Dancing Death

by Christopher Bush

  “Yes . . . I know. Still, I shall make it up to you. You can rely on me, Martin.”

  Braishe grunted, then, “Come and sit down. Never saw such a restless devil in all my life! What’s the matter with you? Fed up with the book?”

  “No . . . not really.” He shivered slightly. “The room’s rather cold, don’t you think? Give the fire a stir, will you?”

  The flames leaped up as they caught the dry side of the wood. Fewne watched them, made as if to come over, hesitated, then sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Have a cigarette?” Braishe passed over his case.

  “No, thanks . . . really. I think perhaps I’ve been smoking rather a lot.”

  “Shouldn’t wonder!” He helped himself. “Tried on your costume yet?”

  Fewne smiled. “Oh, rather!”

  “Like it?”

  “Splendidly! It’s . . . I mean I think it’s marvellous!”

  The other smiled at his enthusiasm. “Glad you like it! Challis is a pretty shrewd chap when it comes to casting costumes!” He got to his feet. “Think I’d better push along now. See you as soon as . . . they arrive?”

  “Oh, yes! . . . Give me a holler if I’m not there.”

  He smiled at Braishe as he left the room, then took the fireside chair. Outside, the sky was grey, and saturated as it were with snow, and the room was as dark as twilight. Then suddenly he sprang up and, standing by the side of the window, peered across the snow. Braishe could be seen passing the loggia, then disappearing into the front porch.

  Fewne sank wearily into the chair again. For several minutes he sat looking into the fire, then all at once seemed to come to a decision. For five minutes he worked—and the things he did were curious ones. Then he gave another look towards the house. Even then he was not satisfied. He opened the door and peeped round the angle of the wall along the path. He re-entered the room, and when he emerged he was carrying something.

  He halted at the edge of the veranda and, leaning on the pillar with his left hand, hurled that something into the air—a thin, dark object it seemed to be as it soared away over the snow towards the far lawn. Then it fell, thirty good yards away. From where he stood he could see nothing.

  He turned back into the room. As he shut the door he was breathing hard, as if he had been running. Then he sank into the chair again.

  D

  There were two men in one city; the one rich and the other poor.

  The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds;

  But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb . . . it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom.

  L. T.

  1 The Perfect Murder Case.

  PART I

  THE PROBLEM

  CHAPTER II

  ROADS OF DESTINY

  WHEN Martin Braishe decided to give a house party at Little Levington Hall, his motives were decidedly mixed, as indeed the motives of all of us are, except in plain matters of eating and sleeping. Had he been asked, however, what his motives were, he might have given three excellent ones. In the first place, since he had come into the property on the death of his father the previous summer, he had done no entertaining whatever, and a house party was therefore indicated; moreover, as Celia Paradine was available as hostess, the occasion was too good to be missed. Then some sort of celebration seemed overdue on account of that gas discovery of his. Not only had the War Office definitely taken it up, but if George Paradine was right, there seemed likely to be certain commercial uses to which it could be put, provided its amazingly lethal properties could be adequately harnessed. And lastly was the most obvious reason of all. There were people whom he liked and to whom he owed things. What more delightful than to give them the pleasure, in his own company, of knowing each other?

  The fancy-dress ball was really Brenda Fewne’s idea. Old Henry Braishe had made it an annual affair for New Year’s Eve, and it did indeed seem rather a pity to drop an event to which so many of the most charming people in that corner of the county looked forward. Martin, indeed, needed little persuading. Many snows have melted since those days when your scientist was necessarily of mature age and monastic tastes. Braishe, just in the thirties, could shake as loose a hoof, as they put it, as the best of ’em.

  As for those people who accepted the invitation to that small house party, their motives too were decidedly mixed. If one were fantastically minded or had a liking for high-flown imagery, one might say that all sorts of roads, during those twenty-four hours, led to Little Levington—as, for instance, The Street of Unlawful Delights, The Path of Prevarication, Hilarity Highway, and The Road to Dusty Death. Had you asked them what their motives were, their answers would certainly have been equivocal. In order to arrive at something like the truth, therefore, the best thing to do seems to be to use the available keyholes or to maintain a precarious hold on the luggage grids of a mixed assortment of cars.

