’t. But a great many irritating things have happened. There are people in the garden at night, too.’

  Campion glanced at her sharply. She had spoken casually and there was no suggestion of hysteria in her manner. She met his eyes and laughed suddenly.

  ‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I know. I’ve been wondering if I live too much alone or if the hypersensitiveness of the stage is catching. But I assure you there are people in this garden after dark. Plants are trampled in the morning and there are footmarks under the lower windows. The servants get unsettled and I’ve heard whispers and giggles in the shrubs myself. You see, in the old days when my uncle was alive – I used to come and stay with him sometimes – the village policeman would have been warned and he would have watched the place, but we can’t do that sort of thing now. When a man’s name is part of his assets he can’t afford to do the simplest thing without taking the risk that it will be seized on, twisted and made into an amusing story, so we just have to sit still and hope it all isn’t true. That’s not fun with Jimmy in his present nervy state. He’s beginning to feel it’s a sort of doom hanging over him.’

  She spoke wistfully and Campion looked away from her.

  ‘It’s all rather indefinite, isn’t it?’ he said severely. ‘Mercer tells me Sutane has no enemies.’

  She considered. ‘I think that’s true, but Mercer wouldn’t know if he had. Mercer’s a genius.’

  ‘Are geniuses unobservant?’

  ‘No, but they’re spoilt. Mercer has never had to think about anything except his work and now I don’t think he’s capable of trying to. You don’t know everybod
y yet. When you do you’ll find you know them all much better than they know you.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Mr Campion was startled.

  ‘Well, they’re all performers, aren’t they? All mild exhibitionists. They’re so busy putting themselves over that they haven’t time to think about anyone else. It’s not that they don’t like other people; they just never have a moment to consider them.’

  She paused and looked at him dubiously.

  ‘I don’t know if you’re quite the man to help us,’ she said unexpectedly.

  ‘Why?’ Mr Campion did his best not to sound irritated.

  ‘You’re intelligent rather than experienced.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ Campion was surprised to find himself so annoyed.

  Linda looked uncomfortable.

  ‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ she said. ‘But there are roughly two sorts of informed people, aren’t there? People who start off right by observing the pitfalls and the mistakes and going round them, and the people who fall into them and get out and know they’re there because of that. They both come to the same conclusions but they don’t have quite the same point of view. You’ve watched all kinds of things but you haven’t done them, and that’s why you’ll find this crowd so unsympathetic.’

  Mr Campion regarded the small person at his side with astonishment. She returned his glance timidly.

  ‘It’s all very upsetting,’ she said. ‘It makes one rude and unnecessarily forthright. It frightens me though, you see. Do help us out if you can and forgive me.’

  Her voice was quiet and had the peculiar quality of capitulation. Mr Campion nearly kissed her.

  He came so near it that his common sense and natural diffidence combined, as it were, to jerk him back with an almost physical force only just in time. He stared at her, frankly appalled by the insane impulse. He saw her dispassionately for a moment, a little yellow and brown girl with a wide mouth and gold flecks in her eyes. All the same it occurred to him forcefully that it would be wise if he went back to London and forgot the Sutanes, and so he would have done, of course, had it not been for the murder.

  3

  CHLOE PYE tied a long red silk skirt and a kerchief over her bathing dress in honour of lunch, which was served with obstinate ceremony on the part of the servants at a quarter to four.

  The two visiting stars had departed with apologies, already two hours late for other appointments, and Ned Dieudonne, Sutane’s invaluable accompanist, had been given a drink and a sandwich and bundled off to return the borrowed score to Prettyman, in Hampstead, who was doing the orchestrations.

  The rest of the party ate hungrily. Apart from those he had already met, Campion noticed only two newcomers at the table; the young man with the golden curls whom he had last seen fighting with the doorkeeper over a silver-plated bicycle, and the incomparable Slippers Bellew.

  Slippers was a nice girl. As soon as he saw her Campion understood Uncle William’s regret. In her short white practice dress, her warm yellow hair knotted high on the top of her head, she was about as alluring as any nice healthy child of twelve. She, Sutane, and the golden-haired boy, who turned out to be Benny Konrad, Sutane’s understudy and the young man in the ‘Little White Petticoats’ number in The Buffer, ate rather different food from the rest of the gathering and drank a great deal of milk.

  Sock Petrie did most of the talking, skilfully keeping Chloe Pye occupied so that her attention was diverted from Mercer, whom she was inclined to tease.

  Campion sat next to Sutane who talked to him eagerly, his thin mobile face reflecting every change of mood and lending every phrase an emphasis quite out of keeping with its importance.

  ‘We’ll snatch half an hour after this,’ he said. ‘I’ve got Dick coming down at half past four with a fellow I’ve got to meet. The chap wants to put some money into Swing Over, so we mustn’t discourage him, bless his heart. Has Linda told you about the trouble down here?’

  He used his hands as he talked and Campion was reminded again of the dynamo simile. The nervous force the man exuded was overpowering.

  ‘I heard about the people in the garden at night, but that might be just inquisitive villagers, don’t you think? You’re an exciting household, you know, to a quiet country community.’

