The Firebird's Feather

by Marjorie Eccles

  Several hours had elapsed since then, and Kitty knew she ought not to keep dwelling on those first electrified few minutes. Or telling herself it hadn’t happened. But neither could she shut it out, the scene playing itself round and round in her head, like a needle stuck in the groove of a gramophone record. Aunt Ursula, collapsed on to the sofa … Bridget white as a ghost … Gaines, the shorter of the two men, standing aside and looking almost detached, and Inskip in his flashy suit …

  His sort especially didn’t make mistakes.

  ‘No, sir, no mistake, I’m afraid, sir,’ he’d said stoically when Papa seemed, like the rest of them, absolutely unable to take in what they had just been told. He had almost staggered, as if he’d been dealt a physical blow. ‘There’s no doubt the lady who was shot is Mrs Challoner.’

  ‘That, I am not disputing.’ Louis’s colour had become high and a pulse was beating in his temple. ‘A mistake on the part of the gunman was what I meant. A mistake, or downright carelessness – his target being something or someone else, which he missed.’

  ‘Quite possibly, sir,’ Inskip said woodenly, looking as though he didn’t believe that for a minute.

  ‘Who is this maniac? Why haven’t you caught him?’

  ‘He made his escape from the scene, sir, before anyone could reach him. Mr Villiers tried, as you know, but he was too late.’

  He had already told them this, and everything else they had found out about the accident, which hadn’t taken long because there was virtually nothing to tell. Kitty could only think it was this helpless feeling of being unable to comprehend how or why it had happened – especially why – that was making her father so angry; mild-mannered Papa who never lost his temper and was always polite to everyone. Perhaps it was because, like the rest of them, he just couldn’t accept something that simply didn’t make any sense at all. That Mama should have left the house this morning, happy, smiling and at ease, and that she, out of all those others riding near her, had had her life ended because of a careless shot by some unknown, cowardly person who ran away when he saw what he had done. Kitty didn’t believe the real hurt, the pain, had got through to her father by then, any more than it had to her. The pain would come later, when the possibility that such a calamity might actually be true began to sink in. Though even yet there was still the sense that it was all play-acting, that suddenly the curtain would fall and they would all come back into the real world where such things couldn’t possibly happen.

  ‘Are you ever likely to catch him?’ Papa had demanded, less heated but still in a sarcastic sort of voice that wasn’t his at all.

  ‘Our investigations have only just started, Mr Challoner,’ the other policeman, Gaines, intervened to remind him. Whereas Inskip had an Irish accent overlaid with Cockney, and that aggressive manner, Gaines was better spoken, even if not quite what Aunt Ursula would call ‘one of us’. He had so far kept mostly in the background, despite his seniority.

  ‘That hadn’t escaped my notice,’ Papa said, ‘any more than the fact of irresponsible persons being allowed to run around loose with guns, causing accidents. In a public place like Hyde Park, if you please, amongst women and children!’

  ‘Allowed? Hardly that, sir.’

  Inskip cut in impatiently, ‘Was it a regular thing for your wife to go riding in the Park, Mr Challoner?’

  ‘Yes. It’s not easy to find places to ride in London, so that was where she usually went.’

  ‘You didn’t accompany her, sir?’

  ‘I don’t ride nowadays. I had a hunting accident some years ago which has left me with a troublesome back – and a certain antipathy towards horses.’ It was his stock reply, usually delivered with a smile, but he was a long way from smiling then.

  He had never seen any necessity for owning a private carriage, except on occasions like this morning, when he’d been held up coming home from his club and had spoken of buying a motor car. Lydia’s chestnut mare, Persephone, and the little filly, Dulcinea, bought for Kitty when she became eighteen, were kept at livery, the only arrangement possible, considering where they lived. Mama rode, as often as possible, but although Dulcinea was a pretty, sweet-natured animal, and Kitty really loved her, she had lately been reluctant to accompany her mother, and got out of it as she had this morning, as well as she could without giving the impression that she had little interest in the generous present she had been given.

  ‘I see,’ was Inskip’s reply. ‘So it was Mr Villiers who usually escorted her?’

