Tenant for Death

by Cyril Hare

“It was a very good dinner,” said Mallett gratefully.

  “Not bad. Let me see, we had a sole vin blanc and a tournedos—rather overdone, didn’t you think? I can’t remember the sweet for the moment.”

  “At all events,” said Mallett, “I am extremely glad to find your memory is so good, because I have come here simply to tax your memory on one subject.”

  Lord Bernard shook his head.

  “Don’t depend on it. Inspector,” he said. “My memory is not on the whole a good one. I remember the things I happen to be interested in, like everybody else, that’s all. Leading a rather idle and worthless life as I do, dishes and the vintages of wines bulk rather largely in my mind, I’m afraid. Yours, I expect, is full of details of your cases. I dare say you tend to be quite forgetful outside them, unless you are a superman—which I suppose a detective ought to be. I know musicians who are hopelessly absentminded about ordinary things, but can carry the full score of half a dozen symphonies in their heads. It’s a form of specialization.”

  While he was speaking, Mallett was only attending with half his mind. His eyes meanwhile were travelling round the airy, charmingly furnished room. Something that he had noticed when he entered it had touched a chord of memory—something connected with the matter in hand. What was it? Presently he found it. It was a small, brilliantly executed oil painting of a woman’s head, which hung over the mantelpiece. He had seen that face once before, and though the woman in the portrait was some years younger, at least, than the original when he had met her, he had no difficulty in recognizing her. It was Mrs. Ballantine. He had just established the fact to his satisfaction when Lord Bernard’s little discourse came to an end.

  “Just so,” he said. “Everybody’s memory works in a different way, and you never can tell what will jog it into action again. What I have come to ask you is about something you said at that dinner, and about something you would have gone on to say if you had not been interrupted.”

  Lord Bernard gave him a keen look.

  “You must play fair with me, Inspector,” he said. “Before we go any further, you must tell me whether this in any way implicates my brother. Because if so——”

  “I can promise you,” replied Mallett, “that nothing you can tell me will incriminate your brother. Indeed, I can go further and give you my assurance that I am quite convinced that Lord Henry is in no way concerned with this crime.”

  “Very good. Then go ahead.”

  “We had finished dinner, and you were talking about Ballantine. You told me that you had always distrusted him, principally because of his clothes. You mentioned that he always gave you the impression of a man dressed up for a part. Then you went on to speak in particular of the last time you saw him at his place in the country, where you had gone with Lord Henry to help his office staff to produce a play. I am speaking from recollection, but that is roughly the line the conversation took.”

  “There’s not much wrong with your memory, is there?” said Lord Bernard with a smile. “I congratulate you. But I’m afraid I’m interrupting. Please go on. What did I say next?”

  “That’s just the point. You were going to say something, and had got so far as ‘That reminds me——’ when you were interrupted. Now I have reasons for thinking that if you can tell me what you were about to say, it will help me to prove who murdered Ballantine.”

  “That sounds extremely improbable, if I may say so,” Lord Bernard commented.

  “It is true, none the less, and I must ask your lordship to take my word for it.”

  “Obviously, I must. You know your business, and I don’t. Well, I’ll do my best. Just run over my lines again, and I’ll see if I can remember my cue.”

  Mallett repeated the words again.

  “That reminds me—that reminds me——” murmured Lord Bernard to himself. “No, I’m sorry, Inspector, but it doesn’t come back. You see, I’m not really remembering that evening at all. I can vaguely recollect using the words you have mentioned, but that is only because you have put them back into my mind, and they sit there, isolated so to speak, and sterile, because the context isn’t there. Just cudgelling my brains and trying to remember is no good. If I could only think myself back into the mood of that evening, feel as I did then, perhaps the words would start breeding in my brain and have issue, the issue that was stifled at birth last Thursday night. Though heaven knows, Inspector,” he added, “whether it will be any good to you when it does arrive!”

  “Do you think you can do that, then?” asked Mallett.

