by Ellis Peters
No, wait a minute, why not go the whole hog? Off came the coat again, and she settled the ribbon of rainbow silk that was the baldric of Cherubino’s smallsword across the breast of the silver waistcoat, and eased the scabbard comfortably at her hip. The finishing touch.
This she was really looking forward to. This would be the biggest free publicity stunt any première of Figaro had ever had, and Johnny could like it or lump it, whichever he liked.
She twisted the full skirts of her coat before the mirror a last time, clapped the silver-braided tricorne on top of her wig, and slid open the panel in the wall.
‘West End, here I come!’ said Hero, and ducked through the hatch and ran for the back staircase.
The commissionaire who opened the door of the Aston Martin in front of the discreetly lit portal of the hotel gaped and stared for an instant at the vision that slid nimbly out of the car. Two leather-coated young men halted and whistled, and even respectable elderly gentlemen turned their heads and loitered to watch, faint grins of pleasure and speculation dawning gently on their disillusioned faces. London, accustomed to every fantastic manner of dress the world provides, sometimes still shows mild surprise and sophisticated wonder at the tricks chance can play.
Most of those who lingered to admire Hero’s vainglorious progress up the steps and in at the glass doors put her down to the vagaries of the film world or the advertising business, but that did not lessen the pleasure she gave them.
The diminutive page-boy who was just crossing the foyer as she entered had more imagination. At first sight of her his jaw dropped so far that he almost dislodged his pill-box cap, but the next moment he had laid a white-gloved paw on his heart and swept her a prodigious bow.
‘Good evening, m’lord!’
Hero twirled her ruffles and flourished her hat, and made him an even more elaborate return, and they parted with solemn faces, magnificent in make-believe. After that the grown-ups with their goggling astonishment, smoothly hooded at once behind professional serenity, were a sad come-down. The middle-aged gentlemen sitting over drinks in the open hall showed candid appreciation, but she ignored them; in or out of fancy dress, they were easy game.
The women were more interesting. Eyebrows signalled indulgent amusement, mild curiosity, and cool, well-bred, expertly disguised jealousy. Hero slowed her progress towards the reception desk to give them their money’s worth, and accentuated the delicate swagger she had cultivated for Cherubino until she had every eye in the room upon her. It was good practice for achieving the same effect on the stage. It was also slightly alarming, and very pleasant.
Two round, dark waiters, plainly Italian, achieved the feat of pouring out drinks flawlessly while their eyes followed her with eloquent and perfectly frank delight the length of the room. A male clerk had mysteriously materialised from some hidden regions, and unobtrusively elbowed the woman aside from the precise area of the desk at which the vision might be expected to arrive. An invisible spotlight accompanied her. All the other women might as well not have been there at all, nobody was looking at them.
She was very late, presumably Chatrier had given her up. She leaned a satin elbow on the desk, tilted her smallsword cockily, and said nonchalantly: ‘Will you be so kind as to acquaint Mr Chatrier with my arrival? He expected me earlier, but unfortunately I was unavoidably delayed.’
‘Certainly, sir!’ said the goggle-eyed clerk, a shade heavy-handed with his co-operation. ‘What name shall I say?’
‘Cherubino,’ she said grandly, and turned to let her gaze rove tranquilly over the audience in the foyer.
She had practically put a stop to conversation there, even business held its breath a little. One of the Italian waiters moved slowly out of sight through a service door, his chin on his shoulder, and his eyes devouring her to the last moment when the door swung to between them.
A tall young man had just come in from the dining-room, and was looking round in some wonder for the focus of the prevalent hush. He found it, and halted as abruptly as if he had run his good-looking nose into a brick wall. The blue eyes opened very wide, directing at her a long, roused, dubious stare. Better and better! She had forgotten in her single-minded obstinacy that most of the company’s principals, including Hans Selverer, were at the same hotel.
She continued to gaze past him, contemplating the florid decoration of the far wall, but acutely aware of what was going on behind his cloudy face, none the less. He was making up his mind; he was beginning to thread his way between the chairs and tables towards her. Not yet, she thought firmly, and not here, and turned again to the beaming clerk, who was just cradling the telephone.
‘Mr Chatrier will come down at once.’
He was coming down at that very moment, and precipitately.
The first glimpse of his face was interesting. Through the blaze of conscientious delight she sensed the careful motions of a mind busy balancing solid satisfaction at her coming, with all its implications, against irritation at the difficulty in which she’d landed him. This was far too public and unorthodox for his plans. She’d alert her father too soon – if, indeed, she hadn’t done so already.
‘Hero, my dear!’ He took her hands, looking her over with magnificently dissembled dismay. ‘I’d given you up. What has happened?’
‘I know,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t get away earlier.’ Out of the tail of her eye she observed that Chatrier’s arrival had stopped Hans Selverer in his tracks. He frowned, hesitating whether to meddle; if she wasn’t quick he’d make up his deliberate but formidable mind and move in on the spot, and Johnny might take a dim view of his daughter playing the leading part in a public scene.
‘Can we go somewhere quiet?’ she said appealingly. ‘I didn’t really want to sail in here looking like a refugee from pantomime.’
