‘Good-morning!’ said F. X. ‘Lovely morning, Mrs Fairburn.’
‘Gord-mooning, Mr Baynedik. Truly a delaiteful day. It makes one feel really as if spring were drawing on.’
F. X. nodded. ‘Yes, doesn’t it? Well, what’s the trouble, Mrs Fairburn?’
The thin lips of Mrs Fairburn writhed themselves into one of their sudden smiles. ‘No trouble, Mr Baynedik. Nothing of the sort. Only rather an extraordinary thing has happened.’ She produced, from some recess in the black-clad angularity of her presence, an envelope; advanced, bearing this rather like a lictor his symbolic bundle, towards the table. ‘Mr Baynedik,’ she said, ‘this letter came by a district maysenger boy last night when you were out. It is, as you see, addressed to the housekeeper and staff. Seeing this address, Mr Baynedik, Ay opened the letter and inside Ay found three orchestra fauteuils for the Royal Theatre for tonight’s performance. It is a piece which is apparently entitled The Sixth Wife of Monsieur Paradoux … rather, I must say, an astonishing title, Mr Baynedik.’
F. X. struggled with a smile. ‘Certainly. Certainly. Damn silly names some of these people call their damn silly plays. Well, what about it, Mrs Fairburn? Do you want to go?’
‘Ay did think, Mr Baynedik, that perhaps we would like to go as these seats have been presented to us so kindly, albeit so mysteriously.’
F. X. frowned. ‘We’d like to go … Oh, I see. You want to take the rest of the staff, Mrs Fairburn? Yes, take them by all means. Do you all good, I’m sure. And you can keep an eye on them and see that they don’t get into mischief. Wonder who’s sending you theatre tickets …’
‘Ay cannot,’ said Mrs Fairburn, ‘understand the gift mayself, Mr Baynedik, but Ay believe there is a saying to the effect that one should not look at the mouth of a horse that has been given to one. Ay must confess that Ay could never see the meaning of this saying, but Ay have no doubt it is an apposite one.’
F. X. buried himself behind his paper. ‘Yes. Go, by all means. It’s very good of you, I’m sure, to chaperone the other two.’
‘It was only,’ said Mrs Fairburn, ‘ewer dinner Ay was thinking of, Mr Baynedik. You see, if Ay go and also take the two gairls, there will be no one except Prout.’
F. X. crackled his paper. ‘Prout’ll look after me all right. He’s done it before, you know. That’s all right, Mrs Fairburn, you go.’
‘Thank you, Mr Baynedik. Ay am sure that both Ay and the gairls are most grateful. Perhaps if you would not mind just casting your eye over these theatre tickets to ensure that we are not being made the victims of some cruel hoax …’
F. X. stretched out an arm from behind the paper. ‘Let’s have a look.’
With deliberation, Mrs Fairburn drew from her envelope three yellow slips.
F. X. took them and looked at them and grunted. ‘Seem quite all right. I shouldn’t worry about where they came from. As you say, a gift horse and all that. I expect it’s some new advertising stunt or other. Get up to anything these people nowadays.’ He thrust the tickets back upon their owner. ‘Yes. Do all go. And by the way, Mrs Fairburn, as you go down perhaps you’d find Prout and ask him to come and see me. You leave me something cold tonight. I shan’t want much. And Mr Anthony won’t be in. He won’t be back from Paris until Monday or Tuesday.’
Mrs Fairburn rustled out, to be replaced almost immediately by the silent Prout. F. X. looked at him.
‘Well, Prout,’ he said, ‘Mrs Fairburn and the gairls are going out tonight. Very giddy! They’ll leave me some food. You’d better get it ready.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Prout. ‘Very good, sir. At what time would you like to dine, sir?’
F. X. considered. ‘Seven-thirty,’ he said at last. He looked up at Prout’s wooden visage and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Prout. You’ll be able to go round the corner to The Foxhound as usual.’
Prout was silent, but into his demeanour there crept the very faintest tinge of discomfort.
F. X. grinned at him. ‘All right, Prout. Why shouldn’t you go to The Foxhound? Good pub … I’ll dine at seven-thirty then. I’ve got a business acquaintance coming to see me at ten, a Mr Marsh. When you’ve let him in, you can go out for an hour if you like.’
