I wonder what that was about? thought Harriet. Something important, obviously. No doubt Peter would tell her about it, by and by. She turned her attention to work.
Her life had turned inside out, she considered. Before she married Peter her professional life had been relatively easy, and private life was full of intense, seeming insoluble difficulties. She had been compelled to keep parts of herself firmly locked away, and manage like a motor engine running on only half its cylinders. And now her private life was almost ridiculously easy, she was waited on hand and foot, and the inner tigers were sleek and purring and prosperous, and as if to maintain some secret fundamental balance, as if to modify the ‘happily ever after’ cliché, and keep it in the realm of the real, work had become impossibly difficult.
Defying Miss Bracy, who was knitting in a meaningful fashion, working an increasingly elongated sweater, Harriet stared out of the window, her fountain pen idle in her hand. Miss Bracy’s knitting advanced in inverse proportion to Harriet’s manuscript, and if this dawdling went on much longer the unfortunate secretary would be able to clothe a regiment of relatives. Harriet applied herself to analysing the problem. A detective fiction, she told herself, might be born in a moment of inspiration, but it had to be worked out with almost scholarly calm and detachment.
Very well; but the sort of calm and detachment which had done very well in the past was less than adequate now. Her new approach had begun with Wilfred, that self-lacerating character, of whose agonies – for they had entailed agonies of her own – Peter had said, ‘What does it matter if it makes a good book?’ The blackness and despair in the book she was writing now had surprised her; clearly it was a subject she had not been able to afford to write until she herself was safely anchored ‘out of the swell of the sea’. But that very safety had changed the rules of the game; it was now worth writing only if the result was very good. How good did it have to be? There was no limit.
If Peter thought that the job was to project a dream of justice, an ideal that had to be kept alive in a very unjust and dangerous world, then the first thing she had to do was to convey the disruption, the hideousness of murder, ‘murder most foul, as in the best it is’, the intolerable violence done to rightful expectations. Harriet’s readers ought to feel desperate to see the thing put right; not as in puzzle-solving, but with real need. And so the first thing she had to do was to make the body in the reservoir more than a conundrum, to make the victim pitiful, and real.
In real life, Harriet told herself, murder was dreadful in this way. Even the death of deplorable people, like her sometime lover Philip Boyes . . . Harriet found, fascinated, that she could hardly remember Philip now; his face and voice and tiresome demands had faded into oblivion, and she recalled him chiefly as the source of her own danger, and of her debt to Peter. Rosamund, then – ah, yes, poor Rosamund! Still probing her trains of thought, Harriet reflected that she could never have felt much liking for Rosamund alive. Rosamund alive was a pattern of all that Harriet disliked in a woman. Rosamund dead, however, was a different thing. Her death evoked a free flow of Aristotle’s cathartic emotions, pity and fear. And, after all, there had been something poignant about Rosamund; Harriet found herself wondering if the disapproval she had felt for the silly woman was sharpened by her own rejection of any such life for herself.
Meanwhile – surely Miss Bracy’s needles were clicking louder than ever! – to work. A morning’s work, and as good as she could make it. Even her work was put to the test of Peter’s opinion. Where had he gone? she wondered. She missed knowing where he was, that intangible sense that he was somewhere in the house . . . Oh, come! she told herself, crossly, and bent her mind to the task.
The first person Harriet saw as she entered the crush in the foyer of the Sheridan Theatre was Henry Drummond-Taber, in conversation with Sir Jude Shearman. And over there Miss Gertrude Lawrence was talking to Nöl Coward. If ever society was rightly described as glittering, then this party glittered. The red plush walls and spectacular chandeliers of the Sheridan’s foyer, the twinkling champagne glasses offered around on silver trays, the photographs of stars of stage and screen mounted on the walls in silver frames, all sparkled back at the guests. Everyone was in black; that was expected of them, although the new King had shortened the period of mourning to six months. But if you must appear in black, then you may be forgiven a scatter of sequins, and some diamond paste. Harriet had donned one of her white collars, ruthlessly suppressing a twinge of reluctance. She had left her rubies at home; Sir Jude’s party would have as many old friends as new ones in attendance, and a show of wealth might look unnecessarily triumphalist.
