Black Plumes

by Margery Allingham

  "I saw her. Mum," said a young voice in Tooting.

  "What did she say?" The older voice in Cricklewood was nervous.

  "She said she couldn't. She knew you was right but she couldn't. She can't leave her lady since she's so old. She might die without her, she said."

  "I dare say she would, but that can't be helped when there's one's self to think of. I do think she might think of her relations and what people say. Did you tell her it wasn't very nice for her own sister, living a respectable life, to be pointed out as a person connected with the murder? Some people might enjoy it, I dare say but not our family. We're respectable and we're Chapel and always have been. Did you tell her that?" "I told her, Mum."

  "And still she said she couldn't leave?" "That's what she said."

  "Did you tell her Dad and I would have her here if we had for"

  "Yes, Mum, I told her, but she wouldn't come." "She is aggravating. She always was. Obstinate as a Pig"

  There was a pause and then the same voice went on again, lowered this time.

  "Did she say anything about it?"

  "No, nothing, except that she didn't know who’d done it."

  "Oh." The old voice was disappointed. "Dad feels we ought to hear as soon as anybody."

  "Yes." The younger voice sounded preoccupied and presently became impulsive. "'Mum? I say, I think she's mixed up in it."

  "She is?"

  "I think so."

  "Oh. Oh, my God. Never let your father hear that. What did she say? She didn't say she'd done it?"

  "No, of course not. She didn't say nothing really. I only felt she knew something. She knows something and isn't saying. I come away..."

  The last relevant telephone call of the day was put through at six-thirty in the evening. David Field rang 38 Sallet Square. Frances answered him and was so relieved to hear him at last that her own voice betrayed her.

  "Hello, Duchess, is that you?" He sounded irritatingly normal. "How are you?"

  "All right."

  "Are you? Is that the truth or are you being the gallant little woman?" "I'm being gallant."

  He laughed with spontaneous pleasure.

  "Are you darling? I bet you are. Will you come out and eat with me tonight? Yes, I know, but wait a moment. I particularly want you to come, and I choose a place where the chances are that we shan't meet anyone who has ever seen us before. Don't worry. Film stars wander round London without being recognized. Don't get a neurosis about publicity."

  "I don't want to come," she said, adding casually, "Can't you take somebody else?"

  "Of course I can. I rather thought we ought to meet, though. I haven't been round for a day or so and a gossip writer phoned me this morning to ask if our engagement was still on."

  "Oh. What did you say?"

  "Me? I was very upstage. Wasn't that right? I said indeed it was and if I read anything to the contrary in his perishing column I should be happy to sue him or kick his seat for him, whichever he preferred. Put on a nice blue dress and I'll fetch you at seven-thirty."

  "Gabrielle says we're all to wear black for a month."

  "Does she indeed? I say, I like her. Old Grand mamma Intestinal Fortitude, isn't she? Have you got a mourning dance garment?"

  "Yes."

  "Fine. Seven-thirty then. Hold your head up. By the way, I shall come in a humble cab. No Daimler’s. What did you say?"

  "I said I should hope so. David?"

  "Yes."

  "Why haven't you been round?" "Eh?"

  "Why haven't you been round?" She heard him laugh again, awkwardly this time. "Oh. funk, you know," he said and rang off, leaving her wondering.

  12

  The Marble Hall was so named by its astute proprietor out of deference to that variety of self-derision which has been the very essence of chic ever since the first postwar generation grew up. It was a large comfortable night club and restaurant, designed for those wary birds, the intelligentsia of the smart set, and had actually succeeded in capturing a great many of them. It was outrageously expensive, comparatively exclusive, and it was also, as somebody said of it on the opening night, pleasant without being in any way good. The decor was slavishly of the nineties, and one of its great features was the row of little ornamental boxes built in round the unusually narrow balcony where diners could indulge in a little ostentatious discretion. The looped red curtains drawn well back contrived to defeat their avowed object by calling attention to those who sat framed in them, so everyone was content and the original joke preserved.

