Bobbie was only in time to avoid a collision in the doorway, and he was back again by the engraving when Nancy appeared with a girl who, under a black coat of unseasonable and suspicious fur, wore a light pink dress that belonged to the gaslight.
“Annie!” exclaimed Nosey Ruslin, and rushed to embrace her. When this ceremony had been performed he held her at arms’ length for what purported to be a critical inspection.
“Not a day older, sweetheart,” he said, with all the cordiality and affection of which he was capable. “But where you been all this time?”
Before she could think of a suitable reply she identified Billy Bright and threw a hand in his direction.
“Billy,” she cried, reproachfully. “Haven’t you a word for your first dancing partner?” Evidently Billy was only of minor importance and her flattery was the current coin of their language, for the next moment she was exchanging abbreviated reminiscences with three of the guests whose lives had crossed hers in the days when she had been the principal dancer in the troupe known as the “Seven Fairies.”
“You’ve kept your figure, Annie,” said someone, and, indeed, she had.
Tall, firmly made, well-proportioned, and pretty, there could be no denying that Annie Smithers was still the equal of the beauty once known as Hortense Delisle, a name which was amongst the proudest inventions of Nosey Ruslin. Her eyes were absurdly blue and her skin actually too pretty to require cosmetics. Nearly everyone who watched her now, and Bobbie was fascinated by her, realised that Nancy herself, the beauty of the party hitherto, was eclipsed. Annie bore herself too with something that was not as cheap as her speech and manners. There was a trace of dignity, a suggestion of position, even of power in her carriage. It was only imagination, as Bobbie unnecessarily assured himself, but to Nosey Ruslin, a quick observer of his fellows, it brought a surprise that puzzled him.
“A drink for Annie.” Of course, it was Nancy who spoke. It would be Nancy. Bobbie turned to hide his expression of annoyance. Why was she at her worst on this night of nights? Could it be possible that the girl he adored and idealised could be so common and vulgar? She was not drunk but she was on the verge of intoxication, and her alcoholic humour was revolting to the head of the great Cheldon family.
Billy Bright acted as waiter, and Annie with a cheery “Here’s everybody,” banished the whisky.
“You’re tired, Annie,” said Nosey, who had become master of the ceremonies by his own choice. “Here’s a chair.”
The newcomer flung herself into it with an expression of thanks.
“Been travelling all day,” she murmured, “and the kid was a drag.”
“What kid?” asked Nosey, but before Annie could speak Nancy had seized her left hand and was holding it up for general inspection.
“Look!” she screamed. She was an expert screamer. “A wedding ring! Oh, my Lord, fancy Annie as a wife—”
“And mother,” said Annie, with a laugh. “You should see young Jumbo. Not quite three yet and a heavyweight champion.”
“You should have brought him along,” said Billy Bright, who was enjoying the diversion.
“Yes, you ought to,” exclaimed Tessie. “He’d have made us fourteen. We’re thirteen now and that means bad luck for someone.”
“It may mean bad luck for all of us,” said Bertie, whose other name appeared to be evening dress. He had lurched across from the piano with a glass in one hand and a sandwich in the other.
Nancy screamed again, but it was only one of her minor efforts.
“Don’t, Bertie, don’t. Annie, a sandwich? Never mind about the bad luck. So you’re married. Why didn’t you let us know. We’d have given you a benefit night at the ‘Frozen Fang’.”
Annie laughed into her glass.
“Who’s the chap?” asked Nosey Ruslin chaffingly. He did not believe that Annie was married at all, being certain that had there been an actual ceremony he would have heard of it.
She looked up at him with a teasing smile.
“The solicitor told me not to talk,” she said pertly.
“So there’s a secret, eh?” Nosey having taken command was allowed to do the cross-examining. His audience was too interested to care for vocal interruptions.
“Yes. It was a secret marriage to begin with. And then I haven’t seen my husband for over two years.”
“Where is he now?” Nosey took her empty glass from her and handed it to Bobbie, who happened to be behind him.
