Death of a Peer ra-10

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Such fun, darling,” said all the Lampreys in their soft voices. “Such fun to see you.”

  Presently they were all sitting before the fire, with Charlot in her chair and Henry in his old place on the hearthrug and the twins collapsed on the sofa. Patch hurled herself onto the arm of Robin’s chair, and Frid stood in an elegant attitude before the fire, and Lord Charles wandered vaguely about the room.

  “Dear me,” said Henry, “I feel like Uriah Heep. It’s as good as the chiming of old bells to see Robin Grey in the flesh.”

  The twins murmured agreeably and Colin said: “You haven’t grown much.”

  “I know,” said Roberta. “I’m a pygmy.”

  “A nice pygmy,” said Charlot.

  “Do you think she’s pretty?” asked Frid. “I do.”

  “Not exactly pretty,” said Stephen. I’d call her attractive.”

  “Really!” Said Lord Charles mildly. “Does Robin, who I must say looks delightful, enjoy a public dissection of her charms?”

  “Yes,” said Roberta. “From the family, I do.”

  “Of course she does,” shouted Patch, dealing Roberta a violent buffet across the shoulders.

  “What do you think of me?” asked Frid, striking an attitude. “Aren’t I quite, quite lovely?”

  “Don’t tell her she is,” said Colin. “The girl’s a nymphomaniac.”

  “Darling!” murmured Lady Charles.

  “My dear Colin,” said his father, “it really would be a good idea if you stick to the words you understand.”

  “Well,” Frid reasoned, “you may thank your lucky stars I am so lovely. After all, looks go a long way on the stage. I may have to keep you all, and in the near future, too.”

  “Apropos,” said Henry, “I fancy there’s a bum downstairs, chaps.”

  “Oh no!” cried the Lampreys.

  “The signs are ominous. I told Stamford you were out, Daddy.”

  “Then I suppose I’d better stay in,” muttered Lord Charles. “Who can it be this time? Not Smith & Weekly’s again, surely? I wrote them an admirable letter explaining that—”

  “Circumstances over which we had no control,” suggested Stephen.

  “I put it better than that, Stephen.”

  “Mike,” said Lady Charles, “be an angel and run out on the landing. If you see a little man—”

  “In a bowler,” said Henry and Frid.

  “Yes, of course in a bowler. If you see him, don’t say anything but just come and tell Mummy, darling, will you?”

  “Righto,” said Mike politely. “Is he a bum, Mummy?”

  “We think so but it’s nothing to worry about. Do hurry, Mikey darling.”

  Mike grinned disarmingly and began to hop out of the room on one leg.

  “I can hop for miles,” he said.

  “Well, run quietly for a change.”

  Mike gave a Red-Indian call and began to crawl out. The twins rose in a menacing fashion. He uttered a shrill yelp and ran.

  “Isn’t he heaven?” Lady Charles asked Roberta.

  “There’s the lift!” Colin ejaculated.

  “It’ll only be Mike t-taking a run down and up,” said Stephen. “I understand that Mike’s playing with the lift is rather unpopular.”

  “I bet it’s the bum,” said Colin. “Has Baskett been warned? I mean he may just lavishly show him in.”

  “If Baskett doesn’t know a bailiff’s man,” said Lord Charles warmly, “after having lived with us for fifteen years, he is a stupider fellow than I take him for.”

  “There’s the bell!” cried Lady Charles.

  “It’s all right,” said Henry. “It’ll only be Robin’s luggage.”

  “Thank heaven! Robin darling, you’d like to see your room, wouldn’t you? Frid, darling, show Robin her room. It’s too tiny and absurd, darling, but you won’t mind, will you? Actually it was meant for a hall, but Mike and Patch turned it into a sort of railway-station so we’re delighted to have it made sane again. I really must dress myself but I can’t resist waiting to hear the worst about the bum.”

  “Here’s Mike,” said Frid.

  Mike came back, still hopping on one leg, and singing:

  “Hallelujah, I’m a bum!

  Hallelujah, bum again!

  Hallelujah, give us a hand up to…”

  “Shut up,” said Stephen and Colin. “What do you mean? Is he there?”

  “Nope,” whispered Mike. “Only her luggage.”