‘Thank you, sir. Very good, sir. Shall I get the car, sir?’
‘No. I’ll walk to the office. Lovely day.’ He stood up and folded his paper and threw it on to the breakfast table.
COMMENT THE THIRD
MRS Fairburn is going to the play. And so are the cook and the house-parlourmaid.
It is to be doubted whether Mrs Fairburn will approve of The Sixth Wife of Monsieur Paradoux. Cook certainly will and so, if she is not too nervous of Mrs Fairburn’s rustling proximity, will Ellen.
It is unusual for complimentary tickets to be sent below-stairs. It is also unusual for housekeepers to associate voluntarily with the servants. But it is a long time since Mrs Fairburn has been to the Play.
And except for Prout, the house in William Pitt Street will be empty of anyone save its owner between the hours of seven-thirty and eleven-thirty.
SEQUENCE THE FOURTH
Friday, March 29th, 193— 11.30 a.m. to 12 noon.
MR. Selsinger’s gun shop in Vigo Street is very dark and very low and very old, but it is—so many people will tell you—the only place in the world in which to buy a gun. So, anyhow, thought Peter (christened Petronella) Rickforth. Into the old dark shop, whose walls are lined with wood and steel, Peter brought, at half-past eleven that morning, some of the sunshine which blazed upon all the rest of London.
Mr Selsinger himself, short and dapper and white-bearded, came forward to serve her. Peter smiled at him. Mr Selsinger, notoriously the most wooden-faced man between Bond and Regent Streets, smiled back.
‘’Morning,’ said Peter. She looked vaguely around her. ‘I want,’ said Peter, ‘to buy a gun.’
‘Quite,’ said Mr Selsinger.
‘A gun,’ said Peter again vaguely. And then, with a little burst of confidence which made Mr Selsinger her slave for at least so long as she should be within his shop: ‘As a matter of fact, it’s a present for my fiance and d’you know, I tried and tried to think of something that he wanted and then my future father-in-law put me up to this. I expect you know him—Mr Benedik.’
‘Mr F. X. Benedik.’ Mr Selsinger smiled again; this time the smile of the prosperous tradesman welcoming the friend of an excellent customer. ‘Certainly, madam. Mr F. X. Benedik has been a customer and a very good customer of mine for a good number of years.’ Now Mr Selsinger put behind him, with one wave of his slim white hand, the delights of social intercourse. ‘May I ask,’ said Mr Selsinger, ‘what sort of a gun you are requiring?’
Peter, who did not shoot, was vaguer yet. She said:
‘I know nothing about guns, but I think it’s a sporting gun I want. In fact, I know it is. Mr F. X. Benedik did tell me. He said … I’ve forgotten, d’you know.’
Mr Selsinger became helpful. He asked questions; many questions. At last he went to the rack labelled ‘Three’ and took from it a dully gleaming affair of blue steel and polished wood. ‘If I might suggest it, madam, I think this is what you want. There is no better gun, if I may say so, in the world today.’
‘It looks,’ said Peter, refraining from holding out the hands into which Mr Selsinger so obviously wished to place his pet, ‘perfectly lovely. I suppose it’s a most frightful price?’
Mr Selsinger made a negative movement with his head. He also said something, but what the words were Peter did not hear. They were drowned by the storming entrance of another customer.
The low door swung open and crashed back—with a bang which ought to have and just did not break its plate glass against a show case. The bell, which the opening of the door set going, pealed angrily. A shuffling followed. Mr Selsinger stared. His white beard twitched with something very much like anger. Peter turned a head which strove not to seem too much interested.
The newcomer was a tall and somehow menaci
ng figure. One didn’t, Peter thought, notice his clothes but one did his hat. A black hat perched forward right over his face and its dark glasses. A soft black hat with a high crown pinched into a point. Beneath the dark glasses the grey moustaches and the little tuft of imperial seemed, not funny as many moustaches and beards seem funny, but extraordinarily—and, thought Peter, as she turned away, rather frighteningly—important. As he walked this man seemed to drag behind him his left leg. It did not bend, this leg, and it was carried so that its foot was broadside on to his progress. The inner side of the shoe, at each stride, scraped along the polished boarded floor with a little, hissing squeak most distressing to the ear.
