The Firebird's Feather

by Marjorie Eccles

  Seventeen

  The exercise book still lay on her dressing table, reproaching her like a neglected chore, its faux-marble covers reflected in the looking glass behind it. It was time she made herself read it – if only to stop herself thinking about what Marcus had told her of his association with her mother … and whether they should go to the police about the icon. He was convinced they should but he’d given in when he saw how horrified Kitty had been. He’d seen that for her it was a question of loyalties: the promise to Papa that she would say nothing, and even more the feeling that she had no right – more so, now that she was dead – to reveal something to outsiders her mother had been at pains to keep secret. Including that secret affair. But Kitty was so afraid of what that might mean that whenever it came into her mind, she resolutely shut it out.

  She wasn’t sure why the exercise book should be bothering her, what difference it would make, if any, even supposing she could decipher it. Would it be worth the effort? Maybe not, but the wretched thing had been lying there too long, nagging her at least to give it a try.

  Half an hour after opening the covers she was still no further than the second page. How was it that Hester Drax had not gone quietly mad with frustration, if this was what she’d had to cope with during the writing of the previous books? Kitty knew how loyal she had been to Lydia but even so! Dedication such as that – Miss Drax rose in Kitty’s estimation. Quite apart from Lydia’s large, untidy scrawl, the sentences were long and rambling, the punctuation negligible, the spelling … well, picturesque, if you were being kind. Was this how Marie Bartholemew’s other novels had begun, with six or seven pages of almost illegible notes? If so, it was a mystery how that first one had turned out so readable. All sorts of ideas and theories that Kitty realised now had been swimming around in her mind for some time began to bob their heads above the surface, though she couldn’t really see any of them as being very likely. There was something elusive here that she felt she should know, yet she was failing to grasp it. She had shown the book to Marcus but he had only looked at it casually, not seeming as puzzled or intrigued by the chaotic nature of its contents as Kitty now was, having forced herself to try and read it. ‘I suppose all writers work in different ways,’ he had said. ‘Why don’t you ask Miss Drax?’

  She had no particular desire to face the unresponsive Hester with the question of how she had coped – she invariably became uptight and prickly when anything connected with Lydia’s writing came up. But at the same time, it was something of a mystery, if not as worrying as the greater mystery surrounding her mother, which Kitty could no longer pretend didn’t exist, no matter how much she wanted to believe that. It hung over her, with imperative questions demanding to be resolved, but the answers that were coming to her were so far-fetched and outrageous she refused to entertain them. She pushed the exercise book away but she couldn’t forget what Marcus had advised. He was very likely right. And since she’d now made herself read those few pages, she knew she wouldn’t rest until she’d done something about it. In the end she took the book along to Miss Drax’s office.

  She was sitting in her usual position at her desk in front of her typewriter, looking as if she’d scarcely moved an inch since the last time Kitty had seen her there, rigid as if a ruler had been placed down her back. She looked up from her work as the door opened and her glance immediately went to what Kitty was holding. She held out her hand. ‘If that’s what I think it is, I’ve been looking for it. It’s Number Three, isn’t it? Where did you find it?’

  ‘It was on Mama’s writing table on Sunday, and since then it’s been in my bedroom. Why were you looking for it? It won’t be any use now, will it?’ There was no answer. ‘As far as I can make out, it’s only the bare outlines of the plot that are scribbled down. Nobody can do much with that.’ There was a longer pause and then Kitty didn’t know who was the more startled when she heard herself asking bluntly, ‘Who wrote those books, Miss Drax – my mother or you?’

  She could have sworn she hadn’t known she was going to voice the suspicions that had slowly been building up in her mind, only half acknowledged but gathering force. If she had known, and could have anticipated its effect on the other woman, she doubted very much whether she would have spoken.

