“It’s no longer done, Ricky. Those who know prefer good sherry. There’s a bottle of old golden on the buffet in the other room. Help yourself if there’s any left. That’s Albert’s only fault; he has a palate.”
“It’s always expensive in a servant and ruinous in a guest,” added Ricardo as he left the room. Returning with a bottle and glasses, he placed them on the table.
“Have you read what the papers have to say about this shooting mystery, Ricky?” asked Vereker, glancing up from the cuttings on the table to which he had suddenly returned.
“I devoured the Daily Report’s account. Their crime reporter’s style’s so good I never buy a thriller nowadays.”
“Geordie Stewart, their editor, asked me this morning to go down to Nuthill on their behalf. He remembered my private work on the Bygrave case. Besides, I once met Sutton Armadale, who practically owned the Report. He bought one of my pictures some time ago. I had a standing invitation to Vesey Manor to see his little gallery of French painters. I’ve always been going to run down. He has a couple of Marchains and a Montezin I’d like very much to see.”
“That’s most convenient. I shall have the flat all to myself. I must get on with my new serial. About that baggage of mine, can you see your way clear—?”
“How much do you owe your landlady?”
“I’ve got to pay her three guineas in lieu of a week’s notice.”
“You’re fairly up to date, then? Astounding, Ricky! And the guv’nor’s cheque, isn’t that due shortly?”
“What a pestilential memory you’ve got, Algernon! Yes, it is, but I’ve earmarked that amount for out of pocket—”
“Don’t trouble to explain, Ricky. What’s the lady’s name this time?”
“Laura Hardinge. You know the Hardinges. I always think Laura’s such a beautiful name.”
“So did Petrarch, I believe. To return to the world, here’s a tenner. Go and get your baggage and come back without divagation, as Thackeray would have put it. Your camping here while I’m down in the country’ll suit me down to the ground. You’ll be handy if I want you to ferret out any information up at this end. If I remember well, you were rather useful once before.”
“Useful? Useful? My services were of paramount importance in the Bygrave case. Damned fine mess you’d have made of it without me! As you know, my forte is shadowing. I can follow your man into the most expensive pleasure resorts with the greatest of skill. Thanks for the tenner. I hope repayment by instalments won’t inconvenience you. The only thing I liked about Eric was the little by little business.”
Vereker was lost in thought for some moments.
“Look here, Ricky, if I leave another twenty quid in my bureau to be used for emergencies will you promise—?”
“Never, Algernon, never! You positively must not! For me every moment is an emergency. If you think your commission will run me into expenses, wire the cash with the commission. My whole life’s a kind of post-dated cheque. In money matters you might truthfully say I’ve always been before my time.”
“Very well, should the need arise I’ll wire the money. What do you say to lunch?”
“I always say yes, emphatically! You see, I’ve been on a breakfast and dinner basis for weeks with a drink of water at midday. Water won’t stay put.”
“Then we will lunch at Jacques. You remember Jacques?”
“I never forget a good eating-house or remember a bad debt. I’ve been to Jacques occasionally since you introduced me to the place. In fact, I’m quite friendly with the sommelier. I used to take Edmée there for dinner.”
“Edmée? Who the devil’s Edmée?”
“Edmée Cazas. I was very much in love with Edmée.”
“French, I suppose. Where did you pick her up?”
“My dear Algernon, you’ve assumed an expression as if you’d just encountered a bad smell. I don’t pick up women; they always forestall me. I was introduced to Edmée by Aubrey Winter, if you’d like to know. Aubrey was also in love with her. A very high-spirited filly she is, and neither Aubrey nor I had the hands.”
For a few seconds Vereker was silent, and then, bringing his right fist with a report into the open palm of his left hand, exclaimed dramatically:
“Now I’ve got her!”
“Well, I’m damned, Algernon! You sly dog! Still, you’re welcome to her and have my sympathy.”
“You misunderstand me, Ricky ; I mean that I’ve placed the lady.”
“Sorry! I thought you’d misplaced your affections.”
“No, with me that would be a tragedy; with you, it has simply become a bad habit.”
“That’s the natural evolution of tragedies, Algernon, but in what connection have you placed Edmée Cazas?”
