The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “By ‘Gordon Tremayne,’” I said, “whoever he may be.”

  “You don’t know him?”

  “Do you? No, I remember as we drove down to the theatre you said you didn’t.”

  “I said I’d never met him,” he corrected me.

  “A mere quibble,” I protested.

  “It’s an important distinction. Do you know anybody who has met him?”

  I turned half round to give him the benefit of what was intended for a smile of incredulity. He met my gaze unfalteringly. Suddenly it was borne in upon me that he was speaking the truth.

  “Will you kindly explain the whole mystery?” I begged.

  “Now you can understand why I was jumpy at the theatre tonight,” he answered in parenthesis.

  He told me the story as we walked along Fleet Street, and we had reached Ludgate Circus and turned down New Bridge Street before the fantastic tangle was straightened out.

  Acting on the advice I had given him when he stayed with me in Morocco, he had sought mental distraction in the composition of “Gretchen,” and had offered it to the publishers under an assumed name through the medium of a solicitor. We three alone were acquainted with the carefully guarded secret. His subsequent books appeared in the same way: even the Heir-at-Law I had just witnessed came to a similar cumbrous birth, and was rehearsed and produced without criticism or suggestion from the author.

  I could see no reason for a nom de plume in the case of “Gretchen” or the other novel of nonage; with the “Child of Misery” it was different. I suspect the first volume of being autobiographical; the second, to my certain knowledge, embodies a slice torn ruthlessly out of the Seraph’s own life. An altered setting, the marriage of Rupert and Kathleen, were two out of a dozen variations from the actual; but the touching, idyllic boy and girl romance, with its shattering termination, had taken place a few months—a few weeks, I might say—before our first meeting in Morocco. I imagine it was because I was the only man who had seen him in those dark days, that he broke through his normal reserve and admitted me to his confidence.

  “When do you propose to avow your own children?” I asked.

  He shook his head without answering. I suppose it is what I ought to have expected, but in the swaggering, self-advertising twentieth century it seemed incredible that I had found a man content for all time to bind his laurels round the brow of a lay figure.

  “In time.…” I began, but he shook his head again.

  “You can stop me with a single sentence. I’m in your hands. ‘Gordon Tremayne’ dies as soon as his identity’s discovered.”

  Years ago I remember William Sharp using the same threat with “‘Fiona Macleod.’”

  “You think it’s just self-consciousness,” he went on in self-defence. “You think after what’s passed.…”

  “It’s getting farther away each day, Seraph,” I suggested gently as he hesitated.

  “I know. ’Tisn’t that—altogether. It’s the future.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “If ‘Gordon Tremayne’ knew that,” he answered, “you wouldn’t find him writing plays.”

  Arm-in-arm we walked the length of the Embankment. As I grew to know the Seraph better, I learnt not to interrupt his long silences. It was trying for the patience, I admit, but his natural shyness even with friends was so great that you could see him balancing an idea for minutes at a time before he found courage to put it into words. I was always reminded of the way a tortoise projects its head cautiously from the shell, looks all round, starts, stops, starts again, before mustering resolution to take a step forward.…

  “D’you believe in premonitions, Toby?” he asked as we passed Cleopatra’s Needle on our second journey eastward.

  “Yes,” I answered. I should have said it in any case, to draw him out; as a matter of fact, I have the greatest difficulty in knowing what I do or do not believe. On the rare occasions when I do make up my mind on any point I generally have to reconsider my decision.

  “I had a curious premonition lately,” he went on. “One of these days you may see it in the third volume of ‘The Child of Misery.’”

  I cannot give the story in his own words, because I was merely a credulous, polite listener. He believed in his premonition, and the belief gave a vigour and richness to the recital which I cannot hope or attempt to reproduce. Here is a prosaic record of the facts. At the close of the previous winter he had found himself in attendance at a costume ball, muffled to the eyes in the cerements of an Egyptian mummy. The dress was too hot for dancing, and he was wandering through the ball-room inspecting the costumes, when an unreasoning impulse drove him out into the entrance hall. Even as he went, the impulse seemed more than a caprice; in his own words, had his feet been manacled, he would have gone there crawling on his knees.

  The hall was almost deserted when he arrived. A tall Crusader in coat armour stood smoking a cigarette and talking to a Savoyard peasant-girl. Their conversation was desultory, but the words spoken by the girl fixed a careless, frank, self-confident voice in his memory. Then the Crusader was despatched on an errand, and the peasant-girl strolled up and down the hall.

  In a mirror over the fireplace the Seraph watched her movements. She was slight and of medium height, with small features and fine black hair falling to the waist in two long plaits. The brown eyes, set far apart and deep in their sockets, were never still, and the face wore an expression of restless, rebellious energy.… Once their eyes met, but the mummy wrappings were discouraging. The girl continued her walk, and the Seraph returned to his mirror. Whatever his mission, the Crusader was unduly long away; his partner grew visibly impatient, and once, for no ostensible reason, the expression reflected in the mirror changed from impatience to disquiet; the brown eyes lost their fire and self-confidence, the mouth grew wistful, the whole face lonely and frightened.

