“The policemen?” he asked.
Lady Hassocks nodded her head and put her finger to her mouth in a naive way, as one would caution a child to silence. Poiret smiled.
“How many?”
“Ten, relieved every six hours.”
“That, it makes forty men, who we do not know, walking around the house each day.”
“Not unknown,” she replied. “Police!”
“Yet, in spite of them, the inspector, he has told to Poiret that you had the affair of the bouquet in the room of Monsieur Hassocks.”
“No, there were only three then. It’s since the affair of the bouquet that there have been ten.”
“It did not help. It is since the ten that you have had...”
“What?” she demanded anxiously.
“You know well, Madame, the floor.”
“Shhh!”
She glanced at the door, watching the frozen policeman looking at the setting sun.
“No one knows that, not even my husband.”
“Monsieur Watkins, he has told this to Poiret. Then it is you, who has arranged for the ten policemen?”
“Certainly.”
“Bon! We must commence by sending all policemen away.”
Lady Hassocks grasped his hand, astounded.
“Surely you don’t think of doing such a thing as that!”
“Bien sur! We must know where the threat, it is coming from. We have four different groups of people here, the police, the domestics, your friends and your family. We must remove the police first. They must not be permitted to enter your door. Madame, you have seen that they have not been able to protect you.”
“But you don’t know the admirable policemen of Inspector Watkins. These brave men have given proof of their devotion.”
“Madame, if Poiret, he was face to face with the assassin the first thing he would ask to himself it would be, “Is he one of the police?” The first thing Poiret, he would ask in the presence of an agent of your police, it is, “Is he not the assassin?”
“But they will not wish to go.”
“Please to call the sergeant of the policemen.”
Lady Hassocks walked into the salon and signaled. The man, who was looking at the sunset, appeared. Poiret took his arm and moved him into a corner. He whispered something. The sergeant frowned and shook his head. Poiret took a letter from his pocket and handed it to him, which the other read.
“Please to gather your men together and leave the mansion,” ordered Poiret. “You must return to the police headquarters. Please to tell to Inspector Watkins that Poiret, he has commanded this and that he requires all policemen around the mansion to be suspended until he gives further orders.”
The man nodded then looked at Lady Hassocks, but receiving no orders he shrugged.
“At your service.”
He went out.
“Wait here a moment,” urged Lady Hassocks, whose anxiety was painful to see.
She disappeared after the policeman. Poiret looked through the window and saw her walking after the sergeant. The latter stopped walking and turned around. They talked for a few moments. Poiret couldn’t hear them. He smiled as he guessed what was said from Lady Hassocks’s gestures and the policeman’s reddening face. A few moments afterwards she returned. She appeared agitated.
“I beg your pardon,” she murmured, “but I cannot let them go like this. They are angry and disappointed. They insist on knowing where they have failed in their duty.”
Poiret dit not respond immediately.
“Madame, please to tell to Poiret all that was said. You have asked the sergeant not to go far away, but to remain near the mansion so as to watch it as closely as possible.”
She reddened.
“It’s true. But they have gone, nevertheless. He said they had to obey you. What was in the letter you showed him?”
Poiret took the letter out of his pocket. When he opened it, Lady Hassocks could see that it was covered with seals. Lady Hassocks read aloud, “Order to all police officials in surveillance of Mr. Stephen Hassocks to obey the bearer. The Prime Minister.”
“How is this possible!” murmured Lady Hassocks. “He would never have given you this letter, if he had imagined that you would use it to dismiss the policemen.”
“Perhaps, Madame, but Poiret, he has not asked him for his advice.”
“Meanwhile, who’s going to watch over my husband?” she cried.
Poiret took her hands. They were trembling. He saw her suffering. He pitied her. He wished to give her some confidence.
“Madame, you and Poiret, we will protect your husband,” he said.
She saw his clear eyes, so deep, so intelligent, the round head, the willing face, all his eagerness and it reassured her. Poiret waited for what she might say. She said nothing. She smiled at him.
