My dear David,
Such ages since we last met. Where have you been? I do sincerely entreat you to come to this. Papa, forgetful of consulting me, has invited most of the guests, and a dull lot they are! But I have slipped this one out personally – I would so much prefer to spend the evening in talk with you. Please say you will come.
Yours, ever,
Kitty
She asked me where I had been, and what could I say? Impossible even to hint at the story of her diamond ring and the murder of my dearest friend. The misadventure had robbed me of any inclination to be gregarious. I would probably have held to my reclusive habits were it not for the sincerity of feeling I discerned in Kitty’s note. We had taken to one another on first meeting, and our friendship had continued thereafter, not least because I was so plainly unqualified to angle for her fortune. She regarded me without suspicion, I regarded her without illusion. It suited us both.
On the appointed evening, however, as I descended from a cab at the foot of Kensington Palace Gardens, my feelings were not so sanguine. Certain intimates of the Elder circle were sure to be present. Abernathy and his Social Protection League, for example, smarting from the public assault on their charitable endeavours, would spit bile at the sight of me. Indeed, I wondered why Sir Martin had not simply declared me persona non grata (I had learned that much Latin). It could only be that he rose above such things – that was the privilege of the rich.
In deference to Kitty I had made myself as presentable as could be contrived. A proper old soak and a shave at the Turkish baths in Northumberland Avenue had an emollient effect on my appearance, and my mood was lifted by a fearnought of brandy and water at a hotel in Piccadilly. I had even acquired a new pair of boots, in an oblique sort of tribute to Duckenfield. The curving gravel drive of the Elder mansion was lined with braziers, kindling warmth in defiance of the wintry climate. The stately elms frowned in outrage to find their leaves torn from them. The sight of the magnificent white house itself induced a regretful longing, for the last time I had been here, in spring, there was nothing of the future I could see but intrigue and possibility. Ahead of me in the blazing hall two tall men had divested themselves of heavy evening capes and hats without a glance at the servant who accepted the burden. Other arrivals were pouring in, the cold of the night gusting behind them. My own coat was whisked off my shoulders and out of sight before I was directed by another minion – so many staff! – across the marble prairie of the hall and into an ambling line of guests. The men’s uniform white shirt fronts and black tailcoats offered a frowning rebuke to the coloured silks of the ladies.
The line was filtering down a short corridor and into the ballroom, where the crowd had doubled and trebled as if it were a species reproducing at will. The noise was already remarkable; people were raising their voices to be heard against the roar. Navigating the surge of bodies I gained one of the French windows, half open to the night air. I had managed to pluck a flute of champagne from a passing tray, and was making short work of it.
‘Thirsty business, eh?’ A foxy-eyed man with long side whiskers had just sidled into the sanctuary of the alcove, and nodded amusedly at the glass I had just drained. He had taken out a thin cigar. ‘Care for a smoke?’
I shook my head and regarded him more closely. He was well built, and carried himself with a negligent air of authority; a signet ring glinted on his pinkie. I decided to introduce myself, and he offered me his hand.
‘Hardwick,’ he said, drawing back slightly to get another angle on me. ‘A friend of the young lady’s?’ There was a dry but amicable curiosity in his tone.
‘Yes, I am. Sir Martin is my, um, godfather.’
He raised an eyebrow at that. ‘That so? I dare say you’ve been hunting with him, then . . .’
‘Oh, no, actually – my connection with him is not intimate. He was at Oxford with my father, back in the ’forties.’
‘Indeed? I was at the varsity around that time – Wildeblood, did you say?’
I mentioned my father’s first name, and college, but Hardwick only squinted through his smoke, not recalling. ‘But you met Sir Martin there?’ I said.
‘I did,’ he admitted, ‘and you will not be surprised to hear that he was a formidable character even then.’
As I looked round at the cavalcade of guests, I caught a tumbling flash of diamonds at a lady’s throat, their brightness so piercing I almost had to shield my eyes. Hardwick had seen them too, and said, ‘Must be about ten thousand pounds she’s wearing on her neck.’
‘A prigger’s paradise,’ I remarked jokingly, but the look he returned did not partake of my nonchalance.
