[Title here]

by Deadly Duo (epub)

  "So shall we all, God be praised," said Genevieve, who was still sulky. "The poor man said you should be quiet."

  "Quiet?" The deep voice rose in a schooled crescendo. "How can I be anything but quiet in this absurd provincial back yard? I am being buried alive when I am not being actively murdered-"

  "Tiens!" cut in Genevieve. "The poor child."

  "Of course," Zoff was penitent. "My poor little Margot, half drowned already, she does not want to hear about the old and the sick and the hideous. No, we must talk about her." She paused reflectively and the mischievous black eyes became thoughtful. Margot climbed into a slip and smoothed the silk over her slender flanks. She was waiting, listening intently, her white-gold curls wild on the top of her head, her chin determined.

  Zoff considered her, apparently dispassionately, and, cocking her chin back suddenly, spoke over her shoulder.

  "See those bones, Genvieve, those shadows there, blue in the white back. Mine were never so good, never. Not at my first confession. I had to make my way without much beauty. Still, it is a great deal. Even now when one knows how little it counts it takes one by the throat. You shall have a dark dress, petite, with no back at all. None, down to your little tail."

  The voice ceased only for an instant. Almost without break she added briefly:

  "So my poor grandson Victor Soubise is not now sufficiently exalted for the talented Mademoiselle Robert?"

  "Oh, Zoff!" Margot swung round, the colour pouring into her face. This was Zoff at her naughtiest, unfair and enjoying it. "Don't, darling. Don't go and take it like that. I wanted to talk it over with you. It never occurred to me that Victor would come roaring to you before I could get here."

  "Why should he not?" Zoff was playing the matriarch, looking the part and not entirely acting. Behind her were many generations of small landowners in the Sud and she was dealing now with a problem which would have been perfectly understood by any one of them. "Your marriage to Victor has been arranged since you were fifteen," she said. "It is only the wretched accident of war which has kept you apart in these important years. It is a serious family business. There is property to consider."

  There it was, of course. Zoff had placed a finger on a vital spot. As she said, there was a great deal of property to consider.

  As she was fond of pointing out, other actresses acquired other things. Sarah Bernhardt preferred lions, for instance. But Zoff had concentrated always on property, and now, even though France had been occupied twice in a generation, much of it remained.

  To begin with there was almost the whole of the famous Cap d'Azur, midway between Nice and Marseilles. Both Zoff and Genevieve had been born there when the place had been no more than a hamlet, but when she had inherited the estate which covered the shore line she had not sold it but had put money into its development and had used her friends to make it fashionable.

  During the brief glory of her second marriage, to Megard, the perfume king, that time, money had poured into her ventures, and even after the occupation her faithful old notary could write very optimistically of leases and ground rents.

  The Cap was by no means all the real estate. There was the block of luxury apartments in Paris which she had converted herself out of the mansion in the Rue de St. Anne. It had been her widow's portion from her first husband, that same Conte d'Hiver whose memory she had so abused in the famous cause celebre which had shocked all Paris and nearly cost her her popularity.

  Then there was the super-hotel in Lyons which she had bought for a song in the scare of '17, and the quay and the warehouses at Port Marius inherited from her own grandmother, the redoubtable Mere Zoffany of fabulous memory.

  Lastly there were the two fine vineyards in the Rhone, the deeds of which poor Lampre, the great turf accountant, was said to have sent her from his deathbed. They were hidden in the straw of a champagne bottle, so it was said, and so passed unnoticed through a ravening multitude of creditors who swarmed over the anterooms in his fine house.

  All these were still flourishing, all paying dividends. Zoff had picked her agents with genius and had had a flair for holding on at the right time. Also, of course, there were the jewels. Certainly there was property to consider.

  Margot stood looking at Zoff now, following the train of thought behind the narrow forehead. The old woman was thinking of her possessions and what was to become of them.