  The ground-floor tables, huddled round the tiny dancing ring, were crowded when Frances came in with David, but one was reserved for them, and they sat down in the shadow of a ridiculous palm.

  He watched her for a minute or two, his eyes narrowed professionally.

  "All Degas," he said. "Lovely. I like the dress. It's just right in this studied pretentiousness. Don't look round like a hunted fawn or something. That's carrying the jest too far. Don't worry. There's not a soul in this room who can spare a second to recognize anyone but themselves. That's the strength of this age. Individualism."

  It was always like this, she reflected. She met him in a painful overwrought state of nerves, suspicion and self-consciousness, and in five minutes he soothed and bullied her into easy friendliness with a gentle if far too experienced hand. He had turned from her and was looking up at the boxes with interest, so that she had plenty of time to see that he was thinner and to notice the underlying nervous strength which kept his manner so light and controlled. He was an odd person.

  They had barely finished the meal when the message came. David took the note from the waiter's tray, and the comers of his wide mouth turned down as he read it.

  "Spotted," he remarked. "Come on, lady. This is where you hold my hand."

  "What is it? What's happened?"

  "Hey..." He paused in the act of rising to peer at her. "Keep your hands on the wheel. I didn't know you were going like this. I thought you were all ice and steel, like the girls in the books out of ships' libraries. It's all right. We're only going to see Uncle Adolphus having a sleuth's night out."

  He took her by the elbow, and they followed the waiter up the grand staircase which was so archly "amusing" with its red plush and white painted ironwork, and down the narrow mirror-lined corridor behind the dining booths. The man knocked and held a door open for them.

  Their first impression was of mellowness and candlelight. The curtains had been partially drawn, and the small dining table set far back in the box. Their principal emotion, however, was frank old-fashioned consternation. "Dolly" Godolphin, looking very spruce and self-important, had risen to greet them, but opposite him sitting well back and dressed in a dark frock, but nevertheless there in public not ten days after the disaster, was Phillida herself. David looked from one to the other of them. He was white and his jaw had set.

  "You blithering, fools," he said, the old-fashioned expletive giving the remark an emphasis which no stronger word could have done.

  "Not at all." Godolphin was brisk and even cheerful. "Sit down, will you? We've something to put to you. We were just discussing it when I happened to see you. Very queer you should have decided to come to just this one restaurant, isn't it?"

  "I don't think it is. I probably came here for the same reason as you did. It's not overcrowded with our particular set. I'm sorry to speak crudely to you two, but upon my Sam I think you're both mad."

  "Sit down." Godolphin placed a chair for Frances next to Phillida. The definite artificiality in his manner was very noticeable, and it suddenly occurred to her that he was behaving like the amateur detective in a play. The same idea seemed to have occurred to David for he looked at him blankly.

  "This is damned serious," he said at last. "You're out of touch with civilization still 'Dolly." It's not what people think that matters, old boy. I don't believe that any more than you do. It's what the police may take it into their heads to consider. They've followed you both here, you know.
They're bound to have. They've had a man tailing me from the beginning."

  Godolphin cast an eloquent glance at Phillida and resumed his seat.

  "A cigarette?" he suggested.

  Frances could have screamed at him. He was slightly drunk and he was playing at it. He had come back into the midst of their genuine tragedy and was using it to gratify some idiotic theatrical sense of his own. She glanced at her half sister to see how she was taking it and was sidetracked by something else.

  Phillida was wearing the chiffon which she had thrown so carelessly on one side on the night before the funeral. The smoky drapery mingled with the shadows and was hidden, but on her corsage glittered an enormous spray of diamonds. The diamond may be more often imitated than any other stone, but it is also the one least capable of disguise. The watery brilliance of the true white diamond is unmistakable, and Frances gaped at it. Phillida had a good many jewels, but a staggering effort of this sort was not a thing one brought out lightly from a drawer in the dressing table or even from a safe in the wall. It seemed incredible that she should never have seen it before.

  David followed her eyes.

