Finally Miss Chitterwick achieved her last reading of the affair: that her nephew wilfully and for the sake of vulgar notoriety had abandoned his proper job of curtain matching and maliciously entered the Piccadilly Palace lounge for the express purpose of watching a murder being committed, in order to see his photograph in the papers later; though this theme sometimes gave way to the opinion that he had really seen nothing at all and his craving for publicity had driven him to the length of inventing the whole thing, the hanging of the red-haired Major being a minor matter as long as Mr. Chitterwick’s debased lust after notoriety could be satisfied. Mr. Chitterwick had a good deal of trouble with his aunt during these days.
A letter which arrived for him one afternoon at teatime went some way to point his aunt’s moral. He read it through with surprise and pleasure and then innocently handed it over to Miss Chitterwick. “What a remarkable thing, Aunt. Do you remember her at all? I can’t say that I do.”
“Don’t expect me to be able to read it, do you?” grunted Miss Chitterwick. “Not without my glasses. If only I had some capable gairl to look after me! Someone who wasn’t always hiding my things away and then forgetting where she’d put them. What’s the good of——”
“I’ll read it out to you, Aunt,” interposed Mr. Chitterwick hastily, nobly refraining (as he had for years) from pointing out that if his aunt really wanted a capable girl she could have afforded to employ half a dozen; but it was another of Miss Chitterwick’s economies, a major one this time, never to employ anyone to do those things for her that someone else would do for nothing.
The letter that Mr. Chitterwick proceeded to read aloud in his gentle tenor ran as follows:
“Riversmead Priory,
“Dorsetshire.
“DEAR MR. CHITTERWICK:
“I can hardly suppose you will remember me, but I used to know your mother very well at one time. We were in fact at school together, and great friends, though we drifted apart later, as school friends so often do. I have been meaning to write to you for some time, as I should like to renew my friendship with your family. Perhaps you will come down and spend a week here, on Thursday next, the 23rd? We should be delighted to see you, and the fishing here is not at all bad. We shall be only a very small party, just ourselves and one friend of mine, so everything will be quite informal. There is a good train from Waterloo at three-thirty, and our station is Templecombe, so I shall expect you by that.
“Yours very sincerely,
“AGATHA MILBORNE.”
“Humph!” said Miss Chitterwick.
“Agatha Milborne,” ruminated Mr. Chitterwick, helping himself absent-mindedly to another muffin. “No, I don’t remember the name at all. But what a very charming letter. Mrs. Milborne. No.”
Miss Chitterwick snorted violently. “Mrs. Milborne! Didn’t you recognize the address, Ambrose, you guffin? Lady Milborne, of course. Your letter’s from the Countess.”
“The Countess?” repeated Mr. Chitterwick, gratified. “Dear me, how very extraordinary. You know her, then, Aunt?”
“Used to come here before she was married,” rumbled Miss Chitterwick disparagingly. “Friend of your mother’s. Flighty sort of gairl. Never thought much of her.” Miss Chitterwick was the kind of snob who dissembles her love of a lord under an affectation of deep contempt. She really was a terrible snob, but Mr. Chitterwick could sympathize with her. In her youth the Chitterwicks had been “County”; now they were, presumably, suburban.
“Indeed?” said Mr. Chitterwick, much interested. “Then what was her maiden name?”
Miss Chitterwick did not reply. Instead she began to sip her tea, rather noisily. Mr. Chitterwick was to gather that his aunt had not heard. His aunt never did hear anything she did not wish to.
Usually Mr. Chitterwick tactfully accepted this convenient deafness. Now, however, his interest was stronger than his tact. He repeated his question, so loudly that his aunt could certainly not pretend to have heard nothing this time.
But he got little satisfaction. “Maiden name?” she echoed gruffly. “How should I know? Can’t be expected to remember the maiden name of every friend of your mother’s, can I?”
“But if she stayed here, Aunt,” suggested Mr. Chitterwick, though he knew it was an empty hope.
“Lord knows what her maiden name was,” replied Miss Chitterwick bluntly. “I don’t; and don’t care either. Something good-for-nothing, I expect.”