  In this matter she was not so free as one might have thought. Under French law there is no nonsense about disinheriting one's relatives. In France, if the children must inherit their parents' sins to the third and fourth generation, they do at least receive their property also.

  Everybody knew how Zoff's fortune must be disposed. She had only two direct descendants, two grandsons. These were the cousins Victor and Denis, sons of her two daughters, one by each of her marriages.

  Therefore, by the law of the land, each grandson must receive a full third of the whole estate, and only the remaining third was free. This last portion was settled on Margot, save for certain sums left to Genevieve and other dependents. It was all very simple and utterly inescapable. And yet, like many others who have built up fortunes by unswerving personal effort, Zoff recoiled from dividing hers. She had seen its power grow, had nearly lost it twice to the Boches, and now again felt the thrill of holding it. To her it was a living thing.

  For its sake the marriage between Margot and Victor had been planned when the boy was in the schoolroom and the girl in the nursery. Denis, the other grandson, remained. Even Zoff had discovered there was no way round Denis.

  Certainly she had done her best. The scandalous case which she brought in the French courts after her quarrel with her elder daughter, the sickly Elise d'Hiver, had almost cost her her career. The suggestion that a mother could get up in open court and swear that the baby she had carried in her arms at the famous reception when her secret marriage to D'Hiver was first announced was not her own child was too much even for the most delirious of fans.

  Zoff lost and retired for a time. Elise died in childbirth after her marriage to a penniless American soldier of the first World War. But even after he too had lost his life in Picardy there was still the baby, still Denis.

  The boy had been a thorn in Zoff's side all his life. He had been brought up by servants on the small portion his mother had received from her father, and he had no help from Zoff.

  Even this new war had not obliterated him. He had taken part in the resistance movement and, a second-year medical student, he had worked underground attending to the wounds of men fighting the invader. After a dozen hairbreadth escapes Denis remained.

  At this very moment he was finishing his training in a London hospital, studying to take the final degrees he had not had time to acquire before the terror swept over the land again. When Zoff died, one third of her fortune must be his. There was no avoiding it. One third at least must be whittled off the whole, and now she was being asked to divide again.

  All this Margot followed perfectly as she stood in the big bedroom looking thoughtfully at the old woman. She felt the situation was archaic. It was exasperating, belonging to an older world, but there it was, it was true.

  "Oh, darling," she said, "I'm so sorry. Do, oh, do understand."

  Zoff tilted her chin. It was a characteristic movement, curiously resourceful.

  "You have decided against Victor, utterly?"

  "Yes-that is, only, of course, that I don't want to marry him."

  "Eh bien. This change in your heart, it had taken place on your trip to New York, yes?"

  "No, not exactly. I decided finally on my way back, on board. But I've been thinking of it for some time, ever since I first saw Victor again when he got back from South America. How long is that?-six months at least." She was speaking earnestly but with caution. It was happening, in the worst possible way. Zoff was forewarned and forearmed, and her personality was a force one had to fight against all the time.

  "You took a dislike to Victor? You thought him ch
anged? He was not a hero, he had not fought. Was that it?" The black eyes were penetrating and Margot looked away. It was not going to be possible to explain to Zoff that a man who had seemed a thrilling mystery of graceful sophistication to a girl of eighteen had become a rather spiteful old-lady-ish bachelor in the eyes of an experienced woman of twenty-four. Zoff would not be interested in any such revelation. Her retort might easily be that a husband was not a lover, and what did one expect. Zoff still lived in an older France. Margot sighed and returned to the battle.

  "Victor does not love me, and I don't love him," she said. "We never have, except as brother and sister. That won't do for marriage, Zoff, not nowadays. Don't worry about the property, my dear. Let him have my share as well as his own. You're free to give it to him. I'm not a relative. You've done everything for me and I'm more than grateful. I owe you everything and I love you, but I don't want any more. I'll be all right, Zoff. Don't worry about me. Count me out."