“She was one of the guests staying down at Vesey Manor, Sutton Armadale’s place in Surrey. Do you know anything about her?”
“Quite a lot! By profession she’s a ballerina, by nature a Bacchante, behaves like a Begum, Belgian nationality, born in Britain, a bewitching brunette—in fact, she’s everything beginning with a b except a bore or a Beguine!”
“Ricky, I see you’re going to be helpful. Can you tell me how long she has known the Armadales?”
“She got to know them last year at Nice. The Armadales had taken a Villa there for the season. Aubrey Winter—he’s Angela Armadale’s cousin—was among the guests. Aubrey was painfully in love with Edmée—at the sonnet-writing stage, if you understand.”
“I thought that stage was a sort of afterglow.”
With a poet, yes, but Aubrey’s merely a part of a motor-car, a Bentley spare, you might say. Well, Edmée was taken into the bosom of the family, chiefly Sutton’s. The result was catastrophic. I don’t know whether I should tell you the details. I got them from Aubrey.”
“In confidence?”
“Not exactly. He poured out his tale of woe to every one patient enough to listen. Besides, to tell me anything in confidence would be as foolish as putting a burglar in command of the Bank Guard. You see it concerns Edmée, and I’m very fond of her.”
“I thought Laura Hardinge was in the ascendant at the moment.”
“I know, I know, but Edmée’s not an ordinary woman, Algernon; she’s a relapsing fever. She gets into your blood. You take an injection of common sense and you think you’re cured. You even begin to look happy, and then without the slightest warning you’re as bad as ever again. I may have a relapse at any moment.”
“And Laura’s an alternating fever, I suppose.”
“No, no, she’s too sweet for that. She’s almost a convalescence.”
“Well, never mind. I’m discretion itself, Ricky. You can trust me with the details; they’ll go no further.”
“Then let’s begin at the beginning. It’s just a little over two years ago since Sutton Armadale married Angela Daunay. She had been the loveliest debutante of her year, so every one said. It’s a relative kind of compliment as a rule; the standard’s so low. Still, every one would call Angela beautiful, I think, beautiful with a noli-me-tangere face. Flaxen hair, blue eyes, complexion of milk and roses. Not my colouring; I’ve always disliked Dresden Shepherdesses since I broke one of my mother’s treasures as a small boy. There’s one thing, however; Angela’s a thoroughbred. ‘Fruity’ Fanshaugh says she has the most perfect pasterns he has ever seen. Everything about Angela is fine; it’s an overpowering quality in some women. I’m rather afraid of her, to tell the truth. One glance from her turns me from a baboon into a courtier. About his first wife I don’t know very much. A very estimable person, I believe, but not quite out of the top drawer. She was fourteen stone and always dressed as if she weighed seven. Had a bourgeois taste in jewellery and wore it like a publican’s wife. I’ve seen her enter a room caparisoned like a durbar elephant. But she was an amiable, kind-hearted soul with a Family Herald streak in her mental make-up. I think her favourite author was Berta Ruck. Anyway, Sutton was very happy with her and was very cut up when she died. He knew her and und
erstood her; he’d got the feel of her as one does of a favourite stick. Now, like many successful business men, Sutton had no insight where women were concerned. He met Angela Daunay, liked her streamline, knew she was a top-notcher as far as birth was concerned, and thought she’d put the right cachet on his wealth. Nobody thought Angela would look twice at him. But there’s something about these financiers that’s inexplicably, almost spookishly magnetic. I’ve a theory that it’s the secret of their success. Angela, to everybody’s surprise, accepted him. I was going to say jumped at him, but it would be wrong. She accepted him with about the same enthusiasm as royalty accepts a large donation to a charity. She was glad but impersonally glad. She had accepted him as if he were going to be a pleasant adjunct to her dignity and comfort—more of a rich fur coat than a husband. Sutton’s second excursion, if rumour speaks the truth, was unfortunate. In less than six months they were cold soup to one another. Edmée says they ought to have taken a warning during their engagement when they found they couldn’t dance well together. ‘Their vital rhythms varied,’ were her words, and I dare say lasting love’s only a matter of good timing. In any case, there was a big disparity in their ages. Sutton was forty-eight and Angela twenty years younger.”
