“Have you any idea, Tony, whereabouts we are?”
“None,” I confessed.
“Oh, well.” He restored the torch to his pocket. “Possibly it’s of no consequence. Philosophers tell us nothing is of any consequence really. But, like the police, I don’t like mysteries. And I can’t understand why a footstep should suddenly be heard on such a night, miles from anywhere, and stop so abruptly when its owner hears a car coming.”
“A tramp,” I suggested.
“A tramp would have come up and asked for money or a lift—money anyway.”
“A man flying from justice?” I spoke jestingly. But in truth the eerie quality of the atmosphere was beginning to tell on me also, and none of the circus tricks of melodrama would have astounded me then—the sudden bright eyes peering out of darkness, piercing shrieks, cold hands on my neck, voices in my ear.
Jeremy settled back in his seat and drove on. We drove for another half-hour and then suddenly the fog began to lift. I knew at once where we were. We seemed to have travelled in a circle, so that when we heard that footstep we couldn’t have been very far from Ravensend. At twenty minutes to eight we sighted the rather obscure yet beautiful house of the Felthams, standing with a gracious aloofness in its modest grounds. The house has been rebuilt twice in the last four hundred years, and its appearance is deceptive. It looks a rather small, wandering country mansion, but it has a great deal of space within. The last Feltham to build it had inherited sober Puritan blood. When someone remonstrated with him for the simplicity and lack of ostentation of his design, he replied coldly, “I am not building a house for roisterers and their trulls; I am building a house for a gentleman of leisure and his sons.”
2
Our welcome was peculiar. The enormous front door of the Abbey stood wide open. Lights blazed in every room. There was a general atmosphere of flurry and dismay. We rang ceremoniously, but nothing happened; we rang again and a scared-looking footman came hastily into the hall. When he saw us, his face changed. He said quickly, “I beg your pardon, sir. You have news?”
Completely mystified, I said I hadn’t, and asked for Eleanor. The fellow looked embarrassed, but took us into a room to the left of the hall. Here we waited for some time. I was oppressed and silent; the memory of that invisible step on the moor remained with me, as though it were knit up with this extra-ordinary arrival.
“Did they know you were coming?” asked Jeremy at last.
“I wired from town. I can’t think what’s happened.”
“It’s quite obvious what’s happened. Someone or something is lost. You don’t leave lights on and doors open unless you want to guide someone home. I want to know who it is.”
We waited a little longer, and then the door was flung open and a lady came in. She was middle-aged, with a Victorian figure and an Alexandra fringe. I couldn’t at first place her. She seemed breathless with excitement and apologies, turning quickly from one to the other of us.
“I’m so sorry. Have you been waiting long? That stupid man’s only just told me. The whole staff is quite demoralised. Let me see, do I know who you are?”
“My name is Keith,” I told her. “I’m a kind of connection by marriage with Eleanor. And this is Mr. Freyne.”
She barely touched my hand but clung eagerly to Jeremy’s. “And you’re friends of James?”
I placed her then. She was the widowed sister, of course, but anything less like our expectations you couldn’t conceive. Eleanor was brilliant, witty and well-bred; this woman was none of these things, and yet the force of her personality was so strong that it simply didn’t matter. I don’t know how I can convey her attraction at all adequately. She had nothing approaching beauty or even prettiness; she was short and plump at a time when women were required to be slender and erect. She hadn’t, as the saying goes, got a feature in her face; her voice alternated between a delighted squeak and a deep excited bass. She wore the shabbiest clothes imaginable, and colour schemes were unknown to her; she had not even the merit of a short upper lip or a graceful carriage. Yet at a first meeting none of these disadvantages seemed to count. There was about her an inextinguishable charm. Without effort she took handsome young men away from their pretty companions; she walked into a shop and there was a buzz to serve her; she said outrageous things so naturally as to preclude all possibility of affectation. There was some irresistible enchantment about her; she always seemed to be bubbling up at the edge of a miracle. And you felt that at sight; you could no more ignore that quality of hers than you could forget to notice a fire on a cold day or moonlight in a black night.
I was answering her question. I said I was afraid we didn’t know James at all, but that the Abbey had been my home years ago, and that Eleanor was a kind of connection by marriage, so that in a sense I had looked upon the house as my headquarters.
“And a very inconvenient house, too,” cried the lady, vigorously. “But, of course, it’s aristocratic. I’ve noticed the aristocracy like houses to be inconvenient; no plumbing, if possible, stairs where you don’t expect them, and ceilings so low you bang your head every time you stand up. People like James and me—middle-class people, I mean—we like bathrooms and electric fires and windows that shut up to the top, and proper lights—need them, I suppose, to make up for other things. It’s just a question of which appeals to you most.” She rattled along happily, delighting us both. Then she pulled herself up with a start. “But I’m forgetting—you don’t know who I am, do you? My name’s Ross, Meriel Ross, and I’m James’s sister. It’s an easy name to remember, isn’t it? That’s one of the reasons why I chose it.”
“Chose it?” murmured Jeremy, as fascinated as I was.
