“Nor was I.”
“Still, Feltham was your guardian, and you used to spend your holidays at the Abbey. You must have known Eleanor Feltham pretty well.”
“I’ll tell you all I know. You’d met Feltham yourself, hadn’t you? You know the sort of chap he was, grim, morose, clever as paint and as conscientious as an archangel. But he wasn’t the sort of man who makes friends very easily; he had brain but no wit, intelligence but no sparkle. Give him a tough job to do and he’d get his teeth into it and grind out a solution, but he’d put it together with so little imagination that it would lose half its force. It wasn’t till after his first wife died, and he found himself stranded with Hilary, a brat of about three, that he ran across Eleanor. People said it was a bit of luck for her. Her father was Lord S——but they hadn’t a penny to their names, and she was really wasting her time with him. She was everything to Percy and the child. From the beginning she overhauled his speeches, put in the light touches that made people sit up and take notice, and then ask themselves what had happened to the fellow; she entertained charmingly, she had a manner that would entice a hippopotamus out of its pond on a hot day. Of course, she was only half Feltham’s age, but that didn’t seem to matter. Their relationship appeared to be chiefly on the intellectual plane; Feltham was always more absorbed in facts than in people, a farouche sort of chap—you remember. But he was devoted to her, and was very generous. The uncharitable said she’d married him for his money, because the Metcalfes had a very old-fashioned little establishment in Edwardes Square, and all Eleanor’s frocks had to last two seasons. Well, she was young and handsome and popular. She had a bad time in 1916 when her baby was born and died when it was a month old. She’d wanted children; but she had Hilary, who was five then, a jolly affectionate brat, and most people thought she’d done very well for herself. She still worked hand and glove with Feltham, and put in a lot of war work as well. That year he got a confidential appointment at the War Office, and was at it about eighteen hours a day. He wasn’t a diplomatist by nature, and Eleanor stepped in more than once when his rather high-handed manner lost him his man. There was a row with Sir Rupert Horne, for example, at a time when it was rather important to keep on the right side of the man. And Eleanor stepped in there, and won the fellow over. It was a knack of hers. They said of her that she could make even a list of statistics absorbing, and she talked to Horne on his own subject till he was ready to eat out of her hand. And then Cleghorne came on the scene. He was a queer chap, too, as brilliant as Eleanor, and with more influence. It was necessary to get him in on Feltham’s side, and it wasn’t easy to secure him. Percy, you see, was in the Coalition Government, and his position would be enormously strengthened if he could get Cleghorne as an ally. Cleghorne was apt to be suspicious; they said there was more than a touch of jealousy in his attitude. Outwardly he announced that he distrusted Feltham’s tactics. However, when things were at a deadlock, Eleanor threw herself into the breach, and after a toughish struggle, she won. Cleghorne came in and everyone congratulated Feltham on his tact. That was November, 1917. For several months everything went well. Then rumours started to get about, disquieting rumours. In fact, at first they seemed so unlikely that they were laughed at. Then they were repeated and people remained grave, and at last here and there men spoke openly. They said that information was leaking out through some official in the know, with the result that our moves on the Western Front were counteracted as they were made, by the other side. There was a gigantic scandal in the spring of 1918, when half a regiment was cut to pieces, and that put the lid on things. They started an official inquiry. It was too late now to murmur reassuringly about coincidences and inconsiderable losses, when surprise attacks at dawn were countered by solid massed battalions, and our casualty lists were like a butcher’s shop. One of these more scurrilous and unprincipled weeklies came out with a demand to Name the Spies, and though they didn’t actually commit themselves to names on their own account, their opinions were pretty thinly veiled. Well, the inquiry began and the results were pretty grim. It was Cleghorne. He’d ratted. Rumour said he got colossal sums for his information. So much was proved beyond a doubt. And his disappearance clinched the matter.”
“What happened to him?” Jeremy asked keenly.
