The party had an original appearance, since Nunn had virtually barred the expensive costumes that normally grace these affairs. The women were all right, of course; they can do so much with kilted frocks and silk scarves, and the majority of their accessories appear to be interchangeable, so they did well enough. But a man on these occasions generally climbs into a suit his wife has hired for him, and comes as Henry VIIIth or a cavalier or courtier of the time of the Stuarts, and these can’t very well be manufactured out of a swallow-tail and a boiled shirt. One enterprising guest did appear in sandals and the drawing-room hearthrug, as S. John the Baptist, carrying a locust in a glass case, and another dared the probabilities and came as Moses, in a leonine white woollen beard, a night-gown belonging to his wife, and the Books of the Law very beautifully transcribed in gold. But the rest either had to put on dressing-gowns and carry magnifying glasses, as Sherlock Holmes (I counted four of these), or ragged overcoats and carry trays of matches. And one coward donned the red suit his wife had made him last Christmas and came as Santa Claus. As for the women, they wore every conceivable costume, from the girl who borrowed the housemaid’s rig and appeared as Nippy, to people who hardly played fair, and put on handsome silk and satin clothes on the ground that they had bought them for some other party, and so could claim not to have spent a penny.
Mrs. Ross stood at my side and commented on the arrivals. She would, of course, have preferred Jeremy, but he started the fooling with the arrival of the first guest. He stood outside the door rapping out instructions and asking questions, and a good many of the people didn’t realise that he wasn’t there in an official capacity. I heard some whispers about unpleasantness, and “If Nunn thinks it wise to have the police on the premises…” So that the story about Hilary and Dennis and Ralph seemed pretty common property.
“I think,” said Mrs. Ross, with candour, “they ought to give me the first prize. Oh, do look at that woman with a head like a turnip. It’s Mrs. Stringer; well, really, she needn’t have bothered about the disguise; she’s always like that. Who’s that man, Mr. Keith? Is he one of the servants—I never can get accustomed to all James’s retinue—or is he a guest? Has it occurred to you how easy it would be to steal jewels at a party like this? Almost anyone could gate-crash. There’s that child Hilary in nothing but pyjamas. You know, I simply can’t understand—not the morals exactly, but the outlook—of people like Eleanor and her set. You seem just the same. Of course, people like me and James are different. Because you make a bit of money in middle-age you don’t change suddenly, and James was earning ten shillings a week at fifteen and I went into a shop. And it used to horrify us to hear of the goings-on of the upper classes; the evening frocks the women wore, and the way they didn’t leave much to be guessed at. But there doesn’t seem to be any limit nowadays. That child hasn’t got so much as a vest on, I daresay. Why, I remember being whipped by my father at fourteen for running downstairs in a petticoat with bare arms and no stockings on. There’ll be no indecency in this house, he said. But you all take it for granted. All I can say is, it’s as well for Ralph Feltham if he doesn’t marry her.”
“I thought you wanted him to,” I protested.
“I’ve changed my mind. A man like Ralph Feltham wants a woman, someone with a steadfast personality. That girl’s like a caterpillar; one minute it’s on a blade of grass and the next it’s humping itself off goodness knows where. She’d never hold him; she’s too much of a flibberty-gibbet. Where is he, by the way?”
I said we were all wondering that. “I should keep an eye on Miss Hilary, if I were you,” said Mrs. Ross, grimly. “If you don’t want her slipping off by herself. In fact, that’s probably why she’s wearing pyjamas. She doesn’t need any luggage now.”
I said shortly I thought she was being unnecessarily romantic, but she only laughed. “An affair like this makes me feel romantic. Besides, I’m beginning to admire that man. He is consistent, and he hasn’t changed his spots just to please James, which is a good point in his favour. He stands up to him, too. Lots of men will change anything if they think they can get cosy with a rich man, but Ralph Feltham just goes on his own way. And, you know, women do like a man who’s different. Really, most of the men here could change places with one another, and even their wives would hardly notice any difference when they woke up next morning.”
