Murder in Piccadilly

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Murder in Piccadilly Page 5

by Charles Kingston


  Ruby Cheldon murmured something about seeing Florence and left the room; Bobbie rushed out when the telephone bell rang with a “That may be uncle or someone.”

  Sylvia smiled when she found herself alone with Nancy.

  “Volatile youth,” she said, with a languid air. “Suppose you and he have fixed it up?”

  “Haven’t got past his mother yet—that is, if I want to.” The reply was a trifle enigmatic, but Sylvia believed she understood it.

  “Didn’t know it was necessary to ask permission of mamma nowadays?” she drawled, but her heart was beating faster.

  “One must be unconventional sometimes.” Nancy was astonished at the ease with which she could imitate her and her set. “It strikes me she’d prefer him to marry you or someone like you.”

  The unexpected addition staved off Sylvia’s embarrassment.

  “Oh, that’s only your joke. Bobbie and I are great pals, but nothing more. I expect he thinks I’m immature. He’s a bit of a poet, you know, and looks down on us poor girls.”

  “Well, he looks up to me—crazy about me.”

  “Not surprised. You’re a bit out of the ordinary and we’re all ordinary here. I had a birthday party the other day—nineteen of us because I was nineteen.”

  “I was nineteen in March.”

  “Then there’s a month between us. How interesting.”

  “Where were you born?” They had never taught Nancy Curzon, née Soggs, reticence in Paradise Alley, Whitechapel.

  “Mount Street.”

  “That’s near Grosvenor Square?”

  “Mother used to say it was about a thousand miles away.” She laughed. “When I was ten we emigrated to Knightsbridge.”

  “I was born in Paradise Row, Whitechapel,” Nancy retorted with aggressive and false pride, “and Mrs. Cheldon knows it or guesses it and tells me politely I’m common and ignorant.”

  “I should say you were most uncommon, Miss Curzon,” said Sylvia, in her youthfulness overrating her power to suppress an offensive patronage.

  “All that matters to me is that Bobbie loves me.” She said this to remind Sylvia that if she entertained any hopes in that direction or if she imagined she could ride roughshod over her she was mistaken. “He’s told me a thousand times that I’m the only girl he has ever looked at, but I’ll bet many have looked at him.” Again the giggle betrayed her.

  “Bobbie’s very popular,” said Sylvia calmly. “We all think he’s a dear. It’s a pity he can’t get a job.”

  “Get a job?” The reference coupling Bobbie with work always had an exasperating effect on Nancy, and she exploded. “I wish to God you wouldn’t talk that rot about Bobbie as if he were a twopence ha’penny clerk living in a back street. Bobbie’s a perfect gentleman. Why, the other night at the ‘Frozen Fang’ when a drunken ass threw a plate at him Bobbie instead of throwing the pieces back picked them up and handed them to a waiter. Bobbie’s a gentleman who oughtn’t to have to work.” In her anger and speed she over-employed words. A rattle of glasses on the other side of the door warned her and she subsided into a windless growl.

  It was Sylvia who opened the door and disclosed Bobbie bearing a tray containing the familiar furniture of a cocktail diversion. Behind him as if acting as acolyte was a tallish, fair-haired youth reverently walking, both eyes and hands ready for emergencies.

  “Be careful, Bobbie,” he was saying when the procession arrived. “There isn’t too much sherry in any of the glasses, you know. Hello!” He stared at Nancy and grinned appreciatively.

  “Hello!” Nancy returned carelessly. Whoever he was individually she knew his kind in bulk, hundreds of them.

  “Freddie Neville—Nancy,” was Bobbie’s mode of introducing them.

  Freddie grinned again. Grinning was a hobby if not a speciality of his, although it mattered nothing to him that it served to distract detection of the narrowness of the space between the extreme boundary of his chin and his too prominent teeth.

  “Tootle-oo!” he chirruped and handed her a glass of sherry. “Spotted you at once, though I couldn’t quite fix the name. Don’t remember to have seen the Nancy.”

  “It’s Hyacinth on the bills,” she explained.

  “Of course. Well, here we are, Nancy, and the best of pals. Gather round before the Old Brigade arrives.”

