Sea of Glass (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

by Dennis Parry

  Damn it, I thought, blood may be thicker than water but nothing will persuade me that that girl is in her father’s camp!

  Turpin brought out a couple of heavy silver trays. He was in a mutinous mood, for he had not expected to be dragged out of his cool pantry. As he passed my chair he muttered:

  ‘Work I expect to: swink I will not.’

  On a second circuit he paused behind Cedric for so long that he seemed to have fallen into a kind of catalepsy, with his eyes fixed on the upper storeys of the house.

  ‘What’s wrong, man?’ said Cedric irritably. ‘What are you staring at?’

  ‘Pardon me, sir,’ said Turpin in a hollow tone, ‘but I ’ave just perceived a fowl effecting an entry by the museum window.’

  It was one of Turpin’s ways of showing his disapproval of Cedric to address him in terms of stilted and soapy euphuism; often, for greater irony, coupling them with an oriental servility. One day, with an extra drink or two inside him, I expected him to begin with the words: ‘Deign to trample on this dishonourable carcase.’

  The knowledge, albeit vague, that he was being guyed, showed in the sharpness of Cedric’s answer.

  ‘For God’s sake, talk sense. You mean a bird’s gone in. What sort?’

  ‘Pigeon, sir.’

  ‘Damn it. They’re great big brutes. If it starts flapping about it may smash a lot of valuable stuff.’

  ‘ ’Ighly probable, sir,’ said Turpin who realized how much any heritable property meant to Cedric. ‘An ’ideous pest, the pigeon.’

  ‘Well, don’t stand there moralizing like a village idiot. Come and help me turn the damned thing out.’ He swung round on the other two of us and snarled: ‘Would it be too much to ask you young people to repay some fraction of the hospitality you are receiving by lending your help?’

  As we crossed the hall we met Varvara, who allowed herself to be pressed into service. I did not really believe in that bird and I thought that when we reached the museum, Turpin would claim an optical illusion. But there, sure enough, strutting on top of one of the tall glass-cases was a pigeon. At first it seemed quite composed in its new surroundings, but Cedric soon altered that. He organized us into line like beaters at a shoot and gave us each a course to pursue between the cases and the bric-à-brac. The idea was that we should drive the intruder before us until it was forced out of the window. As a plan it neglected only one factor—that the room had a ceiling at least twelve feet high. The pigeon retreated in short hops and flutters almost to the windowsill; then it flew up on to the curtain-rail and back over our heads.

  ‘The door!’ howled Cedric. ‘Shut that door, you fools!’

  I made a dash and cut the bird off from the rest of the house.

  ‘Haven’t any of you any common sense?’ he inquired. ‘The things here are valuable, but downstairs they’re priceless.’

  He himself had been the last person into the room. I began to have some idea what it must be like to work in his office.

  We formed up again and repeated the manœuvre. The result was exactly the same, except that the pigeon was now becoming agitated; on its return flight it barged into a coaching-lantern which hung from the roof and left a streak of white slime on a Red Indian headdress.

  ‘Doesn’t anybody care if my mother’s house is turned into a shambles?’ asked Cedric, grimacing with rage.

  I should never have supposed that he was one to bear up well in adversity. But this absurd loss of self-control in face of a petty crisis was something which I had not expected.

  It diminished him in my eyes—an effect which was not unwelcome. I glanced significantly at Varvara to see whether she was taking in the absurdity of her bogey-man. But she appeared to be in an unusually lethargic mood. Since we met her, she had hardly spoken.

  After another futile drive General Cedric decided to arm the troops. As I have mentioned, some of the museum’s larger and lighter exhibits were supported on lattice racks attached to the walls. I equipped myself with the genuine prong of a swordfish; Turpin had a Dyak paddle; at the time I did not notice what the others picked up. Hooking and slashing at the air we advanced once more. Yet it was probably chance that this time the pigeon sailed out of the window, leaving a final trade-mark on the curtains.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Cedric, now mollified, ‘our friend went just in time.’