‘Of course! Come up to my suite, I’ll have them bring dinner there for you.’
He shepherded her hastily up the staircase in his arm, bending over her with elderly gallantry for the benefit of the spectators. The gallantry he would display upstairs would probably be of another kind, though equally discreet and expert, but with Hans Selverer’s black scowl scorching her back she felt pretty secure. The only question was whether, between the two of them, she would get any dinner that night, and that represented a risk she felt to be justified in the circumstances.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Chatrier softly in her ear, ‘you’ve been running into rough water for my sake. Come and tell me. If there’s something wrong I must know. I don’t want to complicate your life.’
Somewhere in the velvet solicitude of his voice there was hidden a thin, clear stream of silent thought that she could almost translate aloud. This girl is going to be a push-over. She wouldn’t have come here like this, nuisance though she is, if she hadn’t got it badly. Take it easy tonight, but better get her tied up quickly and irrevocably, so that marriage on civilised terms will seem the best thing even to her father.
The sudden chill of warning trickled down her spine. If she had been less sure of Hans Selverer, gnawing his lip down there in the foyer, she would have turned back then.
She needn’t have worried. The tap at the door of the sitting-room came before they had even finished the first drink. She had had, as it happened, no intention of finishing hers; she knew her limitations, and she knew a calculated inhibition-loosener when she tasted one. Chatrier had seemed, if anything, rather relieved to see her lack of interest in it. Probably the drinks had been ordered beforehand, and he had regretted his too-comprehensive planning when he guessed that Johnny was already in arms. Possibly he was as relieved as she was when the door, opening in response to his invitation, admitted Hans Selverer instead of the expected waiter.
‘Please forgive this intrusion,’ said Hans, closing the door firmly behind him, ‘but I have a message for Miss Truscott from her father.’ He fixed his eyes upon Hero, curled in the deep chair with the half-emptied glass at her elbow, and set his young jaw at her l
ike a bulldog. ‘I have told him that you are here, and quite safe. I think you must know that he has been looking for you everywhere, and was very alarmed about you. I have reassured him that you are about to leave for home. Under my escort.’
‘You have,’ said Marc Chatrier, coming hotly to his feet, ‘the impudence of the devil, Mr Selverer.’
But he hesitated then, visibly checking his natural anger in face of a sudden doubt. He turned upon Hero, too; he came across to her and stood looking down at her with a slight, troubled frown.
‘Hero, you didn’t tell me that your father had no idea you were here. Is it true?’
The part was developing real possibilities. She hugged her satin knees and lowered her eyes uneasily, admiring Chatrier’s resourcefulness and her own versatility. She hedged, protesting that she had been about to tell him the whole story, that Johnny must have known where she would be, though actually – well, there’d been no time, she’d just hopped into the car and come. Why not? What difference did it make?
The cue was admirably taken.
‘What difference!’ sighed Chatrier. ‘Oh, my dear girl! You should have told me. How can I possibly …’
He turned away with a small gesture of gentle exasperation, and came eye to eye with Hans, who had not moved from his place by the door.
‘You say you’ve spoken to Mr Truscott? Why did you not have the courtesy to speak first to me? You must have known that I would not dream of doing anything behind his back. What have you told him?’
‘Simply that Miss Truscott is here. I dissuaded him,’ said Hans grimly, ‘from leaping into his car and coming to fetch her, but he made it plain that he did not know she was here, and did not wish her to remain. He has authorised me to drive her home, and I shall do so.’
‘I’m not coming!’ said Hero loudly and indignantly.
She didn’t really want a fight, she wasn’t sure that she could cope with it, though the potentialities had a certain allure; but it would look altogether too complacent in her if she fell into line without putting up a struggle.
‘Yes,’ said Hans, very pale and very precise, ‘you will come.’
‘I won’t! And please go away. Your interference in my affairs is insufferable.’
‘I am sorry. All the same, you are going home.’ He grew grimmer by the moment. ‘After that you need not be troubled with me any more.’
She was comfortably certain that he didn’t mean it; his voice held too much vehemence and too little conviction. She began to look forward ardently to that drive home, and didn’t know for the life of her how to get to it gracefully; but she need not have worried, Chatrier was equal to this as to all situations.
‘Hero,’ he said very gently and reasonably, leaning down to take her by the shoulders, ‘you don’t realise. This is something I can’t countenance. I had no intention of deceiving your father, and we must put it right at once. This young man may be insufferable, as you say, but he is undoubtedly right. You must go home. I would take you myself, but your father wishes and expects that you should go with Selverer, and I have no right whatever to quarrel with what your father wants.’
He drew her to her feet, kindly but firmly, smiled at her, and turned to cast one light, disparaging glance over the stiff young sentry by the door. ‘You will undoubtedly be quite safe with Selverer,’ he said.
Who would have thought that could be turned into such a deadly insult? And one that couldn’t be resented, either. Hans reddened slowly to his hair, but said not a word.
‘So, please, dear child,’ said Chatrier, turning his back scornfully on his enemy, ‘do as I ask you, and as you know you ought to. Go home and make your peace with your father. You will be glad afterwards.’
