“Oh, be damned to such talk!”
“Mr. Strickland!”
“I said be damned to such nonsense, and I mean it. There speaks your father.”
“Mr. Strickland, you cannot be expected to honour my late father.”
“On the contrary, madam. I honour and esteem him more than anyone can possibly know. He had only one great fault: he was impossibly idealistic; he lived and died by those ideals.”
“Amen to that, at least.” Celia faltered a little. “It is the true reason why I am here. If only I thought I could trust you …”
Her voice trailed away. Clive’s conscience awoke to trouble him.
“You can trust me,” he assured her. “Forgive me for saying what I said. Are you sure you will not sit down?”
“For a moment, perhaps. No; I will keep my mantle.”
As Clive set out a chair for her by the fire, Celia had become rather pale. She cast little glances at him, as though reluctant to speak and yet impelled by a determination more than would seem possible to her fragile nature.
“Mr. Strickland, I—”
“Yes?”
“There are those, including Uncle Rollo, who say a woman should not trouble herself with such matters as the question of who is guilty, who is guilty, who is guilty. I am sorry, but I can’t help myself. The person who died was my father.”
“And your stepmother too.”
“Yes, I know. On Tuesday night, at High Chimneys, no doubt I behaved very badly. I was sure the—the murderer,” Celia forced out the word, “must have been Georgette Damon. It was no secret (Cavvy hinted often enough!) that my stepmother had been behaving very indiscreetly, to say the least, with Lord Albert Tressider.”
Clive picked up the tea-kettle from the hob, and set it forward on the fire. Instantly the kettle began to simmer; it must have been near boiling before, when someone—Kate, no doubt—had taken it off the fire before leaving.
Even in the midst of wondering about Kate, desperately trying to think where she might be, Clive was caught by his companion’s words.
“Indiscreetly? Yes,” he said.
“Often enough, as I told you,” continued Celia, “Mrs. Damon had laughed when she spoke of Kate dressing in men’s clothes. I said, and truly I thought, that woman must be laying a plan whereby she would kill my dear father to put the blame on Kate. And then—”
“Yes?”
“Last night Mrs. Damon herself was killed.” Celia shuddered. “She was strangled. I wondered if I might not have been doing her some measure of justice.”
“You have been, let me assure you. But what—?”
“Often and often,” said Celia, “I have been called fanciful. Perhaps I am. There is no harm in it. It may even be of assistance. Mrs. Damon told the story of Kate in boy’s clothes no oftener than Cavvy herself told it.”
Clive straightened up from the fire.
“Good old Mrs. Cavanagh!” he said through his teeth. “Kind, loyal old Cavvy!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No matter. Continue.”
“Cavvy is loyal! Never doubt it. But Cavvy has sometimes strange notions of humour, as all our elders have. Cavvy seemed to mock me with that story no less than ever she mocked Kate. Or so I had thought for a long time, when Cavvy spoke so much of the girl called Constance Kent. It has occurred to me to wonder …”
The kettle was simmering hard again, with a tap and rattle at its lid.
With a spasmodic gesture Celia rose to her feet.
“Oh, I should not have come here! I should not have evaded Uncle Rollo; I should have done as he advised, and taken more rest!”
“Miss Damon,” said Clive, “what occurred to you? What did you wonder? What are you attempting to tell me?”
“Nothing at all! If I hurt you …”
“How can you hurt me?”
“It occurred to me, then,” and Celia swept out a gloved hand, “that both Cavvy and Georgette might have been trying to warn me. To warn me, and in a certain fashion to warn Kate too, lest she encompass her own destruction.”
“Miss Damon, I understand not one word of all this!”
“Nor do I, really. Thoughts go through the mind, and are with us in the dark hours. ‘Hell is murky. Fie—!’ Unless it becomes necessary, I pledge you my honour I will never mention to another person what I ask you now. Mr. Strickland, what did my father tell you in the study on Tuesday night?”