  ‘As a rule, yes.’ It had been an arrangement perfectly suited to Louis’s own lazy inclinations.

  ‘Do you own a gun, sir?’ Inskip asked abruptly.

  Kitty could see the sudden question was disconcerting, coming on top of the testy remarks Louis himself had made about the heedlessness of people with firearms, but after a moment he admitted that he did. ‘Of course I have a gun. It’s a sad reflection on our society that no one feels it wise to go out anywhere at night without one. But I’m not in the habit of taking indiscriminate pot-shots in a crowded place like Hyde Park.’

  His protests were beginning to sound pompous, a little forced, even to Kitty, but neither policeman made any further comment. They must have been more familiar than he was with all the arguments gentlemen put forward for carrying a small pocket pistol around with them, and perhaps even saw the sense in it: people emerging into the London streets late in the evening after dining out in restaurants or private houses, or visiting theatres, especially if they looked prosperous, were easy targets for thieves and pickpockets taking the chance to assault and rob. It was only common sense to be equipped with a weapon as self-defence, the threat of which was enough to serve as a deterrent to any would-be criminal. You could buy them almost anywhere, over the counter. She knew her father had bought the gun only last month, because he had showed it to them when he brought it home, and explained its workings, while stressing the importance of it being kept unloaded and locked up. He had even urged Mama to have one, too, to carry in her handbag. Many ladies were doing so, he said, since the terrific scare created not two or three months ago, when that sensational gun battle and siege, something unheard of in England before that, had taken place and rocked the nation.

  ‘But that was between the police and criminals in the East End,’ Mama had smiled. ‘No, Louis, I would rather face being attacked than carry such a lethal weapon about my person.’

  He had told her she was being foolish but he hadn’t pressed the point.

  ‘May we see your gun, Mr Challoner?’ Gaines was enquiring quietly now.

  ‘Certainly,’ he said stiffly. It took some moments before the strangeness of the request struck home, and not only to Louis. ‘But why?’

  The scent of the lilacs that had smelt so delicious that morning wafting into the room from the square garden felt all at once quite sickly and overpowering. Small wonder that Ursula, sitting on the very edge of a sofa, indomitable Aunt Ursula, suddenly gave a little moan and sank back in a swoon. Bridget dropped to the floor beside the sofa, holding her hand, and as she struggled to sit up, pressed her back, wafting a smelling bottle under her nose, bringing tears to her eyes with its ammoniac vapours. ‘Lie still for a few moments, Mother, and you’ll be all right.’ Though Bridget herself looked far from all right, almost ready to copy her mother and faint away.

  ‘Mr Challoner?’ Gaines extended his hand towards the door.

  ‘Very well, if you must.’ Louis threw a glance at his sister but the smelling salts were reviving her. He had no option but to lead the way into his study.

  Kitty followed before anyone could forbid it. Her father didn’t notice until they were actually at the study doorway. When he saw her he blinked, as if he had momentarily forgotten he had ever had a daughter, and for a moment it seemed as if he were about to send her away. ‘Please, Papa!’ The thought of her father, too, going out of her sight even for a few moments gave Kitty a sick, lost feeling.

  ‘Perhaps you might be better staying with
your aunt, Miss Challoner,’ Gaines advised, not unkindly.

  ‘Kitty shall stay here, if she wishes.’

  Inskip looked about to protest but Gaines said, ‘Very well.’ To Inskip, he gave a small shake of the head.

  They all went into the study. Kitty perched uneasily on the edge of a chair, but Louis stood stock still in the middle of the room, looking around as if he suddenly found himself in a strange place.

  ‘The gun, if you please,’ Inskip reminded him.

  The watch and chain draped across the mound of his pin-striped waistcoat held his gold half-hunter suspended in one pocket, his keys in the other. His hands were steady as he selected a key and unlocked the safe. He stood for so long looking into it with his back to everyone that Kitty began to fear something was wrong. Then without turning round, he said, in a flat, dead sort of voice, ‘Well, it’s not here.’ He began to shuffle things in the safe around. Finally, he faced the room again. ‘It’s not there.’

  ‘When did you last see it?’ Inskip asked sharply, exchanging glances with Gaines.

