Black Plumes Read online

  "He sounded so upset on the phone." Disappointment made Miss Dorset's tone plaintive. "He'd just seen the news of Mr. Robert's death. I thought he was going to have a stroke, poor man. What a frightful homecoming for him!"

  Frances looked at her blankly. This extraneous piece of bad luck coming in the very midst of disaster seemed to finish everything, and she only realized then how much she had been relying on Meyrick and the return of his blessed authority. The secret conviction that it would Ik? all right tomorrow had been buoying her up, keeping her abreast of the time. Now she was alone again, rather desperately and painfully alone.

  Miss Dorset's voice addressing David cut into her thoughts.

  "Mrs. Madrigal sent down word that you were going to see to everything with Mr. Worthington... that's the solicitor. I'm so glad," she was saying earnestly. "I'd have done it, of course, but these things do need a man. I don't know why. It's the custom, I suppose. I only realized just now that it would have to be so... so quick. The inquest was adjourned this morning. I don't think Mr. Bridie even troubled to go. He knew what was going to happen. The pathologist rang up when you were out. It'll have to be the day after tomorrow, I'm afraid."

  David frowned. Frances saw him standing there, his hair a little on end and his fine-boned face, which was so sensitive and yet so masculine, animated with distaste and pity.

  "Oh, the funeral you mean?" he said. "The day after tomorrow? Really? That's rather hurried, isn't it?"

  "Well, no, not really." Miss Dorset was flushed. "The... er... operation has been done and the pathologist suggested, very nicely of course, that..."

  Her voice faded and he nodded with sudden comprehension.

  "Of course," he said hurriedly. "I was forgetting. Very well then, I'll see to it. I'll go down and see Worthington now. You'll want it very quiet, naturally."

  "Oh, I think so. Old Mrs. Ivory must be consulted, but I should think as quiet as possible. I'll go and ask her, unless you'd like to. Miss Frances?"

  "No." Frances spoke with sudden decision. "No, you go, will you? I'll come up later. I want a word with Mr. Field."

  She waited until the woman was out of sight and the brisk clatter of her heels on the parquet above had died away before she went into the breakfast room. He followed her, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched.

  "Phillida asked me, you know," he said. "Someone's got to do it for the poor girl. It's a horrible job."

  It was not that the words sounded like an excuse, and thereby inferred that she needed one. She had put that personal aspect of the day's sum of trouble resolutely out of her mind. But the remark jarred on her and she plunged wildly into the awkward statement she had planned.

  "Look here. David," she said, realizing that her cheeks were flushed but unaware that she looked young and a trifle disheveled, "this entire business has got hopelessly out of hand from our point of view. I mean last week, when you were awfully kind and made the terrific gesture, neither of us realized what was coming to us. Wouldn't you like to call the engagement joke off? Even if it made us look silly it would at least clear up a few of the complications. I feel I'm dragging you into this mess, and it's all rather beastly and shame making and will be worse later on."

  She was looking at him directly, but after the first word or so he had not met her eyes but had wandered over to the window and now stood staring out through the gauze curtains at the square.

  "I think you'd better," she said and waited. She had no idea what she expected of him no conscious notion that she was being anything but painfully sincere. Her first impression was that he was going to laugh at her, but his complete silence was disconcerting.

  "You clear right out of it," she said earnestly. "We're going to be the Piccadilly lepers, I can see that. It's no good being paralyzingly decent and sticking by us. You get away while you're uncontaminated."

  Again he let her words die in the room and then, while the silence still ticked uncomfortably, shrugged his shoulders.

  "I'd like to," he said simply. "There's nothing I feel I'd rather do."

  "Well, you go," she said blankly.

  He laughed and came over to her.

  "Darling," he said, "you're lovely. All elementary and untrodden and violets down the path. No complexes, no inhibitions, just plain unadulterated female youth. It's disgustingly rare and painfully attractive. As a ride this is the point where the old cad packs up. However, look over here."

