Mr. Brading's Collection

by Patricia Wentworth

  ‘Ooh — how lovely! And now you must tell us all about them.’

  Lewis was more than ready to oblige.

  ‘Well, if you’ll sit down first — I think there are enough chairs — then everyone will be able to see without crowding.’

  Maida sank gracefully into the chair behind her, pulled it up close, and leaned forward across the table, her arms bare to the shoulder without the least stain of sunburn to spoil their milky beauty. Some red-haired women tan easily, and freckle too, but there are others upon whom the sun has no effect. Maida was one of them. She could bask the whole summer through upon the beach without acquiring a single freckle or the least shade of brown. Since sunburn was the rage, she sometimes applied it artificially, but for the past few weeks she had left her skin to nature and been rewarded by Lewis Brading’s approbation. Certainly against all this black velvet and under the bright overhead lights she made a very dazzling effect. Charles appeared to think so. He said lightly, ‘Breathtaking, isn’t she?’ and went to take the place beside her. She had glanced round for a moment. Perhaps the look had beckoned him.

  Stacy sat down at the end of the table. She had Hester Constantine on her right. There were some people called Brown beyond her, of the sort of young middle age that is by way of keeping up with all the things their children do; then Charles, Maida, Jack Constable, Lilias Grey, Myra Constantine, and Lady Minstrell. All this brilliance was not becoming to Lilias. The jewels, Maida’s glowing vitality, gave her a drained, colourless look. Ugly old Myra came out of it better than she did.

  Myra said in her deep voice,

  ‘Come along, Lewis, get a move on! Ring up the curtain!’

  She didn’t exactly sing the last words, but the sound of the Pagliacci tune came through.

  Lewis turned and made her an odd stiff little bow.

  ‘But you have heard it all before,’ he said in a deprecating voice.

  She laughed enjoyably, crinkling up her eyes.

  ‘Nothing new under the sun, they say. But I don’t get tired of the old things — old songs, old friends, old times — so stop being modest and get the goods out from under the counter!’

  Lewis came back with, ‘Hardly under the counter, my dear Myra,’ and dipping into the glittering heap before him, he brought up a ring. The square emerald caught the light between flashing diamond shoulders.

  Maida stretched out her hands and said, ‘Ooh!’, and before half a dozen pairs of envious eyes Lewis dropped it into her palm.

  ‘Put it on and let’s see what it looks like.’

  She slipped it on to the third finger of her left hand. It looked magnificent. Lewis nodded his approval.

  ‘Women with your colouring should always wear emeralds — it brings out the green in their eyes.’

  She lifted her long dark lashes.

  ‘But my eyes aren’t green. They’re supposed to be hazel.’

  They might have been alone. He said,

  ‘I have seen them look green. If you were to wear emeralds—’

  ‘I haven’t any.’ Her eyes went again to the ring.

  Lewis raised his voice from the low confidential tone which it had taken.

  ‘Now that is a very fine stone, and it has an interesting history. You remember the Greystairs murder? You will, Myra.’

  Myra Constantine nodded.

  ‘The girl asked for it,’ she said. ‘Nineteen-seventeen, wasn’t it? Johnny Greystairs got a spot of leave and came home to find his wife carrying on with another chap. Shot them both, and jumped out of a fifth-floor window as the police broke in. I used to know Johnny — not a ha’porth of vice in him till she drove him crazy. You don’t mean to say—’

  Lewis Brading smiled.

  ‘Yes, it was her engagement ring. My latest purchase. So there’s something you haven’t seen!’ He leaned across the table and drew the ring from Maida’s finger. ‘Now, this bracelet...’ He lifted a solid gold band about two inches wide encrusted with diamonds and rubies. ‘This went down with the Birkenhead. I bought it twenty-five years ago from the granddaughter of the woman who was wearing it. And this— no, it’s not beautiful or valuable. It’s just a little hair brooch with a pearl border, but it was worn on the scaffold by Mrs. Manning the poisoner. She was hanged in black satin, and no one would wear it for a generation.’

