Black Plumes

by Margery Allingham

  "It's not the work; that's nothing. You sit down your-self, miss." Dorothea was breathing deeply and her square wrinkled face was pallid. "I'm as strong as ever I was. as I tell my niece when she comes nosing round to know why I don't leave service. No, it's not that. It's me heart."

  She laid her hand on her stiff black bosom expressively.

  "It's me heart," she repeated and shot a sidelong glance at the girl. "I love the mistress," she began after a pause. "If she was my own mother I couldn't love her more. I've been with her since I was a girl, since I was fifteen. I know her. I've seen her grow old."

  She was silent and Frances, looking at her, was startled to see tears slip out of her eyes and slide down over her cheeks. Tears and wrinkles are ever an appalling combination, but in Dorothea, that tower of strength and common sense, they were terrifying. A drop fell on her hand, and she looked down at it in surprise.

  "I'm off me head," she said, brushing her eyes angrily. "But, oh. Miss Frances, my dear, I'm so frightened. You see, it's not the first time I've found her wandering about this house."

  "What?"

  "There, there, my dear, don't get excited." Now that the admission was made and her secret out Dorothea was much more herself again. "It doesn't actually signify. But I must tell somebody for my own peace of mind. It's no good me talking to the police; they'd only come and worry her and she's too old for that. Besides, I won't have it. They bully her over my dead body."

  "But. Dorothea, what is this? What do you mean? When did you find her wandering about the house before? Not on the night..."

  "Yes, I did. On the night Mr. Robert must have died. She was wandering about the house in the pitch dark. She knows the place so well, you see. We lived here for thirty years. You get to know a house in that time."

  Prances sat down abruptly. Her fine eyes were narrowed and there was a frightened stiffness in the set of her mouth.

  "You'd better tell me," she said.

  Dorothea bent forward and lowered her voice to the earnest monotone of confidence.

  "Do you remember meeting me outside Miss Phillida's door that night?" she said. "You remarked that it was a pity the mistress had come and I said yes, it was and that she was very angry with Mr. Robert. I know I told you then that she wouldn't go to bed but was sitting by the fire talking about the old days."

  "I remember. Go on."

  "I'm telling you. I went buck to her then and she seemed quieter, but still I couldn't get her to go to bed anyhow. She wouldn't take this and she wouldn't take that. I couldn't do a mortal thing with her. After a bit I went out and left her. That always annoys her, and I thought it might bring her to her senses. I went down to the kitchen to get her a drop of hot milk. Norris was out that night, and I got talking with Mrs. Sanderson and Molly. I don't know how long I was there, but it might have been well over an hour. Anyway, when I came back with the glass on a tray I found all the lights in the place were out."

  "Who did that?"

  "I don't know. At the time I thought Mr. Robert had probably done it himself. I didn't really think at all except to be afraid that it was later than I thought. I didn't turn on the hall light myself because it wasn't as if I was at home, and I could get on just as well without it, considering the hundreds of times I've come up those stairs. I went across the landing and pushed open her door. 'Here I am," I said and waited for her to say something pretty sharp to me."

  She paused and looked at the girl with some of the bewilderment of that moment echoed in her eyes.

  "She wasn't there. The room was empty. I couldn't believe it. She's been so helpless for the last year. I thought the effort of coming up here from Hampstead would be too much for her. Well, I was at my wit's end. I set the milk down and went out again. I didn't know what to do."

  There was vividness in the old voice, and Frances saw her standing on the threshold of the big shadowy bed-room, the fire dying low behind her.

  "I was afraid, you see." Dorothea's whisper was urgent. "I knew the house but I didn't know the people. Every room in the place was as well known to me as the palm of my own hand, but I didn't know who might be in any of them. There’s been one noise in the house already, and I didn't want to make another."

  "Noise?"