  Louis rubbed his forehead. ‘Last week? Yes, it must have been last week. I don’t have occasion to open the safe much.’

  ‘Is there anything else missing?’

  ‘No,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Her pearls, her other jewellery, everything is still there.’

  ‘Who else has access to the safe?’

  ‘No one. There is only one key and it stays here, on my watch chain, always.’ He frowned. ‘The safe must have been tampered with. There can be no other explanation.’

  ‘And who do you suggest might have done that?’

  That was an argument which even Kitty could see had no answer. After a moment, Louis spread his hands helplessly.

  While Kitty … An image of the missing pendant-cross from her mother’s jewellery box had flown instantly into her mind. But even in the highly unlikely event of a burglar getting into the house, creeping around undetected and somehow opening the safe and stealing the gun, it was beyond all logic that he would also steal such an old-fashioned and relatively worthless piece as the cross, while leaving behind jewellery worth thousands of pounds. Even supposing he had known where it was to be found. It had never been kept in the safe. The obvious explanation for it not being with the other ambers was certainly that Mama had simply decided to put it somewhere else and forgotten about it. She was often careless with her possessions and chronically absent-minded.

  ‘If you haven’t opened the safe for some time, Mr Challoner, I assume you don’t always take the gun out with you?’ Gaines asked.

  ‘Not in broad daylight!’

  For a moment or two there was silence, and then Inskip asked where he had been that morning. They listened without saying anything as he explained about being at his club and why he’d been late home for lunch because of the man who’d been taken ill.

  ‘Your club is in St James’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The sergeant wrote something down and then as Gaines stood up, he followed suit. Kitty thought it was all over, until Gaines said, ‘Perhaps, Miss Challoner, you should return to be with your aunt now. Mr Challoner, I must ask you to come down to the Yard with us. To complete the formalities, you understand.’

  Four

  Britannia Voice was a young, small, independent newspaper, one of the many publications which saw themselves as a weapon in the class war. Strongly anti-capitalist, it was dedicated to raising the consciousness of the British working people, encouraging strikes for better pay and working conditions, for shorter hours. To a certain extent, like most of the other radical newspapers which abounded, it was modelled on the thriving and popular anarchist paper, Freedom. Jonathan Devenish had been the editor of – and so far the main contributor to – the Voice from its inception, which had coincided with the time he had been sent down from Cambridge and was kicking around, looking for something to occupy his restless mind that would fit in with his political beliefs.

  He was working in the office, even though it was Sunday, on a knotty article that wouldn’t come right, when the telephone rang. He answered absently, words and phrases still buzzing around in his head, and found it difficult to make sense of the jumbled, hiccuping sounds issuing from the telephone. ‘Mother, I can’t understand what you’re saying. Are you crying?’ His mother, crying?

  She started again, but even so it was difficult to get a coherent statement from her – Ursula was never the most collected of persons at the best of times – but at last he more or less understood what she was telling him, though he wondered if he might temporarily have taken leave of his wits and simply imagined she had said that Lydia – his Aunt Lydia, had been killed, in an accident, but Marcus was all right and so were the horses and—

  ‘I’m coming right over.’

  ‘Oh, Jon, darling, I knew you would. We’re all at sixes and sevens here. I’ll expect you within half an hour – don’t walk,’ she said, finding firmness. If possible, he was even more vague about time than Lydia, and it was his passion to walk everywhere, covering miles with his long legs, getting to know the streets, nooks and corners of the capital as well as he knew those of Cambridge and the Kentish lanes and byways round their home, Southfields.

  ‘I’ll take a taxi-cab, Mother. I’ll be there as soon as possible.’

  When he arrived at Egremont Gardens the bell had scarcely finished ringing before the door was thrown open – not by a servant, but by his mother. This in itself was evidence of her distress; she had clearly been sitting there in the hall, right beside the door, waiting for him. ‘I wanted to tell you what happened before you saw Kitty,’ she explained hurriedly. ‘The poor child doesn’t need to hear it all over again. Thank God, thank God you’re here, Jon!’