  It was this expression that came to haunt the Seraph’s dreams. In a fantastic succession of visions he found himself talking frankly and intimately with the Savoyard peasant; their conversation was always interrupted, suddenly and brutally, as though she had been snatched away. Gradually—like sunlight breaking waterily through a mist—the outline of her features become visible again, then the eyes wide open with fear, then the mouth with lips imploringly parted.

  The Seraph had quickened his pace till we were striding along at almost five miles an hour. Opposite the south end of Middle Temple Lane he dragged his arm abruptly out of mine, planted his elbows on the parapet of the Embankment, and stared out over the muddy waters, with knuckles pressed crushingly to either side of his forehead.

  “I don’t know what to make of it!” he exclaimed. “What does it mean? Who is she? Why does she keep coming to me like this? I don’t know her, I’ve caught that one glimpse of her. Yet night after night. And it’s so real, I often don’t know whether I’m awake or asleep. I’ve never felt so … so conscious of anybody in my life. I saw her for those few minutes, but I’m as sure as I’m sure of death that I shall meet her again—”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  He passed a hand wearily in front of his eyes, and linked an arm once more in mine.

  “I don’t know,” he answered as we turned slowly back and walked up Norfolk Street into the Strand. “Yes, if it’s just to satisfy curiosity and find out who she is. But there’s something more, there’s some big catastrophe brewing. I’d sooner be out of it. At least … she may want help. I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

  When we got back to the Savoy I invited him up to my room for a drink. He refused on the score of lateness, though I could see he was reluctant to be left to his own company.

  “Don’t think me sceptical,” I said, “because I can’t interpret your dreams. And don’t think I imagine it’s all fancy if I tell you to change your ideas, change your work, change your surroundings. The Rodens have invited yo
u down to their place, why don’t you come?”

  He shivered at the abrupt contact with reality.

  “I do hate meeting people,” he protested.

  “Seraph,” I said, “I’m an unworthy vessel, but on your own showing I shall be submerged in politics if there isn’t some one to create a diversion. Come to oblige me.”

  He hesitated for several moments, alternately crushing his opera hat and jerking it out straight.

  “All right,” he said at last.

  “You will be my salvation.”

  “You deserve it, for what it’s worth.”

  “God forbid!” I cried in modest disclaimer.

  “You’re the only one that isn’t quite sure I’m mad,” he answered, turning away in the direction of Adelphi Terrace.

  For the next two days I had little time to spare for the Seraph’s premonitions or Joyce Davenant’s conspiracies. My brother sailed from Tilbury on the Friday, I was due the following day at the Rodens, and in the interval there were incredibly numerous formalities to be concluded before Gladys was finally entrusted to my care. The scene of reconciliation between her father and myself was most affecting. In the old days when Brian toiled at his briefs and I sauntered away the careless happy years of my youth, there is little doubt that I was held out as an example not to be followed. We need not go into the question which of us made the better bargain with life, but I know my brother largely supported himself in the early days of struggle by reflecting that a more than ordinarily hideous retribution was in store for me. Do I wrong him in fancying he must have suffered occasional pangs of disappointment?

  Perhaps I do; there was really no time for him to be disappointed. Almost before retribution could be expected to have her slings and arrows in readiness, my ramblings in the diamond fields of South Africa had made me richer than he could ever hope to become by playing the Industrious Apprentice at the English Common Law Bar. More charitable than the Psalmist—from whom indeed he differs in all material respects—Brian could not bring himself to believe that any one who flourished like the green bay tree was fundamentally wicked. At our meeting he was almost cordial. Any slight reserve may be attributed to reasonable vexation that he had grown old and scarred in the battle of life while time with me had apparently stood still.

  For all our cordiality, Gladys was not given away without substantial good advice. He was glad to see me settling down, home again from my curious … well, home again from my wanderings; steadying with age. I was face to face with a great responsibility.… I suppose it was inevitable, and I did my best to appear patient, but in common fairness a judge has no more right than a shopwalker to import a trade manner into private life. The homily to which I was subjected should have been reserved for the Bench; there it is expected of a judge; indeed he is paid five thousand a year to live up to the expectation.

  When Brian had ended I was turned over to the attention of my sister-in-law. Like a wise woman she did not attempt competition with her husband, and I was dismissed with the statement that Gladys would cause me no trouble, and an inconsistent exhortation that I was not to let her get into mischief. Finally, in case of illness or other mishap, I was to telegraph immediately by means of a code contrived for the occasion. I remember a great many birds figured among the code-words: “Penguin” meant “She has taken a slight chill, but I have had the doctor in, and she is in bed with a hot water-bottle”; “Linnet” meant “Scarlatina”; “Bustard” “Appendicitis, operation successfully performed, going on well.” Being neither ornithologist nor physician, I had no idea there were so many possible diseases, or even so that there were enough birds to go round. It is perhaps needless to add that I lost my copy of the code the day after they sailed, and only discovered it by chance a fortnight ago when Brian and his wife had been many months restored to their only child, and I had passed out of the life of all three—presumably for ever.