“Well, it’s remarkably kind of her to ask me to stay,” said Mr. Chitterwick, in mild protest against this quite unwarrantable suggestion. “I shall certainly go.”
“Huh!” sneered his aunt. “Obvious to me why she asks you.”
“Is it, Aunt? Why?”
“Drops your mother as soon as she’s got her earl,” observed Miss Chitterwick with intense bitterness. “Then, forty years afterward, finds she’s been waiting all the time to see some of her family again. Huh! Doesn’t take me in.”
“Why then, Aunt?”
“Why? What do you suppose? You’re a notorious person now, aren’t you? Just what you’ve always wanted to be, it seems.” The mauve satin ribbons on Miss Chitterwick’s cap positively trembled with sarcasm. “Photographs in the papers, and the Lord knows what. Chief witness in a murder trial, heaven save us all. No wonder she remembered she once knew your mother.”
“You mean—you mean, she’s only asked me to stay because I am—because of my—because she supposes I’m—”
“Because you’re one of these noospaper sensations,” supplied Miss Chitterwick. “Anyone but a downright guffin could see that. Collect notorious people, all these countesses, don’t they? Actresses and murderers and authors and Lord knows what. Now you’re one of them, and she’s collecting you too.”
“God bless my soul!” supplicated Mr. Chitterwick, quite perturbed. Really put like that it did seem as if . . . And everyone knew that countesses did . . .
“Huh!” repeated his aunt, and betook herself again to her tea.
“Then I shall certainly not go,” decided Mr. Chitterwick with energy.
His aunt almost dropped her teacup. “Not go? Fiddlesticks! More out of your senses than usual, Ambrose, are you?”
“But really, Aunt, if she only asked me because—”
“When I was a gairl,” observed Miss Chitterwick irrelevantly, “we used to stay every year with the Dook of Dorset. Your grandfather was always asked for the shootin’. Every year. And, of course, I went with him.”
“Yes, Aunt. But if you’re quite sure that’s all she asked me for, I think it would be most undignified to—”
“If I was thought good enough to be asked to stay with the Dook you’re good enough to stay with a twopenny-halfpenny countess, aren’t you?” argued Miss Chitterwick, with remarkable scorn.
“Yes. Oh, yes. No doubt. But what I was meaning is—”
“Fiddlesticks!” snorted Miss Chitterwick.
So Mr. Chitterwick went.
He took with him, besides the more conventional part of his outfit, a rubber hot-water bottle (for even in July you never know), a red flannel chest protector (for his dear grandfather was carried off by chest trouble, as he very well knew, and it is tempting providence to be flagrant in one’s recklessness), a white cotton nightcap, once the property of his dear grandfather (for if Ambrose’s hair went on disappearing at that rate he’d soon be as bald as a coot, and the only way to stop hair disappearing, as anybody but a perfect guffin knew, was to wear a nightcap), and two dead moths (which had got in by mistake). The footman who unpacked for him handled all these things reverently, except the moths.
Of course, once his aunt had taken such a definite line Mr. Chitterwick would have gone in any case, as he very well knew; but he was able to find one factor in the situation with which to salve his male independence. Riversmead Priory, he had discovered, lay within a few miles of Earlshaze;
and though this undoubtedly gave strong support to Miss Chitterwick’s cynical reading of the invitation, it would nevertheless afford the chief witness an opportunity to examine the prize which seemed to have been the mainspring of the crime. He would also, no doubt, be able to gather excellent first-hand information about the accused Major’s early youth and general character, which would not only be exceedingly interesting to himself as a criminologist, but might even be the means of enabling him to assist the police still further; one never knew what one might pick up. Thus thought Mr. Chitterwick as he dressed for dinner on the night of his arrival.
So far he had met no one at all. His train had been late, and the drive to the Priory had been at least twenty miles. Mr. Chitterwick, arriving with only just comfortable time to dress, had been received by nobody beyond the butler, who had managed to convey a tinge of reproof in his welcome, as if to imply that although he knew Mr. Chitterwick could put up a very good defence for being late, yet a real gentleman would surely have done something about it with the train.
