“I know,” David Stratton rejoined gloomily. “It was a bit awkward, for me as well as Ronald, but I couldn’t blame you. After all, as I pointed out to her, you might have done a good deal more than refuse to receive her here if you’d been really vindictive.”
“That’s what I told Ronald.”
Roger shifted in his chair.
“I wouldn’t mind if there was an atom of truth in any of it,” said Dr. Mitchell, with sudden violence. “But these damnable lies …”
“I know. It’s the way it takes her.”
“Personally,” broke in Jean Mitchell’s small, clear voice, “I don’t see that it matters. Everyone must know they’re lies. “What I can’t understand is why she wants to do it.”
“Oh, she’s a pathological case, darling. There’s no doubt about that. But really, Celia, something ought to be done about her. She’s a danger to the community.”
“Yes. But what? That’s the trouble.”
“I don’t know, yet.” Dr. Mitchell folded his arms and looked, for a pleasant man, quite formidable. “But I can promise you, she’s going to be sorry she started monkeying with Jean. That’s a little bit too much.”
Roger took a notebook out of his pocket and began jotting down names. Among so many strangers, with so many different relationships, he found it difficult to keep his head clear.
Still the other side did not appear. Only suppressed gigglings, and an occasional hoot of laughter outside the door, testified to their continued existence.
“But why don’t you leave her, David?”
“Money, of course. If only I could afford to keep her apart from me, I’d do it like a shot.”
“Can’t Ronald help at all?”
“No.” David Stratton was firm enough about that.
“It’s damnable.” Margot Stratton stared ahead as if racking her brains for something that would help.
Celia Stratton turned to Roger.
“I quite forgot to ask you, Mr. Sheringham. Did you find everything in your room that you wanted?”
“Everything, thank you,” said Roger politely.
II
Roger’s list of his fellow-guests and hosts ran as follows:
Ronald Stratton . . . (Prince in Tower)
David Stratton . . . Ditto
Ena (Mrs. David) Stratton . . (Mrs. Pearcey)
Celia Stratton . . . (Mary Blandy)
Margot (ex-Mrs. Ronald) Stratton (?)
Mike Armstrong . . . (?)
Dr. Chalmers . . . (Undiscovered murderer)
Mrs. Chalmers . . . (Mrs. Maybrick)
Dr. Mitchell . . . (Jack the Ripper)
Mrs. Mitchell . . . (Madeleine Smith)
Mr. Williamson . . . (Crippen)
Mrs. Williamson . . . (Miss Le Neve)
Mrs. Lefroy . . . (Marquise de Brinvilliers)
Colin Nicolson . . . (Palmer)
These, Roger considered, comprised all Ronald Stratton’s intimates, and seemed to fall into a group of their own. There were a dozen or so more people present, all from the neighbourhood, but they kept more or less to themselves, and Stratton did not try to mingle the two groups. The doctors, of course, were local men, and they formed something in the nature of a connecting link between the two lots. Roger had been told by Stratton that the local group would probably leave early, and the house-party would then keep it up.
There were about half a dozen of the latter. The Williamsons, who lived in London, were staying the night, and so was Colin Nicolson, who was the assistant editor of a weekly paper for which Stratton did a good deal of work, and whom Roger had known and liked for some years. Mrs. Lefroy was staying, too, and Celia Stratton had come down to act as hostess for her brother. Roger himself had also been asked for the night.
When the charades were over at last, Roger once more tried to effect contact between himself and Ena Stratton, and once again he was foiled. Ronald himself had swung his sister-in-law on to the floor, to set the dancing in train again. Glancing round in a baffled way, Roger saw that Agatha Lefroy was sitting alone on a couch at one end of the room, and joined her.
“Do you mind if we don’t dance?” he said. “I used to be considered rather good before the war, but somehow the old zest seems to have gone.”
“Of course not,” Mrs. Lefroy smiled. “Let’s stop here. Anyhow, I’d much rather talk than dance. What shall we talk about?”
“Ena Stratton,” Roger said promptly.
He was hardly surprised when even Mrs. Lefroy reacted in the usual way to that name. Her smile did not waver, she did not start or turn pale, but precisely the same guarded air showed itself to Roger’s observation as she replied, brightly enough:
“She interests you?”