  “Don’t say ‘her,’ ” said Stephen.

  Mike began to hop up and down in front of the twins singing:

  “Two, two, the lily-white boys,

  clothed all in green, oh.”

  Colin took him by the shoulders and Stephen seized his heels. They swung him to and fro and flung him, screaming with pleasure on the sofa.

  “Lily-white boys!” yelled Mike. “I bet she doesn’t know which is which. Do you?” He looked engagingly at Roberta. “Do you — Robin?”

  The twins turned to her, and raised their eyebrows.

  “Do you?” they asked.

  “I do when you speak,” said Roberta.

  “I hardly stammer at all, now,” said Stephen.

  “I know, but your voices are different, Stephen. And even if you didn’t speak I’d only have to look behind your ears.”

  “Oh,” said Mike, “It’s not fair. She knows the secret. Stephen’s old mole. Old mole-dy Stephen doesn’t wash behind his ears, yah, yah, yah!”

  “Let’s go to your room,” said Frid. “Mike’s turning mad dog, and the scare seems to be over.”

  II

  Roberta liked her room, which was in 26. As Lady Charles had told her it was really the entrance hall but heavy curtains had been hung across it making a passage, through which the others would have to go to reach the real passage and their bedrooms. Frid showed her the rest of 26 which was all bedrooms with Nanny Burnaby living in the ex-kitchen where she could make the cups of Ovaltine that she still forced the Lampreys to drink before they went to bed. Nanny was sitting by the electric stove which she had converted into a sort of bureau. Her hair had turned much greyer. Her face was netted over with lines as if, thought Roberta, each good or ill deed of the young Lampreys had left its sign on that one face alone. She had been playing patience and received Roberta exactly as if four days instead of four years had gone by since their last meeting.

  “Nanny,” said Frid, “things are gloomy. We’re up the spout again and there’s liable to be a bum at any moment.”

  “Some folk will do anything,” said Nanny darkly.

  “Well, I know, but I suppose they rather want their money.”

  “Well, his lordship had better pay them and be done with it.”

  “I’m afraid we haven’t got any money at the moment, Nan.”

  “Nonsense,” said Nanny.

  She looked at Roberta and said, “You don’t grow much, Miss Robin.”

  “No, Nanny. I rather think I’ve finished. I’m twenty now you know.”

  “Same age as Miss Frid and look how she’s shot up. You need nourishing.”

  “Nan,” said Frid. “Uncle Gabriel’s coming tomorrow.”

  “H’m,” said Nanny.

  “We hope he’ll pull us out of the soup.”

  “So he ought to with his own flesh and blood in need.”

  Henry looked in at the door. By the singular scowl Nanny gave him, Roberta saw that he was still the favourite.

  “Hullo, Mrs. Burnaby,” he said. “Have you heard the news? We’re in the soup.”

  “It’s not the first time, Mr. Henry, and it won’t be the last. His lordship’s brother will have to attend to it.”

  Henry looked fixedly at his old nurse. “If he doesn’t,” he said, “I think we’ll really go bust.”

  Nanny’s hands, big-jointed with rheumatism, made a quick involuntary movement.

  “You’ll be all right, Nan,” added Henry. “We fixed you up with an annuity, didn’t we?”

&nbs
p; “I’m not thinking of that, Mr. Henry.”

  “No. No, I don’t suppose you are. I was, though.”

  Nanny put on a pair of thick-lens spectacles and advanced upon Henry.

  “You put your tongue out,” she ordered.

  “Why on earth?”

  “Do as you’re told, Mr. Henry.”

  Henry put out his tongue.

  “I thought so. Come to me before you go to bed this evening. You’re bilious.”

  “What utter rot.”

  “You’ve always shown your liver in your spirits.”

  “Nanny!”

  “Talking a lot of rubbish about matters that are beyond your understanding. His other lordship will soon send certain people about their business.”

  “Meaning us?”

  “Stuff and nonsense. You know what I mean. Miss Robin, you’d better take a glass of milk with ypur lunch. You’re overexcited.”

  “Yes, Nanny,” said Roberta.

  Nanny returned to her game of patience.

  “The audience is over,” said Henry.

  “I’d better unpack,” said Roberta.

