He was in the middle of telling Sally the life history of the smallest known primula, when she looked across his shoulder and saw James come in through the door at the far end of the long Gold Room. For a moment all the gold shimmered and broke before her eyes. She lost James, and the dancing couples, and Bonzo, and she almost lost herself, but when everything steadied down again, there was Daphne stopping her partner to wave to James, and James coming over to talk to her and being introduced to Gerald Crane.
Sally bit the inside of her lip very hard indeed. It was really quite impossible that James should be here, yet however hard she bit, he remained obstinately in evidence whilst she and Bonzo continued to approach the little group which consisted of Daphne, Gerald, and this impossible appearance of James.
Daphne hailed them as they came up.
“Bonzo, here’s James. He never comes when I do ask him, so I didn’t. He’s been dining with someone who had to catch a train. Sally, you met him at my party, didn’t you? James, you’ve met Sally.”
The group had swelled. A pretty girl called Elspeth Reid and Jocko, Lucia Crane and Henri Niemeyer, had joined it. Sally looked across at James whom she had kissed despairingly an hour ago, and said in a little cool voice,
“Oh, yes, I think we did. But we didn’t dance—or did we?”
“No—you had hurt your foot,” said James. “I hope it’s better.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Sally. How much longer were they going to stand here and make polite conversation under all these eyes? Why had he come? Oh, James, did you want to see me so much—has anything happened since I left—oh, James, take care—
Daphne was introducing him to Henri, to Elspeth, to the Cranes, and then he was asking Lucia to dance. Daphne was pairing off with Henri, and Sally herself with Gerald Crane.
James prided himself on his extreme discretion. He danced with everyone else before he danced with Sally, wresting the hot too willing Elspeth from a most reluctant Jocko, and having quite a success with Lucia, who had a passionate desire to own a racing car and a Flying Flea—“Only Gerald says he’ll divorce me if I do, and it’s much too expensive to have a divorce the same year as the wedding, so I’ll have to wait.”
He asked Sally in the end, and felt her shiver as his arm went round her. He talked loudly and cheerfully about Daphne and the exact degree of their cousinhood, and rehearsed the full tale of his cousins, together with their names, ages, and characteristics. And then quite suddenly he asked for Annie’s address.
“Is that what you came for?” said Sally. “It’s 14 West Victoria Street, Ealing, and her name is Brook—Miss Brook.”
“I wanted to see you too,” said James, looking stolidly practical. “I’m afraid it’s growing on me. Sally, if you’re going to blush, you’ll give the whole show away.”
“I’m not blushing,” said Sally. “Go on talking about your cousins—it’s safer. Oh, James, why did you come?”
“To see my cousin Daphne. I’m very fond of her. We were once engaged for about half an hour. I’m very fond of all my cousins. You’ll find me very domestic.”
Sally smiled, a sweet, cool, social smile—not for James Elliot, but for Henri Niemeyer who might be watching them.
He most undoubtedly was watching them, for as Sally smiled, he went past them with Daphne, and could certainly have heard her say,
“You have such a lot of cousins. How do you remember them all?”
“I don’t forget things,” said James in a casual voice. “I’m very persevering and industrious. Would you like to take up my references?”
Sally would have stamped if she had dared. As it was, she lifted her lashes and sent him a green lightning glance. She dropped her voice to an angry breath and said as inaudibly as possible,
“If you go on talking like that, I shall either burst into tears, or have hysterics, or just do a plain swoon in the middle of the floor, and then the fat will be in the fire!”
“I was only making love to you,” said James, aggrieved. “I thought you liked being made love to. Most girls do.”
“I’m not most girls. And Henri is watching us—all the time.”
“Let him watch. My manners have always been considered particularly correct. Sally, how much engaged to him are you?” That was one of the things he hadn’t asked her when they were alone in the studio. It was somehow easier to say it here, in this crowd.
“I told you,” said Sally. “I won’t talk about it here—I can’t.”
“Well, it’s not worth talking about,” said James cheerfully. “He’s not going to marry you, and I am. I expect I’d better not dance with you any more for the moment. I’ll have another go at Mrs. Crane. I like her.”