  In case no better opportunity offer, I hasten to put it on record that my sister-in-law spoke no more than the truth in saying her daughter would cause me no trouble. I do not wish for a better ward. During the weeks that I was her foster father, circumstances brought me in contact with some two or three hundred girls of similar age and position. They were all a little more emancipated, rational, and independent than the girls of my boyhood, but of all that I came to know intimately, Gladys was the least abnormal and most tractable.

  I grew to be very fond of her before we parted, and my chief present regret is that I see so little likelihood of meeting her again. She was affectionate, obedient, high-spirited—tasting life for the first time, finding the savour wonderfully sweet on her lips, knowing it could not last, determined to drain the last drop of enjoyment before wedlock called her to the responsibilities of the drab, workaday world. She had none of Joyce Davenant’s personality, her reckless courage and obstinate, fearless devilry; none of Sylvia Roden’s passionate fire, her icy reserve and imperious temper. Side by side with either, Gladys would seem indeterminate, characterless; but she was the only one of the three I would have welcomed as a ward in those thunderous summer days before the storm burst in its fury and scorched Joyce and Sylvia alike. There were giants in those days, but England has only limited accommodation for supermen. Had I my time and choice over again, my handkerchief would still fall on the shoulder of my happy, careless, laughing, slangy, disrespectful niece.

  I accompanied Gladys to Tilbury and saw her parents safely on board the Bessarabia. On our return to Pont Street I found a letter of instructions to guide us in our forthcoming visit to Hampshire. My niece had half opened it before she noticed the address.

  “It was Phil’s writing, so I thought it must be for me,” was her ingenious explanation.

  As I completed the opening and began to read the letter, my mind went abruptly back to some enigmatic words of Seraph’s: “Is Phil going to be there?” I remembered him asking. “Oh then it certainly won’t be a bachelor party.”

  CHAPTER III

  Brandon Court

  “I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do you?”

  “At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong Kong and Java?”

  “Do you call it that too?” …

  … “You’re the Boy, my Brushwood Boy, and I’ve known you all my life!”

  —Rudyard Kipling,

  “The Brushwood Boy”

  The following morning I took up my new duties in earnest, and conveyed myself and my luggage from the Savoy to Pont Street.

  “I’m allowing plenty of time for the train,” I told Gladys when she had finished keeping me waiting. “Apparently we’ve got to meet the rest of the party at Waterloo, and Phil isn’t certain if he’ll be there.”

  As we drove down to the station I refreshed my memory with a second reading of his admirably lucid instructions.

  “Eleven fifteen is the train,” he wrote. “If I’m not there, make the Seraph introduce you: he knows everybody. If he cries off at the last minute (it’s just like him), you’ll have to manage on your own account, with occasional help from Gladys. She doesn’t know Rawnsley or Culling, but she’ll point out Gartside if you don’t recognize him.…”

  “Do you know him?” Gladys asked me in surprise.

  “I used to, many years ago. In fact I did him a small service when he had for the moment forgotten that he was in the East and that the Orient does not always see eye to eye with the West.”

  Gladys’ feminine curiosity was instantly aroused, but I refused to gratify it. After all it was ancient history now, Gartside was several years younger at the time, and in the parlance of the day, “it was the sort of thing that might have happened to any one.” He is now a highly respected member of the House of Lords, occupying an important public position. I should long ago have forgotten the whole episode but for his promise that if ever he had a chance of repaying me he would do so. I have every reason now to remember that the bre
ad I cast on the waters returned to me after not many days.

  “What’s he like now?” I asked Gladys.

  “Oh, a topper!”

  I find the rising generation defines with a minimum of words.

  “I mean he’s a real white man,” she proceeded, per obscurans ad obscurantius; I was left to find out for myself how much remained of the old Gartside. I found him little changed, and still a magnificent specimen of humanity, six feet four in height, fifteen stone in weight, as strong as a giant, and as gentle as a woman. He was the kindest, most courteous, largest-hearted man I have ever met: slow of speech, slow of thought, slow of perception. I am afraid you might starve at his side without his noticing it; when once he had seen your plight he would give you his last crust and go hungry himself. He was brave and just as few men have the courage to be; you trusted and followed him implicitly; with greater quickness and more imagination he would have been a great man, but with his weak initiative and unready sympathy he might lead you to irreparable disaster. I suppose he was five and thirty at this time, balder than when I last met him, and stouter than in the days when he backed himself to stroke a Leander four half-way over the Putney course against the ’Varsity Eight.

  I went on with Philip’s letter of explanation.

  “Nigel Rawnsley you will find majestic, Olympian, and omniscient. He is tall, sandy-haired, and lantern-jawed like his father; do not comment on the likeness, as he cherishes the belief that the Prime Minister’s son is of somewhat greater importance than the Prime Minister. If you hear him speak before you see him, you will recognise him by his exquisite taste in recondite epithets. He will hail you with a Greek quotation, convict you of inaccuracy and ignorance on five different matters of common knowledge in as many minutes, and finally give you up as hopeless. This is just his manner. It is also his manner to wear a conspicuous gold cross to mark his religious enthusiasms, and to travel third as an earnest of democratic instincts. He is not a bad fellow if you don’t take him too seriously; he is making a mark in the House.”