‘What class of people do you mean, Helen?’ said Harriet. ‘Miss Fanshaw isn’t a servant, she’s a professional woman like myself. Do sit down; would you like a drink?’
‘No, thank you, Harriet, I can’t stay long. I have come to have a word with you, just the two of us, since I understand from the Dowager Duchess that Peter is away.’
So he telephoned to his mother, Harriet thought. I wonder if he told her what this is about?
‘Yes. Peter is away,’ she said. She waited to see what Helen embarked on. No need to encourage her.
‘I had wondered whether to say to you,’ Helen began, ‘that if you wanted to get rid of Bunter . . . well, it is quite the done thing, you know, for a bride to choose domestic servants for herself. You don’t have to keep people on. Many people prefer not to have an old servant around the place, trying to stick to the old regime, and knowing the husband better than they do themselves. And Bunter—’
‘Bunter gives perfect satisfaction, thank you,’ said Harriet. ‘Is that what you came to talk to me about?’
‘No,’ said Helen. ‘That’s just by the by. If you don’t object to him, of course . . . The thing is, we all quite understand, in your circumstances – your circumstances before your marriage, I mean – that you had to support yourself. No doubt writing detective stories was all you could find to do. But we were naturally hoping that you would let the whole thing drop now. Frankly it came as a great shock to us the other night to hear you discussing keeping your maiden name on your future books now that . . .’
‘Would you rather I used my married name?’ said Harriet, coldly.
‘Peter’s wife has no need to work at all,’ said Helen. ‘No doubt he has not mentioned it to you, being so famously sensitive and tactful, but it’s a slap in the face to him to have his wife involved in paid work, even if it were something more dignified.’
‘It is idleness that I would myself find undignified,’ said Harriet.
‘A married woman must consider the reputation of her husband,’ said Helen. ‘Surely you must see that. You cannot marry Peter for all the advantages of his position, and then flout convention and cast a slur on his name every time you have a wretched book published.’
‘Has it occurred to you, Helen, that I might not have married Peter for the advantages of his position? That his position strikes me as a complex of disadvantages, and was responsible in large measure for my declining his offer of marriage for some time?’
Helen coloured up. ‘You aren’t going to claim to have married him for love?’ she said.
‘No,’ said Harriet. Her voice was deadly quiet and even. ‘I am going to claim only that my motives are no business of yours.’
‘The standing of the family is very much my business,’ said Helen. ‘As Gerald’s wife I have a duty to concern myself in it.’
‘I cannot see that being Gerald’s wife puts you in a position to overcome your natural disadvantages as a literary critic,’ said Harriet.
There was a silence. Then Helen said, ‘Please, Harriet, don’t let’s bicker. We all need you to let the writing drop and give Peter some children. I was trying to appeal to your better feelings, that’s all. If you knew how Gerald worries . . .’
‘I take it we are now discussing the reckless conduct of Lord St George, are we?’ said Harriet. ‘Isn’t it rather more your responsibility than mine to provide a back-up heir?’
Helen’s face froze, and she looked so bleakly miserable that Harriet was appalled at herself for unleashing her tongue remorselessly, though it had been in self-defence. The Duchess was not an equal opponent in contests such as this.
‘You have a better chance both of achieving it and of surviving it than I do,’ Helen said.
‘I see,’ said Harriet.
‘So you will do something about it?’
‘I am afraid not. As you know, Helen, Peter married out of his class. And among my sort of people a decision to have a child in cold blood to relieve the feelings of its uncle and aunt about the irresponsibilities of its cousin would seem very wrong indeed. No such consideration will influence me. I shall consider Peter’s happiness and my own happiness and nothing else.’
‘The family will take this very hard,’ said Helen. ‘They will think the worse of you for it.’
‘The family? Are you speaking for the Duke, and for my mother-in-law? In that case I should perhaps report your request, and the answer I have given you to both of them.’
‘No, I mean I hoped this conversation might be just between ourselves. Surely it need go no further?’
‘Very well, I will keep it to myself. But I shall draw my own conclusions about how far, in that case, you are speaking for anyone in the family other than yourself.’