  "Well, row, then. But it's not a nice word. Mr. Robert had forgotten himself to the mistress in the afternoon. Poor fellow! When I heard he was dead I was sorry but I could never have forgiven him for the things he said to her that day if he'd lived to be a hundred. There I was, wondering what on earth I ought to do, when I heard her coming across the hall. I knew it was her. I'd know her step anywhere. But I couldn't believe my ears. I hadn't heard her walk like that for twenty years. She was brisk, you know, walking like a proper little madam. I ran to the top of the stairs and called her softly because I didn't want to rouse the house. 'Is that you?" I said. "Yes," she said and her voice was young too. I thought I was out of mind. She was so angry, you see, it had given her strength. I went down and found her and brought her up to the fire. She was quite calm, not at all shaky as she was tonight, but just calm and willful and wonderfully clear in her mind. That was when she told me to send the cable."

  "She told you then?"

  "Of course she did." Dorothea prodded her listener's knee. 'That was how I got the address. I tell you she was ten years younger that night, although she had to pay for it afterward, poor dear. She was just like she used to be, sharp as a needle, with every fact she wanted slap at her finger tips. She remembered Mr. Meyrick had given her the Hong Kong cable address and that it was in her black book in her writing case. She made me write out the message there and then. 'Come home immediately. Your presence vital in new development. Gabrielle." That's how It ran. I promised her I'd send it off the first thing the next day. That's why I sent Molly to the post office with it in the morning. I didn't have time to phone it or to run out myself with the mistress lying there exhausted."

  "So Molly sent it? That's how the inspector heard about it? Is that why you dismissed her when Robert was found?"

  Dorothea sniffed.

  "Yes, that was a silly thing to do," she said. "I lost my head. When he was found I lost my head. I couldn't forget that she'd been about that night. I don't know what I thought so don't ask me. I only felt that I couldn't have the poor dear questioned, and the simplest thing to do seemed to be to get rid of the girl before she remembered anything. I went down and packed her off. In my young days there’s have been no questions asked and no reasons given. I'd forgotten how things have changed. There was such a set out you'd have thought I was getting rid of a member of Parliament, let alone a housemaid. I called attention to the whole thing instead of hiding it up. I had to come and tell the mistress and she acted us both out of it, the wonderful little old dear."

  The quiet voice ceased and there was silence in the room for a minute or so before Frances could bring herself to ask the question which was nagging at her.

  "Dorothea," she began cautiously at last, "you didn't leave Gabrielle today, did you?"

  "Yes."

  The old woman leaned back in her chair. Her face was drawn and her lips fidgeted for a while before she spoke.

  "Only for a quarter of an hour," she said. "She was sitting in a chair and she dropped off to sleep, or I thought she did. You can't tell with her these day; she's so artful. I knew she wouldn't be disturbed there and I wanted to make sure they hadn't forgotten the lire in her bedroom. She'd been upset and I couldn't have her coming back to a cold room. I went back the way we came, past Mr. Meyrick's door and down the back stairs. I got out into the yard and popped into our kitchen here. I talked for rather a long time with Norris and the other two. He said he'd just been up to see to the fire and it went through my mind that he might have been listening through that door in the cupboard.

  "I don't know how much you can hear through that. Anyway, they pretended to lie all agog to hear what had happened at the meeting and I was careful not to tell them. I suppose I was talking for ove
r ten minutes, maybe quarter of an hour, maybe more. When I came back they'd found Mr. Lucar and all the excitement was on."

  "Was Granny awake when you got to her?"

  "Yes. She was walking about the room. She was its bright as she is tonight. I noticed the change in her. It's almost as if these upsets give her a new interest in life."

  Her voice died away and she sat thinking. After a while she laughed.

  "I'm daft," she aid. "She couldn't. It's silly. Even if her poor sweet mind had gone and she'd taken it into her head to do something so wicked, she couldn't. She hasn't the strength. It's us. Miss Frances. We're the lunatics. We're so muddled and frightened we're losing our sense. She couldn't do it. Besides, what with?"

  Frances did not speak at once. A quotation from the flowery history book of her nursery days had come sneaking into her mind. "If but the blades be sharp enough a child can drive it home, my I, ord Burleigh."

