Black Plumes

by Margery Allingham

  Nobody spoke. Phillida was crying openly and her shuddering breath was the only sound in the big room.

  Godolphin confronted Gabrielle.

  "If you won't have me in the house, Mrs. Ivory," he said. "I’ll stay in the nearest hotel, but if you've any sense you'll use me, not frustrate me."

  The old woman considered him, her bright eyes frankly speculative.

  "Thank you for your offer," she said with surprising meekness. "Yes, Mr. Godolphin, we shall be very pleased if you will consider yourself my son’s guest for a few days." She paused and smiled at him. "You will behave like a guest, of course?"

  For an instant they regarded each other steadily, both of them adventurers in their way, and presently he laughed.

  "You're very wise," he said. "Yes, I'll behave."

  The old Gabrielle sighed, a sound of resignation. Then she withdrew into the depths of her high chair.

  "I am very tired." she remarked and went on talking in a detached fashion which reminded Frances of her interview in the Hampstead house. "No, Dorothea, I'll come presently but not yet. First of all there is something I have to say to all of you. You need not listen to me if you do not want to, but you are all in my drawing room where

  I have every right to say what I like, and it is polite to listen to me. First of all I am an old woman. I am so old that half of the time my mind wanders abominably, but usually in the evenings it becomes very clear, and just at this particular time I think I may be seeing things more vividly than any of you, because I have one great advantage. I am apart. My life is at its end. My emotions are dead already and I do not care very much what happens to me or to anybody else. I do not know if you realist it, but although some of you are my grandchildren you are all strangers to me. You are not only out of my generation but out of my span. I am looking at you from a long way off."

  She was leaning back, infinitely frail in a barricade of stiff black silk. Her hands were folded placidly and if her performance had an ulterior motive, as Frances, who had seen one or two of them, was inclined to suspect, it was certainly tremendously impressive. In a second she had withdrawn from them, left them, washed her hands of them and had retired into a sanctuary made of time itself.

  "As I see it you have all developed one great weakness during the past hour," she remarked, a hint of complacency in her tinkling voice. "You have all got a secret now which somehow or other you must keep from the police. Before this afternoon Phillida had that secret and so had Mr. Field. Now Frances knows it and so does Dorothea, and I know it."

  She paused and looked at Godolphin, who was staring at her incredulously.

  "And so do you," she said. "Now, when the police talk to you, you must all be very careful. The standard of intelligence among the police is far higher than I had supposed." There was a world of unconscious snobbery in the final observation, and they realized that she had probably never spoken to a policeman before in her life.

  "Do you know, I don't think it matters." Godolphin made the announcement with the force and recklessness which had been noticeable in him ever since his interview with Phillida. "The police are sensible people. They want to know the truth and so do we. We must work with them; not against them. They'll want to know the facts of this marriage mix-up, and I don't see why they shouldn't have them. I'm against secrets. If we hadn't kept our marriage a secret this wretched complication would never have cropped up. My death would have to have been proved, or Phillida would have to have waited for seven years or whatever the period is before she could have presumed, it. I say tell the police. There can't be much of a row. As far as I can find out from Phillida poor old Robert must have died last Monday week, just about the time I was lying under a mass of stinking goatskins, being smuggled over the border in a mule train. As Robert died I came to life. Phillida never had two husbands at once, so where's the immortality? Let them thresh it all out. They won't prosecute her for bigamy. They're not lunatics. While she was married to Robert I was dead to all practical purposes. The police are human and reasonable, surely."

  "Oh no, 'Dolly," no. Don't tell." They had half forgotten Phillida, and her panic-stricken appeal startled them. She was leaning forward. "Don't tell them," she said. "You don't know. You don't understand. Robert was queer before he died, awfully queer and sort of psychic. I used to think he'd guessed about you and me. For the last year he'd talked about you to all sorts of people. He talked to you about him, didn't he, David?"

  "To me?" David seemed surprised. "No," he said cautiously. "No, I don't think he did."

  "Oh well, he did to me. He did. He talked and talked. Sometimes I was sure he knew about the marriage. He tortured me, I tell you. This last six months has been hell, absolute hell."