  Hester Constantine, drooping beside Stacy, said in a quivering voice,

  ‘I wouldn’t wear any of those things if you were to pay me.’

  Stacy couldn’t have agreed with her more. Every one of the things which Lewis displayed with so much pride had a story, and every story was heavy with blood and tears. Not that he gave them in a dramatic manner. Murder, retribution, jealousy, hatred, revenge — his dry voice brought them all down to the commonplace, and in a way that made it more dreadful, because it is in the commonplace that we all live and move. The great, the devastating passions are all very well on the other side of the footlights in the never-never land of drama and romance, but when murder comes down off the stage, sits beside you in the gallery or the stalls, and walks back with you into your own respectable suburb, then it has a bare, stripped terror to chill the heart.

  As Lewis went on with his recital, Stacy felt her heart being chilled. This necklet had belonged to quite an ordinary girl from a safe and pleasant home. She had shot a man because he was leaving her for another woman... This scintillating buckle had clasped the cloak of a famous courtesan of Victorian times. She had started life as a poor girl in a milliner’s workroom. She ended it on the filthy straw of a debtor’s prison. At some point between these two places she had dazzled the eyes and wrung the hearts of countless fellow women.

  ‘I hate them,’ said Hester Constantine in that shaking voice.

  Lewis Brading must have heard what she said. He looked sideways at her with a cold resentment which was very unpleasant. Hester hardly seemed to notice it, but Stacy felt a shiver go over her. There was something about Lewis Brading—

  He had picked up a glittering brooch.

  ‘Very few women could hate this,’ he said. ‘Of course diamonds do not suit everyone.’ His glance touched Hester cruelly and came back to the jewelled brooch. ‘Beautiful — isn’t it? The Marziali brooch — five perfectly matched brilliants of four carats set on a bar. A wedding present from her husband to Giulia Marziali in 1817. She was wearing it when he stabbed her and her lover three years later. The affair made a great sensation in Rome, but as the Count committed suicide he was never brought to justice. She was a great beauty, of a noble Sardinian family. Strange to think that these bright stones were drowned in her blood.’

  Hester Constantine said, ‘Don’t!’

  The Browns beyond her, without going so far, opined that they wouldn’t really care about having things like that.

  ‘Very handsome, and must have cost a lot of money,’ said Mr. Brown in his hearty voice. ‘But I wouldn’t care to give my wife anything with such unpleasant associations.’ To which Mrs. Brown responded with a shudder, ‘And I wouldn’t wear it, Tommy, if you did.’

  Maida looked round at her for a moment.

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ she said. Then, with a darting glance at Lewis, ‘Are you going to take her at her word? You’d better not — she might think again. And I warn you, don’t count on me to refuse anything because someone got murdered in it. I adore these lovely things.’ Her voice made the word really sound like adoration. Her hands went out to the necklace he was picking up. ‘Oh, Lewis, let me put it on — please — just for a moment!’

  He let her take it and snap the clasp. Diamonds in a light linked tracery of roses, the flowers flat and formal, each with an emerald at its heart. Stacy looked at them, and couldn’t look away. She heard Lewis say,

  ‘Well, no one was murdered in this. It belonged to my several times great-grandmother, Damaris Forrest, who was a lady-in-waiting at the court of Queen Anne. She was beautiful, she was virtuous, she lived to a ripe old age, and died lamented by a numerous family. All the F
orrest women have been good-looking and good.’

  Lewis had his showman’s patter by heart. It was word for word what he had said three years ago when he had brought out the necklace to show her and Charles had fastened it about her neck. She couldn’t flatter herself that it had looked as well there as it did on Maida Robinson, but she had run to the long plain mirror at the end of the room and admired herself in her white dress with the diamonds and emeralds making little rainbows under the light. Her eyes had been bright above the stones, and her cheeks rosy with happiness, and Charles had looked as if he loved her with all his heart. The picture came back as Maida sprang up and ran, just as Stacy had run, to the mirror which hung between two of the velvet curtains. And then it was blotted out by that other picture, the one she could never forget — two nights later, and Charles in his pyjamas standing with his back to her in front of the bureau in his dressing-room. Just the one light on overhead, and Charles standing there with the necklace in his hand. Midnight and no one stirring, her nightdress falling away from one shoulder, her bare feet, cold on the carpet. And Charles with Damaris Forrest’s necklace in his hand.