“There’s not much in that, Ricky; the woman usually makes up for it in intelligence. Intelligence is to experience what art is to craftsmanship.”
“But Angela, like many aristocrats, isn’t intelligent. With her the delightful capriciousness, the eagerness and glow of vulgar life have hardened into the glitter of good taste and perfect manners. She’s a human crystal. She was brought up in the later feudal tradition of romantic love. In your own language, Vereker, she has been painted in the neo-classic style. At forty-eight, Sutton had outgrown his illusions, but he was stupid enough to give them lip service and always enacted a preposterous make-believe. His was one of those rather undeveloped minds that always think they ought to illuminate their sexual emotions with strings of fairy lamps. However, when the newly married couple discovered that they didn’t live in the same street they were both very amiable about it. Sutton was too indifferent and Angela too polished to quarrel. Figuratively, Sutton sought the Garden of Eden, and Angela was all the time yearning for Paradise. Now, Edmée has always roamed the Garden of Eden. It’s her natural habitat.”
“A very modern Eve, I suppose.”
“No, I wouldn’t call Edmée modern. Ordinary women, like hymns, are either ancient or modern, but Eve is of all time. She’s Isis, Aphrodite, Venus in a hundred guises and various coloured skins. Edmée is ninety per cent Eve and Sutton had achieved through experience seventy-five per cent Adam. They were bound to fuse. It didn’t take Edmée a week to see that Sutton and Angela were a discrepancy, and that Sutton, to use her own phrase, was ‘tout cousu d’or.’ How distinctly I can visualize her mouth as she said ‘tout cousu d’or’ and the calculating gleam in her Belgian eyes! She translated for my benefit in Americanese—‘he’s lousy with money, Ricky.’ Like all Eves, Edmée is passionately fond of money; not for its own sake, but as something to be quickly exchanged for the fruits of the earth. She came upon Sutton just as I might stumble on a fiver when I was hard up.”
“Just as you might come on me for a tenner would be more accurate,” interrupted Vereker, with malicious glee.
“You deserve the point, Algernon; I had dropped my guard. To continue the story, there followed the Sutton Stakes.”
“What on earth was that?”
“Haven’t you heard the yarn? Bless my soul, I thought it was in a cheap edition by now. I have much pleasure in telling you the scandalous story. It happened about a fortnight after Edmée had arrived in Nice. She had come to Nice because Aubrey Winter was there. As I have said, Aubrey was in love with her, he may be so now for all I know, but her affection for Aubrey was the affection she might have for a comfortable pair of house slippers. Aubrey’s a delightful fool and, though Edmée hurts all her lovers indiscriminately, they are somehow never disillusioned. There’s something of the snake and the bird in her relations with men. Well, to brighten things up the Armadales gave a little dinner and dance at their Villa, Les Aigles d’Or. What part Aubrey had in suggesting that dinner and dance, or whether Sutton was inspired to its realization by Edmée, it would be hard to say. Most likely Aubrey, because if a man’s stupid Fate seems to take a grim delight in making him encompass his own ruin. In any case, the dinner was given, and when Sutton gives a dinner it is a dinner. The cost doesn’t interfere with the dream, and Angela saw to it that the dream was delightful. Angela is all for English dinners, and one of the items on the menu was cygnets. I like that touch of cygnets; it’s pure Angela. But the wines that flowed appealed to my imagination. They proved the deus ex machina in what followed. There were old golden sherry, Château Montbrun, Grand Musigny 1911, Clicquot 1919, Cockburn port 1904, and ’70 brandy. Could anything be more reasonable? This selection of sound liquor produced a Bacchanalian atmosphere among the happy guests. Edmée, flushed with the fire of the grape, became Phryne incarnate; Aubrey’s Boeotian wit began to caper whimsically, and even Sutton’s merry mercantile eye took on a satyr’s gleam. It was this vinous urge which promoted the Sutton Stakes. No one is certain to this day who suggested the rag, but it has generally been attributed to ‘Fruity’ Fanshaugh. He has never denied it. ‘Fruity’ is a cross between Kipling’s Anglo-Indian and a Yogi. As a young officer in India he swallowed a lot of Yoga and got it inextricably mixed up with polo and pig-sticking. He’s credited with the possession of a Bombay head.”