  Old Mrs. Ivory refolded her hands and her eyes rested on Godolphin's face.

  "There, you see," she said placidly. "Phillida should not be allowed to talk, should she?"

  "Why not?" Godolphin was vigorously rational. "Any-one can see what happened there. Robert happened to mention my name by chance one day and that started up the poor girl's guilty conscience. Since she was nervy anyway and under occupied it turned into a neurosis. Look at her, poor darling. She's a mass of hysteria now and must have been for months."

  Gabrielle beckoned Dorothea.

  "You can take me up now," she said and added, shooting at Godolphin a glance so direct that it took him out of his stride and brought the whole company up with a jerk as they stared into the pit she revealed to them, "The police are so unimaginative, my dear man. That's why you must be so careful. Given that story they might almost consider that poor Phillida had a motive, mightn't they?"

  11

  It was raining when Miss Dorset took up the squalling telephone from among the piles of scattered papers on her desk. It had been raining for the best part of a week and the square was cold and sodden. The black branches of the trees dripped sooty tears onto the forlorn grass. The morning-paper boards, which for the first time for days bore no reference to the mystery, were soaking and disreputable.

  She approached the instrument cautiously. Just lately some of the calls had not been pleasant experiences.

  "Hello," she said briskly. ''Hello. Who? Oh yes. Miss Dorset speaking. Yes, of course I remember you. You're Mr. Lucar's man, aren't you? I'm afraid I haven't any news for you yet. I should just carry on as I told you."

  "Wait a minute, miss." The bright cockney voice was knowing. "You've slipped past yourself. I've got a bit of news for you. I've heard from my guvnor."

  "Have you?" Her surprise escaped her and he laughed contentedly.

  "I know. It took me back a bit, an' that's a fact. I'd got it well in my head that he'd given me the walkout. Milk's not paid, nor papers, nor my wages. I was certain I d said goodbye to that lot, which was why I got on to your firm. They employed him, I thought, so perhaps they'd see to me."

  "Yes, yes, so you said. You've heard from him, you say?"

  "I 'ave. A wire from a ship. It's just come. I'll read it to you. Are you there? Listen. 'Expect me sleep flat tonight, Lucar.” " There was a faint sardonic chuckle. "Sure of itself, ain't e?"

  "He is, I mean, of course." Miss Dorset floundered and recovered herself. "Oh well then, if he's coming hack you're all right, aren't you? Thank you for telling me."

  "Not at all." The voice was cocky. "I thought you'd like to know. I never thought ‘e done it. I told you. I say. you there?"

  "Yes. Thank you very much for ringing. Good..." "Don't want to discuss it. “ ‘eh?"

  "No, I'm afraid I don't. But thank you for ringing. Good-bye."

  "That's all right. I don't blame you. So long."

  Miss Dorset replaced the receiver and sat looking in front of her with introspective eyes. Mechanically she took up an envelope from the pile to her left and slit the cheap paper open. After a glance at the opening sentence she pitched the lightly scribbled page into the basket, unread. Stretching out for the next packet, her hand wavered and she took up the telephone instea
d and dialed 38s number. She got Frances immediately. It was almost as though she had been waiting for a call.

  "Hello. Oh, it's you. Miss Dorset?" The disappointment was well suppressed. "How are you getting on? Are there many of them?"

  "A few." Miss Dorset considered the littered desk with distaste. "I thought I'd better go through them myself. It's not that I don't trust anyone else but it's not a pleasant job and if it got on a junior clerk's nerves one couldn't blame him for talking. I really didn't know there were so many lunatics at large. It's having an address in the reference books, I suppose. Anyone can get hold of it. If they'd sign their names it wouldn't lie to bad. There are one or two genuine personal letters for Mrs. Madrigal, by the way. I'll send those over."

  "It's abominable, isn't it?" Frances' voice was savage over the wire. "Don't people realist they can't know the truth just by reading a few beastly newspapers? All the letters are for Phillida, are they?"

  "Yes, most of them."

  "Any for me?"

  "One or two." Miss Dorset eyed the solid heap on the right hand side of the desk and hoped she might be forgiven.

  "What do they say?"

  "Oh, nothing really. Just abuse. It's purely pathological. I asked Inspector Bridie and he says it always happens. Just jealousy and spite," he said."