  They moved in a body towards the corner of the room furthest from the door, and once she found herself in the company of youth Nancy’s self-possession and confidence returned to her. She was supreme in that little coterie, and she knew it. Freddie Neville, whose mission in life was to combine pleasantness and good humour with an utter lack of anything approaching brainwork, installed her as their leader, and Sylvia, barely conscious that in the presence of the real thing of which she was only an imitation, it would be discreet to merge into the audience. When Kitty Manson, Sylvia’s usual partner in their nightly pursuit of what they called “life”, arrived and proved to be an animated beauty photograph with a fondness for “chipping” Freddie, the party’s temperature rose a trifle higher. Laughing and shouting, pausing to appreciate Nancy’s own particular scream with which she heralded or emphasised her funny stories, and sometimes talking in chorus they paid no heed to the more elderly of the guests whom Ruby was receiving while her thoughts were as far away as her brother-in-law.

  Florence interrupted with a collection of plates containing sandwiches and cakes. Freddie captured two and held them before Nancy. To prove that he had a sense of humour Bobbie immediately wrested them from him and presented those cakes and sandwiches which had not reached the floor to his divinity. The chorus laughed; Kitty said something which was considered witty, and Sylvia hit Freddie on the head with her empty glass. Somewhere in the background there was a murmur of voices, and Bobbie glancing over his shoulders saw his mother’s crony and toady, Mrs. Elmers, the widow of a clergyman, and Galahad Mansions’ acknowledged authority on Debrett. Beyond her was Mr. Davidson complete with his eighteen stone of a lifetime’s over-indulgence in food, and listening to Mr. Davidson’s recital of his unflattering opinion of Mr. Stanley Baldwin was the tall and gaunt Miss Shamley, a female of almost unblemished reputation.

  “We’re filling up,” said Bobbie sarcastically.

  “I’m not,” said Nancy instantly. “Can’t afford to. I have to dance in an hour or two.”

  The humour appealed to them, and in the midst of the storm of laughter Mrs. Cheldon came across to speak to Nancy. At once a chill fell upon the revellers, a chill caught from the resentful discomposure of the dancer.

  “Mr. Davidson and Mrs. Elmers would like to make your acquaintance,” said Ruby with a smile.

  Nancy, suspecting that Mr. Davidson and Mrs. Elmers were only two members of the jury trying her that night, suppressed an instant desire to snub Bobbie’s mother, but something in the calm, set pallor of her face and the serene determination of her expression checked her.

  “Right-ho—I mean, of course.” She nearly stamped her foot in her vexation at this lapse, but it was difficult to maintain perfect ladyism in the presence of so much sugared hostility and covert criticism.

  Mr. Davidson shook hands enthusiastically, and Mrs. Elmers fishily.

  “Fine weather we’re having?” said Mr. Davidson.

  “What a charming dress!” said Mrs. Elmers, who in spite of a vocabulary of exaggerated adjectives produced to please, seemed to take winter with her wherever she went. Nancy looked at the pointed nose, white and wrinkled skin and carnivorous mouth, and retreated a step or two.

  “Yes—er—I mean—” she murmured, and to her relief the struggle towards politeness was mercifully ended by the sensational entry of Massy Cheldon.

  “Why, Ruby!” he exclaimed as he took her hand between his own, “I’d no idea you were giving a party. I hope I’m not in the way?”

  “Of course not, Massy. We’re delighted
to have you. Bobbie, a whisky and soda for your uncle. Not a cocktail. You know he hates them. Mrs. Elmers, I needn’t introduce my brother-in-law to you. Mr. Davidson. Oh, Massy, I want to present you to Bobbie’s friend, Miss Nancy Curzon.”

  It was only accidental, but to Ruby at any rate it was disturbing that the others should form a ring while Nancy extended her hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said fatally.

  “It’s an honour,” Massy responded gallantly, and looked over her head. “There’s Sylvia and Kitty, and, of course, Freddie. Hello, Freddie!”

  Really the great man was in a most friendly mood. “Charming!” whispered Mrs. Elmers. “Wish I had his money,” was Kitty’s comment, “I’d start the screamingest night club in London and bar everybody over twenty-five.”

  “Must come and see you dance, Miss Curzon,” Massy resumed when the party had recovered a little from his importance.