  "That's rather sensational," he said, leaning forward. "Is it new?"

  Phillida did not speak but indicated Godolphin helplessly.

  David sat back. "Yes, well, you are nuts," he said.

  "You'll get the girl arrested, 'Dolly." Didn't you hear what old Mrs. Ivory said? She's quite right, you know. Look here, this isn't funny any more. I know you and I, and Phillida too, for that matter, all belong to the gang who grew up just after the war and found the place in such a mess that everything had to be a roaring joke, and we laughed ourselves along, trying everything and feeling nothing very serious... as it wasn't, then... but times have changed. We're old. We're grown up. We're the ruling generation. When we get in a mess now it's real. It's a serious mess. You can't go assing along like this as though we were still back in the nineteen twenties. It's disgusting as well as being dangerous."

  Godolphin cleared his throat deliberately. He was still smiling faintly.

  "I was going to talk to you tomorrow," he said, "but we can have it out here better than anywhere else. Frances ought to be in it too. I've been going into this thing very thoroughly. I warned you that I should, and I've come to some very interesting conclusions. Now listen to me. Field. This is straight. You can be absolutely frank with us. We're none of us against you. There's nothing we won't do for you, but we must have the thing settled. Did you kill Robert?"

  David sat perfectly still, looking at them. They could see his face had grown hard and his round dark eyes hot with some emotion which was not defined.

  "My dear chap," he said at last.

  Godolphin bent forward, the energy and eagerness in the movement reminiscent of his old form. 'That's not an answer."

  David rose. Godolphin's stick lay against his chair and he indicated it.

  "When you're fit enough to do without that I'll be happy to oblige you," he said briefly. "I take it you're asking for horseplay?"

  "Still you haven't answered me."

  David appealed to Phillida. "Has he been like this all the evening?" he began, but paused as he caught a glimpse of her face. His color changed and he shot a swift inquiring glance at Frances which took her oil her guard. For a moment he stood looking at her and his mouth twisted before he laughed. "Dear me," he said flippantly. "Life is full of little surprises. No, 'Dolly,’ I did not kill him."

  "Yet you were the last person who could possibly have been with him. You came out of the garden room and told Frances that he was going for a walk. That's common knowledge."

  Godolphin's prosecuting-counsel manner was growing, and he was sprawling across the table in his eagerness.

  "I did. I thought he was going out. Damn it, I'd fetched his coat and hat from the hall for him." The admission escaped him before he was aware, and he broke off abruptly before Godolphin's sharp intake of breath.

  "You fetched his coat and hat?"

  "Yes, I did. Don't be so damned dramatic about it. I fetched his coat and hat and chucked them on the table for him."

  "Why?"

  "Because he asked me to."

  "Do you honestly expect anyone to believe that?"

  "No. That's why I didn't mention it before. But that's what happened."

  Godolphin slid back into his chair.

  "Wouldn't it be easier?" he said gently. "After all, we're all on your side. We all know what Robert was and we all know you're inclined to lose your head when you lose your temper. Give us a chance to get behind you."

  David leaned back against the door of the box. He looked very tall in his dinner jacket. His hands were in his pockets and his head was bent.

  "Why?" he said at last. "Why on God's earth should I have killed the chap? I admit I was having a few words with the man about my marrying Frances, but he couldn't put his foot down one way or the other. He wasn't Meyrick, and anyway the child's free, white and twenty-one."

  Godolphin glanced at Phillida again as if to make sure that she was an appreciative audience.

  "David," he said, "supposing you were having this backchat with Robert alone down there in the garden room, with the house quiet and the fire low, and suppose Robert said something that got under your skin. Suppose you suddenly saw him with that conceited leer on that lantern mug and his Grey lock flapping in his eyes and you felt what a damned silly pompous ass he was, and you suddenly let him have it. Suppose you told him."

  He broke off and they stared at David. He was white. The old friendliness had been wiped oil his face as though with a sponge. Godolphin went on inexorably.