“Dead.” Her expression was grave as she uttered the word but her hearers with one accord detected the absence of regret or sorrow.
“Oh, bother!” exclaimed Nancy irritably. “We’re getting too slow. Bertie, what about that dance?”
“Won’t Annie have another drink?” asked the pianist, who evidently preferred Annie’s conversation to his own music.
“I’m too tired to dance,” said Tessie petulantly.
“What about yourself, Nancy?” asked the latest guest. “You haven’t told me anything. Are you married?”
“No, but I’m going to be. That’s what the party’s for.” With a quick and inescapable movement so far as Bobbie was concerned she caught him by the arm and dragged him into reluctant prominence. “My gentleman friend,” she exclaimed in a voice that had more alcohol than pride in it.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Annie cordially. “What’s the name?”
“Bobbie,” Nancy replied before the head of the Cheldons could reply with appropriate dignity and distance.
“Any other?” asked the inquirer. “Sounds like a pet dog so far.”
A new brand of scream from Nancy inaugurated the applause.
“The same old Annie,” she cried, wiping her eyes. “That was a good one, that was.” Then she pulled herself together with an effort that was far from easy. “The boy friend has two names, perhaps three.”
Someone laughed and most of the guests sought refreshment. The party had developed into an informal gathering with Annie Smithers, once the Hortense Delisle of “Seven Fairies” fame, as the centre of attraction, but had they not all been suffering from physical fatigue she would in all probability have been left to Nancy or to Nosey Ruslin. As it was the other guests languidly looked on and listened, seldom troubling to comment, interested more in the edibles and the liquids than the return of the exile from respectability.
“You’re a good looker, you are,” said Annie, appreciatively, as Bobbie, feeling the complete ass, approached the horsehair throne.
“You flatter me,” he answered, unconsciously a little stiffly.
“That’s just how my old man used to talk,” she exclaimed and giggled. “But what’s the name? Don’t answer if there’s anything to pay. It’ll probably leak out at the assizes.”
The joke received its reward of a scream from Nancy and a variety of growls from Nosey Ruslin’s throat.
“Bobby, you’re a dunce!” exclaimed Nancy, lurching against him and seizing his arm for support. “Kiss Annie and be friends with her.”
Involuntarily he drew back, and instantly regretted it, but Nancy provided a diversion.
“When I’m Mrs. Bobbie Cheldon, Annie, and—”
“What’s that?” Annie’s voice was wholly serious now.”
“You’re deaf, old dear, deaf. I said Mrs. Bobbie Cheldon.”
“But that’s my name—I mean the Cheldon. I’m Mrs. Massy Cheldon. You remember the old chap we used to chaff at the ‘Broken Tincan’ club in Dean Street? Well, I married him four years ago and—why, what’s the matter? Nosey, you’re as white as the boy friend himself?” She gazed around her until she came to Nancy’s stupid grin. “It isn’t a joke, is it?”
Bobbie had fallen back out of her line of vision and was leaning heavily against the wall. Nosey Ruslin with face averted was muttering to himself. Billy Bright with a vacant look was trying to seek enlight
enment from his partner. And Nancy Curzon, unable to comprehend the meaning and significance of what she had heard as if from the other end of a telephone that buzzed, stood with the assistance of a convenient chair and grinned and smiled and smiled and grinned in turn.
“It can’t be true,” someone muttered, and no one identified the speaker.
“Ask the family solicitor that and he’ll tell you different,” said Annie, bridling at the aspersion on her “marriage lines.” “He’s got them now, and when I showed them to him he had the surprise of his old life when I called on him this afternoon.”
“Are you the widow of Massy Cheldon who was murdered a week ago last Monday?” asked Nosey Ruslin, in a voice that croaked and creaked.
“Yes, and if you expect me to do the water-cart act you’re jolly well mistaken!” she shouted, mistaking his meaning. “I’m not in mourning and I ain’t going to be. Why should I turn myself into a hearse for a man who deserted me when I wanted him and who threatened to take away the kid if I didn’t keep our marriage a secret? Five quid a week and him with thousands a year as I’ve seen from the papers. My God, what do you think I am, Nosey? Dirt?”