In the dining room it was Christian Cooper’s turn to tell hunting stories. He was the biggest wool-merchant in England. He owned immense warehouses in Liverpool. He loved Stephen Hassocks as a brother. Once he had saved Hassocks from a wild boar that was about to crush his skull. Cooper killed the wild boar with a single bullet from his rifle. Close ties were knit between the two families by this occurrence and though Cooper was neither noble-born nor sophisticated, Hassocks considered him his brother. He had a massive body, which was fat. His face was oily. His neck was one a bull would be proud of. His paunch was ample.
He had left his business and his family as soon as he had learned of the last assassination attempt, to come and remain by the side of his friend. He had done this after each attack, without forgetting one. He was a faithful friend.
Now he seemed worried, because they might not go hunting as before. “Where,” he asked, “are there any wild boars remaining in England? Or trees for that matter. What you can call trees, growing since the days of the Tudors, giant trees that throw their shade right up to the very edge town? Where are such things nowadays?”
Cooper was funny that way, because it was he, who had cut most of the trees away to create room for his sheep to graze.
“And besides,” he continued, “who nowadays has time for hunting? All the big game is so far away. One is lucky enough if one has the time to bring down a brace of grouse early in the morning.”
At this point in Cooper’s speech there was a murmur of talk among the cheerful gentlemen, because they had all the time in the world at their disposal and they didn’t understand why he didn’t. Wine was flowing like a river when Poiret was brought in by Lady Hassocks.
The arms manufacturer, whose eyes had been on the door for some time, cried at once, as though responding to a cue, “Ah, my dear Poiret! I have been looking for you. Our friends wrote me you were coming to Folkestone.”
Poiret hurried over to him and they shook hands like friends, who meet after a long separation. The consulting detective was presented to the company as a close friend from Paris, whom they had enjoyed so much during their last visit to the City of Light. They inquired for the latest news from Paris.
“How is everybody at Maxim’s?” asked a drunk John Colliver.
Cooper, too, had been once in Paris and he returned with an enthusiastic liking for the French ladies.
“Your women, sir,” he said, appearing very amiable and leaning on each word, with a guttural emphasis as was common in Yorkshire, “they are women!”
Lady Hassocks tried to silence him, but Cooper insisted on his right to appreciate the fair sex away from home. He had a turgid, sentimental wife, always weeping and cramming her religious notions down his throat.
Of course someone asked Poiret what he thought of Folkestone. He had just opened his mouth to reply when John Colliver closed it by interrupting him.
“Allow me! You newcomers, what do you know of it? You need to have lived a long time and in all its districts to appreciate Folkestone at its true value. Folkestone, my dear sir, is as yet a closed book to you.”
“Naturellement,” Poiret answered, smiling.
“Well, well, here’s your health! What I would point out to you first of all is your wine is the best wine, eh?” He showed Poiret a huge grin. “The hardest drinker I ever knew was born in Corsica. Did you know him, Stephen? Poor man. He died two years ago. He wagered at the end of a banquet that he could drink a glassful of wine to the health of each man there. There were sixty. He began going around the table and the business went splendidly up to the fifty-eighth man. But at the fifty-ninth the wine ran out! That poor, that charming, that excellent Jacques Rossi asked for a glass of wine. He wished number fifty-nine a long life, drained the glass in one draught and had just time to murmur, “Chateau Lafite, 1907,” and fell back dead! Ah, he knew his wine, my word! He proved it to his last breath! Your health, Monsieur!”
Colliver emptied the glass in this mouth.
“Wine, Stephen! Vive la France, Monsieur! Kimberley, my child, you must sing something. Ian will accompany you on the piano. Your father will enjoy it.”
