Death of Jezebel

by Christianna Brand

  Up on the stage the horses stood patiently while their riders argued the problem of how Earl should be certain of reaching the amplifier switch. Motherdear’s inherited eye for decor proved unexpectedly useful. ‘Could Mr. Anderson and I have our horses’ forefeet mounted up on blocks? That would bring him in easy reach of the switch and at the same time give a nice effect of chargers rampant on either side of the arch: like the lion and the unicorn in the Royal thingamajig, you know…’ His voice trailed off uncertainly.

  ‘It would also give an impression of the Red Knight sliding slowly but helplessly backwards on to his charger’s tail,’ said Earl.

  ‘You can hold on to your standard,’ said Brian Bryan impatiently: the idea of a man who couldn’t sit two minutes in a saddle unless it was positively and absolutely horizontal!

  Mr. Port was longing only to get off and make it up with darling Isabel. ‘That will be perfect! It’ll make a magnificent tableau and then at the critical moment Mr. Anderson can leave go of the standard for a second, and put on the switch. Your hand will be up near the switch anyway, Mr. Anderson, the audience won’t even notice you just imperceptibly leaning forward to flick it on…’ He clapped his hands in signal for them all to dismiss. Dancing with impatience he allowed himself to be introduced to Inspector Cockrill and after a few civil platitudes dashed off back-stage. ‘Never heard of me, I suppose,’ said Cockie, wistfully.

  ‘Of course, Cockie, you’re used to having the Law behind you, and everybody in Kent being terrified of you, and you being the sort of centre of everything…’

  ‘And you think I can’t get anywhere on my own personality?’ said Cockie grimly.

  Earl had not seen Perpetua so nearly animated for years: something of her old gay girlhood seemed to have come back to her as she proudly presented the little man to the company behind the scenes, and dwelt upon the magnitude of his position and achievements down in Kent where he was really appreciated. The knights jostled through the tower archway from the stage, their long cloaks tumbling behind them and dismounted with more or less grace from their horses; or rode on through the outer door to the stables and there climbed down with the help of the single attendant groom. They all repaired to a pub outside the hall, for drinks: Earl very doggy and palsy-walsy with the barmaid, Brian Two-Times with the solemn black business man’s hat beloved of the visiting foreigner, his too long mackintosh hung over his arm despite the cloudless sky, Susan Betchley standing her round with unfeminine insistence, George hanging on at the tail of the party, miserably convinced that it did not want him there, yet lacking the poise to take himself gracefully off. Sugar-Daddy Port was propped up in a corner with Isabel who was making magnificent capital out of her injuries. She consented to have Inspector Cockrill introduced to her, but soon returned to her purposeful squabbling. Cockrill decided that it was time for them to depart. ‘I’ll see you to your door, Peppi.’ As they sat side by side on the top of the home-going bus, he took her thin hand. ‘There’s nothing to suggest which of these people sent you the notes. You tell me these scraps of paper were littered about everywhere: and eight people had access to them—you three who got them, that Brian Twice or whatever they call him, Miss Betchley, Mr. Port and young George Whatsisname, and his mama—who, however, wasn’t here to-day. You never can tell: but I should think that the whole thing was just a rather ugly, very silly joke…’

  He put his hand into his pocket to fish for his tobacco to roll himself another of his incessant cigarettes. There was something there that had not been there an hour ago. He said, coolly, unfolding the little scrap of paper: ‘Well, that lets out the mama, anyway, and reduces us down to seven.’ The same muddle of pin-men on one side; on the other the same straggly pencilled characters. It was quite a long note this time. It said: INSPECTOR COCKRILL, YOU THINK IT’S JUST A JOKE DON’T YOU? BUT WAIT TILL THE OPENING NIGHT OF THE EXHIBITION. ISABEL, PERPETUA, ANDERSON—WHICH OF THEM WILL BE THE FIRST TO DIE?

  Chapter IV

  IT WAS HORRIBLE TO have to get through the days before the Exhibition opened: to live through the long hours, crawling with half incredulous, wholly uneasy fear. Isabel might make light of it, but she was frightened now: they were all frightened, gathering into little knots to discuss the fourth note, the note that had been found in Inspector Cockrill’s pocket. Cockrill had given it more or less serious attention. It was all probably a ‘have’ but there was a ring about it too grim for the threats to be entirely light-heartedly joking; nor when he looked round the little group of persons who could have planted the notes, were many of them really on terms for that kind of joking. Half apologetically, he took the scrap of paper along to Scotland Yard. The handwriting experts were full of mights and might-nots, but would say nothing definite. He left the paper with them, and returned to his conference, just keeping in touch now and again with Perpetua, a Perpetua woken now from her cold indifference to a new awareness of life—to an awareness of death, of the threat of approaching death…

  They awaited the day.