“I am not at liberty to say.”
“Then am I at liberty to suggest?”
“By all means.”
Celia drew a deep breath.
“May God pardon me if I do wrong in word or thought. But could these murders have been committed by Lord Albert Tressider? And could the one who planned my father’s murder and helped him carry it out have been my own sister? Kate?”
XVII. THE HANDS OF CELIA DAMON
“KATE? ARE YOU MAD?”
“Mad?” cried Celia.
The kettle boiled over.
As though from far away, Clive heard the splash and hiss as the bubbling water burst its confines and spurted out on the fire. Steam eddied up round him. Again the water hissed viciously on burning coals before Clive swung round, seized the handle of the kettle, and banged it back on the hob.
To one watching this, it might have seemed a threat from which Celia shrank back.
“Forbear!” she said, and stood rigid. “I tell you this only because you love Kate; or at least, in your man’s way, you must have some fondness for her. You visited High Chimneys with that—that ridiculous proposal for my hand in marriage. How much did it mean? Kate has been wanton of thought since she was a child. Have you not good reason to know it now? You have heard Kate speak with intense dislike of Lord Albert Tressider. Did it not seem to you she protested too much?”
“Miss Damon …”
“Forbear!” said Celia. “When you and Kate ran away from High Chimneys, did you persuade her? Or did she persuade you?”
“Does it matter?”
“I hope not. But it might.”
“How?”
“Will you listen to me,” pleaded Celia, “and not strike me, if I tell you what is in my mind?”
“I have no intention of striking you, Miss Damon.”
But Celia retreated, though she still faced him. Clive, his throat dry with rage and fear, stood at one side of the chimneypiece. Celia slipped behind the easy-chair, behind the table with its gleaming tea-service and its wooden paper-knife painted to resemble a heavy steel dagger.
Dusk had begun to gather in the sitting-room. Celia’s back was turned to a wall of bookshelves; one door, to the entry on the landing, and another door to the dining-room, were both in that same wall.
Celia cleared her throat.
“My father’s murder was carried out by two persons, a girl and a tall man, who planned it between them. No! Pray don’t interrupt!”
Clive said nothing.
“Each person, the man and the girl, had his and her different part to play on different nights. Each wore the same kind of clothes, and we thought it was the same person. Each shielded the other from suspicion. That’s why it was so horribly clever; that’s why you couldn’t suspect anything until you saw everything.”
Here Celia lifted her voice.
“Penelope!” she called.
It was fully ten seconds, which can seem a long time, before the door to the dining-room opened. Penelope Burbage must have been sitting there in twilight. Her jowly, unpretty face appeared round the edge of the door.
“Penelope, dear!” cried Celia, still without looking round. “On Monday night, when you returned from the lecture at half-past eleven, you saw a figure on the stairs. Everyone else was abed. You told Superintendent Muswell yesterday, did you not, that it was really a woman in man’s clothes?”
“And if Miss Burbage saw that,” interposed Clive, before Penelope could speak, “what does it prove? She told me as much yesterday evening. I know all this! What
does it prove?”
“Penelope!”
“Yes, Miss Celia?”
“Was it my sister you saw?”
“I don’t know, Miss Celia. Before God I—”
“But you think it was?”
“Go back into the dining-room, Penelope! Close the door.”
Penelope fled. The door jarred and scraped against a warped frame as it slammed shut.
“Then it was a woman in man’s clothes,” said Celia, “who did nothing except stand there and show herself to Penelope. Why, why, why was that done? It was to make everyone think the prowler must be a man, a man from inside the house, because no person could have got in from outside that night.
“Oh Tuesday evening my father was murdered. Mr. Strickland, you saw the person who fired the shot; you saw him face to face; he let you see him. And you say, they all tell me, this person was a man. Is that true?”
“I said so, yes! I thought so at the time.”
“Of course you did,” cried Celia. “There were two of them.”
Her eyes brimmed over.