They all went on dancing until about one o’clock, when Daphne announced that Bonzo had a sausage-urge, and what about coming home and toasting sausages round the fire? Half a dozen people seemed to think this was a good idea—Jocko and Elspeth, Henri Niemeyer, the Cranes, Sally and James. Sally didn’t share the sausage-urge, but she didn’t want to go home to Messenger Square—not now, not yet, not as long as she could be with people who were laughing, and talking, and keeping thought away. As soon as she stopped laughing she would begin to think about Jocko, and about Aunt Clementa, and about James, and about what Henri really meant when he smiled and said those things which sounded, and perhaps were meant to sound, like a warning—a warning of what might happen if she did not stay very friendly indeed with Henri Niemeyer. And presently she would have to be more than friendly—and presently after that … A thin, cold shudder went over her, and she was glad to be going back to Daphne’s, and very glad that everyone should be laughing and talking so much.
XXII
They toasted sausages round the fire in the Victorian dining-room, and Bonzo produced beer, and Daphne produced champagne, which he declared was an affront to the British pig. And right in the middle of the toasting and the chatter Daphne had an urge and insisted that they should turn out the lights and tell ghost stories by the firelight.
“And Bonzo shall begin.”
Bonzo refused to do anything of the kind, whereupon the pretty dark Elspeth produced a story about an uncle who went to sea, and there was Something on the ship, only they never found out what it was. At least she didn’t think they ever found out, but her uncle was dreadfully secretive and shut up like a clam if he was asked about it, so perhaps he really knew and just wouldn’t utter.
“I call that a rotten story,” said Jocko heartily. He and Elspeth were sitting very close together, and the fire happening to blaze up, he was seen to be tempering his criticism with a kiss. Elspeth did not appear to be at all disturbed. She had a pretty, slow, drawling voice, and was understood to murmur,
“Well, what about someone else telling a better one?”
“I know a really true one,” said Daphne.
“Mine was true,” murmured Elspeth with her head on Jocko’s shoulder.
Daphne giggled.
“Darling, there wasn’t enough of it to be true or not. But mine is a real, authentic, first-hand story about a house I know. And it really is true, because—well, I won’t tell you why till you’ve heard it.”
“Daphne—I don’t know—” This was Bonzo, just a little uneasy. Or perhaps that was Sally’s fancy. His voice didn’t lend itself to many shades of expression. Perhaps she had only fancied the uneasiness.
“Nonsense, darling!” said Daphne. “You’re burning your sausage. I’m sure you oughtn’t to take your eye off it for a moment. You look after your sausage, and I’ll look after my story.”
She was sitting on a low stool with her hands clasped about her knees. Her pale dress gleamed in the firelight. A diamond clip on either side made little rainbows.
“Well, it’s about a place I know quite well, and it happened in the seventeenth century. And perhaps Jocko knows it, and if he does, he’d better tell it himself, because it’s about the house old Lady Clementa Tolhache left him the other day—Rere Place.”
“How thrilling,” said Jocko. He did not sound thrilled at all, but lazy and content, with Elspeth’s hand in his.
“Do you want to tell it?” said Daphne.
“Darling, I hadn’t even a ghost of an idea that there was a ghost at Rere Place.”
“Well, there is—isn’t there, Sally?”
In her dark corner beyond Bonzo Sally was afraid, she didn’t know why. She said in a jesting voice,
“But I don’t believe in ghosts, so it’s no use asking me.”
“Perhaps Sally would like to tell the story,” suggested Henri Niemeyer. “She does not say that she does not know it—she only says that she does not believe in it, which is quite another thing.”
Sally looked at him, but she could see only a silhouette against the red glow of the fire—a long, thin silhouette.
“You can’t tell a story unless you believe in it,” she said. “Daphne’s the one, because she believes in everything, even your pretty speeches, Henri. And anyhow I don’t know what story she means.”
“Oh, darling, the one about Giles Rere and the Queen’s necklace,” said Daphne.
