A tennis ball, black with age and ill-usage, awakened him out of his reverie as it slid from his arm and dropped like a sodden potato at his feet.
“Sorry, mister,” said a voice, and a small, grimy face was upturned in the direction of his unseeing eyes.
Bobbie, without acknowledging the apology, turned into Galahad Mansions, absorbed in a scurrilous analysis of the one life which stood between himself and wealth and luxury—and Nancy.
He found his mother staring into the weakening fire that had been lighted only because it was necessary to make a burnt offering to Uncle Massy on an afternoon in early May that had threatened to be chilly.
“What did he say?” he asked, thinking only of himself as only an expert can.
“Nothing practical, Bobbie,” she answered, restlessly. “But if he won’t do anything you must do something for yourself.”
“I wish I could.” He dug his hands into his trousers’ pockets and held himself with a vicious intensity that reflected his state of mind.
“I blame myself, Bobbie,” his mother continued, “for letting things come to this pass. I should have insisted on your getting work of some sort. You have brains and personality. But, of course, it’s this cursed Cheldon inheritance—waiting for dead men’s shoes, and your uncle won’t die for a long while yet.”
He started rather guiltily, for at that very moment he had been thinking of his uncle’s chances of prolonged mortality. Fifty-three was a tremendous age to twenty-three, and yet there was Billy Annan’s uncle, Sir Percy Annan, who was ninety and going strong. It was very disheartening.
“I shouldn’t have let you refuse that appointment in South Africa three years ago.”
“When Uncle Massy was seriously ill—dying,” he reminded her. “Had he died I’d have had to come straight home on the next boat.”
“It was a mistake—our mistake,” she murmured, her thoughtful expression adding dignity to her natural beauty. “I haven’t been ambitious enough, Bobbie. I ought not to have been content just to have you. In spoiling you I have spoilt myself. To think that we’ve been living in Galahad Mansions for five years! To think that I was once happy to be here!”
He laid a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s not your fault, mother, it’s just luck. If father had been a food controller instead of a soldier you’d be rich and happy, and—”
“You’d never have met Nancy Curzon, Bobbie,” she said flippantly. “Don’t forget that. It’s places like Galahad Mansions that bring you into contact with girls like Nancy Curzon. That reminds me, Bobbie. What about a little party for me and our friends to meet Nancy?”
The ecstatic look in his eyes hurt her.
“The very thing, mother,” he cried, all his envy, hatred and uncharitableness forgotten. “I’d love you and everybody to meet her and tell me how lucky I am. What about next Tuesday? Nancy is dancing at nine and at one in the morning so she could come either at seven or at half-past ten. At least, I think she could. I’ll have to ask her.”
“Splendid.” She was recovering under the spell of his boyish enthusiasm. “I’ll ask Freddie Neville and Sylvia Brand. I think Freddie’s keen on her. And Mrs. Carmichael.”
“Who’s keen on Uncle Massy?” He laughed ironically. “I can’t imagine the pompous old ass marrying that modern Lady Sneerwell. But still, you can ask her. But, of course, you won’t invite uncle?”
“I’ll not send him an invitation,” she said truthfully. “Have you any special friends you’d care to ask?”
“I’ll wait until the day. Depends on whom I meet. And Nancy might want to bring along a pal, perhaps, her dancing partner, Billy Bright.”
“Don’t forget, Bobbie, we can’t invite more than eight as we’ve only got ten tumblers, to say nothing of chairs. Galahad Mansions isn’t Broadbridge Manor with its salons.”
When she observed the quick change in his expression she regretted her humorous comparison, and to save the situation she added hastily, “We’ll have a jolly little party with no frills and no pretence, and we’ll make Nancy feel at home the moment she arrives.”
“That’s just like you, mother,” he cried, and kissed her. He never knew why she averted her eyes and why she trembled. Fortunately, at that moment the hall door opened to the accompaniment of a creaking key.
“That’s Florence,” his mother said quickly. “You tell her we’ll have tea in here. I’ll see her later.”
