The Devil in Velvet

by John Dickson Carr

“Oh!” cried Lydia, and her mouth fell open. “How did you know …?”

  “Why, merely because so many women are the same, but won’t allow to it.”

  “Willst take me tomorrow’s night,” pleaded Lydia, “if the weather be fine? I shall wear my very oldest gown.”

  “Do you see that star?” he asked, pointing at random. “I would take you there, if you desired it and I could contrive it. This is easily managed. Spring Gardens let it be!”

  And so, all unknowingly, Lydia touched off the spring of evil omen.

  “I shall wear my very oldest gown,” she stated rather primly.

  It is hardly necessary to say that she did nothing of the kind, but went out next day to buy her newest one.

  At ten o’clock that night, after being dressed by Giles, Fenton­ went out into the upstairs passage, now dimly lighted by a few wall sconces. He wore his usual loose, comfortable, sombre-­hued­ velvet, and shoes now made to his liking. Giles was always in agony at his lack of jewelled rings, diamond waistcoat­ buttons­, even lack of more than a plain laced neckband.

  At the same time, Lydia ran out of her bedroom and hurried to the head of the stairs.

  Lydia wore a mask, but no hat. Her gown vaguely suggested the simple countryside, perhaps because of very small pink roses against vertical stripes of silver set off by sky-blue. But it had no shoulder straps, and was cut in such fashion that Fenton wondered how it stayed up. Beside her was her new maid, Bet, carrying a scarlet cape lined with dark blue.

  “Indeed,” Lydia declared, “it is my oldest …” She paused, peering at him.

  Though he was in a merry mood, having drunk above a quart of malmsey at their evening meal, doubt filled his mind. Also he felt jealousy (of what? Of anyone.) like a claw at his heart.

  “In theory,” he said, “this frolic gives no occasion of distrust. Yet in that roystering throng, if I set you loose to pursue you …”

  Lydia ran to him, while Bet fastened round her neck the great scarlet cape.

  “But you did permit me,” she protested, “to go out alone this day in the coach.”

  “That’s none of the same matter. Whip and Harry were with you.”

  Whip was the heavy-shouldered coachman, and Harry one of the downstairs porters who was a very tolerable swordsman and practised each day with Fenton.

  “What if I should lose you in that throng?” demanded Fenton. “What if some brisk fellow should make at you and seize you?”

  “Oh, that?” said Lydia without inflection or even much interest.

  She drew back the left side of her cloak. In the padded lining was a small pocket for a light chamois-leather sheath. A thin, light dagger, hardly four inches long but with sides razor-sharp to its point, nestled there with a light gold haft.

  “If any man but you were to touch me,” said Lydia, stating a simple fact, “I would not try to kill him. I do not think I could. But for months, it might be years, he would regret the day he saw me.” Beyond the mask her eyes opened in wonder. “Sweet heart, were you not sensible of this?”

  Lydia could not understand why he kissed her so hard.

  “I am a moody fool!” he laughed. “Why do we wait?”

  As they hurried down the stairs, Fenton glanced over his shoulder. At the far end of the passage stood Judith Pamphlin, motionless, arms folded, watching.

  It was only a short distance to the main entrance of Spring Gardens, which Fenton had noticed when he crossed the open space with George Harwell on his first day in Old London.

  Not long after they had gone, a street porter loped along Pall Mall and asked of every tipstaffed porter if this would be the house of Sir Nicholas Fenton. When he reached Sam, still straight-backed with periwig and tipstaff, Sam snapped his fingers. The porter handed over a squeezed-up letter and received sixpence.

  Sam summoned Giles, who took the letter under the wall candles of the ground-floor hall. Its superscription, in neat handwriting, was to “Sir Nick. Fenton, who resides in Pall Mall.” It was sealed on the other side, with “Jonathan Reeve, Esq.” underneath.

  Giles, biting hard at his lower lip, weighed the letter in his hand. Deliberately he broke the seal and read. His features sharpened, though not with his customary satiric expression, and his face grew a trifle pale. For a time he stood motionless in thought. Then he hastened away.