Mr Selsinger, with a murmured word of apology to Peter, went to the counter and leaned over it and touched something behind it. A bell pealed musically somewhere in dim hinter regions. Mr Selsinger then turned back, ignoring the newcomer, and began once more to expatiate upon the beauties of the gun now laid across the counter.
‘It is, I can assure you, madam, a gun which any gentleman would very, very much appreciate, and it is the sort of gun, madam, which one need not be—if I may put it this way—ashamed of giving to a gentleman. However good a shot that gentleman may be, in fact, the better shot that gentleman may be the more strongly will he appreciate a first-class weapon like this. I have no hesitation, madam—’
What Mr Selsinger had no hesitation about was never to reach Peter’s ears. Suddenly there came a roar from behind her. The newcomer was impatient.
‘God blast it!’ roared a raucous and somehow not English-seeming voice, ‘God blast and blister it all! Am I going to get served or am I not?’
Mr Selsinger’s neat little face, for one shocking instant, was sufficed with a lively glow. And then, with his return to decent, orderly, shopman pallor, came his superbly controlled voice.
‘I am afraid,’ said Mr Selsinger, facing the blank-eyed soulless stare of the stranger, ‘that I, myself, am attending to this lady. I have rung the bell, as you doubtless heard. One of my assistants will very shortly attend to you.’
A scraping, thumping, squeaking as the stranger took four astonishingly rapid steps and now stood so close to Mr Selsinger that he almost touched him.
‘I don’t want,’ said the stranger, and he spoke through his teeth, which were very white teeth, ‘I don’t want any of your damned assistants. What I want is a gun! Do you sell guns or don’t you? Do you sell guns? Sell me a gun and be quick about it! Standing about here trying to look like the Pope of Rome. Twopenny ha’penny little tradesman. Can’t understand what’s the matter with this blasted city!’
There came from the back of the shop a young and hitherto confident assistant. Towards him Mr Selsinger waved a white hand.
‘Mr Hopkins,’ said Mr Selsinger, ‘perhaps you would attend to this gentleman. He wishes … er … to make a purchase.’
The stranger exploded. ‘Wishes to make a purchase, you little nincompoop! You bloody little half-wit!’
Mr Selsinger once more went pink from his eyes down to the edge of his neat white beard.
‘You will pardon me, sir,’ said Mr Selsinger stiffly, ‘but your language …’ One of Mr Selsinger’s hands indicated in the most gentlemanly manner possible the presence of a lady. The stranger, stooping down from his height, thrust out his face until the dark glasses seemed to Mr Selsinger to be less than an inch from his own trim pince-nez.
‘If,’ said the stranger, and still he spoke without opening those startlingly white teeth, ‘if you got on with your job and served me perhaps you wouldn’t hear any language. I come into your damn shop and I wait about here minutes and minutes and then you send me a little poopstick like your boy friend Hopkins here. I want a gun, man!’ Suddenly and most disconcertingly the stranger put back his head and laughed; a neighing mirthless sound which was described afterwards by Mr Selsinger as ‘positively blood-curdling.’
‘Guns,’ said the stranger, ‘guns! Little white maggots like you and your boy friend here selling guns! I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a peashooter fired in anger, either of you. You’re both more like white rats than any man has a right to be.’
‘Hopkins,’ said Mr Selsinger, trembling with a mixture of rage and fear. ‘Hopkins, will you please step into the street and see whether you can catch the eye of the constable.’
There was a clatter as the stranger’s stick dropped to the wooden floor. For one triumphant moment, Mr Selsinger thought that he had conquered, but alas! the stranger was only laughing. The stranger was in a paroxysm. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said, ‘sell me a gun. I won’t buy the cartridges here or I might blow your head off.’
It was at this point that Hopkins, a youth by no means so devoid of sense as his appearance would suggest, took matters into his own hands.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Hopkins briskly, ‘what sort of a gun is it you’re wanting?’
The tinted glasses of the stranger seemed to look him up and down.
‘Heaven!’ said the stranger, ‘it speaks! … I want a nice, big forty-five colt with a rough grip if you’ve got it. Otherwise I’ll have one of those heavy German automatics.’
Hopkins, talking rapid though very refined salesman talk, led the way to the far end of the shop. Mr Selsinger, his palms outspread almost on a level with his shoulders, his brows raised in terrific apology, turned to Peter.
