The crowd that evening was denser than ordinarily, because there was the chance to hear Roxy again for the first time since her tour of the British Empire. The guests were ready to give her an ovation as Roxy only knew how to sing and dance and so she must sing and dance!
When Poiret entered the Avalon, Roxy had begun her number, which ended with an energetic dance. Surrounded by a chorus of male and female dancers they suddenly took a rigid pose to let the young woman’s voice, which was of extraordinary register, come out. Roxy had centered the attention of the immense audience on herself. All the other parts of the establishment were deserted.
Poiret sat down and ordered his supper, taking time to explain in minute detail how he wished every course to be prepared. Thunderous “Bravos” sounded from a group of expensively dressed gentlemen after each song. Roxy bowed towards them, seeming to ignore the rest of the audience, which had not declared itself yet. She sang a few romantic songs and interspersed them with dances. They had an enormous success, because she gave her whole soul to them and sang with her voice sometimes caressing, sometimes menacing and sometimes magnificently desperate, giving much significance to words, which on paper do not arouse any suspicions. What she was doing was certainly very bold and apparently she realized how audacious she was, because, with great adroitness, her double-entendres were both salacious and funny, which everybody was anxious to applaud. She succeeded by such means in appealing to all the divergent groups of her audience and secured a complete triumph for herself. All acclaimed the singer, glorifying her art.
She herself, though, was an enfant terrible, whose friends no one knew, who passed for very intelligent. She enjoyed making her hosts in the private supper-rooms quake over their meal. One day she had said bluntly to one of the most powerful industrialists of Britain, “You, my old friend, you are destined for the dust heap of history. Your fate has been sealed by the way you treat your workers. Say your prayers.” The man roared with laughter and reached for the wine bottle.
She had been mixed up with radical groups wishing to change the policies of the government or maybe even the government itself. Her former fiancé, Avery Ruskin, leader of a miners’ syndicate, with her help, succeeded in shutting down a mine in Northumbria for three weeks. Their work accomplished, they were arrested by the police. He received a five year sentence as seven policemen had been severely wounded in the suppression of the strike. She was spared jail, not in the least because of the many letters the government received from women all over the country demanding her release. After that she disappeared. She was supposed to have gone on a tour across the Empire. Now she had reappeared in all her joyous glory at the Avalon. It was certain, that she had lost her fiancé, but not her convictions. Gossips said that if the police kept an eye on her it was in their interest to do so. The open life Roxy led was less interesting to them than her hidden activities.
Poiret was not aware of all these particulars concerning Roxy and betrayed astonishment at the great interest and the strong emotion she aroused. From the corner where he was he could see only a bit of the stage. He felt someone gently touching his shoulder. He turned. It was the High Court judge, well known for his drinking feats, John Colliver, along with the Member of Parliament, Richard Monk.
“Come with us,” he said. “We have a box.”
Poiret hesitated for a second, till the Member of Parliament suggested asking the waiter to bring his dinner up to their box. Poiret was soon installed in the front of a box where he could see the stage and the public both and finish his carefully prepared dinner. Just then the curtain fell on the first part of Roxy’s performance. The friends were soon rejoined by Christian Cooper, the wool-merchant, who came from the artists’ corner of the establishment.
“I have been to see the beautiful Miss Gabrielle,” announced the merchant with a great satisfied laugh. “All the women are sulking over Roxy’s success.”
“How did you get into Miss Gabrielle’s dressing room?” asked Colliver.
“Oh, Bromley introduced me to her, my dear fellow. He’s very amateurish, you know.”
“What! Do you knock around with Bromley?”
“On my word, I tell you, dear friends, he isn’t a bad acquaintance. He did me a little service in Malaya last year. A good acquaintance in these times of trouble.”
“You are in the oil business now, are you?”
“Oh, yes, a little of everything for a livelihood. I have a little well in Malaya, nothing big and a little house, a very small one for my small business.”
“What a monopolist Christian is,” declared John Colliver, giving him a formidable slap on the thigh with his enormous hand. “Bromley has come himself to keep an eye on Roxy’s debut, eh? Only he ends up in Miss Gabrielle’s dressing room, the rogue.”
“Oh, he doesn’t trouble himself with her. Do you know who he’s to have supper with? With Roxy, my dear fellow and we are invited.”
Poiret, a napkin around his neck, who was enjoying his dinner, looked up. With one movement of his hand he removed the napkin from his neck and asked the waiter to take the trolley away.
“How’s that?” inquired the jovial Member of Parliament.
“It seems Bromley had a lot of influence in deciding not to charge her for her part in the miners’ strike two years ago.”
“And Roxy agrees?”
“All politics considered, they say that Roxy and Bromley don’t get along so badly together. They say he’s in love with her.”
“He has the air of a small town publican about him,” snorted John Colliver.
“Have you seen him up close?” inquired Monk.
“I have dined at his house, though his wine cellar is nothing to boast of, on my word.”
“That’s what he said,” replied Cooper. “When he learned we were here together, he said to me, “Bring him! He’s a charming fellow, who plies a great goblet and bring that dear man, Richard Monk and all your friends.”