“He was never discovered. Some people will tell you that he got away to Austria—that was a current rumour for a long time—but there are others who say he was one of a number of refugees whose unrecognisable bodies were found several months later in one of the German forests some miles from the fighting line. Anyway, it wasn’t Cleghorne who bore the real brunt of the affair. Obviously the Government had got to find a presentable scapegoat. They couldn’t say airily, ‘Yes, we know who did it, but unfortunately he’s got away.’ So they said that Cleghorne couldn’t have been responsible for all the treachery. They decided there were some things he wouldn’t have known, and if he had known them, the responsibility was Feltham’s, for passing on information he should have kept to himself. The affair for him was calamitous. It was the end of his career, and his career was his life. Even Eleanor was little more than a pawn in his scheme, though he was fond enough of her in his own way. Hilary as a little girl adored him, and I believe she won’t let anyone mention his name now. She was only seven, you see, when the crash came, but she was intelligent, not to say precocious, having been so much with her elders. She and Eleanor had a ghastly time. Feltham took the best way out; I suppose they gave him that last chance. After all, they wouldn’t want an open scandal, if they could help it, and when the rumour circulated that he’d been overworked, and the strain and the responsibility for young lives had affected his mind, they allowed it to rest at that.”
“And what happened to the others? How did his widow collect her millionaire?”
“She went to work for herself and Hilary. She hadn’t any money, and what Feltham had left, about ten thousand pounds, was tied up for the child. She wasn’t to touch it till she was twenty-one. Of course, there was the income, but Eleanor never touched that for herself. It was a difficult position, because fingers were still pointed at them both. She couldn’t send Hilary to school straight away, so she got her a governess, and herself found a job in Nunn’s office. I told you statistics were among her delights, and pretty soon her work attracted attention. After 1918 people began to forget the scandal, and Hilary went to school like some ordinary child, and Eleanor went up a peg or two in the office.”
“How much does Hilary know of all this?”
“No one is quite sure. She asked me, the first time I saw her after her father’s death, if it was true that people only killed themselves if they’d done wrong and were afraid to live. I got out of it as best I could, but that shows you the trend of her thought. When I tried to get back to the subject, she said quite definitely that she didn’t want to talk about her father. I asked Eleanor, but she hadn’t got any more out of her than I did, except that she said passionately that she loved her father whatever he’d done. I’ve never heard her mention him since. Eleanor was distraught. She said she’d got Cleghorne in, and without her there would have been none of this mess. And after that she didn’t discuss the matter, either. In 1924 I heard she was going to marry Nunn. No, he wasn’t a widower, he’d been too busy to think of the domestic side of life, and apparently had been looked after by a widowed sister.”
“And I suppose she was thrust into a Decayed Gentlewomen’s Hostel?”
“Oh, no. He has, as Eleanor wrote to me, quite Asiatic notions of family responsibility. I don’t know whether this woman has always lived with them, but she’s with them now, and has been for a long time.”
“I shouldn’t myself call Lady Nunn fortunate in either of her marriages,” commented Jeremy, grimly. “However, I daresay the unfortunate lady herself doesn’t trouble them much. She’s probably a mousey shrinking little creature, who yearns for the cosy security of Brixton or Tooting Bec. And now, where does Ralph co
me in?”
“Not at the Abbey at all.”
“Not? It’s his house, though.”
“He’s only the landlord at the moment, and his tenant has forbidden him to call. A galling position for Ralph, I grant you, particularly as I believe he honestly does care about the place. He’s got a little house in the neighbourhood, hardly more than a shooting-box, I believe. Of course, Ralph’s record is patchy to say the least of it. There’s queer blood in that family. I’ve never been among the crowd that thought Feltham guilty, but he was an odd fish himself. Too much blue-blooded marrying, if you ask me. If one of the Felthams had got himself tied up with a bouncing village wench, the stock would have notably improved. As it is, it’s hopelessly degenerate. You’ve only got to take Ralph to show you that, and even Percy—you know, he had a very odd manner and appearance at times.”
“Barmy?” asked Jeremy, pleasantly.
“I shouldn’t have been surprised if it had ended something like that.”
“H’m. Nice little Job’s comforter you are. Have you any theories where Hilary’s concerned?”
“Hilary, I must say, seems absolutely normal. I hardly knew her mother, but perhaps she’s responsible.”