  "Would she do it?" she demanded bluntly. "I mean, just supposing she could. Would she? Can you conceive her doing it?"

  It was a rhetorical question, and she was prepared for a vigorous negative. Dorothea's reply was startling.

  "Not unless she thought she was so old it didn't matter," she said.

  "Didn't matter?" said Frances, aghast.

  "What happened to her afterward. Very old people are funny, miss. They've got so used to the idea of dying that they get to behaving sort of wild, like people going to emigrate. She's so clear in her mind that this life is over for her that she's half living in the next. I never knew anyone who treated their body so much as if it was an old dress they were wearing out. She's still young in her heart, you see, still adventuresome. She's impatient, that's what she is. I don't know what she might do."

  "But she couldn't..."

  "No, my dear, she couldn't, thank God." Dorothea dried her eyes with a single wipe from the flat of her hand.

  "I feel a mount better," she remarked naively. "It's keeping it all to oneself that makes one fanciful. Once it's in words you do know it's silly.""

  "Yet someone did it." Frances said slowly.

  "Eh? Yes, yes, someone did it." Dorothea sounded almost casual. "Still, she's safe from trouble, that's all I care. She's sitting up by the fire. She's wonderfully willful and very bright again tonight. I'll just go along to see how Miss Phillida is. If we're going to have nurses in the house that Mrs. Sanderson must help me tidy up the room a bit. You go along to your granny, my dear. Tell her I'm just coming."

  Her resilience was amazing. Confession seemed not only to have been good for her soul but for her legs also, for she rose to her feet briskly.

  "Well, we must get on," she said. "Ml put the nurses in the old playroom. It's warm up there by the water tank. Don't you worry, my dear, it'll all come right."

  Frances followed her to the door. They parted on the landing and the girl turned towards Gabrielle's room. She walked heavily; Dorothea might be able to trot off happily to attend to mere domestic problems, but for her own part she found the new details terrifying Why had Gabrielle been wandering about the house on the night that Robert died? Why? And, above all, where?

  She entered the dark alcove where Meyrick's door was and had already raised her hand to tap on the paneling when she heard Gabrielle talking. The high thin voice was raised authoritatively and the words came clearly through the wood and leather.

  "All my life I have done what I thought best. I see no reason to change that behavior. Have you ever been told that you look like the; prince consort?"

  Frances felt her scalp crawling. As far as she knew there was no one in the house who could possibly be with the old lady.

  She opened the door abruptly and went in. Gabrielle confronted her. She was seated facing the door in a high-backed chair which had been temporarily lined with her enormous swansdown shawl. The lights were shaded and the glow from the coal fire picked out the brilliance of her black eyes and the rings on her lingers, while behind her the shadowy forms of the bed and the armoire melted into the warm darkness.

  At first glance Frances thought that she was alone and talking to herself and she was just facing the new problem which such a discovery might well present when the wing chair standing on the rug between them shot back a little as a man rose up out of it.

  "David!"

  His sudden appearance was so unexpected that she forgot herself entirely and her voice rose. They both hushed her vigorously.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered, reddening at the injustice which such treatment always seems to contain, "but I thought you were..."

  "Arrested." Gabrielle supplied the missing word. "But he seems either to have been let out or to have escaped." She let her voice rise enquiringly but he did not explain. He stood on the hearthrug, his hands in his pockets and his head bent. Although the pose was negligent his shoulder muscles were flexed under his coat and there was an unusual tautness in the fine lines of his face.

  Frances glanced at him anxiously and found him watching her thoughtfully, without smiling.

  "I've been asking Mrs. Ivory to shut the house," he said. "Split up. Pack the servants off. If Phillida's ill let her go into a nursing home. You can go to a hotel, Frances. Mrs. Ivory herself can return to Hampstead. Get the house empty."

  "What? Tonight?"

  "Oh, lord yes, it must be tonight."