“On Monday night, when no outsider could have entered High Chimneys, Kate played the part of a tall man. She stood on the staircase, high up, and seemed tall to Penelope standing below with a lighted candle. On Tuesday evening, when Kate was with me and had what they call an alibi for the time my father was shot, she had admitted a stranger to the house and locked a door or a window after he had gone. Did this never occur to you, Mr. Strickland?”
No reply.
“Please! Did it never occur to you?”
“It occurred to me that there might have been an accomplice. But—!”
“You know, you must know, Kate could never, never, never have fired a revolving pistol and hoped to shoot someone as my father was shot. She is not strong enough to hold a pistol steady. She needed a man to fire and kill. If any witness had ever seen that man inside the house, ever once glimpsed his face without a mask …” Clive blundered back against the side of the chimneypiece.
“What is the matter, Mr. Strickland? Did you see him?”
“No!”
“Not at any time? Are you sure? Kate’s lover, Lord Albert Tressider—”
It would be far from true to think that Celia did not or could not use cold reason. But this outpouring of words, as she stood white-faced on the far side of the table, seemed to come less from reason than from an inspired guess flying to the heart of truth. She hated it; she feared what she said; yet she screamed it aloud.
“Kate’s lover, Lord Albert Tressider—”
“Miss Damon, stop! No more of this! Are you mad?”
“You shall not call me mad,” and now Celia was paler yet in the black costume, “until you can say what else could have happened, or explain the how and the why. Kate’s lover, Lord Albert Tressider—”
Abruptly Clive turned away.
Towards the front of the sitting-room, looking out over Brook Street from the parlour-floor above it, there were two large windows with many rectangular panes. Clive had not drawn the curtains, though he now saw the lamplighter must have come and gone unperceived.
A yellow glow of street-lamps shone up from outside. A four-wheeler rattled past towards Grosvenor Square. The red, blue, and yellow glass vats in an apothecary’s window kindled spectral colours against the dusk.
Presently London would wake up at nightfall. Presently there would be crowds and a roar of noise towards Evans’s, towards Astley’s, towards the Alhambra….
Clive, still in his greatcoat and sweating, went over blindly to draw the curtains.
The sight of the street was blotted out as wooden rings swung together. Clive remained there for a moment, his face turned to the curtains. Celia continued to talk, but he did not hear her.
The image of Tress, the ever-triumphant, being triumphant with Kate too …
Clive turned back.
“Miss Damon.”
Celia ceased to speak, gloved fingers at her lips, grey eyes enormous. Only the thin singing of the gas-jet broke a hot silence.
“Miss Damon, you have accused your sister of conspiring in the murder of your father. There can be no denying that you present a case to be answered. Do you wish to believe this accusation?”
“No! No! No!”
“Then will you answer questions concerning it? Will you answer them calmly and rationally?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“How many times, to the best of your knowledge, has Kate so much as met Tress?”
“How can I say? Six times, eight times, when I was there. But how can I say what may not be within my knowledge?”
“Six times. Eight times. No more?”
“Mr. Strickland, you shall not bully me!”
“I will do what is necessary, madam. Have you any reason for thinking Kate is even interested in Tress, except for the somewhat curious reason that she says she is not?”
“I can only tell you—”
“Can you name one occasion when she has been alone with him?”
“No.”
“Then why do you state so positively that he is her lover?”
Trembling, and yet with a firmness and strength of will belying her delicate appearance, Celia put down the sealskin muff on the table and straightened up. The wooden paper-knife in the shape of a steel dagger lay beside the tea-tray. Celia saw it. She caught it up, holding it longways in both hands.
“Miss Damon, be good enough to answer me. You state in so many words that Tress, Tress of all people, is your sister’s lover.” So much did this thought affect Clive that he stressed it and hammered it all the more. “If you were to testify under oath—”
“I don’t testify under oath!”
“Then how can you say such a thing? Why?”