“Yes. You don’t need to spell it on the telephone. Not that I used a telephone when I was Bertie’s wife. Women didn’t then. They walked to the station with their husbands in the morning, and bought the day’s dinner at the butcher’s and fetched it home in a string bag. And they saw to it they weren’t given equal shares of fat and lean. Butchers had to mind their p’s and q’s when I was a young wife. Of course, everything’s different now. Things come out of tins and cartons, and for all you know your inside’s being poisoned seven days a week by the leavings off other people’s plates. Like this bottled mustard you get. Oh, and there was another reason—besides the one that Bertie suited me, of course. I never meant to be one of these ticketed widows and there was nothing in the least noticeable about darling Bertie. D’you know what I mean? I wasn’t going to have people saying of me, ‘Who’s that? Oh, don’t you know? That’s Sir Blank Blank’s widow. Wonderful man, wasn’t he? Such a brain! Such energy! Such invention! Such foresight! Such judgment! Such courage! Such knowledge! Such enterprise! Such strategical powers!’ No, thank you. I mean to be myself. ‘Meriel Ross? Oh, my dear, you must know her. She’s the woman who wears those awful hats. Gets them at a Jumble Sale, if you ask me.’ Now, that’s a reputation. The other’s an echo.” She smiled enchantingly at both of us. “And now,” she invited, “do tell me what you think of this one. Be quite, quite candid.”
I glanced up and was promptly smitten dumb with horror. I know very little about hats and, to judge from his remarks about the purple felt, so does Jeremy. But I knew instantly I had never seen anything quite so ghastly as the edifice perched on Mrs. Ross’s fair fuzzy head.
“Don’t compare it with the fashions of the day,” she warned us, swaying this way and that so that no aspect of the revolting creation should escape us. “A woman of my age can’t be bothered whether women are wearing things like a coal-scuttle or a penny bun jammed on the back of the head. But viewed as an original creation, in short, as a hat?”
I stared, fascinated by its hideousness. It was a tall affair of pale-coloured straw (burnt straw, Eleanor assured me afterwards), trimmed with yards of lace and a drove of plush butterflies, and where there wasn’t a butterfly there was a velvet bow.
It rode high like a defiant and nightmare ship on the fair hair that was drawn Alexandra-fashion over the forehead. But nothing defeats Jeremy for more than an instant, not even such a hat as that one.
“It is perfect.” He pronounced judgment without the quiver of an eyelash, revolving slowly in the manner of a master milliner. “Ah, Moddom, believe me, it is a dream, an inspiration. There is not another woman in England who could wear such a hat. It is a hat of personality, of chic. It is bold, it has character.” He threw up his hands in a Gallic gesture. “One perceives that Moddom is an artist.”
“You dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Ross, impulsively. For a delighted moment I thought she was going to kiss Jeremy. I think he rather hoped she would.
She had by this time drawn us into the smoking-room, and was mixing us cocktails.
“Do tell me what you’ve come down for,” she coaxed us, but she wasn’t interested in me.
“To put a stop to this ridiculous engagement of Hilary’s,” said Jeremy, coolly.
“You’re going to stop it?”
“Certainly. I’ve other plans for her.”
Mrs. Ross emitted a wail of anguish. “You’re not trying to tell me you’ve come down here to bite the dust at her feet, too? It’s too frightful. Every personable man in the place running after that chit. As if she wasn’t spoilt enough as it is. I should like to be her mother for just one night. Just one night. Why, you might as well live in a monastery—oh, a nunnery, if that’s what I mean—if you tell me you’re going out to look for her, too, I shall burst into tears. Even James has gone off on one of these personally-conducted tours through the heather. And Eleanor’s gone with him. She’ll be a perfect wreck to-morrow.”
“What’s happened to Hilary?”
“She’s disappeared. Well, why not let her? As a matter of fact, I can’t think what they’re making all this fuss about. Hilary never did notice if she was within an hour or two of the right time for dinner. It’s her mother’s fault, I understand. She was meant to be a valentine, but she didn’t arrive till six the next morning, and I suppose the bad habit has stuck.”
“And she’s lost? On the moors? On a night like this?”
“Everyone seems to think so.”
Jeremy looked about him as if he were inwardly collecting kit. Mrs. Ross saw that glance. “You’re not a kind of glorified policeman, too, are you? We’ve had enough of them.”
“Policemen?”
“Yes. All over the house. Asking the most absurd questions over and over again. Does anyone know any reason why she should want to be out at such a time? As if, if we knew that, we should want their help. Breathing ponderously down your neck and going through all the questions in Mrs. Magnus.”
“Are there many of them?”
“There seem to be dozens, but of course it might be the same one all the time popping up all over the place. I did notice a resemblance, I must admit.”
“If they’ve got the police in, isn’t it pretty serious?”
“No, I’m sure it isn’t. If you ask me, she isn’t lying about on a wet moor waiting to be murdered, or horribly bloody in a sandstone quarry. She’s given us all the slip. And how she must be laughing at us. The fact is, she’s always been given her head. And look at the result! Why men should go crazy over her, I can’t think. Oh, I know she has a way with her, but look at her want of consideration. Losing that poor man in all this fog—and I’m sure he’s got a delicate chest.”
“Is this little Arthur?”