  George and Celia Paradine came down by road the previous afternoon. George was rather a quaint figure, on the short side and the least bit stout. The previous two years he had spent in Central Africa with the Pfeiffer Commission on Tropical Diseases, and his face still carried a dark tan that went very whimsically with his vast overhanging moustache. He was a good sort, was George. Ludovic Travers said he had the homeliest first-class brain in the Royal Society. What he was, was the chief authority on the fly areas of Africa; what he looked like was a benevolent uncle who was accustomed to act as horse in a series of nurseries.

  Celia had the grand manner. She made no bones about acknowledging her remoteness from fifty—indeed, she made precious few bones about anything. She was accustomed to giving a withering look and then going straight on. You’d have sworn, after an hour in her company, that she carried a lorgnette, which she certainly didn’t. Travers called her a maternal martinet. He also said that were she either, she’d be the world’s best mother and its worst mother-in-law. But Travers had known her since he was a boy and knew how to approach on the leeward side.

  “Hallo! Getting pretty near now,” said George as the car lurched into the side road.

  Ho-Ping, the Pekinese, almost rolled off his mistress’s lap. Celia clicked her tongue.

  “You must speak to Sheffield, George! His driving is getting positively reckless.”

  “Expect it’s the camber,” said her husband mildly. “Still, as you say, my dear.”

  She soothed the lump of fawn fur with words at which George had long ceased to wince: “There! Didum’s auntie let little boy fall?” then, “Did you say Martin had got some of that dreadful gas in the house?”

  George smiled. “Of course not! Besides, if he had, it’d be as safe as—safe as the Bank of England. You forget Martin’s not a boy. He’s a man and just as responsible as I am.”

  Her sniff made the obvious retort. She tickled the ears of the Peke. “Didums think he’d smell the horrid gas, then?” then, with her usual machine-gun manner, “Why is Ludovic Travers coming down to see you about it?”

  “My dear, I’ve told you! Ludo’s coming because he knows Martin, and Martin asked him. Then, sort of—er—to kill two birds with one stone, we thought Ludo could give us some idea of the financial side—company flotation, and so on—if we actually decide on anything.”

  For fifty yards nothing was said. Ho-Ping resumed his stertorous sleep; then, “I’m sure we should have come down yesterday. Martin can never fit all those people in.”

  “I thought you wrote.”

  “Wrote!” Another sniff. “Well, everything will probably have to be altered in any case.” She thought of something else. “Who’s that man Ludovic’s bringing down?”

  George shrugged his shoulders. “He’ll be all right if Ludo’s bringing him.” He smiled. “All I hope is he doesn’t cut me out by coming as a station master!”

  “Why you indulged in that absurd fancy, I can’t imagine!”

  George chuckled. “Oh, yes, you can! I told you, my dear, I always wanted to be a
railway porter when I was a boy. Now I’ve got the chance for the first time in my life, I’m jolly well not going to lose it. Besides,” with extreme diplomacy, “think of the foil I shall be to you and Ho-Ping, straight from the Imperial Palace!”

  “Don’t they have Chinese porters?” asked Celia frigidly.

  George was spared a reply. The car lurched again as it turned into the Hall drive, and as Ho-Ping woke up he had to be told all about it.

  Mirabel Quest and her sister, Brenda Fewne, came down after lunch, in Mirabel’s car, with Ransome, Mirabel’s maid, inside with the smaller luggage. Physically the pair were alike as two peas; in most things else they were as unlike as a couple of women can be. Brenda was aloof. She seemed to be perpetually aware of the fact that other people knew her brow was like the snowdrift and her neck like the swan’s. She seemed rather a Ruritanian alabaster princess than the product of a country vicarage—even taking into account the fact that her grandfather was a colonial bishop. She possessed a sort of devastating, married virginity; could refuse a cocktail with the divinest air of apology and swing into a dance with the same bored, apologetic sort of grace. You wondered what she would be like if she really laughed, but, as she never got beyond that wistful smile, you never knew.