‘You are a very hard-hearted woman,’ said Helen. ‘I suppose I should have expected that.’
‘Look here, Helen,’ said Harriet, ‘there doesn’t seem to be much prospect of our understanding each other, leave alone liking each other. But we’re stuck with each other, wouldn’t you say? So how are we going to manage? Wouldn’t the easiest thing by far be if we simply agreed to let each other alone?’
‘I shouldn’t have come, you mean?’
‘You are always welcome to call,’ said Harriet. ‘We can talk about the weather. Look – these American copies of Death ’Twixt Wind and Water arrived this morning; would you like one?’
She allowed herself a grin at the Duchess’s back, departing hastily with a new Harriet Vane in her hand.
Peter’s voice was faint, and crossed with another line, so that little gusts of French cut into his sentences.
‘I’m still roaming, Harriet. And I still don’t know for how long. Are you all right?’
‘Peter, whatever you’re worrying about, there’s no need to worry about me too. Why shouldn’t I be all right? I’m just sitting in the centre, like the fixed foot of the compasses, and doing a little sublunary leaning and hearkening.’
‘I’m certainly running obliquely now,’ he said. It was a thing she loved dearly in him, the way he caught and returned allusions. ‘Has anything come up?’
‘Charles hasn’t told me anything,’ she said, ‘if that’s what you mean. But I heard an odd little rumour that Laurence Harwell might be short of funds. It probably doesn’t mean anything.’
‘No; probably not,’ he said. ‘But, look, Harriet, get hold of Freddy Arbuthnot, will you, and ask him in strictest confidence what he can come up with?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘It’s been a lying sort of winter,’ he added. ‘Look, I must go. I’ll telephone to you again when I can.’
In that intensified silence and loneliness that follows on the end of a telephone call, Harriet went to the library to find the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne. The ‘Valediction Forbidding Mourning’ was easy to find; the book fell open at that page. Harriet took the book to bed with her, and fell asleep before she had found what Peter had meant by a lying winter.
11
Hadst thou the wicked skill
By pictures made and mard to kill
How many ways mightst thou performe thy will?
JOHN DONNE
The Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot, hearing that Peter was abroad, and that his help was required, became insistently eager to take Harriet out to lunch. Harriet accepted, and found herself being swept instantly, escorted by a flunkey, from the portals of the Bellona Club across the road, round a corner, and down a side street, into a little glazed pavilion that might once have been a greenhouse, and that certainly had a different address from the club. A discreet brass plate announced this to be the Ladies’ Annexe. The flunkey pushed open the door; and she was delivered to a room full of ferns and little round tables and the welcoming smile of her host.
‘I’m sorry about all that,’ he said. ‘Ladies are allowed in here, but nowhere nearer the sacred halls.’
‘Don’t worry, Freddy,’ said Harriet. ‘If I was going to take offence, I shouldn’t have c
ome.’
‘Ladies do sometimes take offence, though,’ he said, following the head waiter, who was leading them to a table in the darkest corner of the room. ‘Had one here the other day who kicked up a fearful fuss.’
‘Good for her,’ said Harriet, cheerfully.
‘What? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, I suppose the rules will change one day. Now, tell me what you will have, and I’ll order some wine.’
‘Peter seemed to think you would know,’ said Harriet, when they had eventually ordered the meal, and she had repeated the rumour about Laurence Harwell.
‘ ’Fraid I don’t,’ said Freddy. ‘Might sniff something out, though. Leave it with me for a day or two.’
‘Thank you,’ said Harriet. ‘But can you satisfy my curiosity by telling me how such things as that are sniffed out?’
‘Well,’ said Freddy, expansively, ‘there’s always someone who knows something. And, you see, chaps were at school with one, or they had a handy tip-off some time and they owe a bit of something in return – you get the picture. The thing about Harwell is, he’s private. His father made a huge pile in the law courts, and with a bit of canny investment, you know. So the son can do what he likes. He doesn’t have a board of directors to square, or trustees or anything. He can make money or lose money, and nobody be any the wiser.’