  ‘It might be so.’ Sutane glanced out of the window, his eyes, which seemed to be nearly all pupil, dark and resentful. ‘We’re too near London,’ he declared suddenly. ‘It’s convenient, but there’s a suburban note about the place. No one seems to realise we have work to do.’

  He paused.

  ‘I hate that,’ he said vehemently. ‘You’d think they’d use their heads.’

  Mr Campion was silent. He thought he understood this part of the situation. He knew something of country life and the social obligations which certain houses seem to carry as though they had a personality quite apart from their owners. He imagined a bored community in which every member had at least a nodding acquaintance with every other thrown into a state of chattering excitement by the knowledge that a national hero was coming to join it, only to be disappointed and irritated to find that the celebrity retained his inaccessibility and merely deprived them of one of their woefully few houses of call.

  He glanced down the table to where Linda sat, flanked by Uncle William and Mercer. She looked up and caught his eye and smiled. Campion turned back to his host.

  ‘I thought I’d go –’ he began, but Sutane interrupted him.

  ‘You stay here a day or two. I shall feel happier if you do. What I want to know is this; how much of it is my nerves and how much real mischief? – Good God! what’s that?’

  The final words escaped him with a violence which silenced all other conversation.

  Campion, who was sitting with his back to the window, glanced over his shoulder and saw the phenomenon. Coming slowly down the drive, with a dignity befitting its age, was a large Daimler, circa 1912. It was driven by an elderly chauffeur in green and carried a very thoughtful footman in similar uniform. Behind it came a Buick, also chauffeur-driven, and behind that again a taxicab. In the far distance yet another car was discernible.

  Sutane glanced at his wife questioningly. She shook her head. She looked positively frightened, Campion thought.

  Meanwhile the Daimler was depositing its passengers, a resplendent old lady and a willowy girl.

  The peal of the front-door bell echoed through the house and the Dane, who had been asleep under the table, got up and began to bay. Slippers quietened him after some little time, and an ominous silence fell over the room, while from outside in the hall the murmur of voices and the patter of feet upon the polished floor came in to them.

  Presently, just as other cars appeared in the drive outside, another sound, an undignified lumbering noise, was added to the chatter. Slippers giggled.

  ‘That’s the piano,’ she said. ‘We moved it across the drawing-room door. There wasn’t time to get it back. Jimmy, you told Hughes not to bother.’

  Sutane pushed back his chair. He was suddenly and theatrically furious.

  ‘Who the devil are all these damned people?’ he demanded. ‘What the hell are they doing calling in here? God! There’s millions of them!’

  Benny Konrad laughed nervously.

  ‘Doesn’t anybody know them? How marvellous! Let’s all go out and fraternise.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Sock Petrie was frowning, his deep-set eyes fixed anxiously on Sutane.

  The star was trembling and his long fingers gripped the back of his chair.

  The door behind him opened softly and the elderly manservant who had conducted the meal came in. He was red and flustered.

  ‘A great many people have called, sir,’ he began in an undertone. ‘I’ve put them in the drawing-room, and one of the maids is opening the double doors into the living-room. Would you wish me to serve tea?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sutane glanced at his wife helplessly.

  Linda rose. ‘It’s cups, I suppose. Cu
ps and cake, and milk, of course. How many people have come?’

  ‘About thirty at the moment, Madam, but –’ the old man glanced down the drive expressively. Another car pulled up and a group of excited young people got out.

  ‘Oh, well, do what you can.’ Linda sounded resigned. ‘There’s a case of sherry in the pantry, that may help. Hughes, is there anybody you know?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Madam. There’s old Mrs Corsair from the “Towers”, Lady Gerry from “Melton”, Mr and Mrs Beak, Miss Earle – they all called on you, Madam.’ He managed to convey a gentle reproach. ‘I’ll go and attend to them. Will you come?’

  The girl glanced down at her brown cotton dress.

  ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘Very well.’

  She hurried out after the butler, looking, Mr Campion thought, like a very small ship going into battle.

  Chloe rose. ‘We ought all to go and help her,’ she said, not without a certain relish. ‘Who are all these people, Jimmy? Your local audience?’

  Sutane ignored her. ‘The cheek of it!’ he exploded. ‘To come to one’s house in hordes when one’s got work to do!’

  Mr Campion coughed. ‘They’ve been asked, you know,’ he said gently. ‘People don’t turn up by the hundred at four o’clock precisely without an invitation.’

  ‘God bless my soul!’ said Uncle William.

  Benny Konrad squeaked. ‘It’s a dirty practical joke,’ he ejaculated. ‘I say, someone’s got their knife into you, Sutane. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Disappear,’ said Jimmy promptly. ‘It’s hard on Linda, but I’ve got a business conference in twenty minutes.’

  ‘I say, old boy, I shouldn’t do that.’ Sock’s voice was quiet, but very firm. ‘Bad publicity, you know. It’s a swine’s trick, but you’ll have to make the best of it. Both you and Slippers must appear. Go out and say pretty things. Explain you’ve been practising and that’s why you’re in these clothes. It’s absolutely the only thing to do. We’ll all back you up.’