Mr. Chitterwick was a shy man. The thought of descending those noble stairs to a room full of strangers was an unhappy one. As he plucked for the last time at his tie and applied the final and unnecessary touch of the brush to his thinning hair, he wished violently that he had not come. He was a quiet man, contented enough really with his aunt, his criminology, and his stamp collection, and to go a-visiting did not come naturally to him. Still, come he had, and go down he must. So down he went.
The others were already waiting in the huge hall into which the staircase led, but Mr. Chitterwick, descending with immense dignity and secretly wondering if his tie had retained its correct pose for the thirty yards he had already travelled, had no time to admire the groined stone roof, the mullioned windows, or even the suits of armour standing here and there against the grey stone walls; he was far too busy feverishly searching the little group at the far end for a hostess who had been at school with his mother; it is an awkward thing for a guest to select the wrong hostess at the first contact.
Fortunately his problem was solved for him. A woman in a pale pink frock, with very wavy fair hair, blue eyes, and a perfectly enchanting smile, detached herself and came across the hall to meet him, arriving with nicety as Mr. Chitterwick reached the bottom step. “Good evening, Mr. Chitterwick,” she said pleasantly, turning the smile on him to the full, so that Mr. Chitterwick had a momentary illusion that this was the one moment in her life for which the lady had been waiting, and that it came even beyond her expectation. “So sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived. Awfully sporting of you to come and risk a lot of strangers. Strangers are such a toss-up, aren’t they? Come along and have a cocktail.”
Mr. Chitterwick, beaming vaguely, went along to have a cocktail, filled with a great wonder. This woman had been at school with his mother, so that putting it at its lowest she must have been sixty if a day; and yet she did not look a minute over thirty-two, and not really that. Marvellous are the ways of the English judicial systems, and marvellous are the ways of the British police force, but far, far more marvellous still are the ways of women.
And then Mr. Chitterwick saw the foolish mistake he had been making. Obviously this was not, could not possibly be Lady Milborne. It was her daughter. Dear, dear.
“It was very kind,” murmured Mr. Chitterwick politely, “of your mother to ask me, Lady—Lady—er—Lady . . .” His politeness trailed off into deprecatory blushes as he realized that he did not know the daughter’s name.
The daughter paused in her progress across the hall to glance back at Mr. Chitterwick in some bewilderment, causing his blush to deepen. Then an unmistakable giggle escaped from her, she whisked round again, and continued her path rather more quickly than before. Wondering fearfully what horrible solecism he must have committed, Mr. Chitterwick ambled unhappily after her.
The small group gathered about a little table by a large leather settee consisted of a tall man aged somewhere between forty-five and fifty, with a greying moustache and very piercing grey eyes which looked at Mr. Chitterwick from under shaggy grey brows; a young man, not much more than five-and-twenty, short but sturdily built, with the same blue eyes as those of the woman in the pink frock, and the same rather mischievous twinkle in them, too; an elderly lady, tall and erect, with white hair and rather a sad expression, and lastly a still taller girl, about twenty-eight years old (whose appearance seemed vaguely familiar to him, though he could not quite place it), with black hair, an oval face very delicately featured, quite huge brown eyes, and an air of dignified aloofness which at once struck alarm into Mr. Chitterwick’s soul. Mr. Chitterwick, not really at his ease with anything feminine, was particularly alarmed by tall young women with airs of dignified aloofness. He began to wish quite intensely that he had not come.
“This is Mr. Chitterwick, everybody,” announced the pink lady (? daughter) cheerfully. “So now,” she added without truth, “you all know each other.”
A subdued murmur from four throats acknowledged acquaintanceship with Mr. Chitterwick.
It must not be supposed that Mr. Chitterwick had thus examined, with the cool unemotionalism of the professional detective, the characteristics of the five persons with whom he now found himself in contact, even to noting the colours of their eyes. To him they were merely five blurs. Short pink blur (?) daughter of house; tall grey and black blur (?) host; tall black and silver elderly feminine blur, no doubt hostess; still taller flame-coloured blur, unknown and unco-ordinated female of terrifying aspect, and so on. By and by, no doubt, when Mr. Chitterwick’s initial alarm had worn off, their outlines would become clearer; in the meantime he accepted with gratitude an amber-coloured cocktail from the hand of the pink blur and hastily drowned his lack of ease in its depths. Almost immediately afterward, to his relief, dinner was announced. No one took anybody in; they trooped up four steps at the end of the hall into a large panelled dining-room, and Mr. Chitterwick was bidden by the pink blur into a seat. To his secret sorrow he found himself sitting next to the flame-coloured blur.