  “Leave out your pressings,” said Nanny. “I’ll do ’em.”

  “Thank you, Nanny,” said Roberta and went to her room.

  Now she was alone. The floor beneath her feet seemed unstable as though the sea, after five weeks’ domination, were not easily to be forgotten. It was strange to feel this physical reminder of an experience already so remote. Roberta unpacked. The clothes that she had bought in New Zealand no longer pleased her but she was too much preoccupied by the affairs of the Lampreys to be much concerned with her own. During the last four years, Roberta had passed through adolescence to womanhood..The emotional phases proper to those years had been interrupted by tragedy. Two months ago, when the languors and propulsions of adolescence had not yet quite abated, Roberta’s parents had been killed, and a kind of frost had closed about her emotions so that at first, though she felt the pain of her loss, it was with her reason rather than with her heart. Later, when the thaw came, she found that something unexpected had happened to her. Her affections, which had been easily and lightly bestowed, had crystallized, and she found herself indifferent to the greater number of her friends. With this discovery came another: that in four years her heart was still with an incredible family now half the world away. Her thoughts returned to Deepacres and she wanted the Lampreys. More than anyone else in the world she wanted them. They might be scatter-brained, unstable, reprehensible, but they suited Roberta and she supposed she suited them. When her father’s sister wrote to suggest that Roberta should come to England and live with her, Roberta was glad to go because, by the same mail, came a letter from Lady Charles Lamprey that awoke all her old love for the family. When it became certain that she would see them again she grew apprehensive lest they should find her an awkward carry-over from their colonial days, but as soon as she saw Henry and Frid on the wharf she had felt safer, and now, as she put the last of her un-smart garments in a drawer that already contained several pieces of a toy railway, she was visited by the odd idea that it was she who had grown so much older and that the young Lampreys had merely grown taller.

  “Otherwise,” thought Roberta, “they haven’t changed a bit.”

  The door opened and Lady Charles came in. She was now dressed. Her grey hair shone in a mass of small curls, her thin face was delicately powdered, and she looked and smelt delightful.

  “How’s old Robin Grey?” she asked.

  “Very happy.”

  Lady Charles turned on the electric heater, drew up a chair, sat in it, folded her short skirt back over her knees and lit a cigarette. Roberta recognized, with a warm sense of familiarity, the signs of an impending gossip.

  “I hope you won’t be too uncomfortable, darling,” said Lady Charles.

  “I’m in Heaven, Charlot darling.”

  “We do so wish we could have you for a long time. What are your plans?”.

  “Well,” said Roberta, “my aunt has offered very nicely to have me as a sort of companion, but I think I want a job, a real job, I mean. So, if she agrees, I’m going to try for a secretaryship in a shop, or, failing that, an office. I’ve learnt shorthand and typing.”

  “We must see what we can do. But of course you must have some fun first.”

  “I’d love some fun but I’ve only got a tiny bit of money. About £200 a year. So I’ve got to start soon.”

  “I must say I do think money’s awful,” said Lady Charles. “Here are we, practically playing mouth-organs and selling matches, and all because poor darling Charlie doesn’t happen to have a head for sums. I’m so dreadfully worried, Robin. It’s so hard for the children.”

  “Hard for you, too.”

  “Well, if we go bankrupt it’ll be rather uncomfortable. Charlie won’t be allowed on a race-course for one thing. There’s one comfort, he has paid his bookmaker. There’s something so second-rate about not paying your bookmaker and the things they do to you are too shaming.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “I think they call out your name at Sandown and beat with a hammer to draw everybody’s attention. Or is that only if you are a Mason? At any rate we needn’t dwell on it because it’s almost the only thing that is not likely to happen to us.”

  “But, Charlot, you’ve got over other fences.”

  “Nothing like this. This isn’t a fence; it’s a mountain.”

  “How did it all happen?”