Florence was the daily help who “obliged” by working whenever it suited her own convenience. She was a sturdy girl with an inclination to stoutness, but undeniably pretty and with plenty of assurance. She was greatly in demand in the neighbourhood of Galahad Mansions and could be relied on for a not too inaccurate résumé of the news that the newspapers dare not print. She knew the inside history of all the families which could afford to employ her in instalments, but she specialised in the royal family, particularly their matrimonial alliances. This week she was doing duty for Mrs. Cheldon from four to eight.
Bobbie had hitherto regarded Florence with aversion though not because she herself deserved or provoked it. But she was evidence of their ghastly poverty, and he resented the evidence as much as the fact itself. Uncle Massy did not pay a woman eightpence an hour for four hours twice a week to keep his mansion clean. Uncle Massy did not….
He strode into the kitchen with the determination of a man whose time is precious and who must be economical with it.
“I say,” he began, and stopped. “Why, what’s the matter?”
For Florence, seated on a chair and with her head on arms resting on the kitchen table, was sobbing convulsively.
An ever-present consciousness of superiority over the rest of the human creation and especially that meagre portion of it which laboured to lessen his discomforts was responsible for the detached curiosity with which he regarded the noisy, truculent figure. There was accompanying that curiosity, however, a growing feeling of resentment that anyone else should indulge in sorrow to an extent comparable with his own.
“What’s the matter, Florence?” he asked, shoving his hands into his pockets and watching her with an amused interest that never came within approachable distance of embarrassment. “Dry your eyes, and let’s hear all about it. Mother ill?”
“No—no, sir,” she whimpered, unable to maintain the sobbing to a pitch satisfactory to her fury. “It’s Tom—my young man.”
“Oh, of course.” Why it should have been “of course” he did not know, but young men had always formed the staple population of Florence’s life. How often had he heard his mother express a wish that her fragment of a domestic would take a vow of celibacy!
“He’s been and gone and chucked me,” she gulped.
“I am sorry.” It was the regulation remark. “Bit of a cad, eh? Never mind, Florence, there are plenty more, and a popular girl like yourself, you know, eh?”
She smiled faintly.
“I expect by next Monday you’ll be booked up for the remainder of the year.” She smiled appreciatively. “The young men like you.” She nearly laughed over the tear drops. Bobbie, enjoying the patriarchal and patronising role, sought for further words of encouragement. “After all, it’s Tom’s loss and not yours, you know.”
Her expression became cloudy again.
“I’m not quite so sure about that, sir,” she said, threatening to lapse into watery sentimentality again. “It’s because he’s come into lots of money that he’s jilted me.”
“Lots of money?” Bobbie echoed, excited as well as interested.
Florence completed the drying of her eyes before replying.
“It’s that uncle of his, the rich one.” Bobbie thought of his own and scowled. “Mr. Welt owned a newsagent’s business in Chawdon Street, one of the best in Fulham. Well, on Sunday Tom’s cousin took the old man out in his motor car and they had an accident and Mr. Welt
died. Tom heard about his will yesterday. He gets the shop and nearly five hundred pounds.” She dabbed at her eyes. “The shop’s worth six quid a week clear, and Tom won’t have no more to do with me. I’m not good enough for him.” She repeated the phrase with a vicious emphasis. “I’ve a good mind to sue him for breach of promise even if he’s never written me any love letters and there’s never been a ring. But Ethel and Gladys and Harry Smith all have seen him with me and he told them…”
Bobbie listened with his thoughts at Broadbridge Manor….
“And if you ask me.” He awoke as the lengthy narrative took another turn. “If you ask me.” She paused impressively.
“Yes? What is it I’ve got to ask you?” He spoke mechanically.
“I tell you what, sir,” she said, apparently dropping the interrogative style which was a favourite of hers, “it’s my opinion that it was all a put-up job between Tom and his good-for-nothing cousin, Bert Cronen.”
“Indeed!” He threw the word in to satisfy her.