“What’s that? I don’t understand,” asked Vereker, with solemn interest.
“I’m not quite clear myself, but I believe it means that the owner has suffered at one time or another from a touch of the Indian sun—a bit ‘gaga,’ to put it vulgarly. In any case, towards the end of the dance ‘Fruity’ seemed to take charge of the company of guests, and there was a hurried consultation with much laughter among the males. In a few minutes it was seen that something unusual was afoot, and it was suddenly announced before the final dance that the Sutton Stakes was to be run. The gees were to be seven male members of the company who had pooled substantial stakes, and the riders were to be seven of the ladies present. The horses were to run on all-fours with their jockeys astride their backs, and the course was once round the ballroom. It was an astounding proposition, but, as I’ve said, a Dionysian spirit was abroad and the Greeks had a very natural taste in amusements. I can never remember just who the horses were, but I know there was an eminent K.C., a brigadier, a very famous playwright, an M.P.—I won’t mention his name—and an R.A. among the field. Not a selling-plater ran. ‘Fruity’ Fanshaugh was weigher-in, starter, judge, winning-post, tote, Stewards of the Jockey Club, all rolled into one. It was a weight for youth handicap, and to Sutton, being the oldest horse, was allotted Edmée as his rider. She’s a sylph, I may explain, a wisp of provocative feminine gossamer. One of the rules insisted that no rider should touch the ground with her feet. Infringement of this rule instantly disqualified. Edmée, trained for the ballet, found this acrobatic feat to her taste and had, moreover, the courage of her anatomy not to mention underwear. In any case, she rode a daring and graceful race. Sutton went well up to bridle and won, and from that moment lost his heart to his pretty jockey. Edmée at once took the reins and began to ride him for all he was worth in the everyday race of having a good time.”
“And have you heard what Angela thought of this performance?” asked Vereker, with grave interest.
“Have I not? You could have iced the bubbly yards away from her. After the riders had mounted and Edmée had adjusted her rope of pearls—Ciro, of course—on Sutton as a bridle, Angela walked out of the room like a plate-glass Bellona. For a few seconds the air was susurrous, and then ‘Fruity’ shouted the word ‘Go.’ Angela went and sat out on the balcony in frozen meditation, gazing at the sweet moonlit shimmer of the Mediterranean while the race was in progress. Her old friend, Houseley—‘Hell-for-leat
her’ Houseley—accompanied her and gallantly held her hand in the courtliest manner. ‘Masochistic vulgarity’ was what Angela thought of the race, and remarked to Edmée afterwards that she was certain that ‘Nebuchadnezzar at his worst could never have looked such a damned fool as Sutton did on all-fours.’”
“I’ve a soft spot for Angela already,” remarked Vereker when Ricardo had finished his story. “Among the goddesses there’s something devilishly attractive about Diana.”
“I think I’ll call you Endymion instead of Algernon in future,” said Ricardo, with a loud laugh.
For some moments Vereker sat in thought, and then rose abruptly to his feet.
“Do you know, Ricky, when I hear of rags like the Sutton Stakes I long for an evening in company with Van Ostade’s Dutch boors. I want to sit in an old picture and laugh over my mug of ale.”
“Posing again, Algernon, in spite of yourself, and pure cussedness at that! Besides, it’s completely out of fashion to hiccup the antithesis of beer and erudition or beer and art at the British public—except at the Universities. Even the Sussex literary school is as dead as Van Ostade. The idea that poverty implies robust virtue won’t wash in these democratic days. Give me the vivid amusements of the unorthodox rich. Money doesn’t smell, but those that lack it frequently do!”
“Quite in your best vein, Ricky, but now for that lunch. My bag is packed and I start for Nuthill immediately after we’ve eaten. While I’m down there I want you to get in touch with Edmée Cazas.”
“She’s an expensive contagion,” interrupted Ricardo gloomily.
“Never mind, I’ll stand the racket. Connect up. Keep in touch with her and get from her her version of this shooting of Sutton Armadale. I’ll bet she knows more than may ever be made public. With her hysterical desire to be interesting, you ought to have no difficulty in pumping her to a vacuum. I will run up and see you in a day or so, and I hope you’ll have something important to communicate. And now for grub!”
The Polo Ground Mystery Page 3