After the Armistice Ball

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘I don’t think I’ve met the young man,’ I said, making what I hoped was a harmlessly general remark, ‘although Hugh tells me he was once in a coxless eight with a brother.’

  ‘Elder brother,’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘But he died at Arras.’ One thinks one is tired of the euphemisms and casual endearments, but this bald statement in place of the ‘lost at Arras, poor sweet’ was shocking. It was only too clear, even to me, that it was meant to convey not even the mildest of honours to a hero, nor a warning that there was a dead brother to be tiptoed around should I find myself in conversation with the young man later. It was quite simply a point of information: Mrs Duffy had done nothing so lax as let her daughter become engaged to a second son without any prospects. The brother was dead and thus the engagement was a triumph. I turned away slightly to hide the expression I could not bring under control and wished that someone might come up and save me replying.

  ‘So a younger son for your younger daughter,’ I said at last, no saviour having appeared. This was inane even for me, but I was surprised to see from the corner of my eye a sour kind of twist wrench at the woman’s mouth. My mind raced. Did it sound as though I was putting a gypsy curse on her other daughter? This was surely too fanciful. Should I not have made such outright reference to his changed status? Why on earth did I not learn simply to keep my mouth shut? Or if it was too late now for such a wholesale transformation, at least drink a little more and talk a little less.

  Daisy’s butler was circling with two trays balanced on his fingers like a waiter in a Paris restaurant. Sherry glasses on one and cocktail glasses on the other, he swooped amongst the guests proffering a tray to each and seeming always to guess which one was wanted where. I muttered an excuse to Lena and bore down on him, not caring how unseemly I appeared so long as I escaped her. The butler, who knew me of old, held out the cocktail tray, but from sheer perversity and temper I reached for sherry. His face fell, and we parted, he a disappointed man who feels he is losing his touch, and I a disappointed woman who fears she is becoming curmudgeonly with age and has only a quarter pint (it seemed) of nasty, oily sherry for comfort.

  I scanned the room for an empty perch, but apart from Lena sitting alone on a sofa large enough for two and staring at me coldly, all I could see in every direction were settled clumps of people chatting amicably and sipping huge drinks. Daisy’s drinks before dinner always go on for an age.

  Just then Daisy herself peeled off from the group around a stout dowager ploughing through a long story and ignoring the fidgets of her listeners the way old ladies do.

  ‘What on earth were you saying to the hag?’ Daisy whispered. I was unable to answer; I did not know. ‘Talk about sucking on a lemon,’ she went on. ‘And have you seen what she’s wearing? How could you not? She’s twirling it like an old man with a new watch chain. A gold locket! I’ll bet she had to borrow it from her parlour maid. How I have managed not to kick all of their bottoms, I cannot tell you. Even one of the Mrs Bankers is wondering aloud.’ I said nothing (for the usual reason) and Daisy rejoined the circle of listeners just in time to join in with gales of relieved laughter as the dowager’s saga wound to its close.

  I drifted, trying to look self-contained, if not quite inscrutable.

  ‘You look heavenly, Dan,’ breathed Clemence Duffy as I passed her, her face more mask-like than ever and her eyes blinking sleepily as she glanced down at herself waiting, I supposed, for the return of the compliment. Despite the fact that there is nothing so very dignified about the name Dandy I dislike being called Dan by girls fifteen years my junior, and I bristled just slightly, before looking her up and down for something to praise. She was dressed in a black shift, chiffon over a plain slip, and wore a small cameo on a black velvet ribbon around her neck, which looked as all cameos always do as though it might have come from Woolworth’s. Just then I noticed that her ear-lobes were bare of any decoration. They were pierced for earrings and the little naked clefts looked hardly decent against her painted face. She arched her brows at me, staring hard at my choker.