  He put his arms round her and held her soft, plump body close. She was trembling, and raised a tearstained face that was wretched with shock and fear. ‘Oh, Jon, they’ve taken Louis!’

  ‘Who has? Who’s taken Uncle Louis?’

  ‘The police.’

  ‘What?’ He stared at her. ‘You don’t mean they’ve arrested him?’

  ‘Do keep your voice down, darling!’ she whispered, looking over her shoulder, her own voice agitated. ‘No, I don’t think that’s what they’ve done but … to tell the truth, I don’t know why they asked him to go with them, I simply don’t know. My dear, it’s so good you’re here.’ She touched his cheek, white with a shock that mirrored hers. ‘One so needs a man in the family at times like this – and I didn’t know who else!’

  While not flattered by the implication that he had been called in as a last resort, Jon understood what she meant. She and his Uncle Louis, separated in age by only a couple of years, alike in many ways – conventional, with a similar outlook on life – had always been close, especially since Jon’s own father died. Now, suddenly, Louis was not there. There were two other Challoner brothers: Barnabus, who had taken himself off to Australia and ran a sheep farm there; and their eldest brother Henry, who farmed in the wilds of Shropshire, a big, bluff man with three equally big, bluff sons, none of whom had any conversation whatsoever – unless it happened to be about horses, and the owning, riding, hunting, racing or breeding thereof. Henry had never been to Ursula what Louis was, and in any case, Ludlow was a hundred and fifty miles away. All the same, she must have been desperate to call on Jon. He felt even more helpless and inadequate now than he usually did when faced with family situations.

  ‘Mother, I think you had better try and tell me exactly what happened, don’t you?’

  ‘I wish I could,’ she answered distractedly, ‘but it’s all such a dreadful muddle. It must have been a mistake, but no one seems to know exactly … not even Marcus.’ She looked over her shoulder again. It was a large, roomy hall, cool in summer, warm in winter, with comfortable seats in corners where one could hold a private conversation, but she still seemed wary of being overheard. ‘Come into the dining room, it’s the only place where we can be private.’

&nbs
p; ‘Where’s Kitty?’

  ‘In the drawing room. With Bridget and Miss Drax.’

  ‘Hester Drax? Oh, Lord.’

  ‘She’s being very sensible, Jon.’

  ‘No doubt.’ All the same, he thought Miss Drax the last person Kitty would want around her at a time like this. She was so attached to Lydia she was quite likely to be almost as upset as Kitty herself. But at least Kitty had Bridget with her and Bridget, cool and not the sort to stand any nonsense, could be relied upon to fend off anything inappropriate Miss Drax might say or do.

  Ursula drew him into the dining room, where it was cool and dark, where the blinds had been lowered against the sun. There were cut-glass decanters of spirits and sherry, and some red wine left over from lunch on the sideboard. Jon decided it wouldn’t be amiss to help himself to a glass of his uncle’s brandy. ‘You’d better have one, too, Mother,’ he said as he poured it, but she shook her head.

  They sat opposite each other across the expanse of polished mahogany. ‘Oh dear, to think that we were all sitting here at this table, chatting, eating Cook’s delicious apple pie, though we couldn’t think what was keeping them, when all the time—’ Ursula’s voice broke as she recalled the slight strain in the atmosphere, the frisson of uneasiness – and especially when she remembered her own annoyance with Lydia – that grew as the clock moved on and she still didn’t appear. ‘We’d decided to go ahead, you see, and have lunch. Not very well mannered, especially when she was to bring Marcus, but … time was going on and … well, we all know how little time matters to her, don’t we? Though it was unusual even for her to be so very late.’

  ‘This Marcus. Who is he?’

  ‘Darling, you know Marcus Villiers! He escorts her everywhere.’ She tightened her lips. She had always known this – friendship – of Lydia’s with Marcus Villiers was unwise, although it was she herself who had been responsible for introducing them. She blamed herself for it. People had made assumptions. Wrongly, Ursula was sure, knowing her sister-in-law. Lydia had evidently been pleased that a young man was taking an interest in her, but in an amused, teasing sort of way, almost but not quite flirting. Although that, too, was dangerous. ‘She was out riding with him in the Row … you do know him, poor boy …’