  “My dear, how does one run into debt? It simply occurs, bit by bit. And you know, Robin, I have made such enormous efforts. The children have been wonderful about it. The twins and Henry have answered any number of advertisements and have never given up the idea that they must get a job. And they’ve been so good about their fun, enjoying quite cheap things like driving about England and staying at second-rate hotels and going to Ostend for a little cheap gamble instead of the Riviera where all their friends are. And Frid was so good-natured about her coming-out. No ball; only dinner and cocktail parties which we ran on sixpence. And now she’s going to this drama school and working so hard with the most appalling people. Of course the whole thing is the business of Charlie and the jewels. Don’t ask me to tell you the complete story, it’s too grim and involved for words to convey. The gist of it is that poor Charlie was to have this office in the City with buyers in the East and at places like the Galle Face Hotel at Colombo. He was in partnership with a Sir David Stein who seemed a rather nice second-rate little man, we thought. Well, it appears that they had a great orgy of paper-signing and no sooner was that over than Sir David blew out his brains.”

  “Why?”

  “It seems he was in deep water and one of his chief interests had crashed quite suddenly. It turned out that Charlie had to meet a frightful lot of bills because he was Sir David’s partner. So many that we hadn’t any money left to pay our own bills which had been mounting up a bit anyhow. And there’s no more coming in for six months. So there you are. Well, we must simply keep our heads and take the right line with Gabriel. Charlie wrote him a really charming telegram, just right, do you know? We took great trouble with it. Gabriel is at Deepacres and he hates coming up to London so we rather hoped he’d simply realize he couldn’t let Charlie go bust and would send him a cheque. However he telegraphed back: ‘ARRIVING FRIDAY. SIX O’CLOCK. WUTHERWOOD,’ which has thrown us all into rather a fever.”

  “Do you think it’ll be all right?” asked Roberta.

  “Well, it’s simply so crucial that we’re not thinking at all. Never jump your fences till you meet them. But I’m terribly anxious that we should take the right line with Gabriel. It’s a bore that Charlie loathes him so wholeheartedly.”

  “I don’t think he ever loathed anybody,” said Roberta.

  “Well, as far as he can, he hates Gabriel. Gabriel has always been rather beastly to him and thinks he’s extravagant. Gabriel himself is a miser.”

  “Oh dear!”

  �
��I know. Still he’s also a snob and I really don’t believe he’ll allow his brother to go bankrupt. He’d crawl with horror at the publicity. What we’ve got to do is decide on the line to take with Gabriel when he gets here. I thought the first thing was to consider his comfort. He likes a special kind of sherry, almost unprocurable, I understand, but Baskett is going to hunt for it. And he likes early Chinese pottery. Deepacres is full of leering goddesses and dragons. Well, by a great stroke of luck, one of the things poor Charlie bought with an eye to business is a small blue pot which was most frightfully expensive and which, in a mad moment, he paid for. I had the really brilliant idea of letting Mike give it to Gabriel. Mike has quite charming manners when he tries.”

  “But, Charlot, if this pot is so valuable, couldn’t you sell it?”

  “I suppose we could, but how? And anyway my cunning tells me that it’s much better to invest it as a sweetner for Gabriel. We’ve got to be diplomatic. Suppose the pot is worth a hundred pounds? My dear, we want two thousand. Why not use the pot as a sprat to catch a mackerel?”

  “Yes,” said Roberta dubiously, “but may he not think it looks a bit lavish to be giving away valuable pots?”

  “Oh, no,” said Lady Charles with an air of dismissal, “he’ll be delighted. And anyway if he flings it back in poor little Mike’s face, we’ve still got the pot.”

  “True,” said Roberta, but she felt that there was a flaw somewhere in Lady Charles’s logic.

  “We’ll all be in the drawing-room when he comes,” continued Lady Charles, “and I thought perhaps we might have some charades.”

  “What!”

  “I know it sounds mad, Robin, but you see he knows we’re rather mad and it’s no good pretending we’re not. And we’re all good at charades, you can’t deny it.”

  Roberta remembered the charades in New Zealand, particularly one that presented the Garden of Eden. Lord Charles, with his glass in his eye, and an umbrella over his head to suggest the heat of the day, had enacted Adam. Henry was the serpent and the twins angels. Frid had entered into the spirit of the part of Eve and had worn almost nothing but a brassiere and a brown-paper fig-leaf. Lady Charles had found one of the false beards that the Lampreys could always be depended upon to produce and had made a particularly irritable deity. Patch had been the apple tree.