‘Prigger? Now where would you know a flash word like that from?’
I quickly explained my study of slang as it related to The Labouring Classes of London. It appeared to satisfy him. ‘Somers Town . . . I once worked there myself. Met my share of priggers – pickpockets – what you will.’
Curious in my turn, I was about to ask him what he did for a living when, like a jack-in-the-box, Kitty sprang up before me.
‘David! At last!’ She was wearing an oyster-grey evening gown with diaphanous tulle sleeves and lace gloves. Her hair had been pinned up, emphasising the sculptural curve of her neck. She also appeared to have gained about a foot in height.
‘Happy birthday,’ I said, grazing her hand with my lips, stunned for a moment by the transfiguration. When – how – had she become this confoundingly beautiful creature?
‘What are you hiding here for?’ she said, with a little frown that suggested the inconvenience of having to search, for anything. With a quick nod to Hardwick, who bowed in turn, she grasped my arm and steered me through the room. I caught the rise and fall of her voice as we walked, though not the words, still pondering her emergence from the chrysalis of girlishness into this luminous specimen of womanhood.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, catching her prompt, ‘I can’t hear above this noise.’
‘I said, I’ve put you on my card for the first dance this evening – you must promise me.’ She registered my doubt. ‘You do dance?’
‘I would have thought that privilege belonged to your intended.’
She pouted her bottom lip, and was briefly a girl once more. ‘Douglas is smoking a vile cigar with his cronies in the billiard room. He said, “Caesar doesn’t dance,” and laughed.’ A plaintive note sounded beneath her annoyance.
‘Then I am at your service,’ I said, and felt an approving squeeze on my arm. ‘By the way, who was that gentleman I was just talking to?’
‘Oh, Francis Hardwick. He’s the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. One of my father’s old friends.’ She threw an arm airily about us. ‘They all are.’
We were almost out of the room when, from behind a clump of guests, Montgomery Sprule stepped in front of us. At my side I felt rather than heard Kitty’s sigh of exasperation. Sprule wore a smile of strained tolerance as he bowed to Kitty but stopped short of offering his hand to me.
‘Mr Wildeblood. We meet again. You will excuse me if I don’t bestow my congratulations on your investigative triumph.’
‘I wasn’t expecting any, Mr Sprule,’ I replied. ‘I’m here to celebrate my friend’s birthday – as you must be.’
‘Quite so,’ he said suavely. ‘Though I feel obliged to remark that your little stunt, whilst temporarily effective, will only delay progress, not retard it. You really ought to have read my book.’
‘As a matter of fact I did read your book, and I found your idea of progress to be as flawed as your idea of the poor. It is not that they have less moral capacity than the rest of us – just less money.’
He gave a slight shake of his head. ‘You show an imperfect understanding of the way society is heading, sir. In its present constitution it simply cannot be sustained –’
‘Mr Sprule,’ Kitty interrupted, in her most acidly polite voice, ‘fascinating though this is, the evening runs on and I must not allow Mr Wildebloo
d to occupy your time exclusively. Would you pardon us?’
He swooped into an exaggerated bow. ‘Miss Elder, of course,’ he purred, his gaze still holding mine as he backed away. Kitty was directing me towards the doors onto the terrace, which some guests had found preferable to the heaving throng within. The moon was dispensing a silvery light over the vigilant trees, and the long crescent garden stretched into blackness.
‘You seemed very eager to get away just then,’ I said.
Kitty allowed herself another sigh. ‘I have nothing against Mr Sprule – other than that he is completely tiresome.’ She then canted her head to one side and then to the other, appraising me. ‘You are rather slow with your compliments tonight, David. Does my appearance not please you?’
‘On the contrary, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you looking so – agreeable.’ It was a feeble word to end upon, but I’d clutched at it in a vague apprehension that a more meaningful one would invite trouble.
‘“Agreeable”?’ said Kitty, pulling a face. ‘That’s the sort of word a nervous curate might use to his bishop. I hoped on my birthday I might at least coax a phrase with more feeling than agreeable. It wasn’t so long ago you were dashing off on a quest to recover a diamond ring –’
‘– which ended in failure, as you know.’ I had told her this in my reply to her invitation, without mentioning what had happened to Jo.