  He took her back to the window and pointed to a solitary figure idling against the railings of the square.

  "There he is," he said, "boots and all. If I leave the house he goes too. This is a solemn moment. For the first time in his life the old man is trapped. Duchess."

  His hand was on her shoulder and she felt it tighten briefly.

  "If he wasn't there you'd go," she said. "My God, I would," said David Field.

  9

  To everyone's astonishment Gabrielle put her foot down about the funeral, and in her decree the great Victorian instinct for social self-preservation became apparent.

  "Quiet?" she demanded, sitting up in her chair as she did in the afternoons. "At a time like this? Don't be ridiculous. My dears, we do not admit that there is any scandal. Our poor wretched relation has died, and we owe it to ourselves to see him buried in a right way. Besides, if a few sensation mongers are going to crowd round the house, for heaven's sake, give them something to gape at."

  She disapproved strongly of David's share in the arrangements and told him so, but since his name had already been mentioned to the solicitors she agreed that "less talk" would arise from his continuing the work than from his being superseded in it, and she had him and old Worthington, together with the undertaker, up in her room for the best part of an hour.

  Some of her decisions were out of date, but Frances, who was appointed her lieutenant in the business, began to recognize for the first time the awe-inspiring common sense behind the absurdities of that great social code of the day before yesterday. She did what she was told and bought black for herself. Phillida and every servant in the house, and with Miss Dorset she sat up late into the night sending “intimations" and instructions for the dispatch of flowers to everyone who might possibly have some claim to be informed.

  The gruesome preparations added to the horror of the situation by a hundred per cent. Plainclothes men on guard outside the house helped to bring wreaths into the hall, and old Bridie, with his bright inquisitive eyes popping in their arched sockets, seemed to move in a perpetual odor of lilies. Startled dress-shop women with a couple of mannequins apiece were shown into Gabrielle's bedroom, where she kept them parading tin and down in funereal splendor until she was satisfied that her granddaughters were to be suitably clad.

  Nobody wept. There was a grim purpose in the proceedings and a strange element of gallantry.

  Frances, her arm full of black chiffon, ran into David outside Phillida's door on the night before the interment. The entire house reeked like a florist's shop, and death was far more present in the graceful building than ever it had been on the morning when Robert's pathetic corpse had first been discovered in the garden room.

  David was visibly shaken. He looked younger and more vulnerable and his eyes were shocked.

  "It's archaic," he said. "Utterly horrible. My God, if one had liked the fellow it would have driven one mad. I say, did you know? They've picked up Lucar. It's in the stop press tonight. He wired from mid-Atlantic or something equally preposterous. It's extraordinary the way the police go about the house, brushing one on the stairs, nodding to one in the passages, yet never telling anything. Quite reasonable, I suppose, but disconcerting. Still, who's going to worry about Lucar or anyone else while this is going on? In the ordinary way we'd be hysterical with excitement, I suppose, but with Grand mamma’s macabre pantomime taking place all round one everything blurs."

  Frances agreed. She was very weary, and in the last few days the skin had contracted over her fine bones, leaving her face po
inted and fragile. He looked at her sharply and spoke with a flicker of his old manner.

  "Don't let it get you," he said. "Anyway don't go all ethereal over it. It's wise, you know. She's absolutely fantastic, but she's dead right. That's the amazing thing about it. It's sensible. In fact it's genius. It leaves all the doors open. People who aren't sure how the cat's going to jump can send flowers and stay away and so save their faces in any eventuality. If by a miracle the whole stink blows over amicable relations can be resumed without heart burning... if it does."

  The thought seemed to worry him for he glanced at Phillida's door and frowned.

  'Are you going in to her? I wish you would." His concern for the other woman was urgent and personal. Frances imagined that she understood it and felt again the age-old stab which the Marthas of this world must always feel when the Marys score their inevitable triumphs.

  David was embarrassed. "I've been with her all the evening." he said. "Do you know, I don't think she ought to be left."