‘It must be fairly well known whether one of his plays is doing well, or flopping.’
‘Oh, yes. But you see theatre is a wild sort of field. Not like railway stock, or coal, or shipping, where people have a very good idea of what sort of a return you would be getting. Plays are more like horses, don’t you know – odds very slippery.’
‘But if he were borrowing money?’
‘Mightn’t mean a thing. Doesn’t mean he’s lost his fortune, if that’s what you’re thinking. In fact if he’s lost his shirt, he wouldn’t be able to borrow money. To him that hath shall be given, that’s the banker’s motto.’
‘And from him that hath not . . .’ said Harriet. ‘My parents lost every penny they had in an unwise investment.’
‘Sorry to hear it,’ said Freddy. ‘But you know, not everybody went down, even in 1929. You can make money on a falling market as well as on a rising one, if you’re fly enough. Now, the most likely thing is that your man was short of cover – till the next settlement day, or something. And he put out his hand for a bit of short-term help. If he did borrow a bit, I should be able to find out. In general terms, that is. Not why exactly, or how much, just that something was borrowed, and maybe from whom. Tell old Peter that I’ll keep an ear to the ground.’
‘He’ll be very grateful,’ said Harriet.
‘He’s got a lot to be thankful for, if you ask me, even if it didn’t come easily,’ said Freddy.
‘Thank you,’ said Harriet.
‘I – I’m jolly glad he took the plunge, you know,’ said Freddy, colouring slightly, but plunging on recklessly. ‘Best thing I ever did, myself.’
‘Tell me about Rachel and the children,’ said Harriet, and the conversation turned joyfully personal.
Harriet emerged into the street on a beautiful afternoon, softly warm for the time of year. The season had the spring up its sleeve like a badly kept secret. In the park the willow trees had begun to change colour from dead brown to tarnished bronze. The bustle of the streets amused her, and she decided to walk.
‘Star, News and STANdard! Star, News and STANdard!’ yelled the newsboy. ‘Missing actress! Read all abaht it!’
Harriet stopped and bought a paper.
A search has begun for Miss Gloria Tallant, who is missing from her London flat. Miss Tallant did not appear for the opening night of Dance until Dawn in which she was to play the female lead. The alarm was raised when the actress failed to attend the dress-rehearsal on the afternoon of Thursday last, and messengers from the theatre management sent to her address found her not at home. When she had not returned to her flat by the following morning the police were alerted, and a nationwide search set in motion. Miss Tallant was last seen at ten in the morning of 1st March. She was wearing a navy overcoat with a fox-fur stole, and a brown hat. The police have appealed to the public for information, and would be glad to hear from anybody who saw Miss Tallant after ten a.m. on the 1st, or who knows her movements in the few days previously. In the absence of Miss Tallant the part of Cynthia in Dance until Dawn was played by Miss Mitzi Darling. (See our theatre critic, page 6.)
The piece was accompanied by a photograph of the missing woman: blonde, sulky and beautiful, wearing an off-the-shoulder gown. She had the fashionable looks of the day. An aura of familiarity hangs about famous faces of stage and screen, thought Harriet, dimly reminded of someone: was it Greta Garbo?
Rosamund had not kept the headline for long, she thought wryly. She put the paper in her bag to be scanned in more detail later: she was on her way to her last sitting with Gaston Chapparelle.
‘Well, madame, I see there has been quelque chose d’éclatant,’ he said, when she had settled into the pose for him. It was not a difficult pose: simply standing, with an open book in her hands, and looking towards him. The canvas on which he was working was at an angle to her; she could not see it. ‘What has happened? Not a revolution in sewage, I hope?’
‘No; this week’s topic is decomposition,’ said Harriet mischievously.
‘And to that you do not bring the serenity of contemplation that was aroused in you by sewage,’ the painter said. ‘I repeat, madame, something has occurred.’
‘Peter is away,’ said Harriet. ‘Is that what your gimlet eyes have discovered?’
‘But you trust him, non? You expect him back, like the faithful Aucassin?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Harriet, ‘I do.’