‘But the impulse was noble,’ she said. Her voice was light, but in her eyes I caught a glint of something intense, almost pleading, and it disconcerted me. The mood between us felt suddenly charged, and I knew I should try to defuse it. I smiled at her and adopted the light-hearted but cautious tone of a fond schoolteacher.
‘I ought to have said – you look radiant, and Douglas should consider himself a most fortunate man.’
She stared disbelievingly at me for a few moments, then shook her head. ‘You really don’t understand, do you? I thought once you might have, but now I’m not sure . . . perhaps I’ve –’ She had paused, her eyes searching my face again, when a sudden sharp detonation made us both jump. A moment later a pair of blonde-haired girls – cousins of Kitty, I think – were hurrying up to us, shivering slightly in the cold air.
‘Kitty,’ cried one of them, ‘come quick – they’ve started the fireworks!’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll follow you directly,’ she replied, evidently unwilling to end our conversation on an inconclusive note. But straight away another figure emerged from the ballroom, trailed by a cortège of guests, and hailed Kitty in a more peremptory manner. It was Sir Martin himself, his expression of narrow-eyed puzzlement clearing as he recognised me.
‘Ah, I heard you were in the house,’ he said in a tone that was not unfriendly but made clear that my invitation had had nothing to do with him. ‘Well, we are assembling in the front garden – for the display.’
Kitty darted a rueful smile at me before joining Sir Martin’s train on its ambling progress towards the garden. I held back for a moment, alert to the presumption of including myself in the Elder retinue. Instead, I re-entered the house via a side door I remembered from the last time I had been here, the day Kitty told me about the Bindon Fields outing. The gas jets, turned low, showed corridor walls hung with paintings in morose gilt frames, most of them hunting scenes – hare-coursing, deerstalking, men on horses leaping across a beck. One large oil depicted an eagle in mid-pounce, the foreshortened perspective lending its yellow talons a hideous rapacity. I wondered vaguely at the terror of the field mouse or rabbit in those final seconds of its life. The distant pop-pop of the whizz-bangs broke into my reverie. Without a guide the house was labyrinthine, and a wrong turn obliged me to negotiate more vast and unexpected rooms. In one of them I encountered a servant lighting a lamp, and we exchanged brief looks of embarrassment – at least mine was, in seeming (and indeed being) a guest without friends. At length I happened upon the entrance hall, and fell in with the last of the stragglers on their way out to the front lawn.
People stood about in groups, their faces garishly illumined as a rocket flared and tore off skywards with a great whoosh. The ripping white starburst prompted coos of wonder. A woman in the dark next to me couldn’t stop giggling, and the loud male voice at her side (‘Oh dear, she’s off again!’) only fuelled the mood of hilarity about us. More rockets followed, whistling and screaming, each climaxing in an explosive crump that scribbled the blue-black sky with luminous gibberish. Laughter and applause tinkled on the air. The last in the display was also the longest, one refulgent burst catching and overleaping another, their phosphorescent trails reaching to the heavens, fountaining, then toppling, slowly, to nothing. And I wondered if its dying fall – all that brilliant activity gone to smoke – made anyone there feel as melancholy as I did.
Still blinking out the rocket’s imprint from my eyes, I roamed about the garden. Guests recently transfixed by the spectacle seemed reluctant to return indoors, so waiters had begun to ferry trays of drinks onto the lawn. I almost ran into Sprule again, now occupied with Abernathy, but managed by a stealthy about-face to evade them. A curtain of sulphurous smog had descended, the fireworks’ final bequest to the party. I had reached the outer edges of the crowd, just by the stone gate-piers, when a man detached himself from his circle of familiars and hailed me. It was Hardwick, the man from the Met.
‘Quite a show, eh?’ he said. ‘Haven’t seen one like that since they closed the Cremorne Gardens.’
‘I never had the pleasure,’ I replied, and he laughed as though I’d made a joke.
‘Oh, we had some rorty old times down there . . . talking of which, I thought back to Oxford – you said your father was there – and, d’you know, I do remember him. I think we met when he and Elder were on holiday together in Scotland.’