  ‘Else ’e might ’ave spoke ’arshly to the pore bastard,’ said Turpin in an undertone.

  Cedric continued: ‘I definitely prefer humane methods. But if he’d lingered longer I should have had to dispatch Mr. Pigeon.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ I remarked, resenting his switch from panic to complacency. ‘One blast of a shotgun in here would do more harm than twenty birds.’

  ‘Ah, but I should have used more subtle means. You see this?’

  For the first time I looked at his weapon. It consisted of a thin tube made apparently from some whitish-grey wood and bound at intervals along its barrel with rings of desiccated fibre. One orifice sloped down to a mouthpiece like that of a fife, with a cut-away underpart for the lip; the other was slightly flared out in the style of a trumpet.

  ‘Blow-pipe,’ said Cedric. ‘As used by the aborigines of South America.’

  ‘You mean you’d simply have blown that pigeon out of the room?’ said Deirdre (playing up, perhaps).

  ‘I don’t know what young people learn nowadays,’ said Cedric, ‘for all the money spent on their education. No, my dear, the blow-pipe is designed to shoot small parts dipped in poison. Look! I took the precaution of detaching these.’

  He held up a narrow gourd on a string which I imagine had originally been hung round the stem of the pipe. From it he took out two or three slender shafts of wood, about six inches long, and we all gathered round to inspect them more closely. The butts were swollen with blobs of pith designed to ensure an airlock against the mouthpiece; at the other end a sharp thorn had been cemented on and its point was glazed with a film of gummy substance.

  Pointing gingerly at the tip, Cedric said:

  ‘Now I wonder how many of you have heard of curare . . .’

  He elaborated on its deadly properties. It should have been interesting, for his facts were more or less correct, but the patronage of his manner made the lecture a torment. Moreover, I realized from his exceptional burst of bonhomie that the triumph over the pigeon counted in his eyes as a major victory.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, playing the young pedant, ‘but surely the stuff would be pretty useless after years of keeping?’

  ‘It is an exception in that way,’ said Cedric, adding with a horrible roguishness, ‘Wherein, my dear David, may we hope that it resembles your own qualities!’

  I said stubbornly, ‘Anyhow, I doubt whether a light dart would go through a pigeon’s feathers. They’ll even turn shot at a distance.’

  ‘My dear boy,’ replied Cedric with a gratifying testiness, ‘you evidently know nothing about the power of these blow-guns. Now just stand aside everyone and I’ll show you.’

  He slipped a dart down the barrel of the tube, then indicated as his target the fold of a thick baize cloth which hung over one of the cabinets. But before he could lift the weapon to his mouth he was interrupted. Turpin, who was looking out of the window, said in a voice of sepulchral idiocy, ‘Excuse me, sir, but the brute creation is again misbe’aving.’

  Cedric lowered the pipe and, with the rest of us, directed his gaze down into the garden. A large ginger cat had climbed on to the tea-table and was making free with the food.

  ‘Damn it,’ said Cedric, ‘those cups are best Staffordshire. Get off, get off with you!’

  But the cat remained impervious to shouts and imprecations. It looked as if nothing less than our return to the garden would dislodge it; until Turpin discovered among the exhibits a rattle used in Polynesian religious ceremonies. Its din seemed to scalp the cat’s nerves, for it fled as though pursued by a mastiff.

  ‘Would you have shot the cat with the blo
w-gun, Daddy?’ said Deirdre innocently.

  ‘A gentleman doesn’t shoot cats,’ replied Cedric severely.

  ‘Besides,’ said Deirdre, ‘it would be difficult to hit it at that range.’

  Since her father showed no sign of resuming his demonstration, she had picked up the blow-gun and was testing its balance. Although its length was greater than that of her body she had no difficulty in handling it because of the lightness of the wood. She raised the mouthpiece idly to her lips—and then she must have given a tentative puff.

  Afterwards I made experiments. I can only say that without them I should never have believed how small an effort would send the charge streaking over twenty yards. There must have been some secret in the construction which concentrated the force of the lightest breath.