  For the first time in her life she saw Hester Drax bereft of either an acid comment or a meek reply. And then, dreadfully, her face began to crumple. To blur, almost disintegrate. It was quite shocking to see her – Miss Drax of all people! – in that state. Her eyes behind her thick spectacles began to fill with tears. She pulled them off angrily and groped blindly in her pockets for a handkerchief. Failing to locate one immediately, she sniffled and tried to rub away the tears with her fingers. Kitty saw the edge of the handkerchief protruding from her cuff where she’d tucked it and she pulled it out gently and handed it back to her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, though she didn’t know whether that was pity, or an apology for her own clumsiness. Hester blew her nose, hard, but the tears still came. The only comfortable place to sit in this room, apart from the two desk chairs, was a cushioned seat under one of the windows, and she allowed Kitty to lead her to it. It was impossible for her to speak through her sobs.

  After a while, Kitty pressed the bell. ‘I’m going to ask them to bring us some tea. If you don’t want it, I do.’ She thought brandy might be a better proposition but to ask for that would be to make everyone curious as to what was going on. She knew Papa was out and she could have slipped downstairs for some from his study but she was afraid if she left Hester the opportunity would slip away. They sat in silence, the weeping Hester hiding her face, until Emma had answered the bell and brought them a tray. By then the sobs had begun to subside and when she’d taken a few sips of the scalding liquid her colour came back. Finally, she put her glasses back on and said drearily, ‘Well, now you know. How did you guess?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ It hadn’t come to Kitty as a blinding revelation or anything at all like that. She had somehow, thinking and puzzling so much over it, come to realise it was just possible that was how it might have been. How utterly improbable it was that her mother, Lydia Challoner, with no education to speak of, no necessity to earn money – and possibly no real talent, to be honest – should have produced two books, if you counted the one Hester was still working on. The longer she brooded on it, the more likely the only explanation that came to her seemed almost equally incredible in itself. The only thing she hadn’t been able to work out was why. Lydia obviously hadn’t been seeking fame. She had never pretended to anyone else outside the family that she had written those books. Any credit for them had gone to the mythical Marie Bartholemew, not even to poor Hester, who had slaved so long and hard over them.

  ‘What was it all about, Miss Drax? It seems …’ Pointless, rather silly, was what she would have liked to say. A fabrication they’d constructed between them, another secret, yet something quite apart from the other, hidden life of Lydia’s that was emerging. But for what reason?

  ‘She paid me for them, you know,’ Hester said quite suddenly, her voice hoarse from the storm of tears which had left her face blotchy and swollen. But Kitty was relieved to see that after that temporary loss of control, she was in command of herself again. ‘I – I have a brother, he’s in a private institution near here, and the fees … Your father never knew. He thought she spent it all on herself. Every penny she earned, she insisted on my keeping it.’

  ‘But they were your books. You wrote them and did all the work, didn’t you? What she wrote in these exercise books was rubbish.’ Kitty didn’t feel it necessary to point out that the money must have been irrelevant to Lydia, anyway.

  She shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t rubbish. You don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re quite right, I don’t. I don’t see why you needed her at all. Why you didn’t just write the books yourself … make your own name. Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ she said simply. ‘I wouldn’t kn
ow where to start. She was the one with the ideas – she was full of ideas, and she just dashed them off! I could never have thought of such people and stories. But,’ she admitted sadly, twisting the damp ball of her handkerchief, ‘to tell the truth, she really had no notion of how to develop them, whereas, once I get started, provided with ideas … well, I seemed to be able to build it up to make it come right. I always had silly notions of wanting to be a writer, you see, but somehow, it seemed beyond me,’ she finished sadly. Before Kitty could think of anything to say to this, she added, ‘You know what she – your mother – was like. She had this knack of getting people to tell her about themselves and they did because she was always so willing to listen, and help. She found me tearing up the first story I’d tried to write, one day, and when she heard what my difficulty was – that was when it all started. She said why didn’t we put our heads together, she would help me. So we did, and after the first book was successful – well, we just carried on.’

  ‘I still don’t see why she had to pretend she had written them. She didn’t contribute much, after all.’