During the pause while table napkins were unfolded Mr. Chitterwick had to readjust his ideas. The tall grey-and-black male must be Lord Milborne because he was seated at the head of the table, but the white-haired black-and-silver feminine blur could not after all be Lady Milborne because she was not at the foot; on Mr. Chitterwick’s left sat there instead the welcoming pink blur. It was all very confusing.
Then Lord Milborne addressed the pink blur down the table as “Agatha,” and to prove he had made no mistake the young male blur sitting opposite Mr. Chitterwick on her left did so too. This then must beyond doubt be Lady Milborne, who had been at school with his mother. Well, all Mr. Chitterwick could say was that she did not look her sixty years.
To the polite queries she put to him about his journey down Mr. Chitterwick’s replies were a little jerky.
By degrees, as the excellent sherry (a wine to which Mr. Chitterwick was particularly drawn) aided the cocktail in getting to work, Mr. Chitterwick found himself able to reduce the blurs to firmer outlines, and even to fit names to the results. Lord Milborne, for instance, was George; the young male blur was Mouse; Mr. Chitterwick’s flame-coloured neighbour was Judy, and the black-and-silver lady was Mrs. Relph to all the rest of the party and Aunt Mary to the flame-coloured young woman (another aunt, thought Mr. Chitterwick feelingly; really, the world seems full of aunts). But of other surnames there was no sign.
To his relief, as dinner proceeded, the flame-coloured girl showed no sign of anxiety to engage Mr. Chitterwick in conversation; in point of fact, she preserved her aloofness in his respect very nearly to the verge of discourtesy, though Mr. Chitterwick was far too grateful to recognize any such possibility. To a few tentative observations, forced out of him by mere politeness, she replied kindly but briefly, and without in so many words informing Mr. Chitterwick that she considered him as rather less than a worm under her feet, she ne
vertheless quite competently conveyed that impression. To Mr. Chitterwick’s diffident suggestion that they had met somewhere before she was uninterestedly certain that they had not. Conventional requirements satisfied, Mr. Chitterwick was able to turn to his vivacious and astonishingly youthful hostess.
“It was a great surprise to me, Lady Milborne,” he observed, thinking to be delicately complimentary, “to learn that you were at school with my mother.”
“Was it, Mr. Chitterwick?” she said, with what struck Mr. Chitterwick as a slightly cautious air, though her blue eyes continued to twinkle. “Why? After all, your mother must have been at school with quite a number of people.”
“Oh, yes,” agreed Mr. Chitterwick, a little disconcerted.
“Quite. Of course. Let me see now, which school was it? She was at two or three if I remember rightly.”
The lady opened her mouth to reply and then turned suddenly to her other neighbour. “What did you say, Mouse?”
“Nothing. I was listening, that’s all.”
“Oh. I thought you said something.”
“No, it was Mr. Chitterwick who spoke. He asked you which school you met his mother at.”
“I know that. I was just going to——”
“Mr. Chitterwick!”
To his surprise Mr. Chitterwick found it was his flame-coloured neighbour who had addressed him, in a not unperemptory tone. He hastily slewed himself about to attend to this phenomenon.
“Was it raining when you left London?”
Mr. Chitterwick assured her that it was not raining. She seemed relieved.
Mr. Chitterwick turned back to his hostess. “My aunt remembers you quite well. You remember her, of course?”
“Oh, yes,” agreed Lady Milborne with enthusiasm. “Of course I do. A dear old lady”
“Well, she wouldn’t have been so very old then, would she?” suggested Mr. Chitterwick dubiously, thinking that it must have been at least five-and-forty years since the two had met.
The Piccadilly Murder Page 8
