‘Very much; but the place was horribly crowded.’
Her glance at her husband seemed to pick him out of the crowd and get him alone with her in some kind of isle of enchantment. Monsieur Daumier got the impression that Laurence Harwell was impatient even of this casual exchange of remarks with two gentlemen of mature age in a dining-room. He judged the husband to be about thirty, and the wife at least five years younger. Mr Delagardie prolonged the conversation with a few more unimportant enquiries – it might have been for the deliberate purpose of allowing his friend to study the romantic English at close quarters. A diversion was caused by the arrival of Mr Delagardie’s nephew, who had meanwhile returned from telephoning and collected his wife.
‘Vous voilà, mes enfants,’ said Mr Delagardie, indulgently. ‘I hope you have dined well. Peter, I think you know Mr and Mrs Harwell?’
‘By name only; we seem always to have just missed one another.’
‘Then let me introduce you. My nephew, Lord Peter Wimsey, and my niece Harriet. This is my friend, Monsieur Daumier. It is curious that we should all be staying in the same hotel, without connivance, like the characters in a polite comedy.’
‘Not so very curious,’ said Wimsey, ‘when you consider that the cooking is, for the moment, the best in Paris. The comedy will, I fear, not extend to three acts; we are leaving for London tomorrow. We only ran over for a day or two – to get a change of scene.’
‘Yes,’ said his uncle. ‘I read in the papers that the execution had taken place. It must have been very trying for you both.’ His shrewd old eyes shot from one face to the other.
Wimsey said in a colourless tone, ‘It was most unfortunate.’
He was, thought Monsieur Daumier, colourless altogether: hair, complexion, and light unemphatic voice with its clipped public-school accent.
Wimsey turned to Mrs Harwell, and said politely, ‘We shall no doubt have the pleasure of meeting before long in town.’
Mrs Harwell said, ‘I hope so.’
Mr Delagardie addressed his niece: ‘Then I shall find you, I suppose, in Audley Square when I return.’
Monsieur Daumier awaited the reply with some curiosity. The woman’s face was, he considered, interesting in the light of her history: dark, resolute, too decided in feature and expression to attract his fancy; intelligent, with a suggestion of temper about the mouth and the strong square brows. She had been standing a little aloof, quite silent and, he noticed with approval, without fidgeting. He was anxious to hear her speak, though he disliked in general the strident tones of the educated Englishwoman.
The voice, when it came, surprised him; it was deep and full, with a richness of timbre which made Rosamund Harwell’s golden bells sound like a musical box.
‘Yes; we are hoping to settle in now. I have hardly seen the house since they finished decorating. The Duchess has organised it beautifully; we shall enjoy showing you round it.’
‘My mother has been in her element,’ said Wimsey. ‘If she had been born a generation later, she would undoubtedly have been a full-fledged professional decorator with an independent career. In which case, I suppose, one would never have existed. These chronological accidents are a check upon one’s natural vanity.’
‘We are excited too,’ said Mrs Harwell. ‘We have just taken a new flat in Hyde House. When we get home we are going to give a party, aren’t we, darling?’
Her smile enveloped her husband, and then passed with a charming friendliness to Mr Delagardie, who promptly replied, ‘I hope that is an invitation. Hyde House? That is the big new block in Park Lane, is it not? I am told that its appointments constitute a positive miracle of convenience.’
‘It is all absolutely marvellous,’ said Mrs Harwell. ‘We are thrilled. We have spacious rooms, and no kitchen at all – we can eat in the restaurant on the first floor, or get our meals sent up. We have no difficulty with servants, because the service is all run for us. All the heating is electric. It is just like being in a hotel, except that we can have our own furniture. We have a lot of chrome and glass things, and lovely modern curtains designed by Ben Nicholson, and some Susie Cooper vases. The management even keep the cocktail cabinet fully stocked for us; we don’t have a large one, of course, just a very neat design in walnut with a built-in wireless set and a little shelf for books.’