James said nothing, but he was very much interested, and very glad that it was dark, because he didn’t have to bother about whether he was giving anything away.
Lucia Crane wanted to know what queen.
“Darling, I was always so bad at history. Bonzo, what queen would it be—when they were having Cavaliers and Roundheads and things like that, and cutting the King’s head off?”
Everyone obliged with Henrietta Maria.
“Yes, it must have been, mustn’t it? And she went to France, but she gave this necklace to Giles Rere to take to the King because it was very valuable and she wanted him to sell it and have the money. So he came with the necklace to Rere Place, which belonged to his brother, Lord Rere, but he didn’t know that his brother had turned against the King and made friends with the Roundheads. Giles told him about the necklace, and how proud he was because the Queen had trusted him, and how he had the neckplace pinned inside his coat to keep it safe. He told him when they were quite alone. And that night he wouldn’t drink much, because he had the necklace to guard, but he had been a long time on the road and he slept heavily.”
Daphne moved, and the diamonds flashed against her breast. She leaned forward, and the firelight caught her hair.
“Well, in the night he waked suddenly and heard the door close. He thought of the necklace and jumped out of bed, but it was gone. The lining of his coat was ripped across, and it was gone. He ran out of the room in his shirt and down the stairs, and it was dark, and there was someone in front of him all the way. He had a pistol in his hand which he had caught up, and he fired twice into the darkness at the thief, and he heard him cry out, and he heard him fall. Then he called for lights, and when they brought them, there was Lord Rere lying dead with the last two links of the necklace clutched in his hand.”
“The last two links?” said Lucia. “Do you mean only the last two links?”
Daphne nodded.
“That was all. And that was all anyone ever saw of the necklace again—just two links of it clutched in Lord Rere’s hand. And he was dead, so he couldn’t say what had happened. Giles Rere had the whole house searched and everyone in it, but they never found the necklace; and no one knows what happened to it. Some people say that Lord Rere was the thief, and some people say that he tried to get the necklace away from the real thief and it broke between them and the thief got away. And some say that Giles Rere pulled it out of his brother’s hand in the dark before he roused the house, and kept it for himself, and cheated the King. Nobody knows the truth of it, but there’s a day every year when it’s better to keep away from Rere Place, because they say you can hear someone running down the stairs in the dark, and the sound of shots, and the sound of a fall. And they say it’s most frightfully unlucky to hear it. They say it means you’ll die a violent death quite soon, certainly within the year. And now I’ll tell you the really thrilling part of it, and how I know it’s true.” Daphne sat up straight and her voice thrilled. “When Bonzo and I were coming back from Goldacre a day or two ago I got him to drive up to Rere Place because I wanted to look at the house. It’s standing empty, you know. I got out of the car and walked about a bit, and it looked too ghostly and uninhabited for words, and I was just wishing I hadn’t come, when right at my feet on the far side of the terrace I saw a bullet. Just lying there. Well, of course I picked it up, and I thought it was odd, and Bonzo thought it was odd—didn’t you, Bonzo?”
“And it turned out to be a genuine seventeenth-century bullet with Giles Rere’s initials on one side and the clue to the hiding-place of the lost necklace on the other,” said Jocko.
“Well, it didn’t!” said Daphne indignantly. “And it’s all very well for you to make fun, but something very odd happened, because I put it in my bag, and when I got up to town there were letters and things, and I had to hurry and dress because we had people to dinner. And of course I told the story, and everyone was thrilled and wanted to see the bullet, so after we’d had our coffee I sent up for my bag—and the bullet wasn’t there.”
“How could it not be there?” said Lucia.
“Darling, it wasn’t. So it just shows—”
“And what does it show?” asked Henri with a laugh in his voice.
“Well, if it had been a real bullet, it wouldn’t have disappeared—would it?”
“Unless someone had pinched it,” said Gerald Crane. “Whom did you have dining with you?”
Daphne tilted her chin at him.