  "I'll stay with her." Her tone betrayed her and he glanced behind him. She saw him for a moment with the visor up. His eyes were helpless and his expression unexpectedly supplicant.

  "Have a heart. Duchess," he said.

  Afterward she realized that they came as near to understanding one another then as ever before, but at that moment the door was flung open and a haggard relic of Phillida Madrigal appeared on the threshold.

  "Whispering," she said breathlessly. "Whispering outside the door. It goes on all the time. I can't stand it. Cant you come in?"

  "My dear, I'm so sorry. I didn't realist how near we were." Frances turned into the room at once. "Look here, Gabrielle says..." Her words died as Phillida took the dress from her arms and threw it across a chair. She was trembling, and the green of her house coat seemed to have ringed her skin.

  "I don't think I shall want an evening dress again," she said abruptly. "Tell Gabrielle so. Tell Gabrielle... tell Gabrielle... "Her mouth trembled out of control and Frances put an arm round her.

  . "Sit down," she said firmly. "I'm sorry we stood talking out there. Never mind about the clothes. Gabrielle's old, you know, and she's fussy. It's a ghastly business, but we've got to get it over somehow."

  "Get it over?" Phillida sat huddled in the chair like an old woman, her spine arched under the quilted coat. "Get it over?" she repeated. There was an unnatural weariness in the phrase and Frances glanced at her uneasily.

  Outside the wind had risen again. It crept round the house, fitful and mischievous. It was not so boisterous as it had been on the significant night ten days before, but it was the same wind, irritating and uncertain, a living enemy trying to penetrate the fastness of the house.

  Frances knelt down before the fire and sat back on her heels, listening to it while it played in and out her thoughts.

  "Whispering," said Phillida suddenly. "Damned whispering everywhere. It's getting on my nerves. I'm growing like Robert, imagining things. Frances, have you ever wished that you were dead? Seriously, I mean, not just saying it. Have you ever sat and wished with all your said that you'd die or that you had the courage to kill yourself?"

  "Yes," said Frances definitely. Her instinct was for caution."Yes, I have, but not for long. The day goes through it all. Tomorrow night I'll come and the next night. It passes, you know; that's the mercy of it. It doesn't last."

  'This will." Phillida was whispering herself, and for the first time in her life the histrionic effect was not calculated. "You don't remember 'Dolly," do you?"

  Frances glanced at her in exasperation, if Phillida had suddenly decided to mourn for Robert in this slightly dramatic fashion it might possibly have been bearable, but to find her preoccupied with a romantic anxiety was distasteful as well as uncomfortable.

  "Yes, I do." she said vaguely.

  Phillida shivered. "I remember everything about him." Her voice was still husky and she had lowered it until she was hardly intelligible. "He had such force, Frances, such incredible force. He'll be here tomorrow. After the funeral the bell will ring and they’ll be more whispering and steps outside and he'll be here."

  Frances scrambled to her feet.

  "You go to bed," she said. "Take some aspirin and get some sleep. This is madness, my dear. You'll wear yourself to a rag."

  Phillida was not listening to her. Her face looked ghastly in the bright electric light.

  "I'm frightened," she burst out suddenly. "Frightened out of my senses. You can't possibly understand. Nobody can. Frances, do you think David could have been in love with me all these years?"

  "David?"

  "Yes. He was in love with me once. He must have been. I treated him abominably. I know, but some men are peculiar when you do that. They get a sort of respect for you and remember it. If he was a suppressed sentimental type he might... And that would be too horrible. What should I do? What on earth should I do?"

  "Somehow I shouldn't worry about that." Frances knew that she sounded brutal and decided that it could not be helped.

  Phillida shook her head.

  "It's more than worrying. You don't know," she said. "Suppose David had known, somehow, that 'Dolly' was going to be found? Suppose he'd had some sort of psychic intimation? Suppose Robert had told him, as he told me?" The final words seemed to frighten her, for she clapped her hands over her mouth. "I didn't say that!" she burst out like a hysterical child. "I didn't say that. You didn't hear me."