  A Thursday and a Friday crept by, and a long weekend; and then suddenly Monday and Tuesday had wings and it was Tuesday night and to-morrow was The Day: and Isabel Drew crouched in a huddle in her bed and gave herself up to sick fear. Supposing after all it isn’t a joke! Suppose one of them is angry with me for something I’ve done—(so many little, mean little, cruel little, long-forgotten things that Isabel might have done!)—suppose they really mean that they’ll kill me! In a couple of hours it would be midnight: it would be To-morrow. It was terribly lonely. On an impulse she reached for the telephone; she would ring up Earl and tell him to come along round, and she would make him some tea, and they could at least talk about their common peril… But Earl had let them cut off his ’phone, the silly fool. She rang up Perpetua instead. ‘Hallo, Peppi.’

  ‘Hallo,’ said Perpetua’s low voice.

  ‘I thought a word between murderees might be comforting: to-morrow being D-day. I’ve tried Earl, but of course his damn ’phone’s cut off. How are you? Scared?’

  ‘I am rather,’ said Perpetua. ‘I went to bed early—but I couldn’t sleep because of thinking about it. You see I—well, I don’t quite know what to do about the exhibition: I mean, I needn’t go down, really, need I? I haven’t got a job there, nobody can force me to go. Just because I usually help Miss Betchley…’

  ‘I think you’re mad to even consider it. Why go and mix yourself up with that crowd? The rest of us are bound to be at the pageant, because we have got jobs there: why not stay home and be safe? After all, whatever happens is bound to happen down there.’

  ‘Unless the—the murderer has that all worked out: and he’s purposely going to let everybody collect down there and then come and—and attack me all alone here at home.’

  ‘What nonsense you do talk,’ said Isabel crossly. But on thinking things over a little, it did occur to one that with Perpetua at Elysium, there was a three to one chance, while with Perpetua at home, the threat would be shared only by Earl and herself. She switched her powers of persuasion abruptly to persuading Peppi that perhaps, after all, it was her duty to go. ‘The Bitchley does count on you now to help behind the scenes: and to-morrow night, of all nights, she’ll be in a flap…’

  ‘Oh, yes, I shall go,’ said Perpetua. ‘It seems a bit sort of mingy to stay away. But it’s rather petrifying, Isabel, isn’t it? I mean people do do these things: one reads about them in the paper…’ By to-morrow night, would they be ‘people in the paper’? Perpetua had been ‘in the paper’ herself before now. (GIRL HE LOVED FAITHLESS, YOUNG SOLDIER KILLS HIMSELF.) She said wretchedly: ‘Of course probably it’s all some silly idea of a joke: but supposing… Supposing…’

  ‘A fine comfort you turned out to be,’ said Isabel crossly. ‘I might just as well have rung up Sugar-Daddy: at least he’d be worried about me. In fact now I come to think of it, I shall ring him: he can take me down to-morrow evening: it’ll be company, anyhow…’ She slammed down the receiver. Silly little f
ool! Just lily-livered, and anyway thinking only of herself. Friends aren’t friends, thought Isabel resentfully. Only acquaintances. When trouble comes, one hasn’t got any friends. As for Sugar-Daddy—well, he more or less had to be a friend, these days, whether he liked it or not. An uneasy sort of relationship, but still… She lifted the receiver again.

  Sugar-Daddy was delighted beyond measure at this sign of grace. Of course he would take her down in the car. They could stop off somewhere on the way perhaps, and have a drink: the bars would be open at half past five… On the other hand, he supposed he ought to be down there at least an hour before the balloon went up. A cup of tea then? And if Isabel wouldn’t mind all that hanging about at Elysian Hall before the pageant began…?

  But supposing after all that it was Edgar Port who was sending those notes? Supposing that all this time his devotion had been just a gag, just some sort of a trick to get her to put her trust in him…? Come to think of it, it had never really been a very convincing devotion: even in the early days, even before—before he had begun to be frightened of her getting in touch with Mrs. Port, even before he had begun that little series of ‘presents’ that would sweeten her into saying that of course she would never give him away to his wife—even before that, it had seemed unconvincing: a sort of silly infatuation, a sort of deliberate fostering of that infatuation, as though in indulging it he were making a pet of himself, rather than of her. Supposing it had all been a ruse to win her confidence? Supposing, on the other hand, that once it had been sincere: but that now the little presents were becoming too much of a burden? That he really believed that in a fit of ‘conscience’ she was in the least likely to approach his wife… She said abruptly that no, after all, she would go down by herself: see him to-morrow, then, at a little before six…? Once more she put down the receiver, and curled herself up in her bed, and lay there, wakeful, while the hours chimed balefully through the long night. Seven people: and she and Perpetua and Earl had received the notes. Only four—and Edgar Port was one of the four—who might have sent them.