  ‘Oh, no, you’re quite wrong. I couldn’t have done it without her.’

  ‘You could now though, Miss Drax. You have experience – and such a lot of talent.’

  A blush ran up from her neck, right to her hairline. ‘That was what she said, but she was only being kind. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. It’s all in the past.’ Something of her old acerbity came back as she compressed her lips. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out, but you must never mention it to anyone, Kitty. It wouldn’t be what she wanted. It must not go beyond these four walls. Never, do you hear?’

  Such intensity, in so controlled a person as Hester Drax, was alarming. ‘Why must it not? It’s not such a terrible secret, after all.’

  ‘I should never have spoken. I’ve broken my promise to her.’

  Another part of Lydia’s life that must be kept secret? She had made poor Miss Drax promise not to tell this sad little secret. So unfair, thought Kitty, and not at all like her mother, who, whatever else, had always had a great sense of fair play. She felt bound to point out that Lydia could not have known she was going to die so suddenly but at the same time she longed to know why Hester hadn’t yet told her what had been behind all this unnecessary secrecy.

  ‘Miss Drax, nothing you’ve told me, surely, can prevent you from carrying on writing as Marie Bartholemew?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Hester exclaimed, sounding and looking more shocked than Aunt Ursula when Hester had suggested typing the envelopes to the sympathy replies. ‘I couldn’t do that! Not even her publishers knew who she was. They communicate with her through a box number.’

  ‘Can’t you do the same, if you must?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s no good, it can’t be done.’ But something in her tone made Kitty feel that perhaps the suggestion hadn’t entirely come as a surprise to her, that somewhere deep down in her subconscious the possibility, the hope perhaps, had already occurred to her. She thought that surely if Hester did indeed want to write so badly, she would teach herself how to cope with what she saw as her deficiencies. If she’d been able to develop Lydia’s original bright but wild ideas – the sort of thing Kitty had just read – she could most certainly do that.

  Meanwhile, they seemed to have reached an impasse, without getting much further on the subject of why all this had been necessary. And Hester Drax was once again – Hester Drax. She stood up and went across to her desk and sat down again, her face set, her hands ready to poise above the keyboard. ‘Thank you for the tea,’ she said primly. ‘It was kind, Miss Kitty.’

  So what had just passed between them was to be ignored, as though it had never happened. Which was not in the least satisfactory, but Kitty couldn’t see what alternative she had, other than to leave her to it.

  Eighteen

  Another London square, other houses slightly smaller but no less prosperous-looking than the ones in Egremont Gardens, and not far away – this particular one belonging to Paul Estrabon. A telephone enquiry had ascertained he was not expected in his office until later that day; no reason was given for this and Gaines didn’t enquire further, merely asking if he would be found at home. The snooty-sounding young man who had announced himself as Estrabon’s secretary couldn’t or wouldn’t say, and Gaines had decided to take a chance. He thought it better to see the man in his own home, in any case, in his own surroundings, hopefully with his wife, rather than in the more impersonal surrounds of his office.

  At about ten a.m. Inskip knocked on the door and after an examination of Gaines’ warrant card and a head-to-toe inspection, the manservant reluctantly let them in while he enquired if the master would see them. ‘He’d better,’ muttered Gaines.

  They were left to wait, standing awkwardly in a room that could scarcely have been more different from any room in the Challoner home. The furnishings were spare and elegant, the colours cool. It was uncluttered; here and there were pieces of iridescent glass or smooth, plain silver displayed in isolation on stands or in small alcoves. The eye was drawn to the only focus of colour in the room – two large cabinets built into either side of the fireplace, lined with Chinese red silk against which were displayed porcelain bowls, plates and vases in muted greens and blues, as well as plain white. Gaines stared at one of the three pictures in the room, the sort he thought of as ‘modern’, as incomprehensible to him as they were to Inskip, judging from the sergeant’s expression as he too surveyed them.