“She does. Decidedly. And I haven’t even met her yet. Tell me about her.”
“I don’t know that there’s much to tell you, is there? In what way, particularly?”
“Any way. I won’t ask about her marriage, because you said that was a secret. Just tell me why you’re afraid of her.”
“Afraid of her?” Mrs. Lefroy echoed indignantly. “I’m not in the least afraid of her.”
“Yes, you are,” Roger said calmly. “Why?—or shall I ask Ronald?”
“No, don’t ask Ronald,” Mrs. Lefroy said quickly, and added, rather inconsequently: “Anyhow, he wouldn’t tell you.”
“Nor will you?” said Roger, half lightly and half seriously.
“You’re really rather inquisitive, Mr. Sheringham, aren’t you?”
“Intolerably. I can’t help it. You see, I scent a mystery, and I can’t bear mysteries.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Lefroy slowly, “there’s no mystery about Ena.”
“And yet,” Roger hazarded, “quite a number of people in this room cordially detest her.”
“I can quite believe it,” Mrs. Lefroy smiled. “She’s really rather a dangerous woman.”
“How can such a totally unimportant person be dangerous?” Roger asked, following the young woman in question round the room with his eyes. “And yet you’re the second person within the last half-hour whom I’ve heard call her that. I suppose I ought not to ask you what she’s been doing to Dr. Mitchell, and yet I wish I could.”
“Oh, I’ll tell you that. She’s been spreading a ridiculous lie about his wife.”
“Why?”
Mrs. Lefroy shrugged her shoulders. “She seems to enjoy doing that sort of thing.”
“Which sort of thing? Lying for lying’s sake, or doing an inoffensive person a bad turn?”
“Neither, exactly. I think it’s really an opportunity to make herself appear important. That’s her idée fixe. She must be the centre of things, the wonder of all beholders. Philip Chalmers—Ronald’s great friend, you know—says she’s a pronounced ego-maniac. No doubt that’s as good a term for her as any.”
“Williamson has a better one. He just says simply that she’s mad.”
Mrs. Lefroy laughed. “In a way, I suppose, she is. Anyhow, is that all you wanted to know?”
“Not quite. What’s your own private trouble with her? Don’t tell me, of course,” Roger added kindly, “if you don’t want to.”
“I shouldn’t dream of it. But I really don’t mind, as it seems to worry you so much. I don’t trust her, that’s all.”
“Don’t trust her?”
“Ronald’s been rather indiscreet in calling us engaged,” Mrs. Lefroy explained. “It’s all right, of course, in the family and so on, or should be, but, as I told you, I haven’t got my absolute yet. Well, David warned Ronald this afternoon that Ena’s been hinting that she could make trouble with the King’s Proctor if she wanted to.”
Roger whistled.
“Why should she want to?”
Mrs. Lefroy looked a little uncomfortable. “Oh, there are reasons, no doubt, from her point of view.”
“Reasons for making trouble?”
“Reasons why she might be sorry to see Ronald marry again.”
“Oh! Yes, I see.”
It did not need very much perspicacity on Roger’s part to guess something of what those reasons might be. Ronald and Margot Stratton had had no children. David and Ena had a small boy. As Roger knew, the boy was Ronald’s godson. Ronald, who had a flair for business as well as for writing detective-stories, had made his money, not inherited it. It seemed likely that, as things had been, he might have made his godson his heir, with perhaps a life-interest for David. If he married again, another heir might present itself. It was decidedly in Ena Stratton’s interests that her brother-in-law should not marry again.
“Yes, I see,” Roger repeated. “Quite like a plot for one of Ronald’s own detective-stories, isn’t it?”
By Mrs. Lefroy’s smile he knew that his guess had been right. “So Ronald says himself. He looks on it as a joke,” she added, “but it might be quite serious. An unscrupulous woman would do things that an equally unscrupulous man might boggle at.”
“Yes that’s quite true. Is she unscrupulous?”
“Perfectly, I should think,” said Mrs. Lefroy with resignation.
There was a short silence.