“Mr. Dennis. Yes. Well, would any really nice girl take a man out in a fog and then lose him on purpose?”
“That would depend on the man. Being lost in a fog is too good for some of them.”
“Well, I call it very wrong. No considerate girl would have dragged a young man out on such an afternoon.”
“Any man worth his salt would have been glad to go out with Hilary any afternoon,” championed Jeremy, instantly.
“You think that?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Even if he were only going to be shaken off and given his death of cold?”
“He must be a pretty average fool to let himself be shaken off.”
“How could he help it? Of course, she meant to get rid of him.”
“How do you make that out?”
“Well, why did she try to put him off from the beginning?”
“Did she?”
“Yes. If it comes to that, what reason could she have for going out on such a day if she wasn’t going to elope or something?”
“Whom could she elope with?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. There’s that delightfully wicked-looking nephew of Eleanor’s. You know, I’ve always wanted to meet a murderer. But I never thought I should do it under James’s roof.”
“He was acquitted,” Jeremy reminded her dryly.
“Of course he was acquitted. What’s that got to do with it?”
“A good deal, I should have thought.”
“Well, anyway, he’s been paying her a lot of attention lately.”
“Your idea being that she took her young man out, shook him off—is the fellow a beetle to be shaken off so lightly?—and is now—where?”
“Half-way to France, I dare say.”
“Not unless they’re swimming,” said Jeremy, grimly. “There’ll be no boats out to-night.”
“Well,” she challenged him, “what’s your explanation?”
“I don’t even know what happened.”
“I’ll tell you. We were all sitting comfortably round the fire and in strides this young woman and says she wants to stretch her legs. As if they weren’t long enough already, and she shows plenty of them, too. A shame, I call it, in a respectable house. All I can say is, I’m glad I lost Bertie before these hussies started going about half-naked. Well, of course, when he saw she meant to go he said he’d come, too. Anyone could see she didn’t want him, but she couldn’t exactly refuse to let him accompany her. So off they went, and we didn’t think much about them till about six o’clock, when the door was pushed open and in comes Mr. Dennis, soaking, poor darling, and saying, with that delicious little stammer of his, ‘I suppose the j-joke’s on me, is it? Hilary’s been in for ages.’ Of course, we asked him what he was talking about, and he said they’d had a walk and then had tea at an inn, and when they’d left it nearly half-an-hour Hilary discovered—little minx!—that she’d left her bag behind. And sent him back for it. He’s too simple-minded himself to see it was a trick.”
“With all due deference to you, and of course loathing the brute like poison for daring to be engaged to Hilary at all, I can’t quite see why he should have guessed she meant to give him the slip because she lost her bag.”
“Because everyone in the neighbourhood knows the chit, and with good reason, too. If she left a bag at an inn, it would be returned in the morning. And it’s absurd to pretend that there was anything in it so valuable it couldn’t wait a few hours. If she wanted money, though how people can spend money on a moor I don’t know, Mr. Dennis had it. And he always carries a spare handkerchief, I know.”
“Oh, Lord!” murmured Jeremy. “Did he tell you that?”
“Yes. He was once in an accident…”
“Quite the Little Lord Fauntleroy,” commented Jeremy, approvingly. “Does he wear floppy ties?”
“No. He’s in half-mourning for an aunt. He wears a black tie.”
“And you blame Hilary for losing this scourge in a fog? Why, Mrs. Ross, why?”
“He might have caught pneumonia,” said Meriel Ross indignantly.
“True, true. I’d forgotten the weak chest. Well?”
“He went back to look for the bag, which she’d deliberately stuffed behind some books in the inn parlour, and she promised to wait. The fog wasn’t so bad then, according to him, but of course he doesn’t k
now one clump of heather from another. And when he came back she’d disappeared.”
“Poor chump missed the path.”
“Anyone would.”
“Hilary may have tried to get back and missed it, too.”
“Not she. That young woman knows the moors as she knows her own face when she meets it in the glass, and that’s often enough.”
“And that’s positively the last that’s been heard of her? Did you say everyone had gone out?”
“Yes. And they may be out all night for all I know.”
“There may have been something of great importance in the purse.”
“There wasn’t. I’ve looked. She’d deliberately hidden it, where it wouldn’t be found and brought after her within five minutes. It was all part of a plot. And it won’t be any thanks to her if we don’t have a funeral as a result. All these people knee-high in mud looking for her.”
“Perhaps she’s waiting where she said she would, and none of them have hit the right path.”
“You think she’d be waiting there at eight o’clock? Not she. Of course they’ve missed her, and would if she’d been like Lot’s wife, frozen in her steps. He’s been in once since, and when he heard she still wasn’t back, off he went. There are about a hundred miles of moor, and it’s pitch black and he’s got a candle or something, so how he or anyone else expects to find her I can’t imagine. And after that everyone except myself went off, too. Poor Mr. Dennis thinks she may have slipped and broken her ankle. Serve her right, horrid little chit! That young man of hers spoke of chartering an aeroplane, as if he thought the child might be hiding in a bird’s nest, only there aren’t any, are there, at this time of the year?”
Death in Fancy Dress Page 6