  “The mind’s a funny thing,” said Lord Bernard. “I’ve noticed sometimes that it helps if you stop concentrating directly on the subject, and shift your attention elsewhere, not on to something different altogether, but a bit to one side, if you follow me. I don’t want to waste your time, but if I were to discuss the Ballantine affair quite generally, it might attain your purpose, as well as amusing me. Do you mind doing that?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Very well, then. Have you made any discoveries in the case recently?”

  Mallett considered for a moment. Then he got up and walked across the room to get a nearer view of the picture. He noticed, for the first time, that there was an inscription on the frame, some lines of verse which were new to him. He read:

  “Who her will conquer ought to be

  At least as full of love and wit as she,

  Or he shall ne’er gain favour at her hands.

  Nay, though he have a pretty store of brains,

  Shall only get his labour for his pains,

  Unless he offer more than she demands.”

  He read it through twice before he took the plunge.

  “Yes,” he said. “I have discovered something of interest since I came into this room.”

  Lord Bernard was looking at him with an expression of amusement.

  “I congratulate you,” he said. “Yes, that painting is something of interest, certainly—though, to be frank, I hardly expected you to recognize it as such. It is one of Jules Royon’s best works. He would have been a famous man if he had lived. Personally, I don’t think there has been a better painter in France since Renoir died. If you like, I can show you some water-colours of his which are little masterpieces, too.”

  Mallett shook his head.

  “I’m not interested in the painting,” he said, “but only in the subject.”

  “The subject? Ah! You recognize her then?”

  “I do. And it occurs to me that your interest in Ballantine was perhaps rather closer than you suggested in our talk at Brighton the other evening.”

  Lord Bernard laughed.

  “I’m afraid you’re exploring a mare’s nest,” he said. “Yes, that’s Mary Ballantine’s portrait all right. But you can see for yourself that it was done some years ago. In point of fact, I have not seen her since her marriage—or, indeed, for some time before that. No, if you’re looking for a jealous lover to fix the murder on, I fear you will have to look elsewhere. The picture is here as a work of art, merely.”

  “And the inscription?” Mallett asked.

  “Ah, the inscription! But that just proves my point! When I tell you, Inspector, that it was her own choice! I had commissioned the portrait from Royon because I was—not to put too fine a point on it—in love with her, or as nearly in love as makes no matter. She had it framed and sent to me, with those lines underneath. I never had anything to do with her again.” He crossed the room in long strides, and standing in front of the painting, read the lines over softly to himself. “They are beautiful, are they not?” he went on. “Yes, and very proper to be addressed by a despairing lover to his mistress. But when a woman writes them of herself—when she sets herself up on that sort of pedestal—no thank you! ‘Unless he offer more than she demands’, indeed! What right has any woman to demand that sort of approach from a man? It’s the fault of the poets, I suppose, who put such absurd ideas into women’s heads, so that they trade on their femininity, but how any woman of sen
se——”

  He stopped abruptly in the heat of his tirade, and his expression changed all at once.

  “A woman!” he exclaimed. “There was a woman at Brighton, wasn’t there? A girl who looked happy? Inspector, you never told me—what was it exactly that interrupted me in what I was telling you that evening? Can’t you remember?”

  “I remember perfectly well,” answered Mallett. “You were interrupted by your brother, who noticed a pretty girl on the dancing floor below where we were sitting.”

  “Why on earth didn’t you mention it before? Why, it’s the crux of the whole case,” said Lord Bernard in growing excitement. “I can see it all now. We were in the gallery, watching a terrible lot of old dowagers and their gigolos, when suddenly she appeared. It’s as clear as crystal now!”

  “Then you do remember?” the inspector asked eagerly.

  Lord Bernard was back at the breakfast table, arranging chairs.