  The dart shot out in the direction of the door, just as Varvara, who had drifted away from the group, decided to leave the room. For a moment it seemed to have struck her squarely, high up in the nape of the neck. Then I saw that it was touch-and-go whether it had penetrated the mass of hair which she now wore curled back at the base of her skull.

  The thing which made me hope for the best was the slowness of her reaction, which was not that of a person who had been hurt, even mildly. Groping, she raised a hand to the back of her head.

  ‘Leave that thing alone,’ I shouted.

  I ran up to her and made her bend her head. Very carefully I plucked out the dart. Then I parted the hair so that I could see the scalp between the strong tawny hairs. I could not discover any sign of a wound, but it was difficult to be certain owing to the darkening of the skin round the roots.

  ‘Looks as if it’s all right,’ I said cautiously.

  To do him justice, Cedric appeared to be more shaken than anybody else. I wondered why. Then it struck me that some of the most disconcerting moments in life are when chance reveals to us our subconscious wishes.

  He turned on Deirdre and started to berate her savagely for her carelessness. Somehow—perhaps from sentimental ideas of chivalry—I expected Varvara once more to intervene in her cousin’s favour. I little understood how her mind was working.

  She was still so silent and subdued that I thought she might be suffering from shock at her narrow escape. But suddenly she came to life. Taking advantage of a pause in Cedric’s tirade, she strode up to him, her face hard with anger.

  ‘You would have done better to take the blood on your own hands,’ she said. ‘It costs no more in the eye of God, and the performance would have been more certain.’

  Cedric gave her a look which was either a fine bit of acting or reflected a genuine bewilderment.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘there. No wonder you’re upset. We must get Nurse Fillis to have a look at your head and make sure there’s really no damage.’

  Varvara said: ‘You tried once with your daughter, and now you want a second chance through your whore!’

  Cedric still affected not to understand, but Deirdre burst into a wail like a siren.

  Throughout dinner, to which I made little social contribution, I was balancing up the possibilities. I knew that I was shortly going to be involved in an argument with Varvara in which accusations of idiocy, disloyalty, and complicity in murder would be flying about like hail. It would be well to have my reasons ready. The more I considered the facts, the more firmly I was convinced of the rightness of my first assumption. The episode of the blow-gun had been a pure accident.

  Mrs. Ellison, to whom nobody had mentioned the incident, sat up later than usual that evening. No sooner had she gone to bed than Varvara made for her own room, indicating clearly that she expected me to follow.

  I had scarcely taken up my usual seat on the bed when the indignation which was seething inside her burst forth.

  ‘You have deceived me,’ she said.

  ‘Me!’ I said.

  ‘You told me many times that England is not like Doljuk. “Here”, you said, “they do not plot to kill. You only think these things because you are a savage.” ’

  I sighed. It was exactly as I had feared. Varvara had the sort of fierce, medieval suspiciousness which made it impossible for our ancestors to believe that people just unaccountably died: no, there had to have been a witch at work.

  ‘I have not changed my mind,’ I said. ‘What happened this afternoon wasn’t planned. It was just the carelessness of a schoolgirl.’

  ‘You fool!’ said Varvara. ‘That is how my uncle meant you to think. Also the judges if I had died. Did you not once tell me that here they will not execute people of less than eighteen?’

  There was, I think, a faint tinge of authentic paranoia in her make-up. It came out in the awful ingenuity with which she could sweep up undoubted facts and marshal them to support some crazy theory.

  Although I had not much faith in the power of reason, I carefully went through the main points which seemed to me to show that there could have been no design on Cedric’s part.

  First, the occasion for going to the museum had not been engineered by him. The pigeon had been responsible, and not even Varvara could suppose that the birds were in his pay.

  Second, it was absolutely contrary to what we knew of the relationship between him and his daughter to suppose that he would make her his agent for murder; he scarcely trusted her to do up her own shoelaces. Nor did her private behaviour suggest that she was a devoted child, willing to pull his chestnuts out of the fire; she was far more likely to blab.