  Genevieve had come up behind the bed, and now both the old faces, which were alike only in their expressions, were lifted anxiously toward the young one. Absently Zoff put up her hand and touched Genevieve's, which lay on her shoulder. She spoke for them both.

  "Margot," she said, "there is one thing that we must know at once immediatement, now. Who is the man?

  "The man?"

  "Yes, ma cherie, the man. The man you have decided to marry instead of Victor. What is his name?"

  Margot began to laugh. "Idiots!" she said. "Of course there isn't anybody. I should have told you at once."

  "No one?" Zoff's eyebrows looked like circumflex accents. "I hope you are not unnatural," she said devastatingly. "No, of course not; it is one of those enormous Americans, more rich than I am, perhaps. Take no notice of him. Forget him. He will take you out of Europe. You'll never see your home again."

  "Zoff, don't be absurd. This is the truth, really. There is nobody."

  Zoff sniffed noisily and unromantically. She got up and put her arm through Margot's.

  "Perhaps she's not such a bad vedette after all, eh, Genvieve? A very pretty ingénue performance, cherie. Come with me and see what I have done to make this miserable kennel habitable. Poor Kit is so angry with me. I have bribed an old bricklayer to help me to go round the bestial restrictions with which this infantile country surrounds itself, and I have thrown all the three front bedrooms into one grand salon. It is not good, but it is better than being stifled."

  "She has ruined the house," remarked Genevieve placidly. "Sir Kit has been galant, but the tears came into his eyes when he saw it. Run along. I will bring you a dress and you can do your hair in there."

  Margot was not deceived. This brilliant digressing was one of Zoff's favourite manoeuvres. She would return to the main subject the moment Margot's own guard came down. All the same, the alterations sounded startling, and proved to be so when they crossed the hall to see the room. She had done just what she said. Two walls had come down and now the whole front of the house was transformed into one enormous apartment, in which Zoff's own huge rococo bed was almost lost. It was impressive but, for anyone but the chere maitresse, utterly impracticable.

  "The others," said Zoff magnificently, "sleep elsewhere. There are little rooms downstairs and attics also. Quite comfortable, I believe. I have not been up there because of my poor heart. Do you like it?"

  "It's amazing," said Margot truthfully. "Extraordinary, darling. Can they keep it warm?"

  "Seventy feet long exactly." Zoff spoke with satisfaction. "I take my exercise, walking once up and once down. By putting the mirrors at each end I feel I am going further. You don't like it, you silly little bourgeoise."

  "I do, in a way. I don't think it was necessary."

  "That is what Kit said. That man has a mean soul. He wants me to leave here because his son, who is a general coming home from the East, wishes to live in it with his hideous wife and children. I am beset by everybody. Margot, tell me, tell me quickly, is it Denis?"

  The final question was a gentle hiss, loud enough to fill a theatre and the strong fingers sank into the girl's forearm.

  Although she had been waiting for the attack, the suddenness of it took Margot by surprise. She stiffened.

  "Denis?"

  "Yes, this man you intend to marry. Is it Denis?"

  "Zoff, you're mad. Of course not. Denis doesn't want to marry anybody. Haven't you seen him, darling? He's a fanatic. He's crazy about his work. Hell never have time for marriage."

  Zoff grunted. "I have seen him," she said with curious bitterness. "Since he has been in London he has become the dutiful grandson. At any rate, he has come over to see me twice. As you say, he in fanatical." She paused and added casually: "But I hear that you have seen him. You have dined with him."

  "Yes, twice, before I left for the States. He came to the theatre and took me out for a meal. He talked all the time about his work while we ate."

  "In some filthy little cabinet of a restaurant, no doubt."

  "Not a very grand place, no. He has no money, Zoff." To escape the catechism Margot took refuge in a question which had been worrying her. "Zoff, I know it's nothing to do with me, but do you pay Sir Kit for this house?" she said.

  "Pay him?" The celebrity was aghast. "It is he who should pay me to live in the abominable ruin. Of course I do not pay him. I am his guest."