All eyes turned toward Kimberley as she rose. Poiret was struck by her beauty. That was his first impression. It was an impression so strong it astonished him. Kimberley was twenty. Heavy brown curls circled her forehead. The rest of her hair was pulled back around her ears, which were hidden partially. Her profile was sharply-cut. Her mouth was strong and revealed between red, firm lips the pearliness of her teeth. She was of medium height. In walking she had the free, light step of the highborn young women, who in medieval times were said to touch the flowers as they walked without crushing them. But all her natural grace seemed to be concentrated in her eyes, which were deep and of a dark blue. The impression she made on Poiret was instant. It was difficult for him to remain calm and he had been forced to hide the look in his eyes, when she was introduced to him by bowing deeply and kissing her hand.
Kimberley stood next to the piano and waited for Ian to begin. He began with some sad preliminary chords.
“What shall I sing?” she inquired, taking her father’s hand from the back of the sofa, where he rested and kissing it with the tenderness befitting a daughter.
“Improvise,” said the arms manufacturer. “Maybe something French for the sake of our guest.”
“Oh, yes,” cried Ian. “Improvise as you did the other evening.”
He immediately struck a minor chord.
Kimberley looked fondly at her father as she sang. Her voice was sweet and the charm of it subtly pervasive. The words as she uttered them seemed to move all, except for Adam Ashby, the doctor, whom Poiret appraised as a man with a hard heart, not open to sentiment.
“Kimberley sang like an angel,” said Ian, in a quivering voice, after the song ended.
“Like an angel, Ian. But I don’t understand the choice of song, whishing your father a good night.” Adam spoke roughly as he drained his glass.
“A young woman may wish her father a pleasant sleep, surely!” said Lady Hassocks, with a certain good sense. “Kimberley has affected us all, hasn’t she, Stephen?”
“Yes, she made me weep,” declared the arms manufacturer, touching the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand. “But let us have wine to cheer us up. Our friend here may think we are as moody as our weather.”
“Mais non, Monsieur,” said Poiret. “Mademoiselle has touched Poiret deeply as well. She is the poet, the great chansonniere.”
“Hear! Hear!” said Colliver.
Ian began playing a popular song on the piano. First the others hummed a little, later they shouted in a rousing chorus. Poiret looked around amusedly and saw these big children, who amused themselves with unbelievable naiveté and who drank in a fashion more unbelievable still.
Lady Hassocks had been smoking cigarettes incessantly. She rose to make a hurried round of the rooms and after having asked the servants to be watchful, she sat down next to Poiret, who didn’t move, but caught every word, every gesture of each one there. Finally, sighing, she went to Hassocks and asked him how his leg felt.
In a corner Adam and Kimberley were deep in conversation and Ian watched them with obvious jealousy, still strumming the piano. But the thing that struck Poiret most was the mild face of the arms manufacturer. He had not imagined the old war hawk with so paternal and sympathetic an expression. The newspapers had printed pictures of him, but the art of photography had shown him as an industrialist, who knew no pity. Such images were in perfect harmony with the man, whose stubborn refusal to negotiate had sent so many workers to hospital as a result of the police crackdown that it was hardly able to harbor all their broken bodies. There were seven days of terrible battle with nothing but wounds or burnings, until according to the newspapers Lady Hassocks and her stepdaughter, Kimberley had fallen on their knees before the arms manufacturer and begged him for generosity of heart for his workers. He refused.
“War is war,” had been his answer, with irrefutable logic. “How can you ask for mercy for these men, who never give it? If I had only myself to consider,” the arms manufacturer had said to an American journalist, “I could have been gentle as a lamb with these unfortunates. They would not now have condemned me to death. I fail to see what they have against me. I am only serving my country. Besides after the fighting, it was the police, who ferreted out the ones, who had hidden under their mothers’ skirts. Everybody talks of uncivilized repression of workers’ rights in Britain, but I’m not a monster and I, too, have the feelings of a husband and a father. Tell your readers that.”
What stupefied Poiret was the fact that though he was threatened with assassination, he appeared to tranquilly enjoy his life. When he wasn’t laughing with his friends he was talking with his wife and daughter, who adored him. He seemed perfectly happy. With his enormous paunch, his ruddy color, his piercing eyes, he looked the part of a patriarch.