‘I cannot tell you, madam,’ began Mr Selsinger, ‘how deeply I regret … It is not often that in a quiet neighbourhood like this we—’
Peter cut him short. ‘Really,’ she said, ‘it’s quite all right. Please don’t worry. And I’ll have this gun. It’s a beauty, I’m sure.’
Her voice, perhaps from a strongly repressed desire to laugh at Mr Selsinger and Mr Selsinger’s distress, was both louder and higher pitched than usual. She said:
‘I’ll tell Mr Benedik how very kind you’ve—’
Once more an interruption. From where he stood beside Mr Hopkins, poring over a case of automatics and revolvers, the stranger swung round. ‘Benedik!’ he said. His voice was a harsh roar. ‘Benedik!’ he said and laughed again. And if his laugh before had been a sound unpleasing, now it was ten times more so.
Even Peter—that most matter-of-fact and courageous young woman—felt the blood draining from her face.
Mr Selsinger fluttered helpless hands.
It was all over very soon. Back to the case of pistols the stranger swung. The stiff left leg seemed to trail behind its fellow on the turn. He pointed down to the case. ‘I’ll have that one,’ he said.
Peter pulled herself together. ‘If you would send the gun then to this address.’ She gave a card into Mr Selsinger’s trembling hands.
‘Yes, madam. Certainly, madam. A pleasure.’
‘And here,’ said Peter, ‘is one of my cards, if you would send the account to me.’
‘Yes, madam. Certainly, madam.’
Peter, with one glance behind her, went out into the sunlit street. As the door closed behind her she was aware of a great, strangely disproportionate, relief.
COMMENT THE FOURTH
POOR Peter! An unpleasant experience at the time—but to turn out, in the light of the future, nothing less than tragedy.
SEQUENCE THE FIFTH
Friday, 29th March, 193— 7.30 p.m. to 10.20 p.m.
1
THE ‘cold snack’ foreshadowed by Mrs Fairburn turned, under the guidance of Prout, into a certainly cold but otherwise pleasing meal. Prout stayed in the room while F. X. ate. F. X. talked to Prout; seemed to extract from Prout’s ‘very good, sirs’ and ‘yes, sir—no sirs’—as, indeed, he well might—more solace than from many a so-called equal’s conversation.
‘Will you, sir,’ said Prout, ‘take coffee here or in the library?’
‘In the library, I think,’ said F. X. ‘Just trot it along there as quick as you can, will you, Prout? I’ve got to run down to South Kensington to see Mr Rickforth.’
The coffee was drunk by 8.15, and by 8.2
0 F. X. was at the hall door.
‘Will you, sir,’ said Prout, ‘be requiring a taxi?’
F. X. nodded. Prout, from some secret recess on his person, produced a large policeman’s whistle. He ran down the steps into the road; blew three times, heartily; returned.
‘Look here, Prout,’ said F. X., standing on the topmost step. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can, but there’s someone coming to see me at ten. A man called Marsh. He’s coming to talk business. If he should come here before I get back, just take him in, put him in the study, make the fire up, see that he has everything he wants—you know—then as I said, you can slip off to The Foxhound. I may be a few minutes late, but don’t you wait in for me. Go and have your pint in comfort.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Prout.
‘Righto!’ said F. X. He went down the steps just as a taxi drew up at the kerb. ‘Good-night, Prout, in case I don’t see you again.’
‘Good-night, sir. Thank you, sir.’
2
‘Hups … I’m sure I beg your pardon. Don’t know what it is about this spring weather, I’m sure, but it always seems to give me the same hups trouble. Well, dearie, I don’t mind if I do—I think as I’ve got this hups trouble, I’ll have a nice gin-an’-pep.’
‘Mr Bliss! Mr Bliss! When you’ve finished talkin’ to that young man about horse-racing, p’r’aps you wouldn’t mind attending to me and Mrs Edwards … Thank you kindly I’m sure! Mrs Edwards is going to take a large gin with a very small—now, mind you, Mr Bliss, only a very small—dash of pep. Is that right, dear?’
‘Yes, hups, thank you. Pardon, Mr Bliss! My error!’
‘And as fer me, Mr Bliss, I’m sticking to the old-and-mild. Don’t know ’ow it is, but some’ow that seems to suit me best.’
The Rynox Mystery Page 5