  The night passed; and the morning dragged by; and it was five o’clock. She went through the ritual of her toilet in a crawling fear. Tight satin brassiere, tight pink satin pants, flowered silk frock, very light and caressing about her golden curves. She combed her hair into its web of honey, widened her eyes for the mascara, slashed the lipstick across her pouting mouth… Lonely, lonely, lonely… How terribly alone one was, among all one’s friends… She stood herself a taxi down to Elysian Hall. Here and there a few carpenters tinkered desperately; but for the rest the Exhibition was complete. Lights blazed, loudspeakers blared, the rows of houses and cottages and flats and bathrooms and baths stood ready and polished within an inch of their chromium and enamel, on view. The young ladies’ mouths were rounded over their plums, the exhibitors had retired behind the scenes. Tray won of our Slomber nets… You place the chicken in raw… The Clock of Flowers told the slightly incorrect time to the wondering crowd, artificial waterfalls tinkled in gardens that had not been there a day or two ago… At the turnstiles the people shoved and jostled good-temperedly. Isabel, arriving at the latest possible minute so as to spend no undue time upon dangerous ground, displayed her little red ‘Demonstrator’ disc and was permitted to push a way through. She scurried up the long aisles between the Coldio refrigerators and Ohsohot furnaces and Ultra-comfy lavatory seats; the gentlemen on the Downibed stand chi-yacked her as she passed, the red-haired boy on Keepitot plate-racks called to her to skip away later for a drink… She shook her head at them one and all and made like a shot rabbit for the haven of her dingy little dressing room behind the stage. And yet—why there? Would she be safer there? Would she not be running right into danger there? But with the instinct of a wild animal for the shelter of the dark, she scuttled in among the shadowy stalls where the horses moved restlessly shuffling their listless hooves, and so to her room. If only the pageant would begin, she thought: nobody can do anything to me up there in the tower in front of them all. Outside, she heard Miss Betchley’s voice marshalling the knights. ‘Now then, you boys, get a move on, we shall be starting in ten minutes… Mr. Brian, good you’re nearly ready… Mr. Exmouth: good! Ah—Mr. Port! Yes, everything seems to be going quite smoothly; but have you seen Mr. Anderson anywhere? All the rest are here, except Mr. Anderson.’

  Evidently Earl had had the same idea as herself: the less time spent on the danger spot, the better. It was comforting—and yet horribly disturbing—to think that somebody else was frightened too: had also come to think of it as by no means just a joke. There came a nibbling of plump fingers at her door. Sugar-Daddy’s voice called softly: ‘Are you there, my dear?’

  She slid across the room and shot home the bolt. Better to see no one. Better just to keep to herself until it was necessary to cross the Assembly room and run up the inside ladder of her tower. There she would be impregnable. There she would be in view of five thousand people. There she must be safe. The ladder might have been tampered with, of course, the rickety platform made more rickety—but these were things that one could be prepared for, these were dangers one could recognize and understand… She pulled off her silk frock, stepped into the ankle-length silver gown, adjusted the tall pointed hat with the two false plaits hanging on either side of it and the chiffon veil flowing from its tip: and as she dressed, spared a thought for Perpetua and Earl, who also were threatened… Vague, gentle Perpetua, whose dead face had taken on a new look in these last days: but which had passed only from indifference to weariness and strain; and florid, show-off old Earl whom one had known for—was it twenty years?—and knew to be, beneath all that racketty act of his, only a rather simple, not very happy man… Still, he was cutting it a bit fine, only ten minutes more to go, and not here yet. Supposing, Isabel thought with a sudden clutch at her heart, he never did come to Elysium at all that night! And that Peppi stayed away also! After all—it was flying in the face of danger to be here at all: why on earth hadn’t she thought of staying away herself, what on earth did this silly old pageant matter compared with the threat to her life…? And if Earl and Perpetua weren’t there—there was only herself left. ‘ISABEL, PERPETUA, ANDERSON—WHICH OF THEM WILL BE THE FIRST TO DIE?’