The consulting detective observed all these widely different types while standing near a table laden with food quenching his ravenous appetite.
Later when Lady Hassocks turned to speak to the detective, she was surprised at not seeing him. She went out into the patio and looked. She didn’t dare to call him. She walked into the salon and saw the consulting detective just as he came out of the sitting room.
“Where were you?” she inquired.
“The sitting room, it is certainly charming and decorated exquisitely,” complimented Poiret. “It looks almost like the boudoir.”
“It does serve as a boudoir for my stepdaughter, whose bedroom opens directly from it. You can see the door there.”
“Is your dog the trained watchdog, Madame?” asked Poiret, caressing the beast, which had followed her into the room.
“Diablo is faithful and he has guarded us well hitherto.”
“Hitherto, Madame?”
“Till now. Inspector Watkins has him shut in the cottage to keep him from devouring one of the policemen, who keep watch in the garden at night. I wanted him to sleep in the house or even by his master’s door, but Watkins said, “No, no dog. Don’t rely on the dog. Nothing is more dangerous than to rely on the dog.” Since then he has kept Diablo locked up at night.”
“Inspector Watkins, he is correct,” said the consulting detective, avoiding eye contact. “Dogs, they are useful only against the strangers.”
“Oh,” gasped the woman, dropping her eyes. “Watkins certainly knows his business. He thinks of everything.”
Poiret looked in her eyes.
“Promise me,” she added quickly, as though to hide her anxiety, “not to leave like that without letting me know. Come, they want you in the dining room.”
“Madame, you must tell to Poiret about the murder attempt.”
“In the dining room!” she cried then sighed. She continued in a low voice, “In spite of myself I’m not able to leave my husband by himself while he’s on the ground floor.”
She pulled Poiret into the dining room, where the gentlemen were now telling jokes amid loud laughter. Kimberley was still talking with Adam. Ian, whose eyes never left them, was as pale as the keys on his piano, which h
e struck violently from time to time. Lady Hassock made Poiret sit on the sofa, near her.
Counting on her fingers like a careful housewife, who does not wish to overlook anything in her domestic calculations, she said, “There have been three attempts. The first two up North. The first happened very simply. My husband knew he had been condemned to death by the Communists. They had hung revolutionary posters at the factory that night in which they proclaimed their intent. So Stephen, who was just about to inspect the factory, dismissed his police escort. I was scared and asked what he was going to do. He said he was going to drive quietly through all parts of the city, in order to show the workers that he wasn’t to be intimidated. It was nearly four o’clock, toward the end of a winter day that had been clear and bright, but very cold. I wrapped myself in my furs and took my seat beside him and he said, “This is fine, Lady Hassocks. This will have a great effect on these imbeciles.” So we began. At first we drove along the main street. The car drove like the wind. My husband hit the driver in the back, crying, “Slower, fool. They will think we’re afraid,” and so the car was almost walking when, passing behind the Church and the intercession, we reached the factory. Until then the few passersby had looked at us and as they recognized him, hurried along to keep him in view. At the factory gate there was only a little knot of women buying groceries. As soon as these women saw us and recognized my husband, they dispersed like a flock of crows. Stephen laughed so hard that his laugh seemed to shake the stones of the buildings. I felt reassured, sir. Stephen said, “Ah, they give me a wide berth. They don’t know how much I love them.”
“As we were talking pleasantly the gate was opened. We heard explosions in the distance and the firing of a revolver. I threw myself on my husband as the car drove away as fast as possible. We returned to our mansion. It was quite dark by then. At the entrance we were shot at by a group of communists, who appeared suddenly in two cars and disappeared in the darkness so fast that they couldn’t be caught. My husband was not hurt that time. That was the first attempt, but it was fighting in the open. It was some days later that they began to try murder inside our house.”
English Rose (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 13) Page 2