Pictures in heavy gilt frames hung on the white walls. Mr Amberley, something of a connoisseur, glanced up at them as he passed and presently came to a halt under a fine Reynolds. He was still standing thoughtfully surveying the picture when his host came out of the gallery at the end of the passage.
Fountain was in great spirits tonight; his enjoyment of the ball was unaffected and immense. He had been circulating freely among his guests, an excellent host, anxious to make the party a success and contributing largely to the general gaiety by his own evident geniality and pleasure.
When he saw Amberley he at once came up to him and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘This won’t do, this won’t do, Mephistopheles,’ he said chaffingly. ‘Not dancing? Don’t tell me you haven’t got a partner!’
‘I have. I was going in search of her when I stopped to look at your pictures. I envy you your collection.’
‘Do you?’ said Fountain. ‘Not much in my line, I’m afraid. I’ve got some jolly fine sporting prints though, if you like them. In my study.’
‘I prefer this,’ answered Amberley, still looking up at the Reynolds. ‘Who was she?’
‘My dear fellow, I haven’t the foggiest idea! Some great-grandmother, I expect. Got the family beetle brows, hasn’t she? Not a bad-looking wench. You ought to get on to my housekeeper. She knows much more about all these hoary ancestors than I do.’
Amberley turned away from the portrait and remarked that the ball was a great success.
Fountain looked pleased. ‘I think it’s going quite well, don’t you? Awfully silly, really, but I find I’m not too old to enjoy this sort of thing. Once I can get a lot of cheery people round me in a jolly party with a good band and dancing and all the rest of it, I forget all my worries. Daresay you’ll laugh, but this is the kind of thing I like. Always did.’
‘Have you many worries?’ said Amberley lightly. ‘It doesn’t look like it.’
A cloud descended on Fountain’s brow. ‘I suppose we all have our private troubles,’ he answered. ‘There’s a good deal of worry attached to a place like this, you know.’
‘I suppose so. You don’t like the house, I gather?’
‘No,’ Fountain said with odd vehemence. ‘I hate it. I used to think I liked it. Always rather looked forward to living here eventually. But sometimes I wish to God I was back in my town flat, without all the – worries of an estate to bother me.’
‘Yes, I can quite understand that. But I expect there are compensations.’
A grim little smile twisted Fountain’s mouth. ‘Oh yes. There are substantial compensations,’ he said. ‘Fact is, I wasn’t cut out to be a country squire. Look here, quite sure you don’t want me to introduce you to some charmer? No? Well, I must get back to the ballroom. Hope you find your truant.’ He went on down the passage and Amberley proceeded in a leisurely way to the picture gallery, where he succeeded in retrieving Felicity.
The unmasking was to take place in the ballroom at midnight, immediately before supper. Quite twenty minutes before twelve people had begun to congregate in the hall and ballroom, deserting the inglenooks upstairs for the fun of the unmasking. The noise of laughter and of chatter, mingled with strains of the latest quickstep, floated upstairs, contrasting queerly with the brooding stillness there.
There was a movement in the long passage; a door was opened softly and a girl came out and stood for a moment looking down into the shadows at the far end of the corridor. There was no one in sight, no sound of voices in the picture gallery where the lights still burned; even the medley of sound coming from below was hushed at this end of the house.
The Italian contadina stole along the passage slowly, looking for something. The painted eyes above her looked down as though watching what she would do. She reached the archway and glanced through it into the hall. It was empty. She seemed to hesitate, and still with that feeling that unknown eyes watched her, glanced nervously over her shoulder. There was no one there. She went on, but paused by a court-cupboard and put out her hand as though to touch it. Then she drew it back; it was not a court-cupboard that she was looking for.
Almost at the end of the corridor a slim shaft of light coming from an open door was cast on the opposite wall and caught the corner of a walnut tallboy. The girl saw and went forward.
The open door disclosed the well of the back stairs. She peeped through, but the place seemed deserted. One more look she sent over her shoulder, then glided towards the tallboy and softly pulled out the bottom drawer of its upper half. The drawer ran easily and made no sound, but the brass handles clinked as she released them and the tiny noise made her start guiltily.
The drawer was empty; the girl put one hand in, feeling with trembling fingers along the back.