For the first time Monsieur Daumier saw Wimsey look at his wife; his eyes, when fully opened, turned out to be a clear grey. Though not a muscle in his face moved, the observer was somehow conscious of a jest silently shared.
‘And with all the marvels of science at his command,’ commented Mr Delagardie, ‘my benighted nephew takes his unfortunate wife to live in an out-of-date and, I strongly suspect, rat-haunted Georgian mansion, five storeys high, without so much as a lift. It is pure selfishness, and an uneasy challenge to advancing middle age. My dear Harriet, unless you are acquainted with a great many Alpine climbers nobody will call upon you but exceedingly young and energetic people.’
‘Then you will be our most constant visitor, Uncle Paul.’
‘Thank you, my dear; but my youth, alas! is only of the heart.’
Laurence Harwell, whose impatience had been visibly increasing, now broke in: ‘Darling, unless we tear ourselves away we’re going to be late.’
‘Yes, of course. I’m so sorry. We’re going to see the new programme at the Grand Guignol. There’s a hair-raising one-act play about a woman who murders her lover.’
Monsieur Daumier felt this announcement to be ill-timed.
Wimsey said smoothly, ‘We, on the other hand, are improving our minds at the Comédie.’
‘And we,’ said Mr Delagardie, rising from the table, ‘are refreshing our spirits at the Folies-Bergère. You will say that at my age I should know better.’
‘Far from it, Uncle Pandarus; you know too much already.’
The Harwells commandeered the first taxi that presented itself, and departed in the direction of the Boulevard de Clichy. As the other four stood waiting a few moments upon the steps of the hotel, Monsieur Daumier heard Lady Peter say to her husband, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody quite so lovely as Mrs Harwell.’
To which he replied, judicially, ‘Well, I think I have. But not more than twice.’
An answer, in Monsieur Daumier’s opinion, calculated to excite surmise.
‘Of course,’ said Peter, with a touch of peevishness, ‘we would run into Uncle Pandarus.’
‘I like him,’ said Harriet.
‘So do I; but not when I happen to be feeling like a caddis-worm pulled out of its case. His eyes are like needles; I could feel them boring into us all through dinner.’
‘They can’t have got far into you; you were looking magnificently petrified.’
‘I dare say. But why should a man whose blood is warm within sit his grandsire out in alabaster merely on account of an inquisitive uncle? No matter. With you I breathe freely and can apply the remnants of my mind to rebuilding the caddis-case.’
‘No, Peter.’
‘No? Harriet, you have no idea how naked it feels to be unshelled . . . What are you laughing at?’
‘The recollection of a strange non-conformist hymn, which says, “A timid, weak and trembling worm into Thy breast I fall.”’
‘I don’t believe it. But give me your hand . . . To cherish vipers in the bosom is foolish; to cherish worms, divine. Later on, Cytherea – Zut! I keep on forgetting that I am a married man, taking my wife to the theatre. Well, my dear, and what do you think of Paris?’
‘Notre-Dame is magnificent; and the shops very expensive and luxurious, but the taxi drivers go much too fast.’
‘I am inclined to agree with you,’ said his lordship, as they drew up with unexpected suddenness before the doors of the Comédie-Française.
‘Did you enjoy it, darling?’
‘I adored it. Didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Harwell uneasily. ‘Pretty brutal, don’t you think? Of course, gruesomenes
s is the idea of the thing, but there ought to be limits. That strangling scene . . .’
‘It was terribly exciting.’
‘Yes; they know how to get you all worked up. But it’s a cruel kind of excitement.’ His mind wandered momentarily to the London manager who was looking to him for backing, if a suitable play could be found. ‘One would have to modify it a bit for the West End. It’s witty, but it’s cruel.’
‘Passion is cruel, Laurence.’
‘My God, I ought to know.’
She stirred in the dimness, and his nostrils were filled with the scent of crushed flowers. By the turn of her head, silhouetted against the passing lights of the boulevard, by the movement of her body against him, he was made aware that the damned play had somehow done the trick for him. That was the maddening, the intoxicating, the eternally elusive thing: you never knew what was going to do it. ‘Rosamund! What did you say, my darling?’