  In fact it was not Paul Estrabon but his wife who entered after a considerable wait, enveloped in a cloud of scent. She was perhaps wearing mourning, of a sort. Her elaborately fashioned dress was of very dark grey silk, but it was trimmed in shades of turquoise, peacock and pale blue. Jewels winked at her ears and elsewhere on her person, a vulgar affectation at this time in the morning, Gaines had always been led to believe. A small, sharp-featured woman, set amongst these aesthetic surroundings she looked like an exotic bird that had lost its way and found itself in the wrong nest. Summing them up with a critical glance, she told them her husband was busy at the moment and was due to leave the house in half an hour.

  ‘We won’t take up much of his time,’ Gaines said imperturbably, making their business known.

  ‘Very well, then, I’ll see what I can do. Please take a seat.’ She rang the bell, perched herself on the edge of a graceful ebony chair upholstered in ivory damask and waved them to similar ones. They waited. Fanny Estrabon had once, no doubt, been attractive but by now she had a look of being slightly worn at the edges, likely to become haggard in the not too distant future. Her mouth drooped discontentedly and her thin fingers played restlessly with her rings. The manservant presently appeared and she spoke to him in a rapid undertone; he inclined his head and went out. ‘I’ve told him to tell my husband you are here, and to ask him if he’ll spare you a few moments, since it’s about this terrible thing that’s happened to Mrs Challoner. Though I should not pin your hopes on what he can tell you.’

  ‘While we are waiting, perhaps we can have a few words with you. I believe you might have known Mrs Challoner well, as the wife of your husband’s business partner?’

  ‘Of course I did. Lydia and I – I am utterly devastated.’ Producing a scrap of lace, she dabbed at what seemed to be a dry eye.

  ‘A bad business, I’m sorry.’

  ‘She was my best friend, almost like a sister to me, but I’m afraid I don’t have anything that will help you, either. I was not with her when – when it happened. Who could have done such a thing?’

  ‘That’s a mystery we’re hoping to find the answer to. Hopefully by talking to people like you, who knew her.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘How did she strike you, recently? What I mean is, were you aware of anything that might have been troubling her? Or indeed anything different you might have noticed about her?’

  ‘Oh, goodness gracious, no. On the contrary. She was quite her usual self. In fact, s
he was extremely happy at the thought of all that was to happen in the coming weeks. Her daughter’s coming out, Inspector,’ she added, seeing his blank expression. ‘Parties, balls, everything needed to launch the child into society. Poor Kitty. It won’t happen now, of course, it wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘No, of course not.’ He waited while she dabbed at her eyes again. ‘Well now, Mrs Estrabon, presumably you and Mrs Challoner met often? As you were such friends.’

  ‘Of course, several times a week. Shopping, tea, at social evenings and so on. And, of course, bridge. We were both extremely fond of the game.’

  ‘Would you know if that caused her to have any debts? You ladies can get quite carried away at bridge, I’ve heard.’

  ‘Not Lydia, heavens, no! She was never in debt – or nothing you could call debt – but in any case, what has that to do with what’s happened to her?’

  ‘It’s a matter of covering all aspects, Mrs Estrabon,’ said Gaines, who had read the notes Mrs Challoner had kept in the back of that little grey silk diary he had found in her drawer, and to which Miss Drax had reluctantly produced the key. ‘There might, for instance, be people who had grievances against her.’

  ‘Grievances?’ She waved away the suggestion impatiently. ‘If you had ever met Lydia, you’d know she was the kindest soul imaginable.’

  ‘Which makes the tragedy even worse, ma’am. Do you think you might oblige Sergeant Inskip here—’ Inskip had already taken out his pocketbook ‘—with a list of her other friends, those she played bridge with, and otherwise?’

  ‘All of them? She had a great many.’

  ‘As many as you can bring to mind, then.’

  ‘I really don’t understand all this interest in her bridge playing.’ Annoyance had brought a spot of colour to her cheeks. ‘And to suggest that any of her friends might conceivably have had any involvement in – in shooting poor dear Lydia, is really in extremely bad taste.’