A man wearing the costume of the Uncle who murdered the Babes in the Wood sauntered past, with Eleanor on his arm. I saw Dennis standing against the wall, his eyes, apparently leisurely, watching Hilary. But there was a gleam in them that didn’t go at all well with his pose of courteous indifference.
The dance went on; it was a gay affair, and all the visitors seemed to be enjoying themselves. As the clock hands travelled round, I heard Ralph’s name mentioned more frequently; apparently, people expected him to be here, and when he didn’t turn up, they speculated as to whether he had been refused admittance. And they gossiped with dubious discretion of the difficult position in which, as a family, we found ourselves.
I began to have a shrewd suspicion that the girl in the Nippy costume, whose name was Doris Yule, was my aunt’s choice of the future Mrs. Keith. She was a blonde of the appealing type, with enormous eyes, the sort that make a man dream first of the infidelities of which he hasn’t been guilty but of which they perpetually accuse him, and later of the subtle way in which wives can be persuaded to die without arousing suspicion. Hilary danced a good deal with Dennis, but when she was with other men she seemed completely reckless, flirting and sitting-out in a way that seemed to me in the worst possible taste. My partner remarked on it. She had been telling me that she was often asked why she didn’t go on the films, and I’d asked, of course, why she didn’t. She’d have been a treasure-trove to any manager in close-ups, with those eyes, though the vapidity of her personality would probably close the doors of any intelligent calling to her. She said, “I can’t do it; I’m too sensitive. I know there are women who don’t mind admitting the whole world into intimacy with themselves, but—oh, well, I suppose it wouldn’t do for us all to be alike. We—some of us, that is—have a feeling that—that feelings should be sacred. You see, it wouldn’t be just acting for me. It would be living the part. It would take too much out of me.” And then she saw Hilary and asked me with a languishing air if I didn’t think it simply too disgusting.
“She’s one of those girls who can’t leave men alone,” she said. “Personally, I’m amazed at Sir James giving a party, considering what happened the other night. If I’d spent a night like that with a man of Ralph’s reputation, I’d want to hide my head.”
“The fact that Miss Feltham doesn’t surely argues something interesting,” I suggested.
She stared. “I don’t know what you mean,” she panted. She was on the fat side.
I wasn’t any too clear myself, and I was relieved when the Wicked Uncle came in sight, with a questioning look on his face, and I shook the young woman off on to him.
But it became increasingly obvious that not only strangers but Hilary’s own family were becoming anxious about her. Coming into one of the ante-rooms just before eleven o’clock, I surprised Nunn and Jeremy and Dennis and Mrs. Ross, all talking together. None of them seemed to know where she was, and it wasn’t only Mrs. Ross who was conjecturing that she might be meeting Ralph somewhere. Somehow, none of us could believe that he was going to let a magnificent opportunity like this one pass him by.
“You’ve only got to see how she’s behaved all the evening,” said Mrs. Ross, in her sweeping way. “It’s been absolutely outrageous. If I’d been Mr. Dennis and she’d treated me as she’s treated him the whole evening, I should jilt her publicly.”
Eleanor came in and joined us. “Hilary isn’t here, I suppose. Quick, we mustn’t collect like this. People will begin to wonder what’s up. They’re talking enough as it is. Mr. Dennis, when did you last see her?”
“Hilary? She was dancing
with Freyne.”
“And I handed her on to that long chap in a fish-tail dressing-gown.”
“Well, she isn’t with him now. I caught her creeping along the hall in a most suspicious way. I begged her to tell me what was wrong, but she would only say ‘Nothing.’ She was dying to get rid of me, I could see that, and at last I had to let her go. I had a faint hope she might be with one of you.”
She went away again, and Dennis went with her. The rest of us stayed and wondered what on earth had happened to Hilary.
“She’s mad to-night,” said Nunn, in a curt voice, “capable of anything. For everyone’s sake, I hope Feltham has the sense to keep out of the way. There’s been trouble enough in that direction.”
We were still talking when the French windows at the end of the room swung open and Hilary came in. She was breathless, wild-eyed, defiant, as her glance met ours. Her fair hair, that was being grown, and curled on her neck, giving her the appearance of a child of twelve, was tumbled and her face was flushed; her eyes were brilliant, but she was clearly in a towering rage.