  Meanwhile, Lydia and Fenton discovered the high iron-railed gate almost hidden in the tall hedge at the main entrance of Spring Gardens. Dropping money into the hand of an attendant, clad all in green and with leaves and twigs fastened to her hat, Fenton found that the attendant had vanished as though by magic.

  “Oh!” whispered Lydia.

  The waxing moon rode high above Arcadian woodland. There was a little open space inside the gate. Then a second crooked line of hedge, not so high as the first but still higher than a man’s head, showed several openings into the deeper woodland. The illumination here, as presumably to a small distance inside, was just enough so that you should not stumble. At long intervals were set in brackets torches chemically treated so as to burn faint yellow-blue, or dim coloured paper lanterns with a small candle inside.

  But what caught both of them was the atmosphere of Spring Gardens on a summer night, as palpable as the scent of dew-wet grass or hedge. At first the gardens seemed very silent. There was no music of a string trio. Then little noises crept out at them. There were whispered voices, so faint or far away as to be nowhere. A very quick, soft patter of running feet, fading away. The crackle of a twig. A girl’s low, trembling laugh.

  Fenton’s heart beat heavily. He kissed Lydia again, with intensity, before she gently moved back.

  “See, I shall not stumble,” Lydia whispered, displaying shoes which, though very small and silvered, were yet heavy and flat-heeled. “Now I shall run. Do you count slowly to five; then follow.”

  “Yet if I should …”

  “I shall never be far from you, love, though you may see me not. Now!”

  And Lydia went skimming away, her scarlet cloak flowing out, holding up the sides of a sky-blue gown with vertical stripes of silver a-twinkle. She did not dart into one of the open spaces before them, as he had expected. She ran for the farthest side of the inner hedge, rounding it between the inner and the outer hedge, and disappeared.

  “One.” Fenton had already been counting in his mind, with a double beat between each. “Two …”

  It never occurred to him to wonder how grotesque this would have seemed to Professor Fenton, of Cambridge. He was a young man, and accustomed to being so. The old world seemed slowly to recede as his sense of values shifted and altered. …

  His ear was alert for every noise. At the count of three he could still just hear Lydia running on grass. Gathering up the folds of the light cloak, he grasped the sword scabbard among them so as not to impede running.

  “Five!” he said aloud, and raced off in pursuit.

  As he whirled round the turn, some very remote flicker of yellow-blue showed him a narrow grassy path stretching straight ahead for what appeared to be some distance. As he ran along it, he kept an eye to the left for openings in the hedge. He almost passed one before he stopped and turned.

  A low arch opened into what they called a “bower.” It was so densely thick with leaves overhead that not a chink of moonlight entered. For a pace or two it was floored with gravel, then grass. From a far corner Fenton heard two voices faintly whispering together, but in such terms that he hastily backed out of the bower. Besides, he would have heard Lydia’s footsteps on gravel.

  On he plunged, finding another and higher opening in the hedge. This led him into a confused space where opened out three walks of real blossom, scenting and concealing rustic walls. He raced into the first, and was brought up against a dead end by a nailed rustic door. Sweeping into the second, he somehow got into the third: where he stopped, remem
bering something he should have remembered from the first.

  Doubtless Lydia did not know it. But anything coloured red, in darkness or even semidarkness, is all but invisible. Doubtless she had passed him several times.

  “Lydia!” he called.

  “Won’t I do?” softly inquired a feminine voice, almost at his elbow, and so unexpectedly that he jumped. A hand, not unwilling to be pursued, reached out and touched his sleeve. Softly shouting, “Lydia!” he plunged in another direction, followed by a giggle, and emerged again into the main alley.

  This was hopeless. If this were some kind of maze, he could use his reason. But it was deliberately confused. Very soft, padded footsteps ran hard in his direction. He turned to see, in unsteady moonlight, a wench in a white vizard and a white short dress of sprigged muslin, hotly pursued by a fop in a periwig, who wore a cloth mask painted to represent a satyr.

  They flashed past, as in a country of illusion, the satyr leering fellowship and encouragement.

  “Never wear a sword, sink me!” whispered the satyr.