Something impelled her to look up; the breath caught in her throat, and her groping hand was checked. A shadow had appeared in the panel of light on the wall, the shadow of a man’s head.
The girl’s eyes remained riveted on it while seconds passed. No sound had betrayed his approach, but someone was behind her, watching.
She slid the drawer home inch by inch; her throat felt parched, her knees shook.
A smooth voice that yet held a note of menace spoke: ‘Were you looking for something, miss?’
She turned; under the mask she was deadly pale. The valet stood in the doorway behind her, motionless.
She said with what assurance she could muster: ‘How you startled me! I have been admiring some of this wonderful old furniture. I wonder if you can tell me if this is a William and Mary piece?’
His eyes travelled slowly to the tallboy and back again to her face. His tight mouth relaxed into a smile that was curiously unpleasant. It seemed to triumph, to gloat; the girl felt her skin prick, but stood still, waiting.
‘The tallboy,’ said Collins softly.
She swallowed. ‘Yes. Do you know its date?’
He put out his hand and passed it over the polished surface caressingly. His smile grew. ‘No, miss,’ he said politely. ‘I fear I do not. You are very interested in it, are you, miss?’
‘I’m interested – yes. I must ask Mr Fountain about it.’
There was a footstep on the stone stairs; a woman’s voice called: ‘Mr Collins! Is that you up there? Mr Collins, will you come? They’ll be in to supper in a minute; the champagne ought to go on the ice.’
He turned his head; the smile had faded. ‘I’ll be down in a minute, Alice.’ He looked at the girl beside him with narrowed, calculating eyes. ‘I think you had better go downstairs, miss,’ he said. ‘This way, if you please.’
He went before her down the passage; she had no choice but to follow him. He led her to the front stairs and stood aside for her to go down them. She hesitated, desperately seeking an excuse to keep him with her.
A big, scarlet-clad figure stood talking to a Mary Queen of Scots upon the half-landing. He looked round and saw the valet. The girl’s heart gave a frightened leap, for the scarlet figure was that of her host and the hour of unmasking must be very near at hand. She slipped past him and went down to the hall.
‘Oh, there you are, Collins! I want you,’ Fountain said.
An ugly look came into the valet’s face and was swiftly gone again. He said: ‘Yes, sir,’ and followed his master downstairs.
The contadina’s eyes stole to the big grandfather clock. In less than five minutes midnight would strike. Unconsciously her hands clasped and unclasped in the folds of her dress. Fountain had gone across the hall to the dining room with Collins; they were standing in the doorway, and Fountain seemed to be giving the valet some instructions. The man was watching her, she knew, though he did not appear to be looking in her direction. Two other people had joined Fountain; the valet bowed and went into the dining room.
At once the contadina began to edge her way through the crowd in the hall to the staircase. There was probably a second door into the dining room, which gave access to the back part of the house where the kitchens were situated, but the g
irl dared not let slip her opportunity.
A Harlequin with whom she had danced earlier in the evening detained her as she tried to slip past him. He showed a tendency to keep her beside him, pointing laughingly to the clock. One minute to twelve; she made an excuse that she had left a ring in the cloakroom and escaped him. She reached the top of the stairs as the first chime began and ran towards the archway.
The passage was silent and deserted; at the top of the back stairs the door still stood ajar. She reached it, cast a quick glance through, and with a shuddering sigh of relief pulled it to. The shaft of light disappeared, the latch clicked. The girl went to the tallboy and pulled open the drawer she had tried before. Straining her ears to catch the sound of a footstep approaching up the stairs, her hands went feverishly about their work, pressing, scratching along the back of the drawer. Something moved there; the false back came away, revealing a space behind. The girl thrust her hand in, feeling for some object. There was nothing there.
For a moment she stood quite still, her hand in the drawer. Then slowly she drew it out and replaced the false back. There was a bitter twist to her mouth. She pushed the drawer home.
‘Admiring the furniture?’ said a drawling voice.
She started uncontrollably and swung round. Leaning against the archway that led to the hall was Mephistopheles, without his mask.
The dry sob that broke from her was one of startled nerves. ‘You!’ she panted. ‘You followed me up here!’
‘Why not?’ he said.
She could not answer; she stood staring at him, backed against the tallboy.
‘Do you usually inspect the furniture in the houses you visit?’ inquired Mr Amberley in a conversational voice.