‘I said, isn’t it worth it?’
‘Worth it . . .?’
Mr Paul Delagardie, carefully depositing his dentures in a glass of disinfectant, hummed a little air to himself. Really, there was no ground whatever for saying – like that old fool Maudricourt whom he had met in the foyer – that legs were not what they had been. Legs – and breasts, for that matter – had improved very much since his young days; for one thing you saw a great deal more of them. Maudricourt was getting senile; the natural result of settling down and giving up women in your sixties. That sort of thing led to atrophy of the glands and hardening of the arteries. Mr Delagardie knotted the cord of his dressing-gown more tightly about his waist, and resolved that he would quite certainly go and look up Joséphine tomorrow. She was a good girl, and, he believed, genuinely attached to him.
He drew back the curtain and gazed out into the garden court of the great hotel. In many windows the lights still shone; others were already extinguished; even as he looked one, two, three, of the glowing rectangles turned black, as in abrupt secrecy the sojourners sought their comforted or uncomforted pillows. Overhead, the January sky flamed with unquenchable cold fires. Mr Delagardie felt himself so young and sprightly that he opened the window and ventured out upon the balcony, the better to observe Cassiopeia’s Chair, which had for him a sentimental association of a pleasurable sort. Phyllis, was it? Or Suzanne? He was not clear as to the name but he recollected the occasion perfectly. And the constellation – like the legs which old Maudricourt had libelled – had in no way diminished its splendour with the passing years.
From one of the darkened windows just across the corner of the court came a woman’s low laugh. It rippled softly down the scale, and ended in a quick, eager sigh. Mr Delagardie retreated from the balcony and shut the window in gentlemanly haste. Besides, he had no wish to hear more.
It was a long time since they had laughed in his arms like that. Phyllis, Suzanne: what had become of them? Joséphine, to be sure, was a good girl, and in a dutiful way devoted to him. But a sharp twinge of rheumatism in the joints reminded him that it was unwise for elderly gentlemen to stand admiring the winter sky on balconies. Fortunately, his excellent man was always very particular about his hot-water bottle.
Extract from the diary of Honoria Lucasta, Dowager Duchess of Denver:
6th January
Went round to Audley Square to take another look at household while Peter and Harriet are in Paris. Poor dears have hardly had time to look at it themselves, although Harriet did thank me very nicely, and said she liked it. Also said, ‘all very new to me,’ which is probably the truth. Realise have very little idea how a doctor’s daughter or those Bohemian people she used to live among would arrange their houses. Foolishly wondered aloud to Helen when she called to take me to cinema to see new film with Greta Garbo. Helen said she should think squalid was the right description, but can’t believe her. Greta Garbo very stylish young woman, and Harriet can change things as she goes along if she wants to. Have promised to visit Delagardie cousins in Dorset for a week on Friday, and so shall miss Helen’s dinner-party to launch Harriet on London. Hope she doesn’t need reinforcements – Harriet that is, Helen needs rather the opposite. Unenforcements? Disenforcements? Must try to improve vocabulary.
2
Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.
SAMUEL PEPYS
Don’t you know
I promised, if you’d watch a dinner out,
We’d see truth dawn together?
ROBERT BROWNING
Helen, Duchess of Denver, was a woman conscientious in the performance of social duties. However deeply she might disapprove of her brother-in-law and his bride, it was her duty to give a party in their honour as soon as possible after the honeymoon. It had been a difficult thing to arrange. The Wimseys had (characteristically) become involved in a vulgar murder investigation the very day after their hurried, secret, and ill-managed wedding. They had then gone abroad. Instead of returning to London, they had buried themselves in the country, emerging only to give evidence against the murderer at the Assizes. They had then chosen to remain where they were until after the execution, during which time Peter had been reported to be suffering from nervous depression. This was a favourite trick of his at the conclusion of a ‘case’; why anybody should upset himself about the fate of a common criminal the Duchess could not understand. If one did not like hangings, one should not mix oneself up with police work; the whole thing was a piece of exhibitionism which ought to be treated with the wholesome severity it deserved. The Duchess ascertained the date of the execution, issued invitations for Friday of the week following, and wrote to Lady Peter Wimsey a letter, whose gist beneath the formal phrasing was: ‘Herein fail not at your peril.’
