Black Plumes Page 5

  She paused. The other woman was looking at her eagerly, half fear and half excitement in her expression.

  "Then it was, was it? I heard something, but I didn't like to ask any more. Who?"

  "We don't know. They're finding out now." It was a ridiculous conversation. Evasion of the actual word was instinctive in them both. Miss Dorset's hand shook in the pocket of her coat and her mouth trembled.

  "It's dreadful," she said. "In over a hundred years we've never had a breath of scandal and now it's come when your father is away. Are you sure Mr. Robert couldn't have done it himself?"

  "Well, no. You see, he was found in the cupboard. He must have been hidden there by someone."

  Miss Dorset nodded and was silent for a while.

  "It's extraordinary," she said at last. "I've often wondered how I should behave if ever I was confronted by a... a dreadful crime like this, but now that I am it's just like any other terrible thing, isn't it? I mean it becomes a practical problem. Miss Ivory, I shan't say this to anyone else, but Mr. Lucar was over here that night. Did you know?"

  "Yes, I saw him."

  "Oh." The pale eyes rested on the girl for a moment, but she did not pursue the train of thought. Instead she sniffed and said abruptly: "If it had been the other way round I could understand it. Or if he'd done it himself."

  "Could you? Robert was nervy but not suicidal."

  "Don't you think so?"

  They were still speaking in whispers, and the elder woman's question was sibilant in its sharpness. Frances gaped at her.

  "What do you mean? What makes you say that?"

  Miss Dorset hesitated, but when her words did come they were so extraordinary that for the second time that day Frances received the sharp little stab in her diaphragm which comes from a fear which is not to be explained, the secret superstitious terror of the utterly unreasonable.

  "Did he never talk to you about the whistle on the telephone?" said Miss Dorset. "He didn't?" she added hastily as she saw the girl's expression. "Oh well, then, don't mention it, for heaven's sake. It was probably nothing at all. I ought not to have said anything. I'm so upset today I don't know what I'm doing. I'll go back. I daren't leave the gallery any longer. I'm so glad you're here. You remind me of your father. Did you know you were like him? Any time I'm needed just send over. I shall be there."

  Frances caught the angular shoulder just as she was turning away.

  "You sound as if you thought Robert was insane."

  Miss Dorset eyed her. "I did wonder," she said. "So would you have done if you'd known him as well as I did."

  Frances watched her striding off down the landing in her flat-heeled shoes, a shaken, bewildered, but definitely gallant old maid.

  6

  The youngest Ivory hesitated. Gabrielle's room was quiet and she seized the opportunity to be alone. She felt a desperate need for a pause, a minute or two in which to pull herself together and sort out the facts from this welter of suggestion and little mysteries which threatened to engulf her.

  She turned into her own room mechanically and entered its cool fastness with a feeling of relief which was shattered at once as a tall thin figure stepped back from the window and came towards her.

  "Hallo. Duchess," said David Field. "I thought you must come along here sooner or later. How are the nerves?"

  He stood looking down at her, a cigarette case held out invitingly, and Frances, who was in that particular state of mind in which the eye sees all things afresh, found herself thinking that he was a devastatingly good-looking person and that in a way it was a pity, since so many people must have thought so before. It was only a momentary respite, however. In a moment she was back in the crisis again.

  "What did they ask you?" she demanded, taking a cigarette. "Robert was murdered, was he?"

  "Looks like it. ducky." She caught his expression as he held the match for her and was surprised by the impersonal quality of its concern. There was no fear there. He was thinking entirely of her. "The head nark is a nice old Scot," he went on lightly. "You needn't be afraid of him. He's probably even honest. He talked to me like a father. I found myself yearning to confide my secret inhibitions. What's up? Why the wide-open-eye effect?"

  Frances, who had not been aware of her change of expression, found the sudden demand confusing.

  "There isn't one," she said hastily, and he laughed and put an arm round her shoulders. There was no undue affection in the caress. It was as careless and friendly as his voice.