  Then, not a minute later, Fenton caught sight of Lydia. He had turned into another side opening, resolved to explore each. Two paths divided. Instinct and experience told him that the path to the right would lead to a dead end or another bower. But at the end of the narrow, grassy walk towards the left he could see, against a faint yellow-blue spark, what seemed to be a high and thick circular hedge well above a man’s head, and with a high arch cut in it toward this side.

  Something darted round by the side of the hedge and inside it. Against light Fenton saw the flash of the scarlet cloak; he saw Lydia’s gown, with silver stripes against pink rosettes, and her silver shoes. She peered right and left, poised for flight.

  Fenton, after all but falling over a dwarf tree hung with artificial oranges, moved forward with swift, noiseless strides. He had been right about the hedge. It was large and thick and circular, having an arch on each side like the four points of a compass. Inside lay a slightly cup-shaped depression of smooth grass: the centre a flat circle, with sides gently sloping up to the hedge.

  It swam in half-gloom from a torch placed outside one of the arches: to the left of the one by which Fenton approached, he thought. Lydia still hesitated, the hood of her cape drawn up, poised for every direction except the right one.

  Fenton’s blood had heated in more than one way. He thought of bringing down Lydia with a flying tackle. She would not have minded in the least; women were used to such treatment.

  Instead he darted swiftly across the glade, picking her up in both arms. He swept her across the flat circle, fifteen feet across. He deposited her, face up, in the sloping grass of the other side. Pinning her there with his arm and shoulder, he threw back the hood and lifted the mask to her forehead.

  “Did you think—” he asked, breathing heavily; and stopped dead.

  He was looking down into the grey eyes and curling half-smile of Meg York.

  CHAPTER XIII

  FROM PLEASURE GROVE TO DANGER SIGN

  MEG, TO BE MORE COMFORTABLE, writhed out of the cape and lay against its dark-blue inner side. Her thick, sleek, black hair had been disordered by the removal of the hood. He noted—curse these disloyal thoughts!—that her shoulders and breast were more full than Lydia’s, though her figure was more slender. Her hair lay dark against the whiteness of her skin.

  Why, in sanity’s name, was he struck with a kind of madness whenever he met Meg?

  “Nay,” she whispered, moving to draw farther under his arm and shoulder, “do you think my small gullery so very ingenious? For I tell you I was at a large shop, La Belle Poitrine, as was sweet Lydia this day. When I heard her cry in stage whisper, ‘No made gown; this must be done today; ’tis for Spring Gardens tonight,’ why, then, I had but to imitate gown and cloak. I had an even dice-throw to find you, if I covered my hair.”

  Fenton cast a quick look round. The grove hedge, pale green in its gloom, might have been “a wood near Athens” in the play. Never in his life had he been so tempted. And, since he received nothing but encouragement, he bade temptation to the devil and yielded to it.

  “‘Damn her,’” he quoted in his mind, “‘I’ll have her if she lie under a bed of thorns!’”

  His lips pressed down on Meg’s moist mouth, and his arms tightened round her. Suddenly she seemed to recall something; she held his head back with both hands. Her long-fringed grey eyes looked straight into his.

  “Nay,” she said, though he could sense the warmth (or call it what you like) rising from her, “This glade is too open; I’ll lead you to a bower I know. And first I have a question for you.” Hatred rose now. “Art satisfied with my sweet cousin Lydia?”

  The old problem jumped into his mind.

  “And I have a question for you,” he retorted. “Are you Mary Grenville?”

  “Of course I am,” she answered, in ordinary modern speech and accent.

  Propped on one elbow, Fenton stared at her.

  “But, oh, dear!” said Meg, still in modern speech, “you gave me some awfully bad moments, once or twice. And why were you so beastly and awful to me, when I planned it just the opposite? You even kicked me out of the house; and I couldn’t do anything about it, except hint.”

  To Fenton, very briefly, it was as though all material things—hedges, grass, Meg’s maddening, curving smile—all dissolved together. It was as though a vast eye had opened, in one comprehensive wink to show him a damp London street in 1925 and a grey-eyed quiet girl in a cloche hat.