  “But haven’t you?” she asked seriously. “I seem to remember your face. Must have seen you before.”

  “Now you’re trying to make me vain,” he retorted, and Nancy was so puzzled that when Freddie came up to claim her she suffered him to lead her back to the exclusive coterie in the corner.

  As Massy Cheldon moved away with Ruby, conversation became general, and Mr. Davidson, invading the Freddie Neville group, broke it up. Sylvia wandered towards Mrs. Elmers, and Freddie, taking a hint consisting of a muttered threat in his right ear, left Nancy to Bobbie.

  “I know your uncle well by sight,” she said, and said it so seriously that Bobbie stared at her in astonishment.

  “Why the tragedy, Nancy, and the gloom?” he asked, seeking refuge in facetiousness. “Of course, you’ve seen my uncle. He’s one of London’s most famous bores and is often on view in Piccadilly and Pall Mall, to say nothing of St. James’s Street.”

  “Now you’re talking like Freddie,” she protested. “It’s something more than having seen him, Bobbie. When I started dancing I used to be one of a troupe called the ‘Seven Fairies.’ I was the youngest—only fourteen—and the eldest was a girl named Hortense Delisle. Her real name was Annie Smithers, but that wouldn’t have looked well on a bill. Of course.” She uttered an exclamation of relief and her face cleared. “It was your uncle who got keen on Annie, dead nuts, in fact. We girls used to tease her about him.”

  “Well?” His lack of surprise astonished her.

  “Why do you say ‘well’ like that?” she whispered, wishing she could shout. “Is your uncle that sort of fellow?”

  “Always has been, according to his own account.” Bobbie laughed. “He’s been a lady-killer from the day he left Eton, perhaps before. But he’s always seen to it that the killing has cost him nothing.”

  “I think he spent money on Annie.”

  “Oh, so that’s why you’re melodramatic. My dear Nancy, you must learn to be surprised at nothing. Uncle Massy is a bore and a miser who fancies himself as an Adonis. But he’s always been too mean to marry, which I suppose I ought to be thankful for.”

  “I wonder,” she murmured pensively.

  “Wonder what?”

  “What your uncle would say if I asked him what had become of Annie. She was going about with him a lot when she suddenly disappeared.”

  “To be continued?” said Bobbie, ironically.

  “Let me think, you idiot,” she said with a smile. “Annie was a beauty.” She sighed. “Oh, here’s Freddie.” She made a face at him.

  “Nancy,” said the irrepressible intruder, “Sylvia and Kitty and I want you and Bobbie to join us in a midnight visit to Whitechapel. Rather a lark! Whitechapel’s an awfully interesting place, you know.”

  “It’s awful, but not interesting, Freddie. But do take your face away. Oh, who’s that?”

  “Mrs. Carmichael,” heralded Florence from the doorway.

  The newcomer entered on the run, uttered a laughing apology to Ruby and instantly rescued Massy from Mr. Davidson and Mrs. Elmers.

  “That’s the queerest widow in Fulham,” Bobbie whispered. “Wants to marry my uncle, and yet she’s well off.”

  Mrs. Carmichael, who at forty-three had to some extent got the better of her age, was now chatting to both Ruby and Massy. She was of good figure and height, with handsome features and a warmth of expression which gave a semblance of youth to her appearance. Her feeble egotism induced her to arrive late at every party, believing that a solitary entry with all the other guests forming a chorus would give her an outstanding position in any company. She had at her finger-tips the gossip of fifty drawing-rooms and about as many families, which she retailed with an artistic hesitancy and pretence of ignorance which convinced her—but no one else—that she was a listener to instead of a retailer of scandal.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late, dear,” she purred to Ruby.

  “Oh, we all know, Mrs. Carmichael,” said Massy chaffingly, “that you take good care to avoid whatever dangers may lurk in punctuality.”

  “Nasty, clever man,” she cried, affectionately.

  “What about a livener-up, Mrs. Car?” asked Freddie, intruding where even a devil would have feared to tread.

  “Thank you,” she said with the sourest of her ready-to-wear smiles. “A weak, very weak whisky and soda.”

  To her annoyance Mr. Davidson, observing that Freddie Neville was apparently basking in the smiles of the eclectic Mrs. Carmichael, joined the group and was speedily followed by Sylvia, Kitty and Mrs. Elmers. The widow of multiple butcher shops smiled her hardest to keep her thoughts at bay.