  “Do you ever go in for reconstructing the crime at Scotland Yard?” he asked. “I think now that if we reconstruct our dinner-party, whatever was in my mind then ought to come back to it again. I can’t promise, but by all the rules it should. Now let me see, you were in the middle, weren’t you? And I was there, and my brother away on the left. This chair will have to do for him. You will have to double the parts, if you don’t mind. Would you care for a cigar to complete the illusion? No? Very well. We have got to imagine that we are in the Riviera Hotel, and the gallery will come just about where the edge of the carpet is. Is that right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good. Now just prompt me to start with, and we will see what happens. How do I begin?”

  “ ‘I always distrusted Ballantine,’ ” Mallett began. “ ‘It would be difficult to say why.’ ”

  “ ‘I think, it was his clothes chiefly,’ ” Lord Bernard chimed in.

  “ ‘Why his clothes?’ ”

  “ ‘Ballantine’s clothes revealed something in his character which I didn’t like.’ ”

  “ ‘Surely a millionaire can wear what he likes?’ ”

  “ ‘Yes, but why should he be always too well dressed? Or, I should say, over-dressed? He gave me the impression of acting a part?’ ”

  Mallett here assumed Lord Henry’s thick voice as best he could.

  “ ‘You didn’t see much of him,’ ” he objected.

  “ ‘Oh, yes I did—at race meetings, especially.’ ”

  “ ‘Naturally, he dressed up for race meetings,’ ” went on Mallett-Gaveston.

  “ ‘Ah, but it wasn’t only race meetings.’ ” Lord Bernard began to speak faster and with more and more animation. “ ‘Do you remember taking me down to his place in the country for the dramatic show his staff was giving? He looked a dreadful sight’—or words to that effect—‘and that reminds me——’ ”

  So convincing was his acting, that Mallett too was carried away by the part he was playing.

  “ ‘By George!’ ” he said enthusiastically, “ ‘there’s a real good-looker down there at last!’ ”

  His hand, dramatically extended, pointed, not, as it should have done according to the rules, downwards, but directly at the door in front of him. And, as though in response to a magic incantation, it opened, revealing the prosaic outlines of the butler.

  The latter was of the ambassadorial type whose dignity is not easily perturbed. Only by the slightest lift of his eyebrows did he recognize that there was anything irregular in the situation that confronted him. And when he spoke, it was only to say: “Will your lordship require the car to wait any longer?”

  “Oh, go away, Waters! Go away!” roared the master, and burst into a fit of laughter.

  Mallett, for himself, felt more than a little foolish. He had been made to look ridiculous and he felt extremely doubtful whether any good purpose had been served by it. Meanwhile Lord Bernard, still laughing, pushed back his chair and rose to his feet.

  “The séance is over!” he announced.

  Mallett’s heart sank.

  “Then you still can’t remember?” he asked.

  “On the contrary, I remember everything. And what I remember is so perfectly trivial and irrelevant that I can only apologize for making you waste your time.”

  “I am the best judge of that,” returned the inspector. “What was it?”

  “Simply this—I was going to say: ‘That reminds me that the lamented Ballantine still owes me some money for that dramatic society of his.’ ”

  “In what way?”

  “For the dresses and wigs and so on. As I was in charge, I ordered them all, and then when the bill came in he was to settle it. He hadn’t done so up to the time he was killed, and now the wig and dress people are going for me.”

  “I suppose the members of the dramatic society are really liable to you,” suggested Mallett.

  “Yes, but how can you ask those poor devils to pay? They’ve lost their jobs as it is. No, I don’t mind paying. What I object to is that they’re trying to charge me for something I didn’t order—something that wasn’t used in the play at all, and what’s more, the most expensive thing of the whole bill. It isn’t very much, but I object to the thing on principle.”

  “Which is the firm in question?”

  “Bradworthy’s—I expect you know the name. Their address is somewhere near Drury Lane. If it interests you. I’ll look for the bill, and show you what it’s all about.”

  “You needn’t trouble yourself,” said Mallett “I can tell you. Bradworthy’s are dunning you for a brown beard and a padded suit, supplied by them to the London and Imperial Estates Ltd., some time between August and October last.”