“Oh, I only dined at his house,” grumbled Colliver, “because there was a favor he was going to do me.”
“He does favors for everybody, that man,” observed Monk.
“Of course, of course! He ought to,” retorted Colliver. “What is a secretary for if not to do things for everybody? For everybody, my dear friends and a little for himself besides. A politician has to be in with everybody and his father, if he wants to hold his place. You know what I mean.”
Colliver laughed loudly, glad of the chance to show how witty he could be in his allusions and looked at Poiret to see if he had been able to catch the tone of the conversation. Poiret, however, was too much occupied in reading the programme to repay Colliver’s performance with a knowing smile.
“You certainly have naive notions. You think a government official should be an ogre,” replied Monk as he nodded here and there to his friends.
“Why, certainly not. He just needs to appear like a sheep in a place like that. Bromley looks soft as a sheep. The time I dined with him we had mutton streaked with fat. He’s just like that. I’m sure he’s mainly layers of fat. When he shakes hands you feel as though you had grabbed a piece of fat. My word! And when he eats he wags his jowls and continents move.”
“But there is Kimberley!” said the wool-merchant, trying to change the subject.
“Certainly it is Kimberley herself,” exclaimed Richard Monk, who had used his glasses the better to see, whom his friend was looking at. “Ah, the dear girl! She has wanted to see Roxy for a long time. And with Ian Spencer’s parents.”
“But Ian is not here,” sniggered Cooper.
“Oh, he can’t be far away. If he was here we would see Ashby too. They keep close on each other’s heels.”
Colliver put in, “Kimberley hasn’t been able to hold herself in, since she read that Roxy was going to make her debut at the Avalon. She said she just had to see the great artist, at least once in her life.”
“Her father would not have allowed her to come here,” affirmed Monk, “and
that would be as it should be. She must have talked Ian and his parents into bringing her here.”
“Kimberley, you must remember, is a student,” said Cooper, shaking his head. “A true student. They have misfortunes like that now in so many families. I recall, apropos of what Richard said just now, how today she asked Ashby to let her know where Roxy would sing. More yet, she said she wished to speak to her if it were possible. Adam frowned on that idea. But Adam couldn’t refuse her. We all know why.”
“Anyone, who knows Adam Ashby knows that he is an honorable man,” announced John Colliver crisply. “He won’t compromise his career by being seen with a woman, who’s never from under the eyes of the police.”
“Then why do we go to supper tonight with Roxy?” asked Monk.
“That’s not the same thing. We are invited by Bromley himself. Don’t forget that, if stories surface in the papers, my friends,” said Cooper.
“I accept the invitation of the honorable secretary of our admirable government, because I don’t wish to slight him. I have dined at his house already. By sitting opposite him at a public table here I feel that I return that politeness. What do you say to that?”
“Since you have dined with him, tell us what kind of a man he is aside from his love of mutton,” said the curious Member of Parliament. “So many things are said about him. He certainly seems to be a man it’s better to stand in with than to fall out with.”
“When he first offered me hospitality,” explained the High Court judge, “I didn’t even know him. I never had been near him. One day an assistant came and invited me to dinner. When I went to his house I thought I was entering an umbrella shop. There were umbrellas everywhere and galoshes. True, it was a day of pouring rain. He had a little, timid butler there, who took my umbrella, murmuring, “Welcome” and bowing over and over again. He conducted me through very ordinary rooms to an average sitting room of a common kind. We dined with Mrs. Bromley, who appeared fattish like her husband and three or four men, whom I had never seen anywhere. One servant waited on us. My word!
“At dessert Bromley took me aside and told me I was unwise to “Argue that way.” I asked him what he meant by that. He took my hands between his fat hands and smiled. I couldn’t draw anything else out of him. Ah, the great Bromley! Over our coffee I asked him if he didn’t find our country in pretty strenuous times. He replied that he looked forward with impatience to the month of May, when he could go for a rest to a little property with a small garden that he had bought in Penzance. When he spoke of their house in Cornwall Mrs. Bromley heaved a sigh of longing. The month of May brought tears to her eyes. Husband and wife looked at one another with real tenderness. They were sure of their happy vacation and nothing seemed able to trouble them under their fat.”
“Messieurs,” asked Poiret, who had taken theatre binoculars from his pocket and was looking intently at the guests, “do you know that young man, who is seated at the end of a row down there? He is only now getting up.”
“He, in the orchestra seats? Why, that is Lord Holloway, who was one of the richest landowners in the North. Now he’s practically ruined,” said Cooper with a sneer.
“Merci, Monsieur,” said Poiret.
“They say he’s a great admirer of Roxy,” hazarded Monk.
“The lord has been ruined by women,” said Colliver, who pretended to know the entire history of his life.
“He also has been on good terms with Bromley,” continued Cooper.
“Bah! Bromley must have rendered some service to that imprudent lord,” concluded Colliver. “But for yourself, Christian, you haven’t said what you did with Bromley in Malaya.”
“Well,” said Cooper eagerly, “I was returning to Singapore after inspecting my oil wells further north. Bromley, with two of his friends, found themselves badly off with one of the wheels of their car broken. I stopped. He explained that his Malay driver had found nothing better to do than run full tilt into a water buffalo.”
