The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “The last time we met, strictly speaking we didn’t meet at all. I came to say good-bye, but you’d just discovered that a pony was necessary to your happiness. It was an idée fixe, you were a fanatic, you broke half a Crown Derby dinner-service when you couldn’t get it. When I came to say good-bye, you were locked in the nursery with an insufficient allowance of bread and water.”

  Joyce shook her head sadly.

  “I was an awful child.”

  “Was?”

  She looked up with reproach in her blue eyes.

  “Haven’t I improved?”

  “You were a wonderfully pretty child.”

  “Oh, never mind looks!”

  “But I do. They’re the only things worth having.”

  “They’re not enough.”

  “Leave that to be said by the women who haven’t any.”

  “In any case they don’t last.”

  “And while they do, you slight them.”

  “I? They’re far too useful!” She paused at the door of the dining-room to survey her reflection in the mirror; then turned to me with a slow, childlike smile. “I think I’m looking rather nice tonight.”

  “You looked nice twenty years ago. Not content with that, you broke a dinner-service to get a pony.”

  “Fancy your remembering that all these years!”

  “I was reminded of it the moment I saw you. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. You are still not content with looking extremely nice, you must break a dinner-service now and again.”

  Joyce raised her eyebrows, and patiently stated a self-evident proposition.

  “I must have a thing if I think I’ve a right to it,” she pouted.

  “You were condemned to bread and water twenty years ago to convince you of your error.”

  “I get condemned to that now.”

  “Dull eating, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

  “You did then?”

  “I threw it out of the window, plate and all.”

  We threaded our way through to a table at the far side of the room.

  “Indeed you’ve not changed,” I said. “You might still be that wilful child of five that I remember so well.”

  “You’ve forgotten one thing about me,” she answered.

  “What’s that?”

  “I got the pony,” she replied with a mischievous laugh.

  How far the others enjoyed that dinner, I cannot say. Aintree was an admirable host, and made a point of seeing that every one had too much to eat and drink; to the conversation he contributed as little as Mrs. Wylton. I did not know then how near the date of the divorce was approaching. Both sat silent and reflective, one overshadowed by the Past, the other by the Future: on the opposite side of the table, living and absorbed in the Present, typifying it and luxuriating in its every moment, was Joyce Davenant. I, too, contrive to live in the present, if by that you mean squeezing the last drop of enjoyment out of each sunny day’s pleasure and troubling my head as little about the future as the past.…

  I made Joyce tell me her version of the suffrage war; it was like dipping into the memoirs of a prescribed Girondist. She had written and spoken, debated and petitioned. When an obdurate Parliament told her there was no real demand for the vote among women themselves, she had organised great peaceful demonstrations and “marches past”: when sceptics belittled her processions and said you could persuade any one to sign any petition in favour of anything, she had massed a determined army in Parliament Square, raided the House and broken into the Prime Minister’s private room.

  The raid was followed by short terms of imprisonment for the ringleaders. Joyce came out of Holloway, blithe and unrepentant, and hurried from a congratulatory luncheon to an afternoon meeting at the Albert Hall, and from that to the first round of the heckling campaign. For six months no Minister could address a meeting without the certainty of persistent interruption, and no sooner had it been decided first to admit only such women as were armed with tickets, and then no women at all, than the country was flung into the throes of a General Election, and the Militants sought out every uncertain Ministerial constituency and threw the weight of their influence into the scale of the Opposition candidate.

  Joyce told me of the papers they had founded and the bills they had promoted. The heckling of Ministers at unsuspected moments was reduced to a fine art: the whole sphere of their activities seemed governed by an almost diabolical ingenuity and resourcefulness. I heard of fresh terms of imprisonment, growing longer as the public temper warmed; the institution of the Hunger Strike, the counter move of Forcible Feeding, a short deadlock, and at last the promulgation of the “Cat and Mouse” Bill.

  I was not surprised to hear some of the hardest fighting had been against over-zealous, misdirected allies. It cannot be said too often that Joyce herself would stick at nothing—fire, flood or dynamite—to secure what she conceived to be her rights. But if vitriol had to be thrown, she would see that it fell into the eyes of the right, responsible person: in her view it was worse than useless to attempt pressure on A by breaking B’s windows. She had stood severely aloof from the latter developments of militancy, and refused to lend her countenance to the idly exasperating policy of injuring treasures of art, interrupting public races, breaking non-combatants’ windows and burning down unique, priceless houses.

  “Where do you stand now?” I asked as dinner drew to a close. “I renewed my acquaintance with Arthur Roden today, and he invited me down to the House to assist at the final obsequies of the Militant movement.”

  Joyce shook her head dispassionately over the ingrained stupidity of mankind.

  “I think it’s silly to talk like that before the battle’s over. Don’t you?”

  “He seemed quite certain of the result.”

  “Napoleon was so certain that he was going to invade England that he had medals struck to commemorate the capture of London. I’ve got one at home. I’d rather like to send it him, only it ’ud look flippant.”