  ‘But you look heavenly,’ she said again. ‘Beautiful emeralds. Very loyal, I must say.’ She turned away, and I caught sight of Mrs Duffy fingering her locket chain again. At last light began to dawn on me and I took a few steps and craned to look at Cara Duffy. Dressed in a shimmer of pale blue silk, she wore a gold cross on a fine chain around her neck, slim hoops in her ears and nothing on her wrists at all, only her engagement ring to show that she was not just wearing rather an odd frock to a tennis party. All three of them on parade, ostentatiously bare of jewels, screaming that they dare not wear anything but trinkets here. How dared they! They certainly did need a kick on their insolent bottoms, and I was ready to oblige. I caught Daisy’s eye and saw that she had been watching my realization. She mimed my stupidity briefly, eyes crossed and tongue lolling out, thankfully unseen.

  Mrs Duffy still sat alone on her sofa. Very well, then. I should employ the tactics for which Daisy had sought me – the Cuthbert Dougall strategy, one might call it – of discussing loud and plain what everyone else is thinking about but dare not mention. I marched back over to Lena and sat beside her.

  ‘My dear,’ I said. ‘I’ve only just heard your dreadful news. About the diamonds, I mean. What a thing to happen.’ She intensified the stare and spoke again in that horrid murmuring way of hers.

  ‘It has been a great blow to us,’ she said. ‘Almost like a death. A dreadful loss for Clemence.’ This was a strange thing to say. Why so much more to the elder girl? Except perhaps that Cara had her fiance to distract her. Unless the diamonds were intended for Clemence in the long term, as the elder child. But would not ‘The Duffy Diamonds’ have to stay in the Duffy family, entailed on some male somewhere? Even I couldn’t ask any of this.

  ‘And have the police got anywhere yet?’ was what I settled for.

  ‘The police?’ she said, with a slight shriek. Clemence raised her head on the other side of the room and gave me a very fair copy of her mother’s basilisk stare, a look which belied her friendly words of minutes before. What was wrong with these people?

  ‘Of course, it must be horrid for you to have them tramping around,’ I said, smiling across at Clemence and keeping my voice low, ‘but think how wonderful, if they got to the bottom of it all.’

  ‘The police,’ said Lena Duffy again, quieter but no less witheringly, ‘have not been called in. And I very much hope that they never will be.’ I could quite concur with this, for with the police tends to come the press and no one welcomes the indignity of having their misfortune devoured by the jealous and therefore triumphant masses. But I knew enough to know that unless the police were called to investigate there was no way the insurance company would pay up and so . . . My thoughts snagged as an idea spread through me. Could someone be so desperate to avoid publicity that she thought it worthwhile to coerce Silas and Daisy into making good her loss, instead of just going to the police and claiming the insurance? Could anyone be so selfish? The Duffy jewels were fabulously, spectacularly precious, worth more than the rest of Mr Duffy’s estate put together we always believed, and there was no way on earth that Silas and Daisy, rich though they were, could afford to replace them. I could think of nothing to say, but some of my incredulity must have shown in my face and she spoke again.

  ‘Naturally we assumed that Silas meant to do the right thing. That is why we came today. It is galling indeed, then, when I hoped that my husband and he might talk things over in peace and quiet, to find ourselves being expected to help entertain these persons. We of all people who put our faith in him, to be asked to aid Daisy in providing a pleasant visit for these financiers, to support Silas in his pursuit of even further success for the very institution which will not honour its commitments. I know the world has changed, my dear, but it is a great shock and a sadness to my husband and me to find out how much.’ It took me a minute or two to digest all of this and even when I had, I could not believe I understood her.

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bsp; ‘Do you mean to say that the jewels were insured with Esslemont Life?’ I asked, knowing my voice had risen to a squeak. Mrs Duffy inclined her head.

  ‘And I was naïve enough to believe that might make a difference,’ she said.

  I do not know that I should ever have called her naïve, but I could sympathize. Even if no member of the Esslemont household had actually stolen the jewels, Silas could surely have smoothed things through. He must own Esslemont Life outright since the death of his father, although I had a vague notion that owning companies was not like owning farms and woods. I had heard Hugh huffing on about something called limited liability which he appeared to think of as a kind of swindle and I had inhaled a morsel of watercress sandwich once when Daisy had said that Silas’s sisters were his sleeping partners, and had had to be banged on the back. So my understanding of high finance was uncertain, but I was sure that if you owned the company you could do more or less whatever you liked. The only possible reason for Silas to insist on the police – if indeed he was insisting – would be if he hoped to wriggle out of paying at all, and even if he felt no personal obligation over the theft, surely he had too much honour for that. And why had Daisy not told me this? Did she know herself? I suddenly hoped not.