She made an effort to pull herself together. ‘I’m interested in period pieces.’
‘Are you indeed?’ He strolled forward and saw her stiffen. ‘I’m quite uninstructed in these matters. But I’m most curious to know what you find to interest you inside the tallboy.’
She said, trying to speak naturally: ‘Of course – I should not have opened the drawer. I only wanted to see whether it ran easily. I haven’t stolen anything, if that’s what you think. There – isn’t anything to steal.’
‘You don’t have much luck, do you?’ he said.
A footstep sounded in the hall; Fountain’s boisterous voice said: ‘Half a moment, you people; I’m going to rout out the picture gallery. Aha, Miss Elliott, so I did spot you! It was the dimple that gave you away. Couldn’t disguise that, you know!’
The contadina stood like a statue, but through the mask her eyes were fixed on Amberley’s face in a rather desperate entreaty.
Fountain came through the archway into the passage humming a dance tune. He had almost turned right, in the direction of the gallery, when he caught sight of the couple at the other end of the passage. He stopped. ‘Hullo!’ he said, surprised. ‘What are you two up to?’
Amberley looked down at the girl for a moment, then he turned. ‘Hullo!’ he answered. ‘We’re admiring the tallboy. Do you know the date of it?’
‘Lord, what a chap you are for antiques!’ said Fountain, going towards them. ‘No, I haven’t the foggiest. But it’s a show piece all right. Rotten things, tallboys, I think. If you put things in the top drawers you have to have a pair of steps to get ’em out again. But you can’t put me off with furniture, my boy! No, no, it’s midnight, and masks off! Now who’s this pretty lady?’
He was standing before the contadina, burly and jovial, a hand advanced to take off her mask. Mr Amberley caught his wrist and held it. ‘Oh no!’ he said. ‘My privilege. You’re very much de trop.’
Fountain burst out laughing. ‘De trop, am I? All right, all right, I won’t spoil sport! Tallboys indeed! You tell that to the marines.’
Someone called: ‘Basil! Do come here!’ from the direction of the stairs, and Fountain began to walk away, saying over his shoulder: ‘Mind you claim the penalty for being masked after midnight, Amberley!’
In another moment he was gone. The contadina’s muscles relaxed. She said: ‘Why did you do that? Why didn’t you let him unmask me?’
‘You ought to be grateful to me for not letting him,’ said Mr Amberley.
‘I am grateful. But why did you do it? I know very well you don’t trust me.’
‘Not an inch,’ said Mr Amberley. ‘But I’m handling you myself.’
‘If you think I’m a thief – oh, and a murderess too! – why don’t you give me up to the police?’ she said bitterly.
‘Well,’ said Mr Amberley, ‘having given way to a somewhat foolish impulse and refrained from mentioning your presence on the scene of the murder to the police, I can’t very well come out with it now. And who am I to question your interest in antiques?’
She put up her hand and ripped her mask off; her face was flushed, her eyes stormy. ‘I hate you!’ she shot out. ‘You didn’t shield me out of – out of consideration! It was because you want to solve what you choose to think is a mystery by yourself!’
‘Quite right,’ agreed Mr Amberley. ‘Though somewhat involved.’
She looked as though she would have liked to hit him. ‘Then let me tell you I’d rather you went downstairs now and let the Fountains know I’m a gate-crasher and a thief than – than have you following me and spying what I do!’
‘I haven’t the smallest doubt of that,’ he replied. ‘After all, what would happen if I gave you away to the Fountains? You would merely be shown the door. That wouldn’t help me in the least.’
She prepared to leave him, but paused to say: ‘All right! But if you think you’re going to find out anything about me you’re wrong.’
‘Would you like to take a bet on it?’ he inquired.
But she had gone. Mr Amberley gave a laugh under his breath, stooped to pick up the handkerchief she had dropped, and began to stroll away towards the hall.
Five
Mr Amberley, with a sloth his cousin found disgusting, spent most of the next morning in a somnolent state in the garden. A burst of hot sunshine induced Felicity, always optimistic, to put up the hammock. Mr Amberley observed this, and approved. Felicity found him stretched in it an hour after breakfast, tried to turn him out, failed, and went off very scornfully to play hard-court tennis.