Poiret caught a glance of recognition between Lord Holloway and Kimberley, who was leaning over the edge of her box.
“So I offered to take Bromley and his friends into my car and we rode together to Singapore.”
Lord Holloway, at the moment the band began the introductory music for Roxy’s new number, took advantage of all eyes being turned toward the rising curtain to walk past Kimberley’s seat on a raised platform to the right of the restaurant. This time he didn’t look at Kimberley, but Poiret was sure that his lips had moved as he went by her.
Christian continued, “It’s necessary to explain that in Malaya my little well is nowhere near a port. It’s costing me an arm and a leg to transport the oil to the nearest harbor.”
Poiret saw standing back of Kimberley’s seat, a figure he recognized. He had seen him at the police station, then wearing a uniform.
“I explained to the secretary that a port built at that location would have many commercial and military benefits. He understood the benefits to the country and promised to discuss it with his colleagues. Bromley, the good fellow, may be a great lump of fat and may be like a small town publican, but I have always been grateful to him from the bottom of my heart, you can understand Colliver.”
“What reputation Lord Holloway, he has here?” inquired Poiret.
Monk said, “He’s very much compromised.”
“Yet all doors, they are open to him?” inquired Poiret.
“Pooh, pooh,” replied the Member of Parliament, “it’s rather he, who enters without asking for permission.”
Christian stooped down and said, “They say that he can’t be touched, because of the hold he has over a certain person in Whitehall and it would be a scandal, a great scandal…”
“Be quiet, Christian,” interrupted the Member of Parliament, roughly. “It’s easy to see that you are from up North to speak so recklessly, but if you go on this way I shall leave.”
“Richard is right. Mind your mouth, Christian,” counseled Colliver.
All seemed to stop talking at once. Poiret looked up. After the whirl-wind of dances and choruses and the splendor with which she had been accompanied the first time, Roxy reappeared on the stage in a beautiful evening dress and sang a slow, romantic song. Roxy was remarkably beautiful. Her small nose with sensitive nostrils, the clean-cut outline of her eyebrows, her look that now was almost tender, always unusual, her pale rounded cheeks and the entire expression of her face showed clearly the strength of her deep passion. She had an admirable contralto voice, which affected the audience strangely from its very first notes. And when, as her last note left her ruby lips she bowed, frantic bravos from a delirious audience told her of the emotions she had aroused. The expensively dressed gentlemen in the front row rose and howled like wolves.
All through the song the consulting detective never gave up his close watch on Kimberley. She leaned on the edge of the box. She called, time and time again the name “Roxy! Roxy!”
“The reckless woman,” murmured Poiret and profiting from the excitement around him, he left his box without being noticed. He made his way through the crowd toward Kimberley. The audience, after clamoring in vain for a repetition of the song by Roxy, began to move around and the small man was swept along with them for a few moments. When he reached the boxes at the front, near the stage, he saw that Kimberley and the Spencer family were gone. He looked on all sides without seeing the object of his search and like a madman began to run, as far as a heavy-set man leaning on a walking stick can run, through the huge restaurant, when a sudden idea struck his blood cold. He inquired where the exit for the artists was and as soon as it was pointed out, he hurried there. He wasn’t mistaken. In the front line of the crowd that waited to see Roxy come out he recognized Kimberley, with her head enveloped in a black mantle so that none should see her face. This corner of the building was in a half-gloom.
The crowd barred the way. Poiret couldn’t approach as near Kimberley as he wished. He set himself to slip like a serpent through the cro
wd. He wasn’t separated from Kimberley by more than four or five persons, when a great jostling began. Roxy was coming out. Cries rose, “Roxy! Roxy!” There, wrapped in a white muffler, his hat on his arm, appeared Lord Holloway, followed by Roxy. They were hurrying to escape the impending pressure of the crowd. But Roxy as she walked past Kimberley stopped just a second and turning toward her said, “Alright.” Then she moved on. Poiret looked once more. He had once more lost Kimberley. He searched for her. He rushed to the parked cars and arrived just in time to see her seated in a car with the Spencer family. The car drove away at once in the direction of the Hassocks mansion. The detective stood there, thinking. He shrugged his shoulders. He could do no more for Kimberley. He shrugged again, a gesture as though he was ready now to let fate take its course.
“Maintenant,” he said, “to supper.”
He turned in his tracks and soon was enveloped in the glaring light of the restaurant. The expensively dressed gentlemen were standing, glass in hand saluting and waving a thousand compliments at the chorus girls walking between the tables.
Poiret heard his name called joyously and recognized the voice of Richard Monk. The three companions were seated over a bottle of wine and were being served with tiny pates while they waited for the supper-hour, which was now near.
Poiret yielded to their invitation readily enough and accompanied them, when the head-waiter informed Cooper that the gentlemen were desired in a private room. They went to the first floor and were ushered into a large room, whose balcony opened onto a view of the boulevard, almost empty now. But the room was already occupied. In front of a table covered with silverware Bromley did the honors.
English Rose (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 13) Page 10