She let herself be persuaded. ‘Well – if you say so.’ Disconsolate, devoted, all he could wish. A push-over.
He escorted her to the door, and there, as though there had been no uncompromising figure grimly guarding it, he kissed her lightly on the forehead. Oh, the fatherliness of it, the forbearance, the breathtaking hypocrisy! ‘Good night, Hero!’
‘Good night!’ she said, gruff and small, and went out meekly with Hans watchful at her elbow.
On the stairs he took her by the arm, and she felt what did not show in his face, the full tension of his rage. He was furiously angry with her, she had only to prod him a little and the fire would blaze. This was better than that young-brother stuff at least, this was something she could enjoy; and now that she was out of Chatrier’s sight she needn’t even contain her enjoyment.
She hardly felt the reviving glances that provided a guard of honour for her exit, and Hans was not aware of them at all. The first check came when he had marched her out at the door and down the steps to the Aston Martin. He transferred to her the glower he had fixed on the car.
‘Your key, please!’
She gave it to him, trying not to look too complacent about it. ‘Like me to drive?’ she said innocently.
For answer he opened the passenger door for her, and bundled her into the seat, slamming the door upon her with the first tremor of temper he had betrayed. He settled himself beside her dourly, and switched on the engine.
‘Are you sure you can drive it?’
He approached it with caution, but he soon showed her if he could drive it. Once he had got the feel of it, she had never been whisked out of London at a smarter pace. True, he set off at first in the wrong direction, his experience of the streets of London being sketchy as yet; and when she thought fit to point it out, he extricated himself from a one-way street by means of a U-turn which would have landed him in court if there had been a policeman handy; but of his technical ability there could be no doubt.
‘You’re still going the wrong way,’ said Hero helpfully.
‘You will please direct me,’ he said through his teeth.
‘Why should I?’ she objected reasonably. ‘I’m in no hurry to get home. You’re the one who said we were going there. I don’t mind if we end up in Bath – and we shall, if you keep tearing along the A4 at this rate.’
Hans braked suddenly and brought the car to the side of the road. He turned on her furiously; even in the dark she felt the blue, outraged glare he fixed on her.
‘Everything is play to you. You are irresponsible. To come here to London so when you knew your father did not wish it, and to allow yourself to go to that man’s room like – like—’
‘Be careful!’ said Hero, flaring dangerously.
‘—like a half-witted child. And all out of vanity, because you must have your own way. You don’t care that your father is worried and waits for you. You don’t care what trouble you cause, only you must be amused and indulged. And so stupid, to put yourself in the hands of such a man.’
‘What’s the matter with him? What have you got against him? So far he’s behaved towards me a great deal more considerately than you ever have, you – you virtuous busybody! That’s what you are, a meddlesome, priggish busybody!’
‘And you,’ he said furiously, ‘are a spoiled, self-willed, ill-natured child! Your father should beat you.’
‘Why don’t you advise him to? You fancy yourself at correcting other people’s behaviour, why stop at mine? You could put him wise to his parental mistakes – maybe he’d be more grateful than I am.’
For a moment she thought he was going to take her by the shoulders and shake her, at the very least; instead, he jerked away from her with a set face, and seized the wheel.
‘I must go more to the left. You will tell me where to turn, or else I will lock you in the car while I go to telephone your father and tell him where we are.’
That wouldn’t have suited her, but not for the reason he supposed. She had still several miles of wrangling to look forward to, as things were, and she hadn’t half-finished the fight yet. So she told him, only prolonging the ride by a few modest prevarications here and there. The battle raged every yard of the way, and was the most gratifying event of her day. Whatever he felt towards
her now, it wasn’t indifference; and it wasn’t the blind, benevolent affection of an elder brother, either.
The battle with Johnny was less satisfactory. For one thing, he had been really frightened, when he weakened and went back to release her, only to find her gone; and that made her feel horribly guilty. For another, he was still blinder than any bat, and that infuriated her so much that she had no difficulty in transferring the load of her guilt to him.
He ought to have known her better, after all they’d been to each other all her life. He ought to have been looking for her real motives – no, he ought to have felt them by instinct, without even having to look for them. He ought to have recognised that admittedly hair-brained trip to London as what it was, a commando raid into enemy territory, undertaken for strategic reasons – well, partly strategic and partly prestige. After all, he had practically dared her to do it. And here he was, fussing and lecturing in a heavy-handed way, actually convinced that she was genuinely infatuated with Marc Chatrier.
It hadn’t occurred to her until then that anyone but Marc Chatrier himself, and with luck Hans Selverer, could seriously believe that she was attracted to the man. And that Johnny should swallow it so easily, Johnny of all people! She felt as if a gulf had suddenly yawned between them, the revelation set him so far from her.
She had walked straight into his arms on arrival, and kissed him, and apologised for scaring him, all in the best filial style, more than willing to make amends, but desiring also that he should admit his own folly. And how where were they?
She’d never thought the day would come when she’d hear Johnny carrying on like a father. And no end to it! She finished the sandwiches she’d brought in with her providently from the kitchen, and poured the last cup of coffee.