She was the raging, tearing harridan now, unable to realise the tragic purport of the news she had disclosed, unable because of lack of the necessary knowledge to appreciate what the secret of her marriage meant to at least four persons in that room.
“I wasn’t good enough for his friends!” The whisky had got into her head and inflamed her notions of her pride and importance. “I was to be shut up in lodgings in a God-forsaken village in Cornwall with an allowance of five quid a week on condition I didn’t open my mouth. He had me in his power because of the kid. Talked, he did, of my carrying on with another chap when he knew it was only because I had to talk to someone. Nothing more, but he hinted at a divorce and getting the kid to himself.”
“I can’t believe it,” Bobbie gasped, white and trembling, in the grip of a horror that produced sheer physical agony.
“Can’t believe what?” Annie screamed. “Well, if it interests you, Mr. Bobbie Cheldon, you shall see my marriage lines and Milton’s birth certificate. I’ve got them safe.”
Reared in conditions which conferred a sacrosanct exclusiveness on all documents dealing with marriage and legitimacy, Annie Smithers, claiming to be Mrs. Massy Cheldon, laboured under the delusion that marriage lines and birth certificates once lost could not be replaced.
“Leave her alone, Bobbie, can’t you?” exclaimed Nancy irritably. “What business of yours is it? Why shouldn’t Annie marry anyone she pleases?”
The intervention restored the outraged guest’s good humour.
“Of course, it is, Nancy. You’re a dear. My head’s splitting.”
The usual remedy was applied, and Bertie of the evening dress announced that with it the supply of the most popular liquid had given out. Someone laughed and suggested raiding the bar of the ‘Frozen Fang’, but Nosey Ruslin, Bobbie, and Billy Bright were unconscious of the interlude. A heaviness of heart had descended on all three, and at least two were balancing the probabilities of escape and the hangman. Billy the Dancer’s face was a faint yellow and his forehead was wet.
“I’ll go mad if I stay here much longer,” Nosey whispered to Bobbie. “Never mind about Nancy. She’s too drunk to understand. But in the morning, Cheldon, in the morning!”
Even in that moment of the tragic death of all his hopes Bobbie could wince at the unexpected familiarity of the ex-pugilist. But the wince was replaced by a spasm of fear that recurred again and again before he and Nosey crept downstairs, not because they had any compassion for the slumbers of the queer tenants of the queer building but because they had to keep time and tune with their gloomy and disturbing thoughts.
In the street Nosey stopped first.
“What’s the game now?” he asked roughly.
“The game’s up,” said Bobbie, sullenly.
“And my ten thousand quid?”
Bobbie laughed ironically. It struck him as the worst of taste to talk of money in that moment of moments.
“Where’s my ten thousand a year?” he demanded, forcing himself to present an affectation of fearlessness.
Nosey glanced up and down the windless, deserted and ghostly street.
“He’s done us in, Cheldon, he’s dished us completely. That uncle of yours has got even with the whole blooming lot of us. The old sinner!” He added a few more epithets not to be found recorded except in the more daring dictionaries of slang. “Fancy Annie Smithers scooping the pool, with that brat of hers! I wonder where the kid is.”
Bobbie, taking the suggestion seriously, recoiled from him.
“Spent scores of quids and here I am without a shilling.” The monologue was Nosey’s. “Just when I thought I’d earned something for my old age this knock-out blow comes along. Was ever such cursed luck!” He turned on Bobbie with all the vileness of his type, but the avalanche of filth and reproach was stayed by the heavy footfalls of a policeman.
“I’m off home,” said Nosey, crossing the road.
The policeman turned his lantern on Bobbie and bade him “Good night,” and the rejoinder was duly memorised by the official protector of the night before he resumed his beat.
For nearly five minutes the dispossessed heir to the Cheldon estate stood, immovable in his uncertainty. Not a sound now came to disturb thoughts which forced themselves into prominence and added to his agony of mind. It was useless voicing a suspicion that it had all been a nightmare, that there was no Annie Smithers….