  And then she heard Perpetua’s voice: and Perpetua was saying soothingly: ‘But Earl’s here, Miss Betchley… He’s changing into his armour.’

  Isabel pushed open her door abruptly and walked out swiftly into the Assembly room. Perpetua hurried after her as she began to thrust her way through the jostling knights. ‘Oh, Isabel—I thought you’d like to know: I’ve got Inspector Cockrill down here with me. He’s out in front.’ She was panting a little. ‘He took a bit of persuading: I thought I’d never get him here in time.’ She threw a glance over her shoulder. ‘I’m so late! Must go and help poor Betchley with these maddening knights.’ She slipped away.

  The knights were pouring into the big room now, jockeying for their positions in the line. Brian sat quietly on his white horse, waiting to lead them through the arch. Isabel scurried through the throng, alert for the least sign of attack from any of the mail-clad figures; in their silly tin armour with their helmets and flowing velvet cloaks it was impossible to tell who anybody was: and now, if ever, was the moment to strike… Through the jostling crowd and into the haven of her dim, silent, tower. She paused inside the entrance, looking up the tall ladder, her hand at her heaving bosom in a gesture which for once had nothing in it of coquetry: and with one foot on the bottom rung, was suddenly electrified into immobility. Half-way up the ladder, was something that, to her excited imagination, shone with an evil glitter in the light from the open door.

  Cockrill, left to himself, took up a favourable position in front of the stage and waited with bored impatience for the fun to begin. The English and their pageants! Nobody enjoyed them, nobody ever knew what they were intended to represent but it was in the national character to produce and witness them: and if one was anybody it was expected of one that one
should attend. In North Kent, Cockie assiduously attended all the local pageants, standing craning his neck in the crowd and always at a loss to know what in the world was going on. To come to London, where he was so pointedly nobody, and yet still have to go to see one seemed the very height of indignity. He concentrated all his attention on the hopeless task of rolling a tidy cigarette: and looked up swiftly as a blare of trumpets drew the attention of the crowd to the deserted stage. Lights sprang up among the ferns and hydrangeas tastefully banked up and about its base, footlights flooded the castellated wall and the archway through the tower: Mr. Port’s ‘arras’ across the archway screened the waiting knights in the Assembly room from the public gaze. The chattering of the crowd died down to a hum: something was about to happen on the stage, and whatever it was, was free! What had been a sea of variegated blobs, now became a sea of pink faces all turned towards the tower. The trumpets blared again, the footlights bathed the scene in radiance, dimming in contrast the fierce light of the vast auditorium below: and to strains of highly martial music, the bead curtain across the archway was pushed back, and the Knights of England, Home and Beauty came riding through.

  The white charger walked at a stately pace: the silver armour gleamed, the silver standard held the white banner high, the long cloak flowed out over the horse’s hindquarters in folds of glossy velvet. Slowly down the centre of the stage till, through the upthrust visor, Cockrill could see the blue eyes of the rider gazing down at him: then it turned abruptly and swung off to the right. The train of ten black horses followed, swinging off to right and left, meeting again beneath the tower, dispersing to their stations for the ‘hollow square’, the White Knight in the centre: and so on into the movements that Charity had plotted out with her little pin-men all those weeks ago. The velvet cloaks billowed, the tinny spurs jangled, the knights sat squarely in their saddles, their mailed right hands glued to their standards to hold themselves steady, their left clutching the heavily decorated reins. The Grand Chain was coming, and in the Grand Chain the horses had actually to be urged to a highly dangerous gallop! Corner to corner… Set to partners… And finally, slowly stepping but gathering pace until the whole was conducted at a fine jingle-jangling, saddle-creaking, cloak-flowing, bucketing canter, into the twirling, in-and-out gyrations of the Grand Chain. The crowd applauded, the music changed again with a warning note, the pace slowed down, and the knights took up their final positions in the Tableau of Homage to heaven only knew what: eight in a semicircle round the curved edge of the stage, staring out through their up thrust visors at the crowd; one on either side of the tower, blue cloak to the left, red cloak to the right, their horses’ forefeet posed patiently on their wooden blocks; the white horse backed to the audience, facing into the arch, its rider’s white cloak flowing in its soft velvet folds across its rump and half-way down its gently swishing tail. The floodlights shifted, gradually ascending to the darkened window of the tower: and slowly, sickeningly, Isabel’s body toppled over the low railing of the balcony and landed with a horrible, soft, slightly scrunching thud on the floor below.