  Frances laughed unnaturally. "I like him," she said, "or at least I would if I wasn't so afraid of him."

  "Afraid?"

  "Oh, not seriously. I mean it's all practically settled now, isn't it? Or it will be as soon as they bring Lucar back, won't it?"

  The words were belied by the urgent question in the tone, and Miss Dorset's face grew anxious.

  "I should think so, my dear." Long years of discretion taught her voice just the right degree of noncommittal cheerfulness. "One or two of these anonymous letters to Mrs. Madrigal mention Mr. Godolphin. I don't like to say anything to her myself, but people do remember that they were once engaged and it does give them such a handle. He's still determined to stay in the house, is he?"

  "I'm afraid he is." It was Frances' turn to be cautious, but her irritation betrayed her. "He's so keen. He works like a fiend. It's like having a policeman present at every meal."

  Miss Dorset coughed.

  'That kind of person is very trying but they're also very useful sometimes," she said. "They've got such energy. They go on ferreting until they do get to the truth."

  "Yes, I know."

  There was a brief pause.

  "I haven't seen Mr. Field for a day or two." In her effort to make the question casual it sounded to Miss Dorset herself that she underlined it unmercifully.

  "No," said Frances. "No. Nor have I. You'll send the genuine letters over then, will you?"

  "Yes, I will. Goodbye. Is Mrs. Ivory all right?"

  "Amazingly well. Good-bye."

  Ten minutes later the phone in the breakfast room at 38 tinkled again, but when Frances leapt on it she was just in time to hear the soft click on the wire which meant that someone else in the house had also expected a call, and Phillida's nervous voice said urgently:

  "Is that Doctor Smith now? This is Mrs. Madrigal. Is that Doctor Smith's house? Well, can I speak to him? Put me through. Put me through, please. Put me through."

  Frances hung up, and across the city a nurse grimaced as she handed the instrument to a thin man with a tired face who took it wearily.

  "No," he said gently after the phone had crackled at him for a full minute. "No, my dear lady, how can I? We thrashed all this out yesterday. Why don't you do what I tell you? Go to bed and stay there with a book. Yes. I will. I'll come and see you about four o'clock, but please don't ask me to do the impossible."

  "Why not?" Phillida was unusually decisive. "It wouldn't matter. Really it wouldn't matter. I was in my room all that day. I didn't go down except once when old Mrs. Ivory came over in the afternoon. Why shouldn't you say I couldn't move?"

  "Because it's not true."

  "Does that matter so much?"

  "Do you expect me to answer that question?"

  "No. No. I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm mad. I'm ill. I don't know what I'm doing. You won't tell anyone I asked you?"

  "I'm not unprofessional as a rule."

  "I know you're not. I didn't mean that. Come and see me."

  "Yes, I will. This afternoon. Meanwhile take three of the tablets and go to bed. Would you like to go into a nursing home?"

  "I would. Oh, I would! Do you think it would look as though I were running away? No. I'd better not. No. You won't do that little thing I asked you? I could sleep if you promised."

  "I will not. I'll come and see you this afternoon. Good-bye."

  "And yet I don't believe it," he continued to the nurse as she hung up for him. That woman's a neurasthenic, not a maniac. If she killed her husband I'll eat my brass plate and go and keep chickens."

  "I wonder you don't keep away from her all the same," said the nurse practically. "No one, not even a man with your reputation, can afford to be mixed up in that sort of thing."

  "You're horribly right," he agreed gloomily, "but I'm sorry for her. You don't know her, do you? She's got a certain charm."

  At this precise moment Detective Sergeant Randall of the N Division was standing in a public telephone booth on a dreary windswept railway station talking to Divisional Detective Inspector Bridie.

  "Got him, sir," he reported briefly.

  "Ye have, have ye? Jolly good. What's he like?"

  "Cocky, sir."

  "Ah, he is? I thought that would be likely. Bring him along."

  "Right sir. The train goes in seven minutes. Well be with you before five."