  Mirabel was a year older—twenty-eight, that is—and of the stage stagey. Her mouth was the tiniest bit larger and her lips the tiniest bit thinner than her sister’s, and her moods were as many as expediency demanded. Sometimes, in repose, she looked as repulsively efficient as a bargain hunter; when she cared to be herself she could be calculatingly jolly. Her other poses—both a kind of second nature—were a Topsyish, gushing volubility and a raucous, slangy masculinity. Off the stage she was quite a good actress. On it she was a magnificent one, though the spiteful described her as a rhythmic recitation laboriously conned from Wyndham Challis. As for the pair of them, to use language purely figurative, Brenda seemed to have left the vicarial nest by crossing the lawn to the duke’s castle; Mirabel, to have eloped from a back window with the frowsty leader of a pierrot troupe.

  “What’ll Denis make out of that last book?” she was asking. Denis was, of course, Brenda’s husband, and the book his latest—Tingling Symbols.

  “I don’t know, really.” She gave the faintest suggestion of a frown.

  “You don’t know! Well, I should jolly well know. Blue blood’s all very well, old dear. Give me the boodle every time!”

  “Don’t be vulgar, Myra darling!”

  “Vulgar be damned! What do you think Windy’s coming down for, this week-end? Boodle! Wants Martin to put up the needful for the new show. And he’ll get it!”

  “I’m not quite so sure,” said Brenda with rather exasperating indifference. The other flashed a quick look at her.

  “How do you know what Martin’ll do?”

  “I don’t. It’s merely my opinion, darling.”

  The pair were silent for some time, then Brenda drawled out, “You’re really so illogical you know, darling. You cling to this man Challis because he can keep you where you are. If you married Tommy Wildernesse you could snap your fingers at a cheap little vulgarian like Challis.”

  “You’re jealous, old dear!”

  “Now you’re merely being absurd.” Then her face showed a sudden interest. “If you must marry for that kind of thing, why not Ludovic Travers? He’s simply rolling in money, and he’s just been made a director of Durangos. And he knows everybody worth knowing.”

  “What’ve Durangos got to do with it?”

  “Publicity, darling. They’re the biggest people in the world. If you married Travers, he’d put your name on every hoarding in town.”

  Her sister laughed. “Why don’t you get him for Denis? The poor mutt needs a little publicity—and so do you, for that matter, old dear.”

  Brenda was perfectly unruffled. “Well, darling, that’s certainly better than notoriety!”

  “You make me sick! You and your strait-laced tommyrot!” She scowled as she trod viciously on the accelerator. “What bought the car you’re in? And the flat you weren’t too strait-laced to sleep in?” She wrenched the car to the crown of the road. “You and your damn virtue! What good’s it done you? Let you land a husband like yourself!” She mimicked Fewne’s voice. “Er—how d’ you do, Mirabel? . . . My God! you make me sick—the pair of you!”

  Two minutes before, Ransome had shifted her seat, and with back to the wheel sat listening to the conversation.

  Ludovic Travers was the next to arrive. He left his sister’s place in Sussex just after lunch, Franklin in front with him, and his man, Palmer, behind till Tommy Wildernesse should be picked up at Tonbridge. Travers was mildly excited, chiefly about seeing George Paradine and Celia again after more than two years. Also, according to George’s letter, that gas business of Braishe’s might turn out a really big thing. George’s name would carry tremendous weight with any administration in malarial or tsetse areas, and if Braishe had delivered the goods there looked like being a fortune for those who got in on the ground floor. That “if,” of course, was everything. Braishe, for all his reputation and what he had undoubtedly accomplished, was just the least bit too suave, too persuasive for Travers’s liking. His career was just a bit too meteoric; he lacked maturity.