  Lord Bernard looked at him in amazement.

  “You are perfectly right,” he said. “But how on earth you could guess is utterly beyond me. No, don’t tell me. I prefer to remain in ignorant admiration, ‘to venerate where I cannot presently comprehend’, as Burke so prettily said of the British constitution. I shall dine out on this story for weeks.”

  He shook the inspector’s hand warmly.

  “Good-bye,” he said, “and thank you for a most amusing morning. I wish you could tell me just one thing, though.”

  “What is that?”

  “Ought I to pay Bradworthy’s bill or not? It is rather on my conscience.”

  “I must leave that to your lordship’s solicitors,” said Mallett, and took his departure.

  21

  AT MRS. BRADWORTHY’S

  * * *

  * * *

  Tuesday, November 24th

  Old Mrs. Bradworthy was an institution in theatrical London. She had sat, a genial fat figure in black silk, at the back of her little shop, just round the corner from Drury Lane, longer than the most elderly ingénue actress could remember. It was a gloomy shop, the light from the windows being all but cut off by the suits of stage armour which hung facing the street, and had so hung, growing daily dirtier, ever since they were made for Irving’s production of Macbeth. Mallett had been there once or twice before—although the interest of the detective in make-up and disguise is not nearly so great as is often supposed—and he never ceased to marvel that so small a place could hold the vast stock of dresses, wigs and stage accessories without which no amateur play-producing society, no pageant or fancy-dress ball could hope to be successful. It was a wonder, too, that even the proprietress, inured as she was to the blackness in which she lived, could find her way about. The unwary visitor, straying in the dingy recesses at the back of the shop, could be fortunate if he did not break his knees over some “property” or another on the floor, or bump his head on a pantomime mask hanging unseen from above; but Mrs. Bradworthy, guided by some instinct of her own, would go at once to the mustiest corner in her establishment and bring from it at the first attempt exactly what the most exotic fancy of her customer required. She had lived so long in the atmosphere of the stage that she and everything about her seemed a trifle unreal. Th
e very assistants in the shop looked more like supers than ordinary human beings. Only her charges were firmly related to the workaday world, and these, Mallett knew, were no joke. One does not become an institution in trade—even when that trade is a theatrical one—without a keen sense of business.

  He found the old lady sitting behind the counter, working, as usual, on her endless accounts. She greeted him with pleasure.

  “Well, Mr. Mallett, this is a nice surprise! What can I do for you today?”

  “I’ve called about Lord Bernard Gaveston’s account,” began the inspector.

  “Lord Bernard, indeed!” The old lady took him up at once. “Why can’t he pay, I want to know? It isn’t becoming a gentleman, let alone a lord, to keep me out of my money all this time.”

  “I wonder if you’d let me look at his account,” said Mallett, diplomatically avoiding taking sides in the controversy. “There’s one item in it that interests me a little.”

  With surprising strength for her age the old lady instantly reached down a heavy ledger from a shelf behind her, and quickly found the place.

  “Here you are,” she said, pushing it over to the inspector. “Can you read it all right there, or do you want the electric light? I’ll turn it on if you like, but——”

  “No, no, I can see perfectly,” Mallett lied. Mrs. Bradworthy’s parsimony was notorious, and he knew that she would never forgive him if he proved himself to be wasteful in the matter of electric current. Straining his eyes over the page, he found the item he sought.

  “That is what I am enquiring about,” he said. “The padded suit and beard.”

  Mrs. Bradworthy shook her head sadly, and clicked her tongue against her teeth.

  “Tck, tck! The most expensive thing in the whole account! Bought, and not hired like the rest of them, you see, Mr. Mallett. It’s a bad business—it should never have gone out without payment, but there it is. It will be a lesson to us, that’s all I can say.”

  “I notice that it is dated a few days later than the other items,” Mallett remarked.