  Frances rang the bell.

  "I'm going to send for Dorothea and we're putting you to bed," she announced. "You be quiet and try to sleep. It's the only thing to do. You'll drive yourself out of your mind if you go on like this."

  "You didn't believe what I said?" Phillida was frankly hysterical.

  "I didn't even hear it." said Frances with feeling. "Do you want a bath, because if you do I'll turn it on for you?"

  Phillida was still crying when they got her into bed, and old Dorothea sat by her until she slept, but in the morning, to the relief and astonishment of the entire household, she pulled herself together. She same down comparatively early, a graceful greyhound figure in her black suit, looked at the flowers and even let Mrs. Sanderson weep to her a little. Frances saw her on that morning standing stiffly by a tremendous wreath from the employees at 39. Her chin was up and her eyes were blank. Even then, before she understood, then, while the whole terrible complication was still unknown to her. she recognized that blind courage and the picture of it sank deep into her mind.

  The funeral itself was one of those unbelievable pieces of picturesque nightmare which sometimes slip into real life to remind one that there is nothing so painfully absurd that it cannot happen. To begin with, the wind had risen almost to gale force without losing its fitful quality. It raced round the square, tormenting and blinding, snatching at hats and whipping at skirts, irritating the horses and disarranging the flowers. It was like Gabrielle to insist on horses. No motor hearse in the world can convey the same macabre dignity which six brown-black horses, complete with silver buckles and black plumes, can produce with a single rattle of their well-oiled hoofs. The plumes were the undertaker's own contribution. He was an elderly man who recognized a real Victorian when he met one. More-over, in company with most of his kind, he deplored the passing of the pomp and circumstance of death. The plumes had been resurrected, therefore, for the first time since the war had given Londoners new and simpler ideas about Interment. Now they stood high in their silver sconces on top of the hearse and on the nodding heads of the black horses, looking like bunches of gigantic crepe palm leaves. The wind leapt on them with a squeal of triumph as they waved before the breakfast-room windows, and Robert Madrigal waited for the last time for his friends.

  There were few friends. Flowers had arrived by the cartload, but the fashionable crowd was absent. However, there was no dearth of mourners. The newspapers had announced the event. "PICTURE EXPERT MURDER: FUNERAL," said the evening boards in Piccadilly, and the square was full of sober, idle peo
ple, not one of whom had so much as nodded to the living Robert but who had come to watch his burying as they would have come to watch any other procession with a bit of a tale to it. They helped considerably, of course. Frances realized that when she came back from the grim, chilly little ceremony and everybody met in the drawing room to thaw and to drink and forget if they could that vast sad cemetery where the flowers had been left to the roistering wind and Robert to the hideous yellow earth.

  Here the guests were comparatively few. Most of the staff from 39 was present, of course, as were the usual collection of obscure relatives who always appear at weddings and funerals like some sort of family phenomena, while old Worthington had come, bringing his son, who stood about the doctors, and a decayed gentleman who belonged to Robert's club and had owed him money. But for the rest there were only telegrams and more and more last-minute flowers.

  The only uninvited guests in the house were the police. They hung about shamefully, like bailiffs, grimly amused in their official capacity but as men secretly a trifle overawed. The expedition itself had been preposterous. Since Robert had no relatives nearer than South Africa a Victorian stoicism had decreed that his widow should travel in the first limousine accompanied by a startled old nephew of Gabrielle's own as her escort. He was a pathetic person who had been fetched up from his Bournemouth boarding house by a telegram which was as near blackmail as made no difference, and he had sat huddled in the car beside his kinswoman, trying to remember long-forgotten manners and privately worrying about the droughts and his own weak chest.

  Frances herself, with David in his capacity as her fiance, had gone next, and behind them rode Miss Dorset, supported by the head of the clerical department from' the gallery.