But Mr Amberley was not destined to be left for long in peace. Shortly after twelve o’clock his aunt came out and poked him with her sunshade. He opened his eyes, surveyed her in silent indignation, and closed them again.
‘Dear Frank – so sylvan. But you must wake up. The most tiresome thing.’
Without opening his eyes Mr Amberley murmured a sentence he knew by heart. ‘Bridges haven’t sent the fish, and unless I will be an angel and run into Upper Nettlefold for it there won’t be any lunch.’
‘No, nothing like that. At least, I trust not. That man who annoys your uncle.’
‘Which one?’ inquired Mr Amberley.
‘Colonel Watson. In the drawing room. Must I invite him to lunch?’
Mr Amberley was at last roused. He sat up and swung his long legs out of the hammock. ‘I forgive you, Aunt Marion,’ he said. ‘It was very nice of you to come and warn me. I shall take my book into the woodshed. On no account ask him to lunch.’
Lady Matthews smiled. ‘I do sympathise, my dear. Of course I do. But not a warning. He has been talking to your uncle for half an hour. The gold standard, you know. So incomprehensible and unsuitable. He came on business. Something very legal, but he wouldn’t go. If he had only told Humphrey that he wanted to see you! We have only just discovered it. Not that he said so. It was sheer intuition on my part. Do come, my dear. Be very rude, and then he will not want to stay to lunch.’
‘All right, I will be. Very rude,’ said Mr Amberley, and descended from the hammock.
‘So sweet of you, Frank, but perhaps better not,’ said his aunt dubiously.
The chief constable’s manner when Mr Amberley lounged in through the long window in the drawing room was
an admirable mixture of casual surprise and friendly gratification. ‘Ah, hullo, Amberley!’ he said, getting up and shaking hands. ‘So you are still here! This is a pleasant surprise. How are you?’
‘Sunk in apathy,’ said Mr Amberley. ‘Just about half awake. Certainly not more.’
This seemed to provide the colonel with the opening he wanted. He laughed and said: ‘Sunk in apathy! Surely that can’t mean bored?’
‘Not yet,’ said Mr Amberley.
His uncle gave a sudden snort of laughter which he managed to turn into a cough.
‘You want something to occupy your mind,’ said the colonel in a jocular way. ‘Perhaps you’d like to try your hand at our little murder case!’
Mr Amberley saw fit to treat this as a joke. Colonel Watson abandoned the facetious vein. ‘Seriously, my dear fellow, I should be delighted if you cared to give us a hand with it. It’s a most interesting problem. Quite in your line.’
‘Very kind of you, sir, but you don’t want an amateur dabbling in these professional matters.’
The colonel realised that he did not like Mr Amberley. Looking back, he could not remember that he ever had liked him. Those hard eyes had a way of staring contemptuously through one, and that ironic smile was the most irritating thing he had ever seen. The fact was the fellow was too damned conceited. Obviously he wasn’t going to beg, as a favour, to be allowed to have a hand in the solving of this worrying murder. The colonel dallied for a moment with the idea of taking him at his word and leaving him out of the thing altogether. It would afford him distinct gratification just to turn the conversation on to quite trivial matters, chat for a little and then go, leaving this insufferable young man to wish he had not been so offhand.
The idea was very tempting, but the colonel put it aside. He was rather dismally aware that he was not a particularly clever man, but he hoped that he was clever enough not to cut off his nose just to spite his face. It was all very well for the inspector to say that they would clear the whole mystery up as soon as certain data came to hand, but Colonel Watson had no great opinion of the inspector’s ability to probe any mystery. A good routine-man, yes, and a capable man, but it was no use blinking facts; this sort of thing was not in his line. Of course he didn’t want to call in Scotland Yard. The colonel could quite sympathise with him over that; he didn’t want to call in Scotland Yard himself. He hated those highly efficient persons who came from the Yard, and complained that they should have been called in sooner, before the trail was cold; and took the whole matter out of one’s hands. Really, when one considered it, they were worse than Frank Amberley. He was much ruder than they were, because they took the trouble to disguise their scorn of the previous conduct of the case, and he never had any hesitation in condemning what he chose to think blamable. But at least he could not relegate them all to the status of lower schoolboys, and to do him justice he hadn’t, over that Bilton affair, wanted to take all the credit of success to himself.
Georgette Heyer Page 6