“I know what I feel. Here. That is all.”
“Has Penelope Burbage identified your sister as being the woman on the stairs? Has she? Shall we bring Penelope back and ask her?”
Celia’s fingers twisted on the paper-knife, which was long and heavy despite its flatness. Clive took a step forward.
“You accuse—”
“I do not accuse. Never think it. I wish to be reassured; no more!”
“You accuse Kate and Tress of a masquerade. Each, at different times, wears the same type of clothes, so that each may have an alibi for the murder of your father. Why should Kate want to kill your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Suppose Tress had made an offer for Kate’s hand in marriage instead of yours? Would your father have objected or prevented that?”
Now Clive had gone too far.
He knew it.
Celia’s eyes, bright in the fluttery gaslight, were fixed on him unwaveringly.
“You know my father would have prevented it, Mr. Strickland,” she answered in a clear voice. “At High Chimneys, just before you went to speak with him in the study, you told Kate and me he had something to tell you concerning one of us. Which one? Mr. Strickland, what did he have to tell you?”
Silence.
“You taunt me again and again,” said Celia in a loud but steady voice, “and say I will not answer your questions. Will you answer mine? Did you at any time, either on Tuesday or Wednesday night, see Lord Albert Tressider at High Chimneys?”
“No.”
“That is a lie, is it not?” inquired Celia, gripping the paper-knife. “I see it in your face.”
“Miss Damon …”
Celia’s voice went up.
“Unless you believe my poor sister conspired with that man to kill my father, and perhaps destroyed his last will so that she might inherit money not due to her and leave High Chimneys forever, how else can you explain all that happened?”
Beyond the still-unlocked outer door of the rooms, past the dark little entry now on Clive’s right, a board creaked and a footstep stirred. Somebody was listening.
Kate?
It could not be Kate. The footstep had been that of a man, and of a large and h
eavy man as well. From the corner of his eye Clive glanced towards the outer door. Celia neither heard nor saw.
“I ask for reassurance,” she cried. “And I ask on more counts than those. Inspector Whicher—”
The footstep creaked again.
“What did you say of Inspector Whicher?”
“I have seen him twice,” replied Celia, gripping the paper-knife harder and blinking back tears. “I saw him this morning at High Chimneys. But I saw him last August, when all of us except Cavvy were gathered there for my twentieth birthday. Mr. Strickland, has Kate never told you her childhood’s ambition?”
“No, she has not. How could she? I had scarcely exchanged twenty words with Kate before I met her again on Tuesday evening….”
“And carried her away on Wednesday. Poor man!”
“You were saying?”
“Her ambition was to be a dancer, like that woman Lola Montez. Until Cavvy slapped her so hard, when she mentioned it, Kate never spoke of the wish afterwards. But she was to be a dancer, and Victor was to be a general covered with decorations and leading cavalry-charges, and I was only to be a good wife and mother, as indeed I still wish. Why shouldn’t I be? Why shouldn’t I be?”
“There is no reason why you should not be, Miss Damon. But you were saying? Of Inspector Whicher?”
Outside in the passage, a floorboard squeaked sharply. There was no noise, however, when the outer door opened.
Dr. Rollo Thompson Bland, cat-footed despite his weight, stepped into the narrow entry. He was watching Celia, head turned partly sideways, his bright blue eyes fixed on her face.
Celia did not even notice him. But in just such a manner, Clive vividly remembered, Dr. Bland had looked at Matthew Damon from the doorway at the study not long before the murder; and at a time, according to Whicher, when Mr. Damon had been half out of his mind and not very clear about what he was saying.
A pang of dread touched Clive Strickland now. Dr. Bland remained motionless, and so did Celia.
“Inspector Whicher? Oh!” She drew her thoughts back. “He—he was announced when we were all at table for my birthday dinner.”
“And what happened at the birthday dinner?” Clive asked in what seemed to him a very loud voice.
Scandal at High Chimneys Page 18