She was glad to see Drummond-Taber, but he was at the far side of the room. Amaranth Sylvester-Quicke was bearing down on her, and pinning her to the spot.
‘Lady Peter! How delightful to see you here. Where is Lord Peter?’
‘Unavoidably detained,’ said Harriet, diplomatically. Nobody gave information willingly to Miss Sylvester-Quicke, but she was in fact telling all she knew.
‘How very right of you to come without him. I do think it’s rather ghastly when married people go around together all the time. It didn’t do the Harwells any good, did it? And how is the dear Duchess, your sister-in-law?’ The woman was looking malevolently at Harriet. ‘Such a stickler for propriety.’
‘She was well when I last saw her,’ said Harriet, taking advantage of the arrival of a young man at Amaranth’s elbow to extricate herself.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ she heard the theatre critic of the Daily Yell confiding loudly to his companion. ‘I’m told the dress-rehearsal was a shambles . . .’
‘They always are, darling, they always are . . .’
Harriet manoeuvred her way across the room.
‘Ah, Lady Peter!’ exclaimed Sir Jude Shearman. ‘How good to see you. You will be impressed by the play tonight, I’m sure you will. Lord Peter could not come?’
‘Alas, no.’
‘Is he involved in this dreadful Harwell business? Perhaps one should not ask. Poor Harwell had troubles enough, without this.’
‘Did he?’ said Harriet.
‘I’m only guessing, mind. But the fellow has a cloth ear for a play. And I would have thought he was over-stretched. He had to postpone his new production, you know, on account of the King’s dying. He had a lot of things on the boil already, without backing Amery’s play. I would have liked to look at that myself. I’m sorry it didn’t come my way.’
‘I always thought Laurence Harwell had inherited a good deal of money,’ said Drummond-Taber, who had arrived at Harriet’s elbow, and had been listening.
‘But then, I suppose plays cost a lot to put on,’ Harriet said, as though she had only just thought of it.
‘Oh, yes, certainly. A rich man’s game,’ said Sir Jude. ‘You can have a fortune tied up in a production, and not a penny coming in until the first night. Now you mustn’t think that I know more about Harwell’s affairs than I ought to. One of my contacts in the City mentioned that Harwell was trying to raise a little wind, that’s all.’
At that minute a theatre usher came up to Sir Jude, and whispered in his ear. ‘Excuse me a minute, won’t you?’ he said, and went off through a baize door.
Harriet turned to Drummond-Taber. ‘It’s good to see you, Henry.’
‘You’re looking well,’ he said gloomily. ‘Positively glowing.’
‘You don’t sound pleased,’ she said, laughing. ‘Do you prefer your authors downtrodden?’
‘Rather. Just the place for them. Poor, hungry, frantic for the advance. Seriously, Harriet . . .’
‘Seriously, Henry, I am hard at work.’
‘I am very glad to hear it. Keep your nose firmly to the grindstone. No coming out to parties like this; eschew the dizzy whirl.’
‘Tyrant!’ said Harriet amiably, as the foyer bell announced the first act, and the party streamed through into the auditorium to take their seats.
Just before curtain-up,
Sir Jude Shearman appeared between the curtains. He was greeted by a little sporadic clapping, but he gestured for silence.
‘I deeply regret, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘that Miss Gloria Tallant is unable to appear tonight. Her part will be played by Miss Mitzi Darling, the understudy. Miss Darling will be appearing for the first time on the London stage, and I hope you will give her your warmest welcome.’
He stepped back between the curtains, which rose on a scene in a station waiting-room.
The understudy had certainly seemed a little nervous at first, but she had carried it all off perfectly well, and been rewarded with gales of applause. Harriet, riding home in a taxi into which Henry Drummond-Taber had handed her with a show of gallantry, reflected that she had quite enjoyed the evening, in a way. It made her feel as though she were revisiting her old life, going somewhere like that without an escort. Peter had not turned up. She expected to find him at home, but he had not returned. Surprised at the sharpness of her disappointment, she settled down beside the fire with a book to wait up for him.