“People who dine with me don’t pinch things, and anyhow it was Ambrose and Hildegarde Sylvester, and Henri, and an uncle and aunt of Bonzo’s. And I know Henri didn’t do it, because he didn’t stay in the dining-room with the men and he was under my eye all the time. And so was Hildegarde, and of course the aunt. Bonzo’s uncle is a professor of Economics. And can you see the great Ambrose tiptoeing into my room and opening my handbag to see what he could pinch?”
Elspeth in her sleepy voice enquired why anyone should pinch a bullet.
“Woman, you’re being dull,” said Jocko. “You’re not up in modern crime literature. The obvious answer is that murder has been done, and that if you have the bullet, you can trace the murderer. The marks on the bullet will be found to correspond with the revolver which he keeps locked in his writing-table drawer. He will explain that he only keeps it there for plugging the serenading cat, but the jury will not believe him, because by that time Jocko the Boy Detective will have discovered the corpse at the spot marked with a cross on plan A. Bonzo could of course save me a lot of trouble by coming clean right away. I have him marked down as the first suspect.”
Sally began to feel more and more frightened. Why were they all talking like this? Had Daphne really found the bullet which had been fired at her and James on that foggy evening which seemed about a year ago but was only the other day? And if she had found it, who had taken it out of her bag? And what was Jocko going to say next? His voice was fairly tingling with mischief, and in that mood he was capable of anything.
“And what does Mr. Elliot think?” said Henri Niemeyer. His voice suggested a courteous desire to include a rather neglected guest.
It was, however, Jocko who answered him.
“He doesn’t think about anything except cars—do you, James? Lovely propositions, proper engineering jobs—all that sort of thing. That’s what Atwells pay him a nice fat screw for. At least I hope it’s a nice fat screw, because I rather fancy he’s thinking of getting married on it—aren’t you, James?”
It had come. Sally felt quite sick. James and Atwells had been linked, and once they had been linked there was no safety any more. She heard James say, “Not on my screw—I’m afraid it wouldn’t run to it,” but she heard it as you hear something in another room, and the room that she was in shook, and darkened, and filled suddenly with dancing sparks of fire. She thought she was going to faint. And th
en all at once a hand closed down over hers, warm, steady, and strong. It stayed there for perhaps a minute and then let go again.
Henri Niemeyer was asking, “What is Atwells?” And then Jocko was off in full cry, explaining Atwells, explaining James, rehearsing his sufferings as James’s fag, and expressing the pious hope that James would be sorry for it some day.
“And do you drive for these Atwells, Mr. Elliot?” said Henri, ignoring him.
“I demonstrate cars,” said James shortly.
“And have you ever been in our part of Sussex? These old stories are so much more interesting if one knows the locality.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Daphne’s story about Rere Place—very interesting, if one has been there. Do you know that part at all? It’s between Staling and Warnley. Not more than ten miles from Goldacre—is it Bonzo?”
“About ten miles,” said Bonzo.
Sally was shaken by an inward shiver. No good crying over spilt milk, because you can’t pick it up again. If only somebody would talk about something else. She heard James say,
“I never heard of Rere Place. There are stories about most of these old houses. I can’t say I believe them myself.”
And then Jocko struck in.
“Unbelieving dog! Well, I’ve got a hundred-per-cent true story about Rere Place which I don’t suppose any of you have ever heard before. It happened to Aunt Clementa, and she told me about it herself, and I’m prepared to swear she was telling the truth, so you can all sit up and take notice.”
The hand that had closed on Sally’s came down upon her shoulder for a moment and pressed it hard. Sally could not see whose hand it was, but she knew well enough. As far as position went, either Bonzo, Henri, or James could have reached across and touched her, but she knew well enough that it was James whose steady clasp had brought her back from the edge of fainting. He would have had to lean across Bonzo, but nobody ever minded Bonzo. As they sat round the fire, James was on the extreme left, then Bonzo on the fender-stool, Sally on the floor, Henri and Daphne on the stool again, Gerald Crane at Daphne’s feet, Lucia with her elbow on the stool, and Jocko and Elspeth in an entwined attitude on the extreme right.
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