  ‘It’s unbelievable,’ I said at last to Mrs Duffy. ‘I can’t believe it of Silas. Even on his own terms, as a businessman I mean, surely he can see that this will destroy him. A theft in his house is bad enough, but this!’

  ‘The theft in this house is not the half of it, Dandy dear,’ said Lena. ‘And Silas knows that. Not that the evidence isn’t clear on that point. It is, as I could tell you in plain words if propriety did not demand otherwise. Very clear. But even setting that aside, there are other things I happen to know, which I am sure Silas wishes I didn’t.’ Her voice had sunk to a spiteful mutter, and I squirmed.

  ‘There’s no need to say anything more,’ I said, praying that she would not. I loathe confidences. ‘No need for plain words. What you’ve told me already would sink Silas for ever with anyone who matters.’

  She turned to me, turned fully, and it was perhaps owing to old-fashioned corsetry but it nevertheless gave the impression that she was sizing me up. Then she seemed to soften.

  ‘Who matters to you and to me, my dear,’ she said, with a significant glance at Daisy and a shake of her head, ‘may not be anyone who matters to others.’

  ‘Well, then you shall just have to be businesslike and call the police in,’ I said. ‘Even though it will be beastly. And you can pack your things and leave here in the morning. Tonight even. There is no earthly reason for you to feel you should have to stay. Unspeakable cheek.’

  She hesitated then, just for a moment. ‘There is an irregularity,’ she said. ‘With the paperwork. Nothing that Silas could not put right had he sufficient will to do so. But enough of an irregularity to mean that unless this can be handled as a matter of honour between friends then it cannot be handled at all.’

  ‘Oh, but paperwork!’ I said. ‘How could that matter?’

  Mrs Duffy looked discomfited and chewed her lip for quite some time before she answered. When she did it was with the distant chilliness of one who feels her dignity will not withstand her words.

  ‘It is possible that a back-dated premium payment now could be misconstrued,’ she said.

  I groaned to myself. So Mr Duffy had allowed the insurance to lapse. It was hard to believe when one thought of the staggering value of the diamonds, but then I suppose that was rather the point. The premium must have been vast and the Duffys were in the same boat as we all were, with two of their houses closed despite all their ships and their forests in Ontario. Still, as she said, between friends it should make no difference at all, and if Silas traded on friendship to his own benefit as he most certainly did – this house party being just one example of it – then friendship, if not common decency, should see to it that he did what was not to his own advantage too.

  ‘Would you like me to speak to Daisy?’ I said. ‘Perhaps if just one of her friends makes it clear how shockingly we think Silas is behaving? Perhaps they are sunk so deep in with bankers and accountants and goodness knows what grubby little moneybags, that they can’t see what this would mean.’ I was quite sincere. My view of the proceedings had shifted one hundred and eighty degrees and I was very angry. I had been taken advantage of and Daisy had barely even bothered to hide it. She had said quite openly it was my denseness and resulting artlessness that were what she needed. Lena Duffy was smiling at me and nodding. It was the calmest and least complicated expression I had ever seen on her face, and I swelled slightly with righteous pride to think that I had put it there.

  ‘You are very good, my dear,’ she said. ‘But, if you do, please make it plain that we are not expecting an instant payment of the whole amount. That would be far too much of a strain, even for the Esslemonts. Something now, and then a regular sum . . . I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.’

  I wavered on hearing this. A something now, and then a regular sum, because Lena had proof and could harm Silas? That arrangement could be called a very plain word indeed.

  Lena was still watching me intently and I imagine that my thoughts were clearly painted on my face, for her chumminess started to chill again and she drew herself up and away from me. Before I could summon my wits to speak though, the gong sounded, at last.