  “A wonderfully pretty girl, Massy,” said Mr. Davidson, anxious to please.

  They started at his loudness of voice until they discovered that Nancy and Bobbie had disappeared from the room.

  “Of course, she’s pretty, Davidson,” said Massy curtly. “What else is there to infatuate Bobbie?”

  “When a man thinks only of a girl’s beauty he’s apt to forget himself,” said Mrs. Carmichael, but the remark missing fire because Massy Cheldon continued to look severe, she added hastily, “Not that I approve of this constant running down of our sex. An incurable bachelor like yourself, Mr. Cheldon,—”

  “Incurable? There’s no such thing or state, Mrs. Car!” retorted Mr. Davidson who was sufficiently well-to-do to be able to afford to discount Massy Cheldon’s standing in his own family. “Cheldon is merely taking the longest way round to St. George’s, Hanover Square. I used to think I was one of the incurables. Didn’t marry until I was forty-three, and I did it again at fifty-six.”

  “And yet you’re always sneering at our poor sex, Mr. Davidson. You deserve to be punished for it,” said Mrs. Carmichael severely.

  “I was,” he answered curtly.

  The widow sought a chair and Massy Cheldon dropped into the one next to hers. Mr. Davidson sprawled himself on the decayed sofa, to Ruby Cheldon’s horror, and Mrs. Elmers occupied part of a chair. Freddie, ready to serve, stood between them and the door.

  Ruby longing for the time to pass so that she might take counsel with her brother-in-law, inspected the array of bottles and decanters on the sideboard.

  “Perhaps Mrs. Elmers would like some tea,” she whispered to Florence who had appeared in response to the pressing of the bell. “Oh, there’s the front door. Who can it be?”

  She had forgotten the vanishing of Bobbie and Nancy, and their return was very welcome, for somehow even the inventive and resourceful Mrs. Carmichael was finding it none too easy to keep the conversation alive.

  “Sorry, mother,” said Bobbie, “but the cigarettes gave out. Have one, uncle?” He presented a large box. “Oh, of course, Mrs. Carmichael. You too, Nancy.”

  “I must rush,” said the dancer. “Just come back to say good night. Goodbye, Mr. Cheldon. Have my work to do before I try and forget Freddie and his grin.”

  “Oh, come now, Nancy!” that youth prot
ested good humouredly.

  But the murmuring “good nights” and “good byes” and the temporary disappearance of Bobbie blotted him out of the picture until Bobbie had come back and in a feverish attempt to compensate himself for the loss of his fascinator led Freddie to a determined assault on the solids and liquids.

  “Thank you, Bobbie,” said Massy Cheldon, accepting the scientifically adjusted whisky and soda. “I wanted it.”

  “A toast, ladies and gents,” said Freddie, believing his assumed cockney accent was exquisitely correct and therefore exquisitely funny. “To the health and happiness of Nancy Curzon, and I am sure you will all agree with me that Bobbie has found a distinct number one.”

  Massy Cheldon nodded, and Mrs. Carmichael therefore nodded to. But they did not fail to notice that Bobbie’s face reflected a sort of angry pride that threatened a scene.

  “So she’s dancing in a night club,” Massy Cheldon remarked in an undertone with a sentimental flavour about it. “Dear me, why I could have been only a boy when I was last in one.”

  “But I thought night clubs were only invented during the war,” exclaimed Sylvia.

  “My paternal grandmother eloped with a man she met in a night club in the Haymarket in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign. It’s curious to think that if that hadn’t happened I mightn’t have been here.”

  “Oh, night clubs are not the curse some people make them out to be,” said Freddie Neville, helpfully.

  “Thank you, Freddie,” said Massy Cheldon ponderously, and Mrs. Carmichael duly provided the necessary laughter. “By the way, how is your mother getting on at Hollywood?”

  “First rate, thanks. She’s just got a fresh contract at two hundred a week—pounds not dollars—and is going great guns. You should see her press notices. But I can tell you that I was a trifle worried until I got the cablegram, for if she hadn’t secured the contract I’d have had to take that job in the city my cousin offered me.”

 

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