This firmness had been rewarded. The invitation had been accepted. What means Harriet Wimsey had used to persuade her husband, the Duchess neither knew nor cared to know. She merely observed to the Duke: ‘I thought that would do the trick. That woman isn’t going to let slip her first chance of social reinstatement. She’s a climber if ever there was one.’
The Duke merely grunted. He liked his brother, and was disposed to like his sister-in-law, if only people would let him. He thought they were a trifle mad; but since their madness seemed to suit one another, let them get on with it. During the past twenty years he had gradually given up hope of ever seeing Peter married, and was now thankful to see him settled down. After all, he could not disguise from himself that the heir-apparent was an only son, much given to reckless driving; and that, failing him, there was only Peter’s possible line to stand between the title and an elderly and mentally deficient third cousin on the Riviera. In the Duke’s harmless and rather stupid existence, only one passion held permanent sway: to keep the estate together, in spite of the monstrous imposition of land-tax, super-tax, and death duties. He was bitterly conscious that his own son did not share this passion. Sometimes, sitting at his desk and struggling with his agent’s books and reports, he was haunted by horrible visions of the future: himself dead, the entail broken, the estate dismembered, the Hall sold to a film magnate. If only St George could be got to realise – he must be made to realise . . . And then would follow the thought, disconcerting and oddly disloyal: Peter’s a queer devil, but I could have trusted him better. Then he would dismiss the thought with a grunt, and write an angry letter to his son at Oxford, complaining of his debts, the company he kept, and the rarity of his visits to the Hall during vacations.
So the Duchess made preparations for a dinner-party in Carlton House Terrace, and the Duke wrote to Lord St George, who was staying with friends in Shropshire, that he must, in decency, turn up to receive his uncle and aunt, and not make the beginning of term an excuse for absenting himself. He could perfectly well travel to Oxford the following morning.
‘Can you face the family?’ asked Lord Peter Wimsey of his wife. He was looking at her down the length of the breakfast table, holding the gold-edged invitation in his hand.
‘I can face anything,�
� said Harriet cheerfully. ‘Besides, it has to happen some time, doesn’t it?’
‘There is an argument for getting on with it,’ said his lordship. ‘While we can still sit together.’
‘I thought husbands and wives were always placed apart,’ said Harriet.
‘No; for the first six months after marriage we are allowed to sit together.’
‘Are we allowed to hold hands under the table?’
‘Best not, I should think,’ said Peter. ‘Unless about to go down with the ship. But we are allowed to talk to each other for the duration of one course of the dinner.’
‘Is it stated which course?’ asked Harriet.
‘I don’t know that it is. Will you have me as hors d’oeuvres, soup, fish, entrée, pudding, cheese, or dessert?’
‘As just desert, my lord,’ said Harriet, solemnly.
If the Duchess’s guests were all either of the highest social position or the most fashionable style of beauty, or both, that must not be put down to any desire on her part to put the bride at a disadvantage. Such a gathering was due to Peter’s position. The Duchess sincerely hoped that ‘the woman’ would behave well. It was a most unfortunate match, but one must put a good face on these things. And if the arrangement of the table seemed likely to leave one or two of the guests but dismally situated, that could not be helped. There was the question of precedence, of the required seating of bride and groom, and of separating husbands and wives. People must learn to accommodate themselves. The Duke made a wry face, all the same.
‘Couldn’t you have found someone a bit livelier opposite Harriet than old Croppingford? He can’t talk about anythin’ but horses and huntin’. Give her young Drummond-Taber; he can chatter about books and stuff and help me out with her.’
‘Certainly not,’ said the Duchess. ‘It’s Harriet’s party, and she ought to have Croppingford. I can’t give her Charlie Grummidge, because he’s got to take me in.’
Thrones, Dominations Page 2