  Margot hesitated. "I don't think he's very well off. The war has hit him badly, you know."

  "Tant pis." Zoff shrugged her shoulders. "We cannot help his troubles. He is very honoured to have me here. Poor Kit, he loved me very much once. Sometimes even now he loves me a little still. Do you find that disgusting?"

  Margot blinked. Zoff really was a terror. Age seemed to be playing round her rather than touching her; just trying to get a word in edgeways, perhaps.

  "Love is a very awkward thing," the great actress was apostrophising. "That is why these family marriages, which are all-important, should take place when one is very young. If one is young enough one can love anything. I expect that is why people cry when youth confronts them suddenly. It is envy," She cocked her head on one side and prodded the girl's shoulder with a long forefinger. "Should love arrive when one is older it is a different matter. To love is to become molten, you understand, and to pour one's self into a die. Afterwards, whatever one does, the pattern remains. If one escapes the first man, one loves again another exactly like him, and so on forever. It is very serious."

  She seated herself in the high-backed gilt chair which had stood at the end of her bed ever since Margot could remember.

  "You ate in a dirty estaminet," she observed, "and yet, ma chere, you went again to dine with Denis."

  "Oh, leave Denis out of it!" In spite of her caution the young voice was raw, and Zoff's eyes flickered with sudden pain. Immediately her entire mood changed.

  "As I get older I think too much and too quickly," she announced. "Poor petite, you will forgive old Zoff. She grows silly ideas as the other old women do. Now get yourself dressed. As for me, I must go down. I have a policeman to talk to." She got up slowly and moved over to the door, and for the first time it occurred to the girl that she had grown a little tottery. But on the threshold it was the old Zoff who looked back, mischief on her broad face. "I have to tell him I have made a stupid mistake," she said. "I wish I was your age. In that case, of course, it would be he who would have to apologise."

  There was nothing ominous in her words, but as the door closed behind her Margot shivered. She sat down before the dressing table to do her hair.

  TWO

  Sir christopher perrins walked sadly down the corridor. The house was his own but he hardly recognised it. Since Zoff had bedevilled it, the familiar atmosphere of sanctuary had disappeared altogether. The angry police inspector at his side was an anachronism if ever he met one.

  In his youth Kit Perrins had been one of those happy little men whose round faces and smiling good humor sometimes deceive people into believing that they can have neit
her brains nor deep feelings. Both in the diplomatic and the elegant sporting circles which revolved round the great country houses of those days he had been a great favourite without being a great figure. It was only afterward that his friends, looking back on him, realised how sound he had been, and also how nearly the tragic elements in his story must have touched him.

  His marriage had been a miserable failure, but he never complained and no one heard of the bitterness brought into his life by the cold, greedy woman who had shared forty years of it. His fortune dwindled inevitably in the changing years, and a country never generous to the men on whom she relies had awarded him hardly at all for a lifetime of service. Yet at seventy-odd-he was jocularly evasive about the odd he remained a round and smiling person, old only by his wrinkles and a slight unsteadiness in his freckled hands.

  At this instant he was deeply shocked. During his long friendship with Zoff she had provided him with plenty of awkward moments. For nearly fifty years she had retained her ability to startle the wits out of him, and on rarer occasions to scandalise his sophisticated soul. Today she had done it again. His round brown eyes were reproachful. This final scene, which had taken place not ten minutes before when she had calmly rescinded all her dreadful accusations of the morning, this really had taken a deal of swallowing. He glanced up at the furious policeman who walked beside him.

  "The French are volatile," he ventured.

  "Old ladies are often difficult, you mean," Inspector Lee spoke bluntly. He was a big man, heavily built, with an intelligent face which normally wore a mild, not to say resigned, expression. But at the moment he was irritated beyond endurance and did not care if he showed it. Kit sighed. There were times when he half wished he had left Zoff to the Hun, but as always, in the next breath he was ashamed.

  "In her own country Madame Zoffany has been a little queen for a great many years."