Dancers in Mourning (6 page)

‘I hate that,' he said vehemently. ‘You'd think they'd use their heads.'

Mr Campion was silent. He thought he understood this part of the situation. He knew something of country life and the social obligations which certain houses seem to carry as though they had a personality quite apart from their owners. He imagined a bored community in which every member had at least a nodding acquaintance with every other thrown into a state of chattering excitement by the knowledge that a national hero was coming to join it, only to be disappointed and irritated to find that the celebrity retained his inaccessibility and merely deprived them of one of their woefully few houses of call.

He glanced down the table to where Linda sat, flanked by Uncle William and Mercer. She looked up and caught his eye and smiled. Campion turned back to his host.

‘I thought I'd go –' he began, but Sutane interrupted him.

‘You stay here a day or two. I shall feel happier if you do. What I want to know is this; how much of it is my nerves and how much real mischief? – Good God! what's that?'

The final words escaped him with a violence which silenced all other conversation.

Campion, who was sitting with his back to the window, glanced over his shoulder and saw the phenomenon. Coming slowly down the drive, with a dignity befitting its age, was a large Daimler,
circa
1912. It was driven by an elderly chauffeur in green and carried a very thoughtful footman in similar uniform. Behind it came a Buick, also chauffeur-driven, and behind that again a taxicab. In the far distance yet another car was discernible.

Sutane glanced at his wife questioningly. She shook her head. She looked positively frightened, Campion thought.

Meanwhile the Daimler was depositing its passengers, a resplendent old lady and a willowy girl.

The peal of the front-door bell echoed through the house and the Dane, who had been asleep under the table, got up and began to bay. Slippers quietened him after some little time, and an ominous silence fell over the room, while from outside in the hall the murmur of voices and the patter of feet upon the polished floor came in to them.

Presently, just as other cars appeared in the drive outside, another sound, an undignified lumbering noise, was added to the chatter. Slippers giggled.

‘That's the piano,' she said. ‘We moved it across the drawing-room door. There wasn't time to get it back. Jimmy, you told Hughes not to bother.'

Sutane pushed back his chair. He was suddenly and theatrically furious.

‘Who the devil are all these damned people?' he demanded. ‘What the hell are they doing calling in here? God! There's millions of them!'

Benny Konrad laughed nervously.

‘Doesn't anybody know them? How marvellous! Let's all go out and fraternise.'

‘Shut up!' Sock Petrie was frowning, his deep-set eyes fixed anxiously on Sutane.

The star was trembling and his long fingers gripped the back of his chair.

The door behind him opened softly and the elderly manservant who had conducted the meal came in. He was red and flustered.

‘A great many people have called, sir,' he began in an undertone. ‘I've put them in the drawing-room, and one of the maids is opening the double doors into the living-room. Would you wish me to serve tea?'

‘I don't know,' Sutane glanced at his wife helplessly.

Linda rose. ‘It's cups, I suppose. Cups and cake, and milk, of course. How many people have come?'

‘About thirty at the moment, Madam, but –' the old man glanced down the drive expressively. Another car pulled up and a group of excited young people got out.

‘Oh, well, do what you can.' Linda sounded resigned. ‘There's a case of sherry in the pantry, that may help. Hughes, is there anybody you know?'

‘Oh, yes, Madam. There's old Mrs Corsair from the “Towers”, Lady Gerry from “Melton”, Mr and Mrs Beak, Miss Earle – they all called on you, Madam.' He managed to convey a gentle reproach. ‘I'll go and attend to them. Will you come?'

The girl glanced down at her brown cotton dress.

‘Yes,' she said at last. ‘Very well.'

She hurried out after the butler, looking, Mr Campion thought, like a very small ship going into battle.

Chloe rose. ‘We ought all to go and help her,' she said, not without a certain relish. ‘Who are all these people, Jimmy? Your local audience?'

Sutane ignored her. ‘The cheek of it!' he exploded. ‘To come to one's house in hordes when one's got work to do!'

Mr Campion coughed. ‘They've been asked, you know,' he said gently. ‘People don't turn up by the hundred at four o'clock precisely without an invitation.'

‘God bless my soul!' said Uncle William.

Benny Konrad squeaked. ‘It's a dirty practical joke,' he ejaculated. ‘I say, someone's got their knife into you, Sutane. What are you going to do?'

‘Disappear,' said Jimmy promptly. ‘It's hard on Linda, but I've got a business conference in twenty minutes.'

‘I say, old boy, I shouldn't do that.' Sock's voice was quiet, but very firm. ‘Bad publicity, you know. It's a swine's trick, but you'll have to make the best of it. Both you and Slippers
must
appear. Go out and say pretty things. Explain you've been practising and that's why you're in these clothes. It's absolutely the only thing to do. We'll all back you up.'

Sutane stood irresolute.

‘It's a damned imposition.'

‘I know it is, but what can you do?' Sock was appealing. ‘Once someone realises that the whole thing is a hoax the story will get out and it'll make good reading. Do go along, there's a good chap.'

Slippers, who had a kindly feeling for Sock, linked her arm through Jimmy's.

‘Come on, loov,' she said. ‘We'll make our entrance.'

‘Will they applaud?' murmured Benny and giggled.

Sock kicked him gently and he grew red and, ridiculously, raised a hand to hit back.

Mercer came over to Campion and Uncle William.

‘I suppose they've got all three pianos?' he said. ‘Do you know?'

They looked at him in surprise and he frowned.

‘They're bound to use all the rooms. I'll go home. It's only across the park.'

He opened a window and swung himself out into the drive, much to the astonishment of some new arrivals who all but ran him down. He stepped aside and scowled at them ferociously and the last Campion saw of him was his short, top-heavy figure striding off across the park.

Chloe Pye peered at herself in a compact mirror.

‘Will I do?' she said to Uncle William, and, on receiving his startled nod, plunged out into the hall.

The party, as a party, was the fiasco its perpetrator had evidently planned. Any house is uncomfortable when strained to the uttermost limits of its capacity, and thirteen bottles of Amontillado and forty cups of tea, including six kitchen mugs, will not, in these degenerate days, satisfy the five thousand. The furniture was in the way and the empty beer bottles, the relics of Sock's morning refreshment, did not grace the living-room piano where a thoughtful guest who had stepped amongst them placed them for safety.

All these were minor disasters, however, compared with the