‘Then you will please to contemplate his return. Ça doit donner un beau regard.’
Harriet fell silent. It would be easier to contemplate Peter’s return if she knew where he was, and when it would be. Somehow she had expected lawful marriage to lay to rest the switchback feelings of a lover’s state. And yet she ought really to have known that she would be vulnerable to this degree; hadn’t she once told Miss de Vine that if she once gave way to Peter she would go up like straw? Well, here she was, burning away merrily under the ruthless gaze of Chapparelle, whom she was not even sure she very much liked. Certainly being seen through by him made her feel humiliatingly transparent. But what was he seeing?
She turned her attention to the chaos around her. Chapparelle’s studio was a sort of material analogue to her life before Peter; in the centre was a clear space, stripped for working. All around, piled against the walls, were heaps and heaps of stuff, shoved aside, discarded, tumbled any old how, so long as it did not intrude on the area needed for easel, canvas, backdrop, and table with rows of paint tubes. Canvases old and new, props of various kinds, chairs and stools and boxes were piled up with no visible system at all. In one way she felt very comfortable with it. Living in a clear space in the midst of chaos had been a habit of hers. The trouble was that sooner or later one needed to clear it up. She smiled, thinking how now outside her magic working circle, instead of chaos and pain, there was order and light.
‘Better,’ said Chapparelle. ‘But please to smile with the mind only.’
A minute later he said, ‘This secret: I do not believe it is just the congé du mari. Something else has changed.’
‘There is no secret, Monsieur Chapparelle.’
‘Secrets are like that,’ he said. ‘That there is a secret itself is a secret.’
‘If you say so.’
‘But certain is I cannot finish today. You must kindly permit me another sitting. Then I can see if anything changes permanently.’
‘You are welcome to another sitting without making such a mystery about it,’ said Harriet. ‘When can I see the result?’
‘Not today, I think. When it is finished will be soon enough.’
‘But I would very much like to see the picture of poor Mrs Harwell. You
must have finished that.’
‘Mais oui; but I am desolated that you cannot see it. Mr Harwell has taken it already.’
‘Oh, poor man!’ said Harriet. ‘Yes; I can well imagine . . .’
‘It is not so sympathique, all the same,’ said Chapparelle. ‘I am surprised by him. He did not like the picture, you see. It troubled him. But all the same he is round here to pay me for it and carry it away, only two days after his wife is dead.’
‘Don’t you think the loss of his wife in such dreadful circumstances might have made him urgently need the picture?’
‘Ah, you do not believe me. You who once tell me I see too much. But a person who does not look at the picture again before he takes it . . . he is in such a hurry he does not even wish me to have it wrapped for him, he just takes it in the car. I told him the varnish was not quite dry, only – mouillé – tacky, I think you say. He replies that very well he will carefully not touch it. So it is gone. If it had stayed I would perhaps have touched up some things more a little – but c’est ça.’
‘I’m sorry to have missed seeing it finished, or very nearly finished. I thought you had caught something about her which I had not then seen, but have seen since.’
‘It is my trade, madame.’
‘Perhaps I shall see the picture in Mr Harwell’s flat some time, when he recovers enough to see people.’
‘It must be hoped. He will recover in not too long.’
‘He loved her desperately.’
‘Oh, yes. We have a rhyme in French, Lady Peter, for playing with plum stones: “Il m’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, à la folie, pas du tout.” For my painting it was pas du tout. He has paid me what I asked him, which was twice the price because he has hurt my pride.’
Walking back through the park, Harriet met Lady Mary, with the two little Parkers. They stood watching the children playing chase round the beds of spring bulbs. Harriet had barely met her sister-in-law, Peter’s younger sister. She was aware of the unspoken family tension around the Parkers’ marriage. Peter was fond of Mary, though Harriet had heard him refer to her as a little goose, and perhaps even fonder of Charles Parker, his colleague in many hard cases. The Duchess, on the other hand, could not bring herself to mention either Parker or Lady Mary, who had rather conspicuously not been present at the family dinner-party for Harriet that Helen had organised.
Thrones, Dominations Page 18