“What’s happened?” she demanded, seeing us gathered in a little group at the end of the room.
“We thought you’d eloped,” said Mrs. Ross, coolly. “And it would never do to cheat the villagers of their wedding at this stage.”
“Well, I daresay you could console him,” cried Hilary, almost beside herself. “And the villagers won’t mind whose wedding it is, so long as they get plenty of beer.”
Nunn said sharply, “Hilary, what are you saying!” I tried to patch up the affair by remarking that my prospective match was off, and Jeremy pushed his arm through Hilary’s, and marched her off, saying, “My dear, you’re spoiling for a row to-night. Come and have an ice. It’ll cool you down.”
Mrs. Ross said, “I didn’t know you were going to be married,” and I said I thought there had been some notion in Eleanor’s mind that I should rent a cosy little villa at Putney or Ealing Common and devote myself to the next generation.
“Do you mean in company with the lady of the lustrous eyes?” questioned Nunn. “I’m inclined to agree that she might make life rather too much like a perpetual Day of Judgment.”
“She ought to have come in feathers, as an owl,” contributed his sister, helpfully. “I’ve been wondering all the evening what she reminds me of.”
Jeremy came back without Hilary, and said, “I hope you don’t mind your house being turned into a private lunatic asylum, sir. I don’t know what’s the matter with Hilary. I can’t do anything with her.”
“Then it’s a good thing you aren’t going to marry her,” said Mrs. Ross, who was determined to play Job’s comforter that evening. “Though if it comes to that, can you afford to marry anyone? Have you a career?”
Jeremy turned to Nunn. “Perhaps you could find an opening in your office for me, sir. I’d try and earn my daily bread. Pure nepotism, of course, but it’s the way most big business is run these days, I’m told.”
“The way it’s ruined,” amended Nunn, grimly. “Well, what can you do? Accountant?”
“Not quite up to your standard, I’m afraid,” Jeremy confessed. “Couldn’t I go touting? They tell me there’s a lot of money in that. Salary and commission, you know.”
“Try and sell me an insurance policy,” Nunn offered.
Jeremy assumed an appearance of grotesque briskness. “Good-morning, sir. Are you insured?”
“You think it wise to begin so baldly?”
“Most certainly I do. It’s the only way. I’m a plain man. Besides, you have to get your oar in before the door’s shut in your face. Good-morning, sir. Are you insured?”
“Thank you. I am.”
“No doubt. But from what? Fire? Quite so. Burglary and accident? Precisely as I had conjectured. But what does that accident policy cover? Injuries, fatal or otherwise, from motor-driven vehicles, trains, other steam-driven vehicles, bicycles or other foot-driven vehicles, such as scooters, miniature cars, lap-dogs and so forth, collapse of buildings, storms, falling slates, accidents in reference to airplanes or parachutes. But are you insured, for instance, against death from wolf-bite?”
“There are no wolves in England, I believe—not at large, that is.”
“Suppose one escaped from a menagerie?” suggested Jeremy, resourcefully. “And chased you down the High Street? Or through the Cathedral Square? There was a wolf of some note living in a city called Assisi at one time, and not all of us are S. Francis. Suppose you went to Whipsnade and the elephant had an accident and stepped on you? What of your widow? Foresight, my dear sir, foresight all the time.”
“I don’t see, James, how you can let him go,” said Mrs. Ross, enchanted. “I know I shouldn’t, if the chance were mine.”
“You can come to me if you want something in due course,” Nunn agreed. And then Dennis came in and said, “No sign of Hilary yet? I must say, like the King in the Fairy Tale, nobody can call me a fussy man, but in a gathering like this, all eager to manufacture scandal if there’s none on tap, I think she might put up some show of behaving as though we were going to be married, if only for appearances’ sake.” He walked to the windows and looked out at the garden, the long lawns black in the heavy dew, the colourless lines of the borders, the circular beds where the geraniums were too dark to be distinguished from the pervading gloom, the mysterious effect of pollard willows standing in a long rising line, blacker than the sky. He was clearly angry, and I thought Hilary would be wise to risk vexing any other member of the household for preference, even Nunn, if she must be a nuisance at all. I knew Dennis’s kind of rage, the slow-burning wrath that takes long to kindle, but longer to quench, and is apt to do such lasting damage before it is finally put out.