Then Roger looked puzzled. “I don’t know much about these things, but would it really worry the King’s Proctor to know that you were going to marry Ronald when you’re free? I know the King’s Proctor is very easily worried, but that does seem almost hypersensitive.”
Mrs. Lefroy looked at the tip of her neat slipper. “Once he begins making special inquiries, who knows what might happen to him?” she said cryptically.
“Collusion, like a worm i’ the bud, might feed on his damask cheek, as my friend, Lord Peter Wimsey, might say,” Roger nodded, with sympathetic understanding. “Shall I strangle the woman for you?”
“I wish to heaven someone would,” said Mrs. Lefroy, with sudden bitterness. “We all do.”
Roger examined his fingernails. “If I were Mistress Ena Stratton,” he thought to himself, “I’d watch my step.”
III
In the end the introduction was effected with complete ease.
“Oh, Ena,” said Ronald Stratton, “I don’t think you’ve met Roger Sheringham yet, have you? Mr. Sheringham, my sister-in-law.”
Ena Stratton looked at Roger with large eyes swimming with discipleship, weltschmerz, humble pride, and all the other things with which a high-souled young woman’s eyes should swim when confronted with a successful author. Roger saw that these proper emotions were being registered for him almost automatically.
“How do you do?” he said, without any weltschmerz at all.
Ena Stratton was a young woman of about twenty-seven. She was moderately tall, of good, athletic-looking figure, with dark, almost black hair, which she wore cut in a straight fringe across her already rather low forehead; her hands and feet were on the large side. Her face was neither exactly ugly, nor exactly pretty. It was a hag-ridden face, Roger thought, with big grey eyes whose promise was counteracted by the wide, thin-lipped cruelty of her mouth. When she smiled, the corners of her mouth seemed in some curious way to be drawn downwards rather than up. There were innumerable wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and two deeply graven lines running down from her nostrils. Her complexion was sallow.
Judging by appearances, Roger thought, not a nice person. He wondered why David Stratton had married her. Presumably she had looked nicer then. That neurotic type stamps its own face very early.
“Shall we dance?” said Roger.
“I’d rather have a drink. I haven’t had one for at least half an hour.” She spoke slowly, and her voice was not unpleasant, rather deep and with a particularly clear enunciation. She managed to convey that for a woman of her sophistication not to have had a drink for at least half an hour was quite too ridiculous.
Roger piloted her to the bar, and asked what she would have.
“A whisky, please. And don’t drown it.”
Roger gave her a stiff whisky-and-soda, and she tasted it.
“I think I’ll have a little more whisky in this, please. I like it almost neat, you know.”
“Ass of a woman !” thought Roger. “Why does she imagine it’s clever to like her whisky neat, and a good deal too much of it at that?” He handed her the amended drink.
“Thanks. Yes, that’s better. I feel like getting drunk to-night.”
“Do you?” said Roger lamely.
“Yes. I don’t often feel like that, but I do to-night. Really, sometimes getting drunk seems the only thing worthwhile in life. Don’t you ever feel like that?”
“Only in private,” said Roger, rather prudishly. He noticed that she was repeating a set of remarks which he had overheard earlier, almost word for word. Evidently Mrs. Stratton was extremely proud of her own appreciation of intemperance.
“Oh,” she expostulated, “there’s no point in getting drunk in private.”
In other words, thought Roger, she admits to being an exhibitionist. Well, that was probably exactly what she was: an exhibitionist. And rather a crude one at that.
Aloud he said:
“By the way, I really must congratulate you on your dress, Mrs. Stratton. It’s extremely good. Just like Mrs. Pearcey’s in Madame Tussaud’s. I recognised her at once. How very brave of you to come as a charwoman, hat and all, against such competition.”
“Competition? Oh, you mean Celia, and Mrs. Lefroy. But you see, I’m a character-actress. Costume parts don’t interest me at all. Anyone can do a costume part, don’t you think?”
“Can they?”
“Oh, yes, I think so. Of course one of my best parts actually was a costume one. Did you see ‘Sweet Nell of Old Drury’? No? It was a wonderful part; but of course it was character, not just being able to wear the dresses, that I got it on.”