  "You think I'm a mug, don't you?" he said. "You're a most refreshing person, so trusting. I wish I were. Let me tell you, young woman, I'm more experienced than I care to think. Which reminds me, do you recollect performing a Girl Scout act of mercy on my hand with a bottle of iodine some time last week?"

  Frances glanced up at him and her eyes flickered. She did remember the incident. He had called in one morning to discuss the announcement of their engagement, amusing her by his secret embarrassment. While they were talking she had noticed a loose flap of skin on his knuckle and had insisted on the antiseptic. She remembered standing in the breakfast room, smearing the stuff on while she told him of Robert's flight to his club. It must have been on the first day, then, on the morning after Robert's death.

  "Yes," she said cautiously. "Why?"

  He held out his right hand palm downward for her inspection.

  "A complete cure," he said. "Gone without trace. Every heard of Coriolanus?" "Who?"

  "Coriolanus. A hellishly noble Roman. He was touchy about displaying his wounds. I'm just like him. I thought I'd mention it. Forget the incident entirely, will you?"

  His arm tightened about her and she stared at him, the full significance of the request breaking over her in a shivery wave which caught her breath and sent the blood flying out of her face. She was looking up at him, her face so near his own that she only saw his mouth. She saw it narrow and twist like a disappointed child's, and then he had released her abruptly, flinging her lightly away from him and was standing before her, laughing.

  "Oh, tell em what you like, ducky," he said, "but for God's sake don't dramatize the old man."

  The reproof was almost spiteful, and she reacted to it instantly.

  "I'm not." The retort sounded childish and ridiculous in the gravity of the situation. "I'm not. But..."

  "But what? But what, old watercolor eyes?"

  They stood looking at one another, the man defensive and ostensibly amused, and the girl hurt and in her heart most desperately afraid.

  It was unfortunate that the knock should have come at that moment or that, as neither of them answered it, the door should have been thrust open by a startled policeman. There was quite a little group on the landing. Norris and a plainclothes man were there, as well as the elderly Orkney Scot with the hooded Grey eyes and the prim expression. Before that owlish and official stare Frances slowly reddened. Beneath his unresponsive glance the room with its muslin curtains, draped dressing table and flounced colonial bed became distressingly feminine and intimate. She glanced at David out of the corner of her eye and saw him grave and slightly at a disadvantage.

  "To the pure all things are slightly indecent,"" he quoted to her under his breath and turned to smile at the elder man. "Have you met Miss Frances Ivory, Inspector?" he inquired. "Frances, this is Mr. Bridie, the divisional detective inspector."

  "I'm jolly pleased to meet you. Miss Ivory," said the D.D.I, and again the deep Scot's voice with the soft aspirated accent came with a shock of surprise to her. "I'd like a word with ye," he continued and added, looking round him, "We'd hardly talk in he-ere."

  There was nothing impolite in his objection; it was simply a statement of his personality, and Frances, who was a stranger to the prurience of the police, felt out of her depth and unjustly ashamed. They all went out on the landing, and Norris and the two subordinate policemen withdrew discreetly to the head of the stairs. Bridie glanced at David.

  "I'd like my word with the young lady alone,
" he said mildly.

  Frances found herself pouncing on the words, trying to discern any hostility or reassurance in the tone in which they were made, but there was nothing there beyond the polite intimation.

  David nodded and drifted off to join the others. He did not touch her, and she found she had expected a reassuring grip on her elbow as he passed and that she experienced an indescribable sense of loss when it did not come.

  Bridie led her into the comer of the landing.

  "I don't want a statement from ye yet. Miss Ivory," he said. "This is a serious business. A bad, nasty business, an' the sooner we get to the bottom of it the better for all concerned. I hear your sister's ill and can't be disturbed, so the doctor says?" He paused enquiringly.

  "My stepsister," said Frances mechanically and wished she had not spoken as his round eyes peered shrewdly at her.

  "Your stepsister." He corrected himself. "Ma mistake. I'm sorry." She saw him making a mental note of a lack of sympathy between herself and Phillida as clearly as if he had written it down under her eyes, and her feeling of unsafely grew. "I know who ye are an' all about ye," he went on in a gentle, avuncular fashion as if he were speaking to a child, "an' after a bit I'll ask ye one or two questions, maybe, but just now I wondered if perhaps you’d take me in to see your granny?"