“I’m glad you admit Hilary isn’t likely to end her days in a mental sanatorium. I should hate to end my life as one of Lord Buckmaster’s hard cases. What about Ralph and Hilary? Do they ever meet?”
“I shouldn’t think so. They wouldn’t have much in common.”
Jeremy surprised me by saying, “Well, I don’t know about that. Hilary’s all right, as you say, but she’s got the same strain of recklessness in her that Ralph has. She wouldn’t be party to this Spider affair, of course, but she’s like a pal of mine who spent a year after the war blackmailing profiteers and giving the money to some service fund. You couldn’t make him see he’d done anything indefensible. And Hilary would be in the same boat. When she’s married to me, I may be able to drill a little sense into her. Is that the lot?”
“Except the servants.”
“I doubt if any of them would be implicated, except as links. Have they been there long?”
“Hook was Feltham’s butler, and he returned to Eleanor after her second marriage. There’s an elderly housekeeper who has been with Nunn for some time. I don’t know about the rest.”
“On the face of it, it does look as though Ralph was implicated, though he isn’t in this as a one-man show. He hasn’t got enough imagination to organise anything on this scale, but he’s quite conscienceless and would be an excellent partner. He’s knocked about a lot, knows the world from the underside better than most, and has no reputation to lose. And he’s not in the least likely to draw the line at blackmail, when he hasn’t drawn it at murder.”
“That was never proved. In fact, he produced an alibi.”
“A dozen, I believe. But that doesn’t alter the position. By Jove, though, he must have given that woman a run for her money. Cleopatra they called her, but those in the know say that even Cleopatra didn’t maintain the state this mysterious demi-mondaine was accustomed to. I wonder what she saw in Ralph—a new type, perhaps. She’d had lovers enough, heaven knows. And then, after all that splendour, to be found strangled with one of her own gold chains in a hotel bedroom. Yes, I know it was a hotel de luxe, but I shouldn’t imagine it made much difference what kind of room you died in, if you had to die, particularly in that very brutal way. In a sense, the affair was proved up to the hilt against Ralph. He’d been with her within a few hours of her death, there’d been a hell of a quarrel over some other fellow in the hotel, he disappeared early that morning. Everything pointed to him. Of course, he showed astounding wisdom in returning as soon as the news of the murder was broadcast, and he came back with his fists full of alibis. Did you notice, though, they were all the kinds of alibis you could buy? Porters and newsvendors and keepers of coffee-stalls. He got off all right. But he did it. Oh, he did it. The devil of it is that a man who can work that kind of bluff wouldn’t care what he did to anyone. I’m thinking of Hilary now… She’s in danger… I know. Talk of the devil in practically every big city in the world, and you’re soon hearing of Ralph Feltham. He knows that’s his reputation, and he glories in it. And this job of nosing in other men’s dustbins would suit him down to the ground. Offal’s his proper meat. He’s the sort of fellow who talks of selling his sword, but I wouldn’t mind betting he’d sell it simultaneously to both sides. They say he even had a bet about that Victoria Cross he got. The question is, who else might be in it?”
“We don’t know that anyone else at Feltham is concerned. And if Ralph is involved, I fancy you’ll find the other fellow one of these correct, solid, meticulous chaps who might be shoved into the British Museum as typical of the middle-class prosperity of their time. By the way, where the devil are we?”
It had just occurred to me that such of the road as I could distinguish through the heavy wet mist was unfamiliar. Also I could hear water running near by. One is liable, of course, to hear all manner of strange noises in a fog, but this grew momentarily so loud that I became convinced we were approaching a weir. I said as much to Jeremy.
“Damn you!” he said, politely. “I thought the sole reason for your being here at all was to see we didn’t miss the road.”
We stopped the car at the first house we came to, and he got out and asked the way. It was some time before we could make ourselves clear. Then it appeared that we had taken a wrong turning some time back, and were five-and-twenty miles off our road. We had just got back to it, travelling at not more than twenty miles an hour (any driver less reckless than Jeremy would have slowed to half that pace, considering the weather) when a back tyre punctured. Jeremy displayed commendable patience. When I observed bitterly that I’d as soon try to find Feltham in this fog as plough over the Sahara, he only said, “You wouldn’t talk in that loose way if you’d ever gone astray in the Sahara. Bring one of the headlights round here, will you? This’ll be a matter of twenty minutes.”