  The Orkney man grunted and hung up. The brief conversation appeared to have pleased him considerably, for he decided to treat himself to one of his rare cigarettes. He selected it with care from the box on his office desk. It was an unexpectedly pansy affair with a filter and a hygienic mouthpiece. Strangers were apt to regard this uncharacteristic taste in tobacco with astonishment, but those who knew him best were inclined to attribute it to native canniness and a naive attempt to temper the vice of smoking with the off chance that the beastly things were doing him good.

  He smoked half the cylinder with earnest preoccupied enjoyment and would doubtless have gone on until the fumes of the burning filter choked him, as he usually did. had he not been interrupted by a thought. He took up the house phone and got through to Inspector Withers, a placid, painstaking man in whom he had great faith.

  "Any results?" he inquired, cocking his head on one side at the mouthpiece.

  "A blank... sir." Withers added the courtesy as an afterthought. The two men were friends but he was in a bad temper. "I've been through every perishing report, forty-seven of ‘em. No nigger for miles. Not a soul in or about those two houses on the night in question saw hide or hair of a nigger except those two hysterical women."

  "No." The inspector conveyed that he did not presume to argue.

  Bridie sniffed. "Mrs. Sanderson may be an emotional parson," he conceded, "and maybe the girl Molly is not particularly strong in the head, but when those two women say they saw a nigger walk past the kitchen window into the yard just before dusk that day I was inclined to believe them."

  Silence.

  "I take it you jolly well weren't?"

  "No, I was not. sir." Withers was still polite but it was with an effort. "I'm sorry, but a more cockeyed tale I never laid ears to. Why didn't they raise Cain at the time?"

  "Because the yard was in juxtaposition to the picture gallery next door, and strange parsons were forever walking down there."

  "I see. Well, if that's so why wasn't this blinking nigger likely to be one of the... er... strange parsons with a right to be there? Fetching a packing case or something. Why bother about him?"

  "Because he had no right to be there. No one knew of him. Ye say so yourself, man."

  Withers remained unimpressed. Til go on following it up, of course," he said.

&nbs
p; "That's right," agreed Bridie with exasperating satisfaction.

  "Any luck in your other direction?" The inspector could not restrain the gentle dig and Bridie smiled affectionately at the instrument.

  "I'm keeping an eye on the lad," he said comfortably. "He's staying away from the house and amusing' himself, but we'll let him bide for an hour or two. He's costing the country a mint in shoe leather but it can't be helped." With which cryptic announcement he hung up and returned to his cigarette, now nearly burnt through, he noted with regret.

  Meanwhile in another room in the same building a charge sergeant was being severe over the telephone.

  "I can't help who you are. sir." he was saying, "but you've been on the chief twice today already and unless you have some new information, in which case you can report it to me first. I can't put you through to him again. Everything is being done, you can rest assured of that."

  "That's all very well, but is it?" Godolphin did not sound amused. "It's over a fortnight now, you know, and the inquest will he resumed in less than six days."

  "We know that, sir. We're working on the case." The sergeant listened attentively and sighed as he heard the explorer hang up. "He thinks he's doing his duty, you know," he remarked tolerantly to the constable who leaned against the desk. 'That's the funny thing. You always find it in a bloke who's been out East. Stirring' 'em up, they call it among themselves. It's all right for foreigners, but back ere it's just fidgeting. You notice it in old army men."

  At three in the afternoon Miss Frances Ivory very hurriedly, and with a palpably fictitious explanation ready on her lips, rang up the studio flat in St. John's Wood which Pendlebury, the R.A., had let to David Field for the winter. She stood listening to the bell ringing and ringing in the empty room for a long time after she realized that had anyone been there he must have answered it, and she returned to the deserted drawing room, mingled irritation and relief tempering the breathless feeling of despair which had brought her to much weakness.

  A little later in the day, when Phillida was with her doctor, when Frances was still hovering near the telephone, when Bridie was reading the second report of the day on David Field's itinerary, when Miss Dorset was burning a basketful of scurrilous filth in the basement furnace at the gallery, when Godolphin was preparing his third list of questions for Norris to answer and when Henry Lucar. his red hair blazing above his pallid face, was riding in a London-bound train with Sergeants Randall and Betts in attendance, a very queer conversation passed over the wires between one small house in Tooting and another on the far side of London in Cricklewood.