“An absolute put-up job.” Florence approached nearer and lowered her voice to the requisite conspiratorial level. “Nearly a week ago Tom got the sack from his job. Cheeky to the foreman, he was. Well, he’s finished there and he owes his landlady for five weeks. The dogs got the money, sir. I know that ’cause he told me. Well, Tom’s in a rare fix, no weekly wages and nothin’ to come. Then it occurs to him that he’s still his uncle’s favourite. Isn’t it likely that he got Bert Cronen to take the old man out in his rotten car and purposely had an accident? You’re not going to believe that it was just chance that made Tom a rich man inside a couple of days? He knew his uncle would never have died in the ordinary way so soon. Good for twenty years and—”
“How old was he, do you know?” There was a curious hush in his voice.
“Fifty-five, but young for his age,” she answered promptly. “I saw him only a fortnight ago when me and Tom went to tea with him. Mr. Welt was always saying he was going to touch eighty. That’s how he would put it—touch eighty. Why, in many respects, sir, he was younger than Tom. You know these printers, sir.”
Bobbie did not, but he was not listening, and she took his abstracted air for profound absorption in her shattered but still dramatic romance.
“They’re never fit.” To his surprise she burst into tears again. “I always hoped that when me and Tom married we’d be able to help his uncle with the shop. I didn’t want a husband who might be at work all night. But there, I’m silly. Tom’s rich now and I’m not good enough for him. It was all right when he was broke and I could help him a bit. It’s different now. He’s killed his uncle and got the shop and nearly five hundred quid. And I wish I was dead, I do indeed.”
With a sympathy animating him that astonished him he laid a hand on her arm.
“I’m sorry, Florence,” he said feelingly, “really sorry. But there are better men left than Tom, and one of them will find you soon. There, I can see you’re a sensible girl.”
She looked gratefully at him.
“Thank you, sir,” she whispered. “I never thought you’d bother about my trouble. But I’ll sue him, that is if he ain’t—I mean, if he isn’t had up for murder. He wasn’t in the car—that’s his slyness—but it was a regular do, that was. They ought to hang him and his precious cousin for murdering the old man for the money and the shop. I’m not good enough for him!” She concluded with a scream of derision that frightened herself as well as Bobbie. “Sorry, sir,” she said nervously. “I—”
“That’s all right. Better think of something. And that reminds me. Mother says we’ll have tea now.” He turned to leave the kitchen. “Oh, by the way, Florence, what’s the name of the gentleman with the car?”
“Bert Cronen, sir. Why?” Her surprise temporarily banished her sorrow.
“Oh, er—I—well—I want to tell mother the whole story. But get tea at once, Florence.”
“You’ve been a long time,” said Ruby when he re-entered the room. “Anything happened?”
He flung himself into the sofa and set in motion its dead springs.
“Just a little human drama, mother,” he answered with an affectation of laziness. “Another of Florence’s love affairs has terminated in tears and tatters.”
“I suppose he drank—the last one was a gambler—so it was the turn of a drunkard.” She smiled reminiscently.
“Oh, no, nothing of the kind. Real human drama, mother. Nemesis has overtaken the chucker of young men. A young man has chucked her.”
“That’s interesting.” She sat up in her chair. “Usually they are afraid of Florence.”
“This one isn’t or wasn’t. Mother, money has come between them. It appears that the young man has or had a rich uncle who was taken for a ride—strictly innocently, of course—in the car belonging to Tom’s cousin, Bert Cronen.”
“And the uncle was so infatuated with the car or its driver that he cut Tom’s name out of his will and made Bert his heir?”
“Wrong again.” Bobbie was enjoying himself in a dour, self-pitying way, but his mother was unconscious of that. “Bert, the cousin, took the opportunity to kill the rich uncle, and lo! and behold, Tom is now the owner of a six quid a week newsagency in Fulham and nearly five hundred more quids in the bank. The immediate consequence of this sudden accession of fortune is that Tom considers he ought to look higher in the social scale than our tri-weekly obliger, and Florence is heartbroken.”
“That means she’ll be emotional for a week at least, and I want our party to take place next Tuesday.”
“We can do without her. I’ll help, and so will Nancy for that. She’s wonderfully domesticated considering she’s an artiste. Besides, we can rope Freddie Neville in, and Mrs. Carmichael will be unhappy unless she’s nosing around all the time. Oh, here’s Florence approaching, so exit young master in search of silence.”