“I didn’t know you’d been on the stage.”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Stratton sighed dramatically. “I was on the stage for a time.”
“Before you were married, of course?”
“No, since. But I’d studied for it before. I didn’t find,” said Mrs. Stratton earnestly, “that marriage gave me the fulfilment I expected from it.”
“And the stage did?”
“For a time. But even that didn’t satisfy me altogether. But I managed to find fulfilment in the end. Can you imagine what it was that brought it? I expect you can, Mr. Sheringham.”
“I can’t think.”
“Oh, and I did think you’d understand. The women in your books are always so very true. Why, having a baby. It’s the only possible way really to fulfil oneself, Mr. Sheringham,” said Mrs. Stratton with much intensity.
“Then I look like remaining unfulfilled,” said Roger ribaldly.
Mrs. Stratton smiled tolerantly. “For a woman, I meant. A man can fulfil himself in so many ways, of course; can’t he?”
“Oh, yes,” Roger agreed. He was wondering what people like Mrs. Stratton really meant by that can’t word, if indeed they meant anything at all. In any case, he had felt as yet no urge to be fulfilled in any of the many ways.
“Your writing, for instance,” Mrs. Stratton added, rather helpfully.
“Yes, yes, of course. That fulfils me all right. Shall I put your glass down?”
“That would be rather wasting an opportunity, wouldn’t it?” said Mrs. Stratton, with ponderous kittenishness.
As Roger poured out the drink he pondered on the determination with which Mrs. Stratton had dragged into the conversation, within three minutes, what were evidently the two most important achievements of her life: that she had been on the stage, and that she had had a baby. It was plain, too, that in Ena Stratton’s opinion these two events reflected the greatest possible credit on Ena Stratton.
What Roger himself thought reflected credit on Ena Stratton was that in spite of the amount of whisky she had apparently absorbed during the evening, she showed no sign at all of approaching the only thing really worth while in life.
“Thank you,” she said, as he gave her the replenished glass. “Let’s go up o
n the roof, shall we? I feel stifled here, in this crowd. I want to look at the stars. Would you mind frightfully?”
“I should love to look at the stars,” said Roger.
Carrying their glasses, they went up the little staircase that led to the big flat roof. In the middle of it the three straw figures still dangled from their heavy gallows. Mrs. Stratton gave them a tolerant smile.
“Ronald is really rather childish sometimes, isn’t he, Mr. Sheringham?”
“It’s a great thing to be able to be childish sometimes,” Roger maintained.
“Oh, yes, I know. I can be absurdly childish when the fit takes me, of course.”
The edge of the roof was bounded by a stout railing. The two leaned their elbows on it and gazed down into the blackness that shrouded the back kitchens below. Mrs. Stratton had apparently forgotten that she wanted to gaze upwards, at the stars.
The April night was mild and fine.
“Oh dear,” sighed Mrs. Stratton, “I’m an awful fool, I expect.”
Roger deliberated between a polite “Oh, no,” a blunt “Why?” or a not very tactful but encouraging “Yes?”
“I feel so terribly introspective to-night,” pursued his companion, before he could decide on any of these choices.
“Do you?” he said feebly.
“Yes. Do you often feel introspective, Mr. Sheringham?”
“Not very often. At least, I try not to encourage it.”
“It’s terrible,” said Mrs. Stratum, with gloomy relish.
“It must be.”
There was a pause, for contemplation of the terribleness of Mrs. Stratton’s introspection.
“One can’t help asking oneself, is there really any use in life?”
“A dreadful question,” said Roger, keeping his end up as well as he could.
“I’ve had a baby, I suppose I could say I’ve had some success on the stage, I’ve got a husband and a home—but is it worthwhile?”
“Ah!” said Roger sadly.
Mrs. Stratton moved a little nearer to him, so that their elbows touched. “Sometimes I think,” she said sombrely, “that the best thing to do would be to put an end to it all.”
Roger did not reply that Mrs. Stratton would apparently find a number of persons in hearty agreement with this sentiment. He merely remarked, in a suitably hushed voice: “Oh, come.”
Jumping Jenny Page 3