“I remember now. Nancy did say that uncle had been keen on Hortense Delisle.” He could not smile as the name rolled off his lips. “But how could I—what could I—”
A door behind him opened, and he walked away from it to a friendly doorway on the other side which enabled him to watch Billy Bright and the tall man in evening dress they had called “Bertie” walk away together. In the dim light from a street lamp he decided that Billy was so drunk that his companion had to drag him along.
Would it be worth while to return to Nancy? The only answer was a reminder that what Nancy needed was sleep, the only medicine that could cure her.
The other guests appeared in batches, and by way of escape from his thoughts he counted them.
“That makes nine including myself and Ruslin,” he muttered. “I suppose my aunt by marriage is staying the night with Nancy.”
“I won’t believe it—I refuse to believe it,” he said aloud when the closing of the door opposite symbolised the end of a day which had encroached on the next one to the extent of three hours. “My God, it can’t be true. A job in the city again, and Galahad Mansions for the rest of my life.”
In a paroxysm of self-pity he wiped his dry eyes.
“Can I do anything for you, sir?” It was the policeman again.
“No—er—no—thanks—I’ll walk home.”
When he reached Shaftesbury Avenue, almost rendered virginal by depopulation, he stopped to glance in search of a taxi. In the same moment he dug his hands into his pockets and discovered by contact with the few coins they contained that he had not the fare to the remote hinterland of Fulham where Galahad Mansions reared its head above the woes and worries of its impecunious tenantry.
Measured by his despair and disappointment it was the longest journey he had ever made; measured by the fear that seized him half way it was the shortest, for the arrival at the colourless frame of wood that formed the hall door of Galahad Mansions produced a choking sensation as if the prison walls had closed in on him. But he could not bring himself to pass the block of flats and he dived into the gloomy hall and trudged up the three flights of stairs to where he was wont to fumble for a place in the lock with his key. Not a sound anywhere, not a breath of air, not any sort of rival to his tempest of baffled hopes, gloom and dread.
In the sitting-room he swit
ched on all the lights and drank in, as if it were a dose of poison, all the evidences of poverty it contained. Something of the painful ecstasy of the martyr in his agonies seized him and again a flood of self-pity rose to the surface as he dwelt fondly on the spectacle of himself as a particularly unfortunate victim of Fate.
With a dramatic gesture he seized a siphon and would have found its companion, the whisky decanter in the same manner, had he thought of it, but he was acting mechanically to an audience of himself, and it was of himself that he thought and nothing else.
“Ten thousand a year a few hours ago—and now!” It was very theatrical and stagey, but genuine to him, and he enjoyed the sensation of pain and sacrifice and suffering because he was convinced all three were undeserved.
“What’s that?” He started as a noise like the patting of a carpet disturbed the silence which he had claimed as his own.
“Only me, Bobbie.”
Through the open doorway his mother appeared, clad in a dressing-gown and looking beautiful and young in spite of her pale face and tear-filled eyes. To Bobbie she was a ghost of all that might have been until he saw the tears and was frightened by them.
Was it possible that she had heard? Perhaps the family solicitor had sent a special messenger with the terrible news!
“Oh, Bobbie,” she said in a voice of anguish, “I’ve had a letter from the solicitor this evening and since reading it I haven’t stopped crying.”
Then she did know!
“It can’t be helped, mother,” he said, valiantly.
She looked at him quickly.
“You can’t know,” she said confidently. “It was about your uncle’s will. Bobbie, he did love me, after all, and, perhaps, if he had proposed I might have married him. Who knows! Especially if you married and I was lonely. But he didn’t forget me, Bobbie, and although it’s only little more than a thousand pounds it’s all left to me. I am the only person he names in his will. Do you wonder at my tears now?”
She covered her face with her hands and sobbed, and Bobbie knew that had he been a woman he would have sobbed too, though not for the money she had gained but for the fortune he had lost.
Murder in Piccadilly Page 28