Ruby watched the girl arrange the tea things and did not speak until the seventh sniff.
“Sorry to hear of your disappointment, Florence,” she said, trying to infuse something else into her tone than politeness.
“Thank you, ma’am. But Mr. Robert has been so sympathetic-like and kind. I thought he’d have laughed at me but he didn’t. You should have seen his face when I was telling him how Tom and Bert had killed their uncle for his money. At least, it’s my opinion that they did.”
A horrible sense of discomfort pervaded Ruby. She shrank from the association of “murder” with “uncle,” and she escaped from panic only because it was so obvious that the girl was utterly incapable of discovering a parallel in Galahad Mansions to the temptation which must have assailed the alleged murderous Tom during the weeks preceding the profitable tragedy.
“You mustn’t bring charges you can’t prove, Florence,” she said, severely. “The cousin wouldn’t have risked his own life to help Tom.”
“He didn’t ma’am,” was the unexpected retort. “Mr. Robert guessed that as well as me. Wanted to know particularly what Bert’s name was.”
Ruby seized an empty cup and rattled it unwittingly against a saucer.
“We’ll have toast for tea,” she said weakly.
Chapter Two
The preparations for the party by providing a diversion for Ruby Cheldon’s oppressive and apprehensive thoughts quickly restored her to her usual serenity of outlook and manner. She loved entertaining, and was, therefore, always at her best no matter how poor her surroundings or how inferior the ingredients of the feast might be. A gracious friendliness towards all, attentiveness to everybody, combined with a tactful avoidance of iterated invitations to eat and drink, an unobtrusive supervision, and yet a total absence of dominance gave her the control and leadership of every party of which she was the hostess without anyone suspecting that she was something more than one of those present.
But then she left nothing to chance, not even the apparently smallest detail
s. The commandeered rooms were with their contents subjected to a disembowelling cleansing which rendered parts of them almost as shiny as the “payway” products of the new era. Even the sofa, thrust into the least conspicuous of corners, was nearly redeemed from passive hideousness by gaily-coloured cushions distributed at strategic points. A couple of rugs from the bedrooms broke the drab monotony of the drawing-room floor, and the shaded electric light mercifully reduced the three engravings to symmetrical frames and nothing else. Flowers in glass vases were assigned positions where Ruby thought they would show most effectively, and whenever possible inartistic evidences of their poverty were banished to the kitchen.
Her chief glory and pride, however, were her photographs, those relics of gentility which the poor wear like medals. The photograph of General Sir Hildebrand Cheldon complete with Crimean whiskers and cast-iron regimentals. (“Oh, yes, he was my husband’s uncle.”) Hubert Cheldon in his uniform as a deputy-lieutenant. (“I’ve got a book about him somewhere.”) Jonathan Cheldon in the dress of the late eighteenth century which the twentieth regards as a uniform. (“That’s a photograph of his portrait. Painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Yes, he does look like Lord Clive. Lots of people have remarked it.”) Broadbridge Manor with its extended frontage and vast lawns. (“Belonged to the Dukes of Weybridge before Bobbie’s ancestor bought it. Lady Emily Cheldon. Daughter of the Earl of Ditton. Married Bobbie’s grandfather. His aunt, who jilted a marquis, used to tell me that Disraeli was crazy about Lady Emily.”) Thomas Delaforce Cheldon in his legal robes. (“Yes, but all the Cheldons are handsome. That book in his right hand? I don’t know, but probably it’s one he wrote himself. He was always writing.”) And in the place of honour a large photograph of Colonel Henry Bertram Cheldon. Ruby had no need to voice her pride in her husband, neither was it necessary for her to parade his virtues or add to them by invention. His silver frame was always the centre of the array of Cheldon memorials and reminders that it was a distinct come-down in the world for a member of that illustrious family to dwell in Galahad Mansions, Fulham. They formed a goodly company for the edification and sneers of guests according to their degree of humility or jealousy.
Murder in Piccadilly Page 3