  I reminded her that she had not answered my question.

  “Roden says that the ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act has killed the law-breakers,” I told her, “and tonight’s division is going to kill the constitutionalists. What are you going to do?”

  Joyce turned to me with profound solemnity, sat for a moment with her head on one side, and then allowed a smile to press its way through the serious mask. As I watched the eyes softening and the cheeks breaking into dimples, I appreciated the hopelessness of trying to be serious with a fanatic who only made fun of her enemies.

  “What would you do?” she asked.

  “Give it up,” I answered. “Yield to force majeure. I’ve lived long enough in the East to feel the beauty and usefulness of resignation.”

  “But if we won’t give it up?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “What can you do?”

  “I’m inviting suggestions. You’re a man, so I thought you’d be sure to be helpful. Of course we’ve got our own plan, and when the Amendment’s rejected tonight, you’ll be able to buy a copy of the first number of a new paper tomorrow morning. It’s called the New Militant, only a penny, and really worth reading. I’ve written most of it myself. And then we’re going to start a fresh militant campaign, rather ingenious, and directed against the real obstructionists. No more window-breaking or house-burning, but real serious fighting, just where it will hurt them most. Something must come of it,” she concluded. “I hope it may not be blood.”

  Aintree roused himself from his attitude of listless indifference.

  “You’ll gain nothing by militancy,” he pronounced. “I’ve no axe to grind, you may have the vote or go without it. You may take mine away, or give me two. But your cause has gone back steadily, ever since you adopted militant tactics.”

  “The W
eary Seraph cares for none of these things,” Joyce remarked. I requested a moment’s silence to ponder the exquisite fitness of the name. Had I thought for a year I could not have found a better description for the shy boy with the alert face and large frightened eyes. “Every one calls him that,” Joyce went on. “And he doesn’t like it. I should love to be called seraphic, but no one will; I’m too full of original sin. Well, Seraph, you may disapprove of militancy if you like, but you must suggest something to put in its place.”

  “I don’t know that I can.”

  Joyce turned to her sister.

  “These men-things aren’t helpful, are they, Elsie?”

  “I’m a good destructive critic,” I said in self-justification.

  “There are so many without you,” Joyce answered, laying her hand on my arm. “Listen, Mr. Merivale. You’ve probably noticed there’s very little argument about the suffrage; everything that can be said on either side has already been said a thousand times. You’re going to refuse us the vote. Good. I should do the same in your place. There are more of us than there are of you, and we shall swamp you if we all get the vote. You can’t give it to some of us and not others, because the brain is not yet born that can think of a perfect partial franchise. Will you give it to property and leave out the factory workers? Will you give it to spinsters and leave out the women who bear children to the nation? Will you give it to married women and leave out the unprotected spinsters? It’s all or none: I say all, you say none. You say I’m not fit for a vote, I say I am. We reach an impasse, and might argue till daybreak without getting an inch further forward. We’re fighting to swamp you, you’re fighting to keep your head above water. We’re reduced to a trial of strength.”

  She leant back in her chair, and I presented her with a dish of salted almonds, partly as a reward, partly because I never eat them myself.

  “I admire your summary of the situation,” I said. “You’ve only omitted one point. In a trial of strength between man and woman, man is still the stronger.”

  “And woman the more resourceful.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “She’s certainly the more ruthless,” Joyce answered, as she finished her coffee and drew on her gloves.

  “War à outrance,” I commented as we left the dining-room. “And what after the war?”

  “When we’ve got the vote.…” she began.

  “Napoleon and the capture of London,” I murmured.

  “Oh well, you don’t think I go in for a thing unless I’m going to win, do you? When we get the vote, we shall work to secure as large a share of public life as men enjoy, and we shall put women on an equality with men in things like divorce,” she added between closed teeth.

  “Suppose for the sake of argument you’re beaten? I imagine even Joyce Davenant occasionally meets with little checks?”

  “Oh yes. When Joyce was seven, she wanted to go skating, and her father said the ice wouldn’t bear and she mustn’t go. Joyce went, and fell in and nearly got drowned. And when she got home, her father was very angry and whipped her with a crop.”

  “Well?”

  “That’s all. Only—he said afterwards that she took it rather well, there was no crying.”

  I wondered then, as I have always wondered, whether she in any way appreciated the seriousness of the warfare she was waging on society.

  “A month in the second division at Holloway is one thing.…” I began.

  “It’ll be seven years’ penal servitude if I’m beaten,” she interrupted. Her tone was innocent alike of flippancy and bravado.

  “Forty votes aren’t worth that. I’ve got three, so I ought to know.”

  Joyce’s eyes turned in the direction of her sister who was coming out of the dining-room with Aintree.

  “She’s worth some sacrifice.”

  “You couldn’t make her lot easier if you had every vote in creation. She’s up against the existing divorce law, and that’s buttressed by every Church, and every dull married woman in the country. You’re starting conversation at the wrong end, Joyce.”