  ‘I’ve put you beside Cara Duffy’s intended deliberately, darling,’ said Daisy, as we shuffled about, pairing up to go in. I said nothing to her; now was not the time to launch into it. ‘And since she’s on his other side, I fear you’ll be looking at his back all evening, but it’s not because I’m a slave to sentiment, nor because you’re dear to me and so beyond protocol, it’s all in aid of your investigation. It gives you old Gregory Duffy on your other side, you see. Plenty of scope for grilling and snooping there. Bonne chance!’

  My shoulders drooped. It is perfectly all right, of course, to sit an engaged couple side by side even if it is rather sickening to watch, but it is hard on the other neighbours and I feared I could make no use at all of Daisy’s gift. I knew I should not dare to grill Gregory Duffy. He is not a fearsome old gentleman, but silent, with a vague sadness about him. It could be no more than an unsatisfactory marriage, for I am sure that a man of his stamp must be unhappy with such a wife even if her faults are as vague as his virtues. However, if a lack of bliss in marriage was enough to settle such a shroud around the shoulders, the whole nation would be sunk in permanent gloom and I have always thought there must be something more to it. Perhaps the lack of an heir, but then he always seemed much fonder of his younger daughter than his elder and it would surely be the second child, the last one, whom he would loathe for her femaleness, if he harboured such unfair grudges against either. Anyway, wherever the sadness sprang from, it drew out of one a kind of respectful pity, or perhaps a wariness is a better word for it; wariness that if one were not respectful he would only seem the more pitiful and then it would be embarrassment all round.

  This was my usual attitude to Gregory Duffy, then, and it was not affected by any current anger towards him regarding the diamonds. There was only pity there too, for I was sure the ‘arrangement’ Lena hoped for with Silas was her idea alone. I was sure too that she must have made her husband’s life a perfect misery over the lapsed premiums. How dreadful it was of Silas not to do the decent thing, not to feel enough respectful pity for this man.

  I felt I could not possibly broach any aspect of the subject during dinner, but as Daisy had predicted, my view of Cara’s young man was restricted to the broad stretch of his coat shoulders and I foresaw a very dull time for myself unless I made some effort, so I cast about for something else to say Mr Duffy, and eventually found it.

  ‘My congratulations. For your daughter, I mean.’ His eyes flicked towards his wife at the other end of the table then rested on the dark back which hid Cara from view, warming as they did so, melting I should almost have said.

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bsp; ‘Yes,’ he said, and went on softly with a steady, falling cadence, ‘yes, indeed, sometimes, most unexpectedly, matters resolve.’ With this he turned his attention to his plate, and I put my head down too, puzzled. I knew he was very fond of Cara, his favouritism was famed, but how he could look around him and call matters resolved just at that moment was beyond me. (The store of things beyond me was bigger every time I looked.) We drank soup in silence for a while until a combination of grumpiness at being neglected and recklessness, for which I can only blame the enormous sherry glasses, loosened my tongue.

  ‘I was very shocked indeed, though, to hear about your diamonds.’

  ‘Were you?’ he said, quietly, his eyes swivelling again between Clemence, her mother and Cara’s fiance’s back. ‘Were you indeed. I can’t say I was, but my wife appears to have taken it very hard.’ His voice and face were calm and unreadable, just the constant swivelling eyes, reptilian between wrinkled eyelids.

  ‘Yes. She called it “a death in the family”,’ I said, suddenly remembering this.

  At that, he turned his benevolent gaze upon me and watched me with one eyebrow slightly raised, almost smiling. I was in far over my head again, my feet tangled in weeds and no use thrashing. No use either fighting the sensation of foreboding creeping through me again. What was it? Perhaps just the sherry wearing off. I took a gulp of water and when I looked up he had withdrawn into himself in some way quite indefinable but as clear as though he had walked out of the room.

  I amused myself as best I could during the rest of soup and through fish, by studying the bankers’ wives, storing up details with which to regale Grant later. They all wore such similar art silk dresses that it might have been a uniform, and one had to assume these dresses were the very latest fashion since they were so ugly – with the cut and colour of old bandages – that they could not possibly have been selected on any aesthetic grounds. Grant would know. Indeed, if this was to be the next fashion, she would no doubt soon be campaigning for me to buy some old bandages of my own.