‘That would be right. He told me they used to go birdwatching there. I was lost in the house a few minutes ago and came across a quite terrifying picture of an eagle.’
Hardwick chuckled again. ‘Hmm. Our host has always had a predilection for birds of prey. There, for example.’ He pointed with his eyes to the pair of carved predators that stood sentry on either gate-pier.
‘Yes – I always fancy those eagles are watching me.’
‘Rather baleful, aren’t they?’ he mused. ‘And they’re not eagles, by the way. I was told that they’re condors.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Condors,’ he repeated. ‘Elder had them specially made. A South American vulture, I gather. But I’m no expert.’
I stood there, my whole body seized by a dreadful creeping chill. ‘A condor,’ I heard myself say. ‘Is it . . . a particular favourite of his?’
‘I suppose it must be,’ he shrugged, then craned forward a little. ‘Um, is something the matter? You’ve gone awfully pale . . .’
I stared back at him, putting it all together in my head, unable to speak. Of course . . . I had the queer sensation of the party around us as a submerged, incoherent babble, whilst the ground I stood on appeared to slide, dreamlike, from beneath my feet.
‘Whoa, mind the paint!’ Hardwick laughed, holding me upright by the shoulders. ‘Not going to faint, are we?’ No, I thought, but I might be going to vomit. I sensed a need to pull myself together, and quickly.
‘I’m fine, thank you, really,’ I said, forcing a tight smile to my lips. His gaze was still cautious, but he let his arms drop from me. ‘I need – I’ve just remembered an important thing I should tell Sir Martin. I ought to do it now.’
‘Of course – if you must,’ he said. I was walking away before I even realised I was moving, conscious that the strangled apology I left in my wake (‘Sorry to have –’) was a poor return for his friendliness. When I glanced back he was still watching me. I seemed to be following my own heartbeat as I gravitated through the crowds and back through the colonnaded entrance. I was in the house again. Despite the exodus to the garden the revellers in the ballroom were still keeping their end up, the noise almost rising to hysteria as the drinks
flowed on. At the far end of the room a string quartet was tuning up, and near them I spotted Kitty in animated converse with one of the senior staff. She had turned and, seeing me approach, broke into a smile so eager it was like a flag being waved. At that moment I knew I would hate myself for going through with this – and that I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.
She grasped my arm and raised herself to say at my ear, ‘They’re going to start – the dancing. Are you ready?’
‘Kitty, will you listen to me for one moment?’ She instantly read in my manner a withdrawing, for her eyes darkened anxiously.
‘David – you promised, remember? The first dance!’
‘I know I did. But first, I beg you, please do me this favour. I must – absolutely must – speak to your father in private.’
Her features closed into a frown. ‘Why?’
I looked at her, and shook my head. ‘I can’t say – it’s something important. I wouldn’t ask you unless it was.’
The trusting look she returned should have broken my heart. ‘But you will dance with me, once you’re finished – yes?’
‘I would be honoured to,’ I replied, sadly aware that the promise would never be kept.
‘Very well,’ she said, brightening, ‘I shall tell him that you’ll be in his study – you remember where it is?’
I nodded, and in a spontaneous gesture – she couldn’t have known it was my apology – I took up her hand and pressed it to my mouth. In her face pleasure duelled with uncertainty, and she lingered a moment before going off in search of her father. With purpose in my step I exited the ballroom, crossed the hall and turned down a side corridor. The oak-panelled door at the end of it was unlocked, and I pushed through to find the master’s study, steeped in gloom but for a lamp burning low on the desk. It was as I had first seen it: the iron-wrought gallery, the cliff faces of bookshelves, the trestle stacked higgledy-piggledy with scholarly volumes. A sudden movement at the corner of my eye made me jump; then I relaxed on seeing what it was – the gormless, turnip-shaped face of Kitty’s monkey, Ferdinand, peering through the bars of his cage. I wandered over, and his head lifted enquiringly, perhaps in anticipation of a feed. A tasselled velvet night curtain sat atop the cage in folds, and with a flick of my hand it dropped down, concealing the creature from my sight. I heard a muffled chattering of protest behind the cloth.
The Streets Page 29