  Her little arched eyebrows raised themselves at the name.

  “Joyce?” she repeated.

  “You were Joyce when last we met.”

  “That was twenty years ago.”

  “It seems less. I should like to blot out those years.”

  “And have me back in nursery frocks and long hair?”

  “Better than long convict frocks and short hair,” I answered with laborious antithesis.

  “Then I haven’t improved?”

  “You’re perfect—off duty, in private life.”

  “I have no private life.”

  “I’ve seen a glimpse of it tonight.”

  “An hour’s holiday. I say good-bye to it for good this evening when I say good-bye to you.”

  “But not for good?”

  “You’ll not want the burden of my friendship when war’s declared. If you like to come in as an ally…?”

  “Do you think you could convert me?”

  She looked at me closely.

  “Yes.”

  I shook my head.

  “What’d you bet?” she challenged me.

  “It would be like robbing a child’s money-box,” I answered. “You’re dealing with the laziest man in the northern hemisphere.”

  “How long will you be in England?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Six months? In six months I’ll make you the Prince Rupert of the militant army. Then when we’re sent to prison—Sir Arthur Roden’s a friend of yours—you can arrange for our cells to be side by side, and we’ll tap on the dividing wall.”

  I had an idea that our unsociable prison discipline insisted on segregating male and female offenders. It was not the moment, however, for captious criticism.

  “If I stay six months,” I said, “I’ll undertake to divorce you from your militant army.”

  “The laziest man in the northern hemisphere?”

  “I’ve never found anything worth doing before.”

  “It’s a poor ambition. And the militants want me.”

  “They haven’t the monopoly of that.”

  Joyce smiled in spite of herself, and under her breath I caught the word “Cheek!”

  “I’m pledged to them,” she said aloud. “Possession’s nine points of the law.”

  “I don’t expect to hear you calling the law and the prophets in aid.”

  “It’s a woman’s privilege to make the best of both worlds,” she answered, as Elsie carried her off to fetch their cloaks.

  “There is only one world,” I called out as she left me. “This is it. I am going to make the best of it.”

  “How?”

  “By appropriating to myself whatever’s worth having in it.”

  “How?” she repeated.

  “I’ll tell you in six months’ time.”

  Aintree sauntered up with his coat under his arm as Joyce and her sister vanished from sight.

  “Rather wonderful, isn’t she?” he remarked.

  “Which?” I asked.

  “Oh, really!” he exclaimed in disgusted protest.

  “They are astonishingly alike,” I said à propos of nothing.

  “They’re often mistaken for each other.”

  “I can well believe it.”

  “It’s a mistake you’re not likely to make,” he answered significantly.

  I took hold of his shoulders, and made him look me in the eyes.

  “What do you mean by that, Seraph?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he answered. “What did I say? I really forget; I was thinking what a wife Joyce would make for a man who likes having his mind made up for him, and feels that his youth is slipping imperceptibly away.”

  I made no answer, because I
could not see what answer was possible. And, further, I was playing with a day-dream.… The Seraph interrupted with some remark about her effect on a public meeting, and my mind set itself to visualise the scene. I could imagine her easy directness and gay self-confidence capturing the heart of her audience; it mattered little how she spoke or what she ordered them to do; the fascination lay in her happy, untroubled voice, and the graceful movements of her slim, swaying body. Behind the careless front they knew of her resolute, unwhimpering courage; she tossed the laws of England in the air as a juggler tosses glass balls, and when one fell to the ground and shivered in a thousand pieces she was ready to pay the price with a smiling face, and a hand waving gay farewell. It was the lighthearted recklessness of Sydney Carton or Rupert of Hentzau, the one courage that touches the brutal, beef-fed English imagination.…

  “Why the hell does she do it, Seraph?” I exclaimed.

  “Why don’t you stop her, if you don’t like it?”

  “What influence have I got over her?”

  “Some—not much. You can develop it. I? Good heavens, I’ve no control. You’ve got the seeds.… No, you must just believe me when I say it is so. You wouldn’t understand if I told you the reason.”

  “It seems to me the more I see of you the less I do understand you,” I objected.

  “Quite likely,” he answered. “It isn’t even worth trying.”

  The play which the Seraph was taking us to see was The Heir-at-Law, and though we went on the first night, it was running throughout my residence in England, and for anything I know to the contrary may still be playing to crowded houses. It was the biggest dramatic success of recent years, and for technical construction, subtlety of characterization, and brilliance of dialogue, ranks deservedly as a masterpiece. As a young man I used to do a good deal of theatre-going, and attended most of the important first nights. Why, I hardly know; possibly because there was a good deal of difficulty in getting seats, possibly because at that age it amused us to pose as virtuosi, and say we liked to form our own opinion of a play before the critics had had time to tell us what to think of it. I remember the acting usually had an appearance of being insufficiently rehearsed, the players were often nervous and inaudible, and most of the plays themselves wanted substantial cutting.