In point of fact, it took forty-five. Meanwhile we argued points of common law. Jeremy said unexpectedly, “You know, Tony, I’ve always loathed the name Arthur. I don’t know why, specially. Little Arthur’s England, perhaps. One of the crosses of my childhood. The Princes in the Tower, all got up in black velvet tights, with gold fillets round their innocent brows. I wonder what Hilary sees in him. I’m sure he’s a poop.”
“Because he’s called Arthur?”
“Not altogether. I have—intuitions. A lady of my acquaintance once told me she’d never met any man with such a feminine outlook. Such subtlety, such delicacy, such swift intuition. It wasn’t for some time that I discovered she was trying to touch me for her dressmaker’s bill. Those were the days when I was very young. However, if Arthur isn’t a poop, he’s probably a rotter.”
“And Hilary’s marrying him to reform him?”
Jeremy grinned. “You betray your bachelordom with every word you speak. Seriously, though, Tony, it’s ghastly to think that we might spot the Spider and the law of the land doesn’t give us the right to squash it.”
He lay down abruptly, peering into the vitals of the car, and leaving the punctured tyre on the misty road. I began to explain the principles of common law, Jeremy’s voice in argument coming to me muffled from beneath the car. Presently he emerged and continued work on the tyre, arguing all the time, sometimes kneeling, sometimes squatting on the wet road, the fog lying in swathes all about us. Jeremy’s memory was amazing. He would refute my most obvious arguments with references to cases I had clean forgotten or had never read. We admitted certain weaknesses and deplored certain judgments; we discussed the possibility of corruption and the obvious inconsistencies of certain parallel cases occurring in different strata of society. On the whole, I didn’t come out of it so well as he did. He had the freedom of the independent, the man who is fettered by no creed or following, while I was freque
ntly in the position of the theologian, compelled to defend what he cannot hope to explain lucidly to an antagonist. And I had, too, a sense of disloyalty in yielding, as I often did, to Jeremy’s arguments. But, hearing his brilliant, unhesitating parry and thrust, I thought Philpotts was lucky to get such a man on his side.
Our lengthy detour, plus the puncture, had wasted nearly three hours; it was now after five, the hour at which we had intended to arrive. Now we had to go slow along a road with which neither of us was really familiar. Within an hour we had a second breakdown. This was at a peculiarly desolate spot, in the heart of the pitiless moors Hilary loved. We could see them under the curtain of the fog, dripping and impenetrable. I shivered.
“Fancy getting lost here on a night like this! They go on for miles, you know.”
“Revolting thoughts you have. Come on. What’s the time?”
I said it was about six. Our express had probably reached Feltham by this time, though I didn’t make this observation aloud. The evening grew bitterly cold. A sharp wind now and again pierced the volume of fog. As we turned the next corner, Jeremy abruptly stopped the car.
“What’s the matter?” I felt a third calamity would be intolerable.
“I thought I heard footsteps. Listen!” He shut off the engine, and we sat, uncomfortably alert, in the dank gloom. Once I thought I heard something that might have been a foot stumbling over roots of heather, but the sound was not repeated, and I decided it was probably due to an over-sensitive imagination.
Jeremy seemed rather put out. “I’ll swear there was some one. But if so, where the devil has he got to? He hasn’t fallen; we should have heard the crash. Did he hear us and stop dead till we’d gone on? There isn’t a cottage or any kind of shelter here where he could conceal himself.”
He began to shout but nothing came back, except the faint echo of his voice over those unfriendly miles of moor. The place to an imaginative cold and hungry man seemed definitely inimical; to a superstitious mind, it might have been haunted by all manner of obscene night-fears. As for more concrete horrors, there might have been half a dozen murders going on within as many yards. It reminded me of various things; of the beginning of Great Expectations, of parts of Wuthering Heights, and sometimes of Flannan Isle, not merely something ghastly, but something beyond human understanding. Jeremy stopped shouting and began to whistle. Then he produced a powerful electric torch and shot the beam over the nearest path and heather clump.
Death in Fancy Dress Page 5