  She came back with the feeling that everything was sliding from under her feet. Because the necklace was here. Lewis Brading had it again. It was flashing from Maida’s reflection in the mirror at the end of the room.

  Maida turned. They heard her take a long sighing breath. She came to her seat again with a floating step, a lovely, vital creature, her eyes as green as the emeralds. She put up reluctant hands to the clasp, held the necklace dangling, her eyes caressing it, and with an impulsive gesture thrust it across the table to Lewis Brading.

  ‘Oh, take it, take it! And you’d better be quick, or I shan’t be able to bring myself to give it up.’

  He met the extravagance with the faintest of smiles.

  ‘Well, it suits you,’ he said.

  Stacy saw their glances meet. She thought, ‘It won’t be very long before she has it for keeps.’

  Lewis delivered the rest of his lecture. But Stacy never got past the Forrest necklace. She was back to three years ago, and she was wondering what she had done.

  THIRTEEN

  IT WAS STRANGE to come out into the daylight. They had only been in the annexe for an hour, and there was still sunlight on the sea. Charles found himself taking Maida home. It was just one of those things. He certainly hadn’t planned it, but it was happening. Jack Constable had been neatly paired off with Lilias, and Charles manoeuvred into handing over his car to them. It had all been very smoothly done by way of ‘Charles darling, if I don’t have some fresh air I shall pass out. And honestly, if somebody doesn’t positively march me home, I shall come back to those emeralds like a moth and be found all battered and smashed against that horrible steel door. Too paralysing for poor Lewis. And of course there isn’t any need for me to break up the party. Lilias, Jack — all the rest of you — it’s just that I simply can’t take in any more. It’s been too wonderful. I feel like the Queen of Sheba — just completely gone down the drain with looking at so many marvellous things.’ She ran back to where Lewis stood on the threshold of the annexe, both her hands stretched out, her voice low and husky. Snatches of what she said drifted to Stacy — ‘You do understand what I feel, don't you?’ Then a murmur, and then, ‘A good opportunity really. I’ll break it gently. You stay here and put your heavenly things away.’ There was a final murmur before she broke away to link arms with Charles and cry,

  ‘Let’s get out into the air! It looks too lovely!’

  They went off together.

  Lewis stepped back and shut his door. Stacy went up to her room.

  The cliff path to Saltings runs just as Stacy had seen it in her dream, only without the high wall she had imagined. It twists and turns along the cliff, with a drop to the beach which is sometimes quite sheer and giddy. When the tide is in you look down upon the water, when it is out there are rocks, but on the landward side there is only a bank which seldom rises more than a dozen feet. Here and there the bank hollows into a bay, and there is a seat. A pleasant walk for a summer evening.

  Charles was wondering why he had been cut out and carried off. Not to make Lewis jealous, since Maida had been at some pains to soothe him. He thought he would leave her to play the game her own way.

  He was telling her what had always been considered a good story, when she waved it away, and said,

  ‘Charles, I want to talk to you.’

  Drama? Well, it was her game. He would have preferred... He had no time to pursue the theme, for she came out plump with,

  ‘Lewis has asked me to marry him.’

  He nodded gravely.

  ‘Which of you do I congratulate?’

  ‘I haven’t said I will — not yet.’

  ‘Then perhaps I congratulate him.’

  She flared.

  ‘How can you be such a beast? But you won’t make me lose my temper!’

  ‘An admirable resolution. Let me help you out — I will congratulate you both.’

  ‘For what?’

  His crooked eyebrows rose.

  ‘For your hesitation, reluctance, or whatever it is.’

  ‘Charles, you are a beast!’

  ‘For suggesting that you will probably make each other damned unhappy?’

  ‘Why should we?’

  He looked at her with a hint of mockery.

  ‘You can’t live on emeralds — or can you?’