  "To see Gabrielle?" She glanced at the big leather-covered door across the hall.

  He nodded. "I've hear-rd she's a pretty old lady and I thought maybe she'd be more comfortable if ye came with me," he said. "I wouldn't keep her a minute."

  "I'll see."she said and hesitated. "Inspector Bridie, what exactly has happened? Was Robert murdered?"

  He looked down at her, and his face, with its fine lines and arched eye sockets, was gently disapproving.

  "That's a very unpleasant word, Miss Ivory. Your poor bother-in-law was killed. How it happened I'm attempting to determine."

  His lady likeness provided the finishing touch to the nightmare quality of the situation, and she saw him then for the first time in the light in which she was to see him ever after, as the embodied spirit of that gentle but inexorable and humorless inquiry which is the finest tradition of British police detection. "I'll see Granny," she said hastily. Old Mrs. Ivory laid down her hand mirror and settled her shawls more carefully about her when Frances brought the divisional detective inspector in some few minutes later. Dorothea stood wooden and disapproving by the head of the imposing bed and Bridie advanced cautiously. He was a little out of his depth in this majestic presence, Frances was grateful to see, and in any other circumstances she might have been sorry for him. The old Gabrielle regarded him steadily. Her back was held stiffly against the pillows and her eyes were alive and imperious.

  "I have lived a very long time," she said. Either as a greeting or as an opening gambit the announcement was unexpected and unanswerable and the Scot bowed.

  "Ye have indeed, ma'am," he said awkwardly. "I wouldn't venture to intrude upon ye if the circumstances didn't make it very desirable."

  The old lady listened to him with evident pleasure, for she smiled.

  "What is Scotland like nowadays?" she inquired. "I used to go up to Braemar in the season, long ago. Those poor deer, Frances. So pathetic. Velvet faces and tiny feet like women in tight shoes.

  Bridie shot an imploring glance at the girl, who went forward.

  "Darling, this is the divisional detective inspector. He wants to talk to you about Robert."

  "Robert," said Gabrielle, and a shadow passed over her face. "Oh yes, of course, of course, I was forgetting. I forget so much. So you're a policeman?"

  The final question was put sharply and Bridie stiffened.

  "I am, ma'am."

  "The police," said Gabrielle and sighed, "in our house. I remember. I remember. Of course. Poor Robert died yesterday."

  "Yesterday?" It seemed to Frances that he pounced upon the word as if it had been an admission.

  "Yes," said Gabrielle, "and they only told me this morning. You told me, Dorothea." She turned to the servant with a tiny fluttering gesture which brought back the ghosts of the drawing rooms of the eighties.

  "I did, my dearie, I did." Old Dorothea patted the tiny outstretched hand and glowered at the inspector with a wealth of unspoken indignation. He looked uncomfortable but stood his ground.

  "It's part of my general duties to enquirer if there was anyone who had taken any especial dislike to him, ma'am," he said.

  Gabrielle closed her eyes.

  "Robert," she said. "Poor Robert. I never liked him myself. I remember him quite well. He and my husband were not friends but business associates. They never quarreled but they were never intimate."

  "Darling, you mean Meyrick, don't you? Meyrick, my father. Your son, not your husband." Frances made the interruption quickly. The fires had died down again. The vital Gabrielle of the morning had disappeared into the shadows once more. This was a very old woman rambling up and down among her memories like a child in a garden.

  "Meyrick?" The bright black eyes flicked open with interest. "Where is Meyrick? Send Meyrick up here now at once. I've been asking and waiting for Meyrick for hours. Why isn't he here? Business must wait. I can't deal with people at my age. He must know that I can't look after him all his life."

  Dorothea bent over the bed.

  "He's away, ma'am. He's abroad, my dear. I keep telling you. You're tired, my lady. You lie down. Mr. Meyrick will come sooner or later. Don't you keep fretting."