  "Suppose you told him about his own wife. You knew, remember. You were the only guest at that wedding. And then, when you realized what you'd done and saw how he was going to take it, and realized that Phillida was going to be brought into it and that your marriage with Frances would be mucked up hopelessly, suppose that then you lost your head... as you do, you know... and you killed him."

  "With a toothpick, I suppose?"

  Godolphin shrugged his shoulders.

  "There used to be an old spike file in that desk in there, so Norris says. He can't remember when it disappeared. Whatever it was you had a week to get rid of it."

  David shifted his weight from the door.

  "Imaginative little beggar, aren't you?" he said, but for once his lightness did not ring true and his face was still Grey.

  "If you'll be reasonable I'll back you to the limit."

  "David, for God's sake!" Phillida was scarcely audible.

  The painter ignored them both. He looked at Frances.

  "Coming?" he inquired.

  She rose at once and went over to him.

  "I'm sorry," said Godolphin. "You could have trusted us. I can't understand you. Don't any of you see that somebody, one of you in the house that night, must have done it? This obstinate lying is so absurd."

  David put his hand on Frances' arm and took it away again.

  "Coming?" he repeated.

  They went out of the restaurant together in silence. The only cab available was an old one, a dreadful spring less vehicle smelling like the inside of an old-clothes trunk. Frances sat bleakly in a comer of it as they jolted over the broad roads, greasy with light rain. She sat rigidly, her hands clasped between her knees, her eyes fixed on the winding vista of lamplight brilliance ahead.

  They were in a traffic jam at the end of Bond Street when at last he spoke in a brittle, contemptuous tone which she had not heard before.

  And what do you think after all that?"

  "I don't."

  "Don't what? Think I'm guilty or think at all?" Frances closed her eyes and her voice was dreary. "I don't think anything except that I love you," she said.

  He said nothing at all, and she sat there wretchedly, feeling that she had finished it, pulled the last sound spar out of the whole tottering structure of life and peace of mind. Now David was gone and that was that.


  The cab crawled on a foot or so and the light from a standard shone directly into the little leather cabin. A movement at her side attracted her and she turned to find him looking at her, a fixed and horrified expression on his face.

  "That's a blow below the belt. Duchess," he said. "Do you mean it?"

  "Yes." she said doggedly. "I don't even care if you killed Robert. I don't care if you've had a dozen mistresses and learned how to be so nice to women by falling in love with all of them. I'm not interested. I don't mind. I'm past all that."

  "Darling, this is bloody dangerous." He put his arm round her and she was surprised to find it shaking. "Don't go and do this," he said, his lips touching her ear. "Don't, please, sweet. It hurts like stink while it lasts and when it ends it's hell on earth. You don't know anything about it. It's all right for me, you see, but not for you. You're so new."

  "Do you love me?"

  He bent his head until his forehead rested on her cheek.

  "For my sins," he said.

  After a while he drew away from her, kissing her very lightly as he raised his head and pushing her firmly away from him. He found her hand, however, and held it so rightly that he hurt her, kneading it between his own.

  "I hit him," he said. "That's what happened. Lucar was there to begin with, and there was an idiotic scene in which I became insufferably upstage and refused to discuss you in front of him, and he got cheeky and Robert wouldn't or couldn't shut him up. Finally I became all theatrical and kicked the little blighter out. You heard 'Dolly' getting at me this evening over my notorious temper? That was a dig at me because I once had a row with Gabrielle down in the game room at 38. It was over Phillida, the time when she was stringing me along and running a serious affair with somebody else. This was years ago, about the time I painted your portrait. I was very much the penniless artist in those days, and Gabrielle said a few rather painful things about young men who wanted to marry money. I had an Indian club, of all things, in my hand, I remember, and there was quite a set out. I got away without doing any damage but everyone knew, or thought they knew, that I might have done some, and anyhow it all looked very bad. This affair the other night was the same sort of thing. I pitched Lucar into the passage and he went off like a streak. That was when you met him, was it? It was some little time before I came up. Tenish."