  "But, David, we can't." In her reaction against the impracticability of the suggestion Frances forgot for a moment how extraordinary it was that he should be there at all. "We can't," she repeated, "Anyway, we're not allowed to. We're all to stay here until Inspector Bridie has finished with the gallery and can come over and interview us all again. There's a policeman in the front hall and another on the back door now. Didn't you see them as you came in?"

  "No. I er—I didn't come that way."

  "I heard his tapping at the cupboard," explained Gabrielle calmly. "I thought it was the police so I let him in. He has not cared to explain how he came to be in my son's private office." There was no rebuke in her tone. She made the statement as if it referred to some minor unconventionality into which she was too polite to enquirer.

  Frances glanced at the small cupboard beside the fireplace. The door was bolted again now. She could see the brass catch clearly against the paneling. David followed her eyes gloomily but he made no comment, and it was the old lady who returned to the main subject.

  "Quite impossible," she said, resettling herself. "And if it weren't I should still stay. There is something I want to know," Her voice had a new tone in it and he turned to her. For a moment he looked positively frightened, but as his eye took in her frailty and her great age his alarm died a little.

  "I hope you're not thinking of turning detective, Mrs. Ivory," he murmured.

  The old Gabrielle appeared to consider the suggestion.

  "No," she said at last. "No. But I'm a very inquisitive old woman, and in all this dreadful business there is one thing that strikes me as very strange indeed. First, Madri-gal, poor wretched creature, is found dead with a wound in his chest. Then that abominable little baggage man dies in the same way. As far as any reasonable person can see both crimes were committed by the same person, who must be someone who is still either in this house or in the gallery' next door. So much is obvious. Any woman who blinds herself to those facts is a fool. However, the thing that seems so entirely extraordinary to me is this: both houses have been searched over and over again and yet no weapon has been found. I find this so peculiar that I have given my mind to it, and an idea has occurred to me which may eventually explain a number of things."

  The precise Victorian English and the conversational tone made the words unexpectedly dramatic.

  "I am not going to tell you or anyone else what it is," she said, "because if I am wrong then I have made a very serious and unjust mistake. So I shall stay here until I find out for myself. What is the matter, Mr. Field?"

  David's eyes were warning and when he spoke his voice sounded dry.

  "T
hat's a very dangerous statement. Have you made it to anybody else?"

  The old lady peered at him and then turned sharply to glance at the cupboard door beside her.

  "Have you?" he repeated, raising his voice a little.

  "No," she said. "No, I have not. But you come to me with a suggestion and I am explaining to von why I am not adopting it. Now, forgive me. I am tired. Frances will take you downstairs."

  It was her usual dismissal, imperious and unanswerable. He mewed obediently but when he was halfway across the room he turned again.

  "You mustn't," he said. "For God's sake. Think of everybody else."

  The black eyes flickered in his direction, and for an instant both young people saw her as she must have been at the height of her powers, when her brain was as clear as any in London and her tremendous vitality was a force in a great many lives.

  "One more day," she said so quietly that her voice would not carry through any paneling. "One more day."

  "What does she mean?" Frances whispered the question as they came out into the alcove. His hand closed over her arm warningly. He did not move but stood listening, holding her back in the shadow. No one was in sight, hut all around them the house was alive. There were new voices downstairs and footsteps. She heard Godolphin talking and a strange woman answering him, and then the doctor spoke. David bent over her.

  "Is there a lire escape to this house? Keep your voice down."

  Frances stiffened. Until that moment she had not taken Gabrielle's airy statement about his escape from arrest with any degree of seriousness. He saw her expression and his eyes wavered.

  "Sorry, Duchess," he murmured, "but it can't be helped. Where's the bolt hole?"

  "Up here." She took his wrist and drew him hastily across the narrow end of the landing to the flight of steep stairs leading up to the third floor. Neither of them spoke until they were out on the roof, standing in a narrow valley beneath the shadow of a chimney stack. It was very dark up there. All the light came from below, giving new values and strange topsyturvy shadows, while the fidgety wind leapt on them avidly, snatching at their clothes and blowing soot in their eyes.