  Third, I did not believe that if the dart had entered Varvara’s scalp she would necessarily have died. I believe it is true that curare keeps its strength far longer than most vegetable poisons. All the same Cedric grossly exaggerated its longevity. The impregnated dart had been lying about for years, exposed to air and dust. Subsequent expert advice confirms that at most it was only likely to make a healthy girl uncomfortably ill.

  On the last point, of course, it could probably well be replied that Cedric did not realize that the method he employed was chemically inefficient. In general the force of my arguments was diminished by the fact that I could not honestly pretend that I thought him to be incapable of murder. The best I could say was that on the particular facts of the case I acquitted him.

  ‘You talk about the difference between Doljuk and England,’ I wound up. ‘But I don’t believe that even in Doljuk people go about trying to slaughter each other by these fantastic tricks.’

  Alas, I should have stuck to what I knew. Varvara was ready for me with chapter and verse from the endless chronicle of Turkestanian barbarity.

  ‘Ishak Toghrul tied a mule’s rein round his brother’s neck and whipped it up so that it strangled him. Fatima Meng, the wife of the apricot-seller, pushed her husband’s concubine down a well on account of the jewellery. Stefan Yefrimovitch Hamin, the refugee from Russia, took a hot iron—’

  ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Please, stop. Perhaps Doljuk is everything that you say. The point is that, whatever you believe about your uncle, you’ve got to keep your mouth shut. Otherwise you’ll be playing into his hands.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘If you make a public accusation against him, he can take legal steps to restrain you. And they’ll be successful. In England people just won’t believe such charges against wealthy and influential citizens.’

  ‘Would not the police?’

  ‘They’d be more concerned to protect him than you.’

  ‘Then,’ said Varvara solemnly, ‘I must make my own law and pass my own judgment.’

  As I left her room the thing happened which I had long been fearing. I put out my hand for the electric switch, but before I touched it there was the sound of a door shutting and the light sprang up from the other end of the landing. Nurse Fillis came towards me from the lavatory.

  As we drew abreast, she stopped and stared.

  ‘Well, Mr. Lindley . . .’ she said meaningly.

  ‘Good night, Nurse.’

  ‘I saw where you came from.’

  ‘Really?’

>   ‘It was out of Miss Ellison’s room. You can’t fool me.’

  ‘Even if there was anything to fool you about, I shouldn’t trouble. You see, I know you wouldn’t throw stones.’

  Nurse Fillis’s face darkened with embarrassment and anger. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Only that you also have your tender moments.’

  ‘Blackmail won’t get you anywhere.’

  ‘So long as that’s realized on both sides . . .’

  It occurred to me that it might be better to drop the irony and end the scene on a bluffer note, showing how lightly I regarded the whole incident.

  ‘Run along,’ I said, ‘if you want to get down those stairs in one piece.’

  Her room was on the floor below. I merely meant that the time switch would again shortly plunge us into darkness. But when I saw the alarm on her face and the way she scurried off I realized that she had put a different interpretation on my words. At the time I was amused.

  10

  At the period of which I am writing, it was unusual for rich people to spend August in London, unless, like Mrs. Ellison, they were not fit to travel. Andrew was not a positive exception to this rule: he merely interpreted it to suit his own essentially urban nature. From Monday to Friday morning he was at his father’s flat in Park Lane: but over the long weekend he went down to a village near Henley where he shared a bungalow with several friends.

  I knew quite a lot about this resort, since it had often figured in the world-weary conversations at Cambridge with which he broke his ascent to the rooms above mine. So many of the things about which he would issue languid warnings seemed to happen there. It must have been quite a big place, for I never exhausted the list of Andrew’s co-tenants—though this was no doubt partly due to the rapidity with which they changed. I had a confused impression of numerous young women guests changing partners, as in a ballet, to the accompaniment of a cricket-like noise of bickering.

  Nurse Fillis and I were unexpectedly alone at lunch on the last Saturday in August.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s going to be rather a disappointing weekend for you, Mr. Lindley,’ she said roguishly.