  Not that Travers was feeling at all apprehensive. All the apprehension he was feeling at the moment was for two vastly different things—the snow that had fallen that morning, and the sort of figure he’d cut at the dance. Ursula had been awfully decent: two days of gramophone and laborious steps; but somehow, just when he was hoofing it most smoothly, something or other would go wrong, and his feet would get all tangled up. Perhaps, in spite of what Ursula had said, he needn’t dance after all. He might slightly sprain an ankle and then merely sit around in that Malvolio costume and watch the proceedings. Then, just a little later, perhaps, at the end of the evening, he might pick a partner of large forgiveness. He put the idea tentatively to John Franklin. Franklin laughed.

  “You’ll be all right! We’ll have a rehearsal after tea. Don’t give a damn if anything goes wrong. Just lug the girl round.”

  “Sounds easy at a distance,” remarked Travers. “That looks rather like Tommy, by the way.”

  “Don’t forget about not mentioning I’m a detective! I mean—well, you know!” said Franklin quickly. “I’m just a friend of yours, that’s all.”

  Tommy Wildernesse, boisterous as ever, got in the rear of the Isotta with them, and Palmer took the wheel.

  “What’s the weather like, Tommy?” asked Travers.

  “Oh, I rang ’em up about an hour ago. They’ve had the plough on the road as far as the drive, so we’ll be all right. You got chains?”

  “Oh, rather!” Travers had a look at his happy-go-lucky face. “You’re a fortunate young devil, Tommy! Nothing to do but play golf and have your photo taken for the papers. By the way, haven’t we got to congratulate you?”

  Tommy looked blankly at the pair of them.

  “Sorry if I’ve put my foot in it,” said Travers, “but surely somebody—who was it, John?—told us you and—er—Mirabel had sort of—er—got engaged?”

  “Gossip paragraph in the Record,” said Franklin.

  “Wish to hell they’d mind their own business!” exploded Tommy. “Sorry! I didn’t mean you fellows.”

  “Then there’s no truth in it?”

  “No . . . and I’m damn glad there isn’t!” Somehow the words rang none too true. Then the truth came out. “What’s your opinion of that little squirt Challis?”

  Travers smiled. “Well, I’m not an authority on squirts, Tommy. Do you mean as a squirt, as a super-Pellissier, or as a husband for Mirabel?”

  Wildernesse grunted. “Damned if I know what I do mean. Let’s talk of something more cheerful. What’s your costume, Ludo?”

  “Oh—er—Malvolio.”

  “Mal—who?”

  “You’re an ignorant swine, Tommy. He’s a long-legged, Shakespearian sort of butler
chap. Bat-eyed—and he can’t dance.”

  “Hm! That’ll suit you all right,” said Tommy wholeheartedly. “What are you, Franklin?”

  “An apache. Parisian burglar sort of bloke.”

  Tommy frowned. “Wish I’d got the brains to think of things like that. Me, I’m going to be a jolly old harlequin. Had it for the Favershams’ dance last week.”

  “I say! Martin’ll be rather upset,” said Travers. “He’s a harlequin.”

  Tommy whistled. “Is he, by Jove! Then you fellers’d better keep quiet about it till I get it on. They can’t make me take the damn thing off. By the way, I shouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing’s a washout. Martin said his phone’d been going all the morning with people ringing up to know if it was still on. He told ’em all it’d be on if nobody got there at all.”

  “How many’d he ask?”

  “Forty, I think. That’s all the floor holds with comfort. He says he’s sure half of ’em’ll risk it, even if it snows again. And he says there’ll be plenty of girls.”

  The car skidded slightly. Palmer drew her up slowly to the side of the road where the snow lay piled up as the plough had left it.

  Wyndham Challis came down by train, and Martin Braishe met him at Great Levington Station. If Braishe, with his blue-black jowl and dense black hair, looked like a toreador, then Challis, with wide felt hat, side whiskers, streak of moustache, and pasty complexion, resembled a matador off duty.

  His volubility was not a love of words but merely an expression of an overwhelming self-assurance. As he walked along the platform with his host he was talking continuously and making little gestures with his hands. All the time he seemed to be wholly unaware of the actual bodily presence of anybody but himself; he floated, rather than passed, through the ticket barrier and handed over his ticket as part of a gesture.

  “Hop in!” said Braishe, indicating the Daimler. “The luggage will come later.”