Jeremy said, “I should leave her alone for a bit, if I were you. She seems all to pieces to-night.”
Dennis swung round. “You have seen her, then?”
“Yes. She came in by that window a few minutes ago.”
“Came in from the garden, did she? Why, I wonder.”
“Like the hen that crossed the street because it wanted to get to the other side of the road,” combated Mrs. Ross.
“I didn’t mean I wondered why she came in. I wondered why she went out.”
“It’s one of the things gardens are made for, to go out in, for air and recreation, you know,” Jeremy told him blandly.
Nunn, appearing to lose his interest in his ward, sheered off. Mrs. Ross said, “Still, a girl doesn’t go out alone at this hour of night in only a pair of pyjamas for nothing.”
Dennis looked at her sharply. Then he said, “P-please, Mrs. Ross, don’t s-say things like that about Hilary when other people are p-present. We all understand what you mean, but s-strangers might not.” And he, too, moved off.
Mrs. Ross said in her downright manner, “What nasty minds men have. I suppose, though, if you’re in the Government, you’re always looking for something indecent. It’s what you’re paid for, and if there wasn’t anything, you’d lose your job.”
A little later Jeremy said to me, “Young Hilary’s making a pretty average fool of herself. If she wants a split with Dennis, she might at least engineer it privately. All this publicity is damned bad form. Particularly considering his position here. He can’t concentrate entirely on her; he’s got this jolly little gang to round up as well. Wonder if he’s discovered anything yet.”
“I wonder how far Hilary’s in earnest when she says she’s going to marry Ralph,” I countered.
Jeremy shrugged his shoulders. “She won’t do that.”
“I shouldn’t be too sure.”
“What would you like to bet me that Feltham neither marries Hilary nor comes to live at this house?”
“Who’s going to prevent him?”
“I once began a short story,” observed Jeremy, with apparent irrelevance. “It started: ‘The
re were twenty-eight lamp-posts on the Highbury Road, but the only important one was the twenty-ninth.’ Similarly, the really important factors in life are the unexpected ones.”
“Meaning you’ll put a spoke in Ralph’s wheel?”
An odd expression crossed his face. “You can put it that way, if you like. At all events, Hilary will never marry the chap.”
“Or only over your dead body, I suppose?”
“Not even over that. I’ve taken chances a-plenty in my time, but when I come to anything serious I don’t, as they say, leave a stone unturned. Though I’ve seen a lot of things under stones,” concluded Jeremy, “that would compare favourably with a fellow like Ralph.”
I felt vaguely uneasy. Jeremy has lived so long in countries where might is right that I wasn’t sure where he’d draw the line to achieve his end. I stayed on the landing where we had been speaking for a few minutes after he left me, thinking. And then, almost sub-consciously, I noticed that the curtain behind me was moving slightly. The window itself was shut; there wasn’t a breath of air; a scrap of swansdown, masquerading as ermine, that had been torn off some pseudo-queen’s dressing-jacket, lay motionless on the polished floor. But the curtain continued to move. I went up the stairs, wishing the wretched affair were over. From the flight above, I saw Miss Yule extricate herself and go quickly along the corridor, with that expression women wear when they have something interesting to impart. I only wondered who her confidante would be.
4
I had someone rather more restful as my partner at midnight, when we went down to supper. Hilary had reappeared, and went down with Dennis. She seemed now in the wildest of spirits, bandying words with everyone.
“When are you going to be married?” I heard someone ask.
“I don’t know,” she returned. “I had an idea that was for the bridegroom to settle. The fact is, this is my first engagement, and I’m feeling hopelessly unsophisticated. Next time I shall have experienced all the ropes.”
Death in Fancy Dress Page 12