Dance to Your Daddy (Mrs Bradley) Page 5

  ‘All right. You’re only storing up trouble for yourself, but I suppose you must have your own way.’ She made an attempt to smile, and added, in a light and playful tone, ‘You’re a very wicked old man!’

  Dame Beatrice, who had been casually working at an indeterminate piece of knitting, dropped it on the rug as the tea-trolley made its noisy approach to them across the tiled floor.

  ‘How nice to have a cup of tea,’ she said. What she thought was a different matter. It was that, in this particular household, even impudent servants had to be conciliated.

  (3)

  Dame Beatrice that night wrote to Laura.

  ‘The situation here is fascinating, macabre and in many ways incredible. I am living in a world of Sheridan Le Fanu, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins and the Brontés. Imagine – a simple matter for a romantic such as yourself – a house inhabited by a smiling villain, a light-of-love who calls him her uncle, a sinister manservant, two country maidens of unblemished character, and an heiress who is permitted to wear nothing but fancy dress for fear she will elude the villain and his paramour and make her escape from their clutches!

  ‘Of course, I do not know how much I should believe of the victim’s story, but I have so little liking for her (alleged) persecutors that, when you have leisure to spare from attendance upon Eiladh, I wish you would make a few enquiries for me.

  ‘I want to know details of the Will of a certain Felix Napoleon Lestrange, who died in April, 1966. I do not know where he lived, but, with that sufficiently unusual name, identification should be a reasonably simple matter.

  ‘You will wish to know what has befallen me since my arrival in this house. I was made welcome with an effusiveness which aroused my suspicions. My bedroom, which, I have been informed, must also be my consulting-room, has had an interior wall breached so that a foot-square hole communicates with the adjoining room. Any conversations I may have with my patient, therefore, can be overheard. I have circumvented this invasion of our privacy, so far, by taking the patient out in my car and holding a conversation with her during the drive. We went to Swanage, and were followed. This added to the general impression of what I feel sure you would refer to as Rosamund being trapped in the Den of the Secret Nine. I feel that my move to talk with my patient in private has scarcely found favour with her captors, who were most anxious to accompany us on our outing, a policy with which I found myself unable to agree. Their attempt to follow us was indicative, I thought, of their state of mind.

  ‘I have also discovered why I was sent for at this particular time when, according to Romilly’s own statement, it would have been better, from the patient’s point of view, to have called me in a year or more ago, but, when I have mastered the contents of the Will, I shall know whether my interpretation of the evidence is justified and what is the best course to pursue. My patient appears to have no idea of my identity. I have been recommended to her, it seems, under the name of Professor Beatrice Adler. I mention this because, if what she has told me is correct, something in the terms of Felix Napoleon’s bequest may surprise you.

  ‘I would not trouble you so soon did I not think (as she herself does) that my patient is in extreme danger either of death or (which appears to be my rôle) found incapable of managing her affairs and so losing all control of her fortune. I hasten to assure you that I myself am in no danger whatsoever. I am thought far too valuable to be liquidated, and George, the good, reliable fellow, is alive to the nuances (if I may put it in that way) of the situation as they strike both of us at present, and is prepared to cope with anything untoward which may crop up.’

  Having closed and stamped her letter, Dame Beatrice descended to the great hall with the intention of walking to the end of the drive and putting it into Galliard Hall’s own post office collecting box, a neat affair affixed to the outside of the wall which abutted on to the road. She had reached the hall door when she was intercepted by Romilly.

  ‘You are surely not thinking of taking a walk in the dark, my dear Beatrice?’ he said.

  ‘A walk? No, that is an exaggeration,’ she replied. ‘I am going as far as the postbox at your gate.’

  ‘A letter? Oh, I see. You had better give it to me. We let the dogs loose at night.’

  ‘You are nervous of being burgled?’

  ‘Well, you will admit that this house is in a lonely situation and there are valuables. These pictures, for example’ – he waved his hand towards those which Dame Beatrice had noticed upon her arrival at Galliard Hall – ‘I am told are probably worth several thousand pounds, and I have treasures of my own. Then there are some quite valuable trinkets which, from time to time, I have given Judith. They, like the pictures, are insured, of course, but I should be loth to lose them, and so would she.’

  ‘I am not in the least afraid of dogs,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but as you will not wish me to run the risk of being attacked, you will not be averse to accompanying me as far as the gate.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense! Give the letter to me. I could not dream of allowing you to run your own errands when I can so easily do them for you.’

  Dame Beatrice had not the slightest intention of delivering her letter into his hands. She smiled her reptilian smile and said:

  ‘My only object was to study the stars. It is a singularly clear and beautiful night, but, as late as this, there will be no collection of letters. It will do equally well in the morning. It is only a note to my secretary about some work I want her to do while I am away. Rosamund tells me that she has a birthday coming along. When would that be? I should wish to give her a present.’

  ‘She didn’t tell you when it was?’

  ‘She merely mentioned that she would be twenty-five years old.’

  ‘Oh? Well, it’s on the twenty-ninth of May.’

  ‘I must remember to wear an oak-apple in my hat,’ said Dame Beatrice genially.

  ‘I hope she has not been stuffing you up with any nonsense?’

  ‘What kind of nonsense?’

  ‘Well, she expects to come into this money of hers when she is twenty-five, and she seems to have some manifestly absurd idea that other people are after it, and will stick at very little in order to get hold of it. All part of her aberration, of course, but I just thought I’d warn you not to take her accusations seriously, particularly if they refer to Judith and myself.’

  ‘Of course I shall not pay attention to her fears unless they are well-founded. The twenty-ninth of May? How interesting!’ She gave him a little nod and went upstairs to her room, her letter still in her hand.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Pieds-en-l’Air—Family Gathering

  ‘Oh, master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would never dance again after a pipe and tabor.’

  The Winter’s Tale.

  * * *

  (1)

  The first of the guests arrived on the following day. The morning was damp and misty. Dame Beatrice, returning from dropping her letter into the pillar-box, saw that the hills behind the house were shrouded in grey and that the clouds promised rain before noon.

  She joined Romilly, as before, for breakfast, and remarked that it looked like becoming a wet day. She wondered, she added, whether he was going into Swanage for a morning paper.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m expecting Tancred and some others. No telling when they’re likely to turn up, so I had better stay in, and there’s nobody I can send, unless your man would like to go.’

  ‘Tancred?’

  ‘Yes. He’s a ruddy poet. I can’t stand him, but he had to be asked, you know. Can’t leave anybody out. Matter of fact, I can’t stand any of them. Hubert might be all right, but I don’t know him as well as I know the others. In any case, I have very little use for clergymen.’

  Tancred Provost turned up in a taxi which he had shared with his presumed cousins Humphrey and Binnie. Humphrey, as Judith had indicated, was a somewhat seedy schoolmaster and (Romilly explained to Dame Beatrice when the visitors had been shown to t
heir rooms) must have married Binnie in a fit of scholarly absent-mindedness or in a state of mental aberration, for they were, in all respects, a notably ill-assorted couple, he thought.

  Dame Beatrice herself thought it far more likely that the shabby, ineffectual, unprepossessing man had been tempted into marriage by his partner’s flaxen head, characterless, innocent, half-open mouth and babyish blue eyes which she widened, as though in surprise, in response to every remark which was made to her.

  Tancred was an attractive young man, and it was clear that he was prepared to champion Binnie against her husband’s weak spitefulness, for Humphrey, like most of his kind, compensated for his own shortcomings by making a butt of his dim-witted spouse. What appeared to be a typical exchange between them occurred as soon as they appeared downstairs again.

  ‘Well, Binnie, my dear,’ said Romilly, ‘I expect you are ready for your lunch.’

  ‘I’m dieting, Uncle Romilly. What are we having?’

  ‘Well, really!’ exploded Humphrey. ‘What a question to ask your host!’

  ‘A perfectly proper question, if she’s dieting,’ said Tancred. ‘What are we having for lunch, Uncle Romilly?’

  Humphrey glared at him. Romilly replied, ‘I’ve really no idea. It’s Judith’s pigeon.’

  ‘I wish it could be pigeon,’ said Binnie wistfully. ‘Oh, boy! How I love pigeon pie!’

  ‘I’m afraid it won’t be that. How charming you look, my dear,’ said Romilly. ‘If that’s the result of dieting, I must admit that the sacrifice is worth it.’

  ‘Oh, do you like my legs? These minis do something for legs, don’t they? I mean, if you’ve got nice legs, why shouldn’t you show them off? And a mini does show them off.’

  ‘At twenty-three that might, possibly, be desirable,’ said Humphrey. ‘At thirty-three, no! You seem to forget that you are almost middle-aged, my dear. I’ve told you before, and I tell you again …”

  ‘“He said it very loud and clear; he went and shouted in her ear,”’ said Tancred. ‘Oh, come off it, Humphrey!’ He turned to Binnie, rolled his dark eyes and declaimed:

  ‘Ah, shall I have you only in my dreams,

  And long for sleep, and loathe to be awake?’

  ‘What are you babbling about?’ snarled Humphrey.

  ‘I am quoting the first two lines of a little thing of my own,’ said Tancred. ‘If you talked poetry to the poor girl instead of criticising her legs …’

  ‘I’m not criticising her legs, damn your impudence! I merely stated …’

  ‘We are none of us criticising her legs. We are admiring those, and talking about her diet,’ said Romilly. ‘Ah, here comes Judith. Judith, my dear, Binnie is on a diet. What are we having for lunch?’

  ‘A diet? Oh, dear!’ said Judith. ‘I’m afraid it’s not diet-y food. We’re having Scotch broth, turbot and a saddle of mutton. Binnie could have the turbot, I suppose, but…’

  ‘I shall have it all,’ said Binnie. ‘Heavenly, heavenly lunch! We never get a lunch like that at home, not even on Sundays. I suppose Humphrey doesn’t earn enough money. Perhaps, if they made him a housemaster in a big public school—’

  Humphrey’s snort of fury at this remark was taken by Binnie as agreement, and she seemed about to enlarge upon her theme when Tancred took her by the arm.

  ‘What you want,’ he said, ‘is to hear the rest of that smashing sonnet of mine. It’s all about you. Come along into the hall. The acoustics are better in there. They suit my voice.’

  During lunch the wrangling between the married couple went on. Dame Beatrice could not believe that Binnie’s capacity for exasperating her husband was not the result of a careful study of his vanities and his weaknesses. On the other hand, when Binnie interpolated one of her banal and meaningless remarks, Humphrey contested it with a blunt cruelty which left her, more often than not, in tears, but which induced in Dame Beatrice some sympathy for both partners in such a mésalliance. Matters were not helped by Tancred, who, as though moved by a disposition of kindness towards Binnie, invariably criticised Humphrey’s arguments and, having the better brain and a poniard of wit against which Humphrey’s bludgeonings seemed always to come off second best, reduced his opponent to teeth-grinding fury. At this the imbecile Binnie would leap into the arena with, ‘Oh, Tancred, you beast! Oh, leave him alone! He can’t help it if he isn’t rich and clever!’

  Dame Beatrice wondered which of them Humphrey would murder first. She extricated herself from the unseemly exchanges as soon as she could, stating that she was ready for a session with her patient.

  ‘But it isn’t the right time,’ said Romilly. ‘It’s after tea you are to have her, isn’t it? I thought you said …’

  ‘What’s this about a patient?’ asked Binnie, interrupting him. ‘Can I help with the nursing? I love sick-beds.’

  ‘Yes, you may help,’ said Dame Beatrice, neatly circumventing Humphrey’s comments. ‘Come along up to my room.’

  ‘Oh, but, really, Beatrice!’ protested Romilly. ‘I thought all your sessions were to be held in secret.’

  ‘Yes, so did I,’ she replied. ‘Since, however, a certain picture in my room has indicated that they are not to be so held, I see no reason to refuse Mrs Provost’s reasonable and helpful request.’

  ‘Will you call me Binnie?’ the dumb blonde asked, as they went side by side up the splendid stair.

  ‘With pleasure, my dear.’

  ‘What’s the matter with the patient? Why is she in your room? What did Uncle Romilly mean about secrets? Do you think I could get a divorce? Of course, it would ruin Humphrey’s career, and I love him really, and I haven’t any money of my own, so perhaps I’d better not try.’

  ‘The patient is suffering from slight melancholia brought about by the circumstances in which she finds herself. She is not in my room, but I shall send for her. Your Uncle Romilly thinks her condition is worse than it is, and so he wishes my work here to be kept secret except, of course, from himself and his housekeeper. I do not know whether you could get a divorce, although, if you did, you could claim alimony from your husband, if you had right on your side.’

  ‘Do you mean I could get money without having to work for it? That would be very nice, wouldn’t it? I’d like to model clothes, but you need brains for that, and Humphrey is always telling me I haven’t any.’

  ‘There is no need for you to believe him, is there?’

  ‘Do you know why we’ve come?’

  ‘I thought it was to join in a family gathering.’

  ‘No, not quite. Uncle Romilly has made all sorts of promises to make sure we came along. He has promised Humphrey a headship. There’s an interview. But what would Humphrey do with a wife like me? I wouldn’t know what to say to the parents, and, of course, I’d have to have better clothes. Humphrey is dreadfully mean about clothes. Just look at the rags I’m wearing!’

  ‘I think you look very nice, and, of course, as you pointed out to us, his salary may not be large.’

  ‘I don’t know what it is. He never tells me.’

  Dame Beatrice opened the door of her room to find that Rosamund had already installed herself in it. She gravely introduced the two girls.

  ‘Oh, we’ve met once before,’ said Binnie. ‘You’re not the patient, are you? I’m prettier than you, but I expect you’ve more brains than I have. How oddly you dress! Do you like dressing up? I did, when I was a little girl.’

  ‘So you do now,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Didn’t you tell me you wanted to model clothes?’

  ‘I wish you’d show me your clothes, and let me try them on,’ said Rosamund quickly to Binnie. She was wearing Joan of Arc’s armour again. ‘Could we go to your room?’

  ‘No, you cannot go now,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘We are to have our session at once, instead of after tea.’

  ‘I love my tea,’ said Binnie, ‘and I can see that Rosamund is quite as well as I am. I think I’ll go downstairs.’

  She left them. Rosamund said:

&nbs
p; ‘Is she quite all there?’

  Dame Beatrice did not reply. She scribbled a few words in her notebook and handed it over. Rosamund read the sentences she had written and nodded intelligently.

  ‘War,’ said Dame Beatrice, loudly.

  ‘And peace,’ said Rosamund automatically.

  ‘Peace-makers.’

  ‘Pace-makers. People who help people to win races.’

  ‘Race-antagonism.’

  ‘There was a young lady named Starkey …’

  ‘That, surely, was fusion, not antagonism. Let us begin again.’

  They played out the farce until the sound of a door being shut told Dame Beatrice what she wanted to know.

  ‘I’ll go now,’ said Rosamund, who had heard it, too.

  ‘Do not attempt to do what you had thought of, even if Binnie lends you some clothes,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Very well. I see you know what it was.’

  ‘It was obvious, of course. But that is not the way.’

  ‘You mean I should be found and brought back?’

  ‘I could not prevent it, at this stage. Have a little patience. Why has Romilly invited all these people here?’

  There was a tap at the door.

  ‘So sorry to intrude,’ said Romilly. He went over to Rosamund, who shrank back as he approached her. ‘I think you had better do as you suggested just now, my dear,’ he said. ‘Make yourself scarce. You may join the others downstairs, if you wish to do so, but you must behave yourself, mind. No nonsense and no tantrums, and you are to pay no attention to anything Tancred may say to you. You know which one is Tancred. You met him the last time he came. He will flatter you, maybe, and talk all kinds of nonsense about his poetry, but it is all meaningless. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rosamund sullenly, ‘but I don’t want to go downstairs. I like it here with Professor Adler.’