It was nearly midnight when the telephone rang. She jumped up, to get to it before Meredith roused himself. ‘Hold the line, please,’ came the operator’s voice. ‘I have a call for you from France.’
Uncle Paul? wondered Harriet, astonished. Then Peter’s voice came through, faint, and sounding hurried.
‘Harriet? You’re not in bed.’
‘No. Where are you, Peter?’
‘In a dim little pension outside Paris. No getting back tonight; and I don’t know about tomorrow. I haven’t succeeded yet. Look, don’t worry about me, Domina. Go to bed. You’ll be all right without me for another day?’
‘Yes, of course. No, of course not.’
He laughed. ‘My feelings exactly,’ he said. ‘I won’t be any longer than I have to be.’
‘Peter, can I get in touch if I need to?’
‘Possibly. The FO would find me. But I’ll be back by tomorrow, please God.’
‘Dearest . . .’ But the line had gone dead. She waited a few minutes in case he had more to say, and rang in again; then she went sorrowfully to bed. How ridiculous, she told herself, to be mooning about like a calf-struck girl, over a lawfully wedded husband! But Peter’s absence was sharply painful to her. It must after all be possible to be in love with one’s married lord, a question which she remembered once having debated keenly with Eiluned and Sylvia. They had run through their entire catalogue of married acquaintances, and had been unable to reach a conclusion on the matter.
Harriet had two unexpected visitors the following morning. The first was not strictly for her, and she might never have known about her had she not been extra alert, in spite of herself, for the sound of the bell; for steps in the hall, for the thump of the front door closing. If Peter had been in France last night, he could not possibly arrive home before the evening of today; and yet, hearing the doorbell, Harriet went at once to the top of the stairs to see who was calling.
A woman was standing on the black and white marble pavement of the hall, holding a large flat package done up in brown paper and string. She was quietly and smartly dressed, but had not felt the need to go into black: her coat and hat were brown. Why had Meredith not shown her into the drawing-room? She was looking around her with frank curiosity, so in a moment her eye met Harriet’s. Harriet advanced down the stairs.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked. ‘I am Lady Peter Wimsey.’
To her astonishment, the woman blushed. ‘Oh, lord,’ she said, ‘Mervyn will never forgive me for disturbing the quality. Should I have come to the back door? Obviously I should.’
‘Mervyn? You mean Bunter? I am so sorry, I believe Bunter is with Lord Peter, away from home at the moment. Can I take a message?’
‘May I leave these prints for him? They were wanted urgently, I believe.’
‘Certainly,’ said Harriet, indicating the ormolu and marble side table that stood against the wall.
The visitor put down her package. There was a pause. Each of them, Harriet realised, was burning with curiosity: the stranger about the house, Harriet about the stranger. The Lady-Peter mask slipped a bit, and Harriet said, ‘It’s a beautiful house. Would you like to see round it?’
‘I’d love to!’ the woman replied.
‘May I know your name?’ asked Harriet.
‘Goodness, didn’t I say? Hope Fanshaw. Miss Hope Fanshaw.’
‘I’ve heard that name somewhere,’ said Harriet, leading the way up the stairs.
‘I should hope you had, Lady Peter,’ said Miss Fanshaw, producing a card from her little bag and handing it to Harriet. Before she could look at it, Meredith appeared, evidently very agitated.
‘Bunter is not at home,’ he said, addressing the visitor, and somehow conveying eloquently his dismay that she had escaped from the hall.
‘I thought not,’ said Harriet. ‘Coffee in the drawing-room in fifteen minutes, please, Meredith.’
She saw his eyebrows go up, as he said, ‘Yes, my lady,’ and the devil got into her. She took Miss Fanshaw on a long and detailed tour of the house before sitting her down in the glories of the drawing-room for coffee.
‘You were much more interested in the portraits than most of my guests,’ she said, as they settled in facing chairs. ‘I always think other people’s ancestors take a bit of being interested in; I’m not sure I entirely manage it myself. Though Lord Peter has perhaps enough to overwhelm one rather.’