  Her tone was intentionally soothing, but underlying it resentment seethed and boiled. Gabrielle seemed to notice it for she laughed softly.

  "Poor Phyllis," she said. "No, it's not Phyllis, is it? I had Phyllis when Meyrick was born. Poor Dorothea and poor Gabrielle. Poor Gabrielle is old. Old. Too old. Let me think. Ask your question again, my man."

  It was a gallant effort; the old mind struggling to continue to rouse itself into working order was pathetic, and Bridie's troubled expression grew.

  "Ye were saying that ye weren't very fond of Mr. Robert Madrigal yourself, ma'am." he said. "Ye had a few words with him when ye came up here from Hampstead, maybe?"

  "No." Gabrielle seemed perfectly lucid and even forceful. "He was rude to me and I told him I should stay here in my own room until Meyrick returned."

  "Until your son returned," said Bridie, snapping down upon what he appeared to regard as an admission.

  "Certainly," agreed Gabrielle. "Until my son returned from business."

  "Or from abroad?"

  The old Gabrielle looked a little frightened. Her black eyes flickered and she moved her hands helplessly. Finally she began to laugh. It was no sound of mere amusement, but the studied social laugh of the very old actress, the laugh to cover the faux pas or the awkward pause.

  "I forget," she said to Bridie with all the gracious apology of her period and her breeding and all the charm of her eternal femininity. "I'm so old. I forget. Forgive me."

  He looked embarrassed, as well he might have been, and Dorothea with her eyes watering bent over her mistress again.

  "It's death," she whispered. "Mr. Madrigal is dead, ma'am. They've found Miss Phillida's husband dead in the cupboard downstairs. I told you."

  Gabrielle stared at her with the astonished look of the baby or the wandering mind.

  "Was that today?" she said. "I thought my husband was with me when you came in to tell me that. He was here. He went downstairs to see him. Oh, dear, the years close up on me. I've no sense of time, none at all, none at all. I thought that was years ago. Robert Madrigal dead today and the police in the house? Oh, dear."

  Her voice died away, but her thin lips continued to mumble and her black eyes were troubled and helpless.

  Bridie's attitude underwent a complete change.

  I'll apologies for intruding on ye. ma'am," he said, and evidently Gabrielle's old charm had not deserted her for he looked as gallant and as virile as an old man with a prim face and a sober suit may well be. "I won't trouble ye any l
onger." He raised his voice a little as if he were speaking to old and deaf royalty. "I'll thank ye very much and I'll ask ye to excuse me. Good morning."

  "Good morning," said Gabrielle and remarked to Dorothea before he was out of the room, "a nice creature. Who did you say he was?"

  The divisional detective inspector looked younger and his color had heightened when he came out onto the deserted landing again.

  "She's a grand old lady," he said to Frances in a burst of confidence which he did not often permit himself, "but remarkably old. I hear-rd she was almost ninety but I hadn't envisaged it, if you take my meaning. I'm jolly grateful to you for taking me in. I'm glad I saw her. When one's old like that the days and the years appear to get mixed up in one's mind." He sighed and added seriously: "What an awful thing for a poor old body like that! She came here over a week ago, you say?"

  "Yes. On the day Robert on the day we thought Robert went away."

  "Ah, she did?" He reconfirmed the point. "That's just what I understood. And she was thinking about her son. your father, about that time, wasn't she?"

  "Yes, I suppose she was. I'd been talking to her about him that afternoon."

  "Ye had?" He seemed pleased. "Maybe that accounts for it. I could not make up ma mind until I'd seen her, only ye see, on the morning after she came here, early, before the news of Mr. Madrigal's so-called departure was announced, she sent the wee maid Molly down to the post office with a cable to your father's agents in Hong Kong. The girl can't remember the message word for word, but it was for him to come home immediately. Did ye know that?"

  Her face answered him. and he laughed at her kindly.

  "You’d never make a liar," he said and added, relapsing into his habitual gravity, "it's a jolly unpleasant business for ye all but justice must be served."

  He was silent for some little time and then startled her out of her senses by a second question.