  “If I treated you badly,” he answered, in the speech of 1925, “it was because most of the time Sir Nick was in charge. My—oh, call it other soul. Why didn’t you speak out when I called you ‘Mary’ the first time we met?”

  He heared her draw in her breath.

  “I wish I had. Oh, God, I wish I had! But I was too unsure of myself. Don’t you recall how I helped you with your Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century Language, and your records? But I was uncertain. I hesitated too long.”

  “I don’t understand anything,” cried the bewildered Fenton. “Look here: you didn’t even have those engravings of people I had to help me, or any evidence. How could you be fitted into all this? How did you know?”

  Meg pressed her cheek close to his.

  “Listen,” she whispered fiercely, “anything about how did I know is the one kind of question you mustn’t ask me. Not yet! Later you’ll learn and soon. You’ll learn that my character, my soul if you like, are exactly the same now as they were before; but I kept silent, and nobody knew. Now we’d better return to a sweeter age.”

  The eyewink closed. The twentieth century vanished as it dwindled to remoteness. The only realities were soft-scented airs under the moon of Spring Gardens, and hedges or grass which could be touched as material things. Meg’s expression subtly altered, no longer with an evasive smile, but tender.

  “Nay,” she said in those drawled tones, “we should do well to utter this speech, as fit as a pudding for a friar’s mouth. I did put this trick upon you, Nick, in the main to give you this.”

  Partly raising herself, moving a little away from him, she threw her skirts above her right knee. Meg wore few if any petticoats. From the top of her garter, above the knee, she took out a small folded piece of paper.

  Ever since their return to this age, Meg’s movements had become more quick, her eyes more bright. It was the same with Fenton.

  “Here,” she said, “are my two houses, where you may find me.”

  “Two houses?”

  “Faugh! You’ll not find me often in the first. They are the lodgings of a French captain, named Duroc, who is horrid and shuddersome. Only this day they brought him home, on crutches, with his leg in boards and bandages. And (oh, fie) this monster would be at amorous tricks! To see how I did elude him would ha’ made you burst a-laughing!”

  “A
nd the other?”

  “That,” whispered Meg, her tone changing to rapture, “is my own little house. Nobody knows I am there. None can find me, or trouble me. ’Tis in no fine neighbourhood; but what better? None will seek me, except … will you come and wait upon me soon? Soon?”

  “I will! I swear it!”

  “The house is kept, on my one floor since all else is empty, by an old woman called Calpurnia. But speak your name to her; she will admit you.” Meg’s tone changed. “You’ll not be spiteful to me? Or harsh of word? Or use me ill?”

  “The very reverse of all that, if you still desire!”

  By this time Fenton would have said anything to any woman, yet even in his befuddlement he knew he spoke truth. Both voices spoke quickly.

  “You spoke,” said Fenton, “of a bower …?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Then Meg remembered. “Stay; you’ve not answered my question. Are you, completely and in all respects, satisfied by my cousin Lydia? One more kiss before you answer!”

  She rolled towards him, and for the next few moments matters became somewhat chaotic. It was Fenton, periwig jostled to one side and part way near to calling the bower unnecessary, who glanced over his left shoulder. He saw the yellow-blue light blotted out by shadow, diagonally across in the arch to their left. He raised his head. Meg, also becoming sure it was too much trouble to go to the bower, raised her head too.

  In the arch, so tall and gaunt that its top reached his flat hat and gold-dusted periwig, stood a corpse-faced man in white, with crutches under his arms and a swathed leg bent behind him. Just in front of him, still masked and cloaked but with lips deadly under the short nose, stood Lydia.

  Meg sprang up, leaving behind her long-discarded cloak. Fenton, for certain self-conscious reasons, sat there but did not get to his feet—and later wished he had. Lydia moved with blinding swiftness in that blind, greenish light. Her hand slipped under the cloak, to the thin sheath with the double-edged gold dagger. She flew at Meg, holding the blade underhand, to rip up the middle.

  “I can use a dagger,” whispered Lydia, “as well as you.”