‘It is my trade,’ said Miss Fanshaw, simply, whereupon Harriet looked properly at her card.
‘Hope Fanshaw, Portrait Photography,’ it read. ‘Weddings, Anniversaries, Investitures. Coming out a speciality.’
‘It’s a very different thing though, photography?’
‘Yes, it is. But it makes one interested in the question of likeness. I sometimes think it’s easier to get a likeness in paint.’
‘That’s very intriguing. The common opinion would be the other way about.’
‘For how many minutes, Lady Peter, would you say you had looked at me this morning? Looked directly, I mean.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Harriet. ‘For some third of the time we have been together? Perhaps less.’
‘Probably less. There’s a taboo of kinds against people staring at each other. Say five minutes; I am certain it has been less, and it cannot have been more.’
‘And a portrait painter has a licence to stare, you mean?’
‘Indeed, yes. The painter stares for hours together. The camera, on the other hand, is done in a split second. People can appear for a split second in ways that are unrecognisably strange to them, and their friends.’
‘So your cunning is to catch the typical moment?’
‘One of them. My cunning is required to guess which of the million ways a person looks, considered second by second, is the way they would like to look, and capture that.’
‘And there wouldn’t always be an answer to the problem, would there?’ said Harriet, musing. ‘Since a lot of people don’t like any of the ways they look. They don’t like their own appearance at all.’
‘You are precisely right. For one thing, they have never seen it. Everybody poses themselves when they look in a mirror; they don’t see what others see. You yourself would be a good example of that.’
‘Why me particularly?’
‘Because your features are rather plain when at rest; it is animation that gives them beauty. One would need to give prominence to your eyes. You have a certain seriousness in your glance. Will you allow me to photograph you?’
‘Certainly, some time. But to revert to what you were saying about a painted portrait?’
‘A painting takes time. It therefore contains time. The changing expressions of the subject, the changing light, the trust or mistrust with which the subject regards the painter are all in play.’
‘And the result will show somebody not as they actually appeared for any one of the million split seconds that could have been photog
raphed, but as they appeared for an hour, or a week, or a year?’
‘As they appeared to the painter, for that time, yes.’
‘I have seen a portrait,’ said Harriet, musing, ‘that showed the sitter in more than one way, all on the same canvas.’
‘That sounds very clever and artificial to me. Who was it by?’
‘Gaston Chapparelle. I saw it in his studio when he was painting me. I wonder how I shall fare at his hands,’ said Harriet thoughtfully. Peter, she remembered, had wanted somebody to show her to herself.
‘Oh, he’s quite good,’ said Miss Fanshaw. ‘Better at women than at men.’
‘And you, are you the other way about?’
‘Not really. I find women interesting. They have more to hide.’
‘Really?’ said Harriet. ‘You should see my husband when he doesn’t like the company he is in, or when he thinks it diplomatic to take cover. In fact, that is what I should ask you to do, photograph Peter for me. So far all his pictures are by Bunter.’
‘Mervyn is a very good photographer.’
‘But perhaps a touch deferential?’
Miss Fanshaw broke into a broad grin. ‘I should rather think he might be,’ she said. ‘Lady Peter, I have taken up too much of your time, I must be going. If you would really like a portrait taken, you can telephone the studio for an appointment any time.’
‘It has been very interesting meeting you, Miss Fanshaw. I shall certainly do that.’
As the guest rose to leave Meredith appeared again, palpably panic-struck, to announce, ‘Helen, Duchess of Denver, my lady.’ And since Helen did not wait to be announced but followed hot on Meredith’s heels, the two women passed on the stairs.
‘Whoever was that peculiar woman, Harriet?’ was the first thing Helen said.
‘A friend of Bunter’s,’ said Harriet incautiously, wondering what it was about Hope Fanshaw’s appearance that struck her sister-in-law as peculiar.
‘Great Scott!’ Helen almost wailed, looking at the coffee tray being borne away by Meredith. ‘Harriet, one doesn’t entertain that class of people!’
Thrones, Dominations Page 17
