Dancers in Mourning (11 page)

‘Besides,' he added with great seriousness, ‘it's all a question of time.'

‘You're telling me,' said Sock grimly as he took up the written sheet.

‘Oh, for God's sake!' said Sutane.

He was sitting in an arm-chair over a fire which Miss Finbrough was coaxing to life. Linda stood forlornly behind his chair and Uncle William sat blinking quietly in a corner, his round pink face a little bluish and his podgy hands folded on his stomach.

The two men by the bureau gave up their wrangling instantly.

‘You go to bed, Jimmy,' said Poyser. ‘You've got to keep fit, old man.'

Sock looked up, his young face lightened by a wry smile.

‘The whole outfit depends on you, James,' he said regretfully.

‘I'll take him up,' murmured Miss Finbrough, as though she had been speaking of a child.

Sutane looked round at them all, a flicker of genuine amusement appearing on his sad, intelligent face.

‘What d'you think I am?' he said. ‘Go away, Finny. I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself. I'm not mental. I may be a dancer of genius, I may make a few thousands a year, I may have just killed Chloe Pye, poor girl, but I'm not a goddamned kid. Oh, hullo, Campion, how did you get on with the doctor?'

It was astonishing how his pleasant nervous voice could take on such authority. They were all quiet as Campion came in.

The thin young man smiled at them faintly and gave a guarded account of his visit.

‘He's not an unattractive old boy,' he said finally, trying to sound reassuring. ‘It was the bathing-dress that got him down. Once I'd put it to him that we were all perfectly normal but busy people he began to be much more tractable. He'll perform an autopsy, of course. I – er – I don't think he's quite so set on suicide as he was.'

‘Good man,' said Sutane. ‘Good man. I appreciate that, Campion. Sock told me about the car. That was amusing. I shouldn't have thought of it on the spur of the moment. You'll have to stay and see us through, you know.'

‘What's that? What's that?'

Poyser was interested and, much to Mr Campion's embarrassment, his little subterfuge was explained in detail. He stood by, looking at them all uncomfortably while they discussed the mechanics of the move with schoolboyish satisfaction. It occurred to him then what a pack of children they were, all of them. Their enthusiasm, their eagerness to escape from the main shocking reality, their tendency to make everything more bearable by dramatising it; it was the very stuff of youth.

He glanced at Linda. She alone had reacted to the tragedy in a way he fully understood. As she stood behind Sutane's chair, her arms hanging limply at her sides and her face pallid, she looked exhausted, ready to sleep on her feet.

Sock went out into the hall and came back in a disreputable leather coat. He was as brisk as if he had only just risen.

‘Well, I'll get going then,' he said. ‘I'll trot round and see everybody I can find. We can't possibly keep it quiet. We all know that, don't we? But I'll put in a delicate word here and there and I'll come down in the morning and meet the boys when they turn up. You go to bed, Jimmy. Leave it all to us.'

He went out and Sutane turned in his chair and glanced at his wife.

‘Mercer had better put up these two,' he said. ‘Where is he?'

‘I left him in the little music-room,' said Uncle William, coming to life with a jerk. ‘I'll go and find him.'

He paddled across the room and came back with the composer. Mercer glanced round gravely.

‘I knew I couldn't do anything,' he said, ‘so I hung about in there to be out of the way. Was that right? What happened? Police gone away?'

‘Yes.' Dick Poyser closed the bureau. ‘Yes. They'll be back in the morning. There'll be an inquest. You'll have to attend that, Jimmy. Would you like to cut out the show for a day or so? Let Konrad take it.'

Sutane frowned. ‘What do you think …?' he began unhappily.

Linda interrupted. ‘It's three o'clock in the morning,' she said. ‘He must sleep. Talk tomorrow.'

Miss Finbrough sniffed.

‘There's a lot to be said for that,' she put in so sharply that Campion looked at her. She was resentful, he noticed, and it occurred to him that she did not like any other woman to give a thought to Sutane's physical well-being, a province which she evidently thought entirely her own.

‘Where is Konrad?' Campion enquired.

‘Oh, he went to bed.' Poyser laughed as he spoke. ‘Konnie has to have his sleep, whoever gets killed. He's got his rally to think of.'