  ‘They’d go quite a long way,’ said Maida Robinson.

  ‘In that case it’s your funeral.’

  As if the word had rung a bell, she said almost eagerly,

  ‘He has made a will in my favour.’

  Charles allowed himself to smile.

  ‘This time I really do congratulate you.’

  She changed colour vividly.

  ‘I didn’t plan it — it was all on the spur of the moment. I was going to make a will myself — I had one of those will-form things. I asked Lewis if he would witness it, but when he found I was leaving him something—’

  ‘A most artistic touch!’

  She met him with bravado.

  ‘Yes, it was, wasn’t it? Anyhow he said he couldn’t, as he was an interested party, and — and— well it ended in his asking me to marry him. And he took the will-form and he filled it in, leaving everything to me, and he said he would get two people to see him sign it — somewhere outside the club, so as not to make talk.’

  Charles gave her an enigmatic look.

  ‘But it isn’t signed yet. I’m surprised you didn’t strike while the iron was hot.’

  There was a brilliant triumph in her eyes.

  ‘Oh, he’ll sign it all right. He’s mad about me. Anyhow it’s really only a gesture. He’ll make a proper real will next week when he goes up to see his lawyers — settlements, you know, and all that sort of thing. This is just — well, what I said, a gesture, and in case of getting run over by a bus, or anything like that. It’s as well to be on the safe side, isn’t it?’ She tilted her head and looked up at him. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Haven’t you got anything to say? Don’t you care? Aren’t you going to do anything about it?’

  He gave her his charming smile.

  ‘I could push you over the cliff of course — that would be one way out.’

  Her voice softened, her eyes held his.

  ‘There might be another way—’

  Charles cursed all red-haired women with green eyes. ’Les yeux verts vont a I'enfer.’ He said lightly.

  ‘I can’t think of one.’ Then, with a complete change of manner, ‘Look here, Maida, this is your show, and I don’t want to butt in. Lewis can marry anyone he pleases, and he can leave his money and that damned Collection to anyone he likes. If you’re fond of him, go ahead and marry him. You’ll look very well in the emeralds. If you’re not fond of him, I should advise you to think again. I’ve known Lewis for a good many years, and you won’t change him. When the
first effervescence is over you’ll take second place to the Collection. That’s what he’s really married to, you know — any woman is just a temporary diversion. He’s had flutters before, but he always comes back to what he really loves. I can tell you quite honestly, I don’t believe he’s capable of love for anything else. He’ll go on living in that mausoleum with his ghoulish gewgaws, and you’ll be just another acolyte. He’s got James Moberly, poor devil. But James can’t wear the jewels — you can. One acolyte to tend the stuff, another to show it off. I seem to remember that the women captives in a Roman triumph used to be loaded with jewels. Well, that would be more or less your place in Lewis’s scheme of things.’

  She kept her eyes on his. They really were very beautiful eyes, large and full of light, neither grey nor brown nor altogether green. They had the shoaling play of colour that water has in a green place. She said,

  ‘Charles—’

  He dragged his eyes away. A light sweat broke on his temples.

  ‘Well,’ he said, you have been warned.’

  They had been standing. The sun was very low. A little cool breeze came in from the sea. It was grateful. He began to walk on again, and she fell into step.

  After a moment she said in the voice of an angry child,

  ‘What’s the good of warning me? I’ve got to have something. You don’t suggest anything else.’

  ‘I’m only the looker-on. He sees most of the game, you know.’

  ‘But he doesn’t play?’ Her voice made the words an invitation and a caress.

  Charles said, ‘Oh, no, he doesn’t play. He has his own game, you see. It wouldn’t do to mix them.’

  She broke into odd angry laughter.

  ‘Then I’ll just have to be a cousin to you, darling!’

  FOURTEEN

  STACY WENT UP TO her room and locked the door. When she had done that she stood irresolute. Time went by. Presently she went over to the window and sat there. The window looked to the annexe and to the hill against which it was built. Very little air came in. She would have liked to feel the breeze, but it didn’t come this way.