Linda turned to Mercer.

‘I wondered if you'd put up Uncle William and Mr Campion?' she said. ‘They didn't intend to stay, you see, and there isn't a room ready.'

‘Yes, I'd like that.' Mercer spoke as though the suggestion had been put forward as a measure to spare him any loneliness. ‘We'll push off fairly soon, shall we? Getting late.'

‘Good idea,' agreed Uncle William. ‘Think better in the morning.' He took Linda's hand and held it. ‘A terrible thing, my dear,' he said. ‘A terrible thing. But we're here, you know, Campion and I. Do anything we can. You can rely on us. Try to sleep and forget all about it until the morning. Things never seem so bad in the morning. I've noticed that all my life.'

It was not an inspired speech but its intention was unmistakable. Linda smiled at him gratefully.

‘You're a dear,' she said. ‘Good night.'

Mercer looked round him.

‘I had a coat,' he began. ‘No, that's right, I didn't. I'd better take one out of the cloak-room, hadn't I, Jimmy? It gets damned cold at this time of night.'

He went out to pick up the borrowed garment and Poyser giggled. Like many very small men he had a curious rattling laugh with a gurgle in it which is usually associated with childhood.

‘What a bloke!' he murmured. ‘Well, I shall sleep for a couple of hours and go up in the dawn.'

Uncle William touched Campion's sleeve.

‘Come on, my boy,' he said. ‘Pick up our host in the hall, don't you know.'

The three men did not talk as they strode through the dark garden, but when they crossed the bridge Mercer halted and demanded to be shown the scene of the accident. Campion glanced at him curiously. He made an odd figure in the half-light, his top-heavy shoulders straining the seams of Sutane's overcoat, while his attitude towards the affair, which was that of a disinterested but privileged spectator, was disconcerting.

‘It must have been suicide,' he pronounced judicially when Campion had given him the bare facts. ‘I shan't say so, of course, if they don't want it known, but any fool can see it must have been intentional. An extraordinary thing for a woman to do. Fancy going to a stranger's house for the weekend and calmly breaking her neck there, making trouble and inconvenience for everyone. Still, I'm not surprised. I thought she was definitely queer in the living-room this morning.'

He moved on and they followed him willingly. It was chilly in the early dawn and Uncle William's teeth were chattering, while Mr Campion, for private reasons, had no desire to talk about Chloe Pye's death.

Mercer drawled on. His articulation was maddeningly bad and he appeared to be thinking aloud.

‘The woman wasn't even a dancer,' he said. ‘I saw her once. No talent at all. Poyser told me she was thundering awful on Saturday night. Why did Jimmy put her in the show? Do you know?'

He did not seem to expect an answer, but went mumbling on until they came through an immense kitchen-garden to his house on the edge of the estate.

Campion was aware of a long narrow brick front silhouetted against the sky, and then Mercer kicked open the door and they passed through a stone-flagged, oak-beamed hall into a vast studio or music-room which took up at least half of the entire building.

Campion's first impression of that extraordinary room was of incongruity, his second of extravagance. A remarkable wireless set took up the whole of one wall. It was an extraordinary contraption which looked as if it might have been designed by Heath Robinson in the first place and afterwards allowed to grow, in Virginia creeper fashion, over everything which happened to lie in its path.

A huge concert Steinway took up the centre of the floor and there was one superb arm-chair.

The rest of the room was pure chaos. Piles of dusty papers lurked in every corner, books lay about in wild disorder, and the exquisite Cantonese shawl which covered the wall above the fireplace was dirty and had been badly scorched.

Mercer moved a heap of papers and wireless parts from a side table and produced a tray with a tantalus and glasses from beneath them.

‘Help yourselves. I don't drink at night,' he said, and threw himself into the arm-chair, only to get out of it again at once. ‘This damned coat is tight,' he said, peeling it off and throwing it on the floor as if he had a grievance against it. ‘I hate tight clothes.'

Uncle William helped himself to a stiff drink and insisted on mixing one for Mr Campion. They stood leaning on the mantelshelf while Mercer lounged in the chair and regarded them, his light eyes sombre.

‘It happens very soon – death, I mean,' he said solemnly. ‘There was a woman we didn't know and didn't particularly want to know. She was crude and noisy and blasted ugly, and now she's dead. Where's she gone?'

Uncle William coughed into his glass and his plump pink face was embarrassed.

‘Mustn't be morbid, my boy,' he said. ‘Very sad, and all that. Shockin'. Got to face it.'

Mercer looked surprised.

‘Good God, you don't believe all that, do you?' he said with a superiority which was somehow adolescent but none the less irritating because of that. ‘Sad … shocking … they're just words. I was thinking as we came along tonight how extraordinary it was that she should have gone so quickly. You'd think some of her would remain. That awful teetering laugh, for instance. I mean you'd think the things that made her the highly coloured piece she was would disappear one at a time at least, not all go out bang, like turning out a switch. It's a curious thing, that. I never noticed it before.'

Uncle William stared at him as if he suspected his sanity.

‘My dear feller, get to bed,' he said. ‘You're shaken up. We all are.'

‘Shaken up?' Mercer was indignant. ‘I'm on to an idea. I'm not shaken up. Why should I be? I didn't even know the woman and if I had I probably shouldn't have liked her. Her death doesn't affect me at all. It's nothing to do with me. It's nothing to do with any of us. I think Jimmy's making too much fuss about it. After all, she only fell under his car. He couldn't help hitting her. Good heavens, there's nothing morbid about me! I was only thinking of the facts of the case. This morning she was a howling nuisance about the house, so I couldn't help noticing her peculiarities. Now all that has just gone. Where to? There's an idea in it. See what I mean? It's a concrete idea. You could work it into a number, even. “
Out in the dark, where my arms cannot hold you
.” See the sort of thing. That's how these songs get written. Something occurs to one and starts a train of thought.'

‘I should like to go to bed,' said Uncle William heavily.

Mercer frowned. ‘I think you're right,' he said regretfully. ‘One must sleep. It's a frightful waste of time. A stupidly arranged business. Why not let us live half the time and keep it light always instead of this mucking about, going to bed and getting up again and shaving. It's waste.'

Campion eyed him narrowly, but there was no trace of affectation in his dark heavy face. He was obviously perfectly sincere. The belief in an omnipotent intelligence which his argument implied was so unexpected and out of character that Campion was at a loss to account for it until the simple truth dawned upon him. Mercer did not think at all in the accepted sense of the word. Ideas occurred to him and engendered other ideas. But the process which linked any two of them was a dark procession taking place in some subconscious part of the brain.

That his efforts at constructive thought were childish was made apparent by his next remark.

‘There's no really good rhyme to “hold you” except “enfold you”, is there?' he said. ‘It's a rotten language. I must get Peter Dill on to the lyric. I think I may do that song. It's got possibilities, all that “where are you” business, “so near and yet so far away”. '

‘That fellow's insane,' said Uncle William as the door of the large bedroom which they were to share closed behind them some minutes later. ‘Hope the sheets are aired.'

There were three beds in the large old-fashioned room, and he opened them all solemnly before giving a considered opinion on the two best. Mercer had indicated the door of their room casually as they came upstairs and it was Uncle William who had demanded and finally obtained pyjamas for them both.

He sat up in the bed he had chosen, his white curls brushed upward and his face as pink and shining as a newly bathed cherub's, and sniffed.

‘Money,' he said as though he detected its odour. ‘Lots of money but no decent spendin'. Feller probably never considers his bank-book one way or another. Your bed comfortable?'

‘Very,' said Campion absently. ‘It's a patent of some sort.'

‘Most likely.' Uncle William did not sound approving. ‘These wealthy, careless fellers get all kinds of things wished on 'em. Salesmen come round to the door.'

‘Not with beds, surely?'

‘With anythin'.' The old man spoke with the unanswerable conviction of one who knows. ‘They get at the servants if they can't find anyone better. There are servants here, I suppose?'

‘Sure to be.' Campion spoke mechanically, his mind occupied by the delicate problem of Chloe Pye's death and his own attitude concerning it. He had never withheld vital information before and his sudden decision to depart from his usual impartiality bothered him considerably. After all, a woman had been killed, and presumably by one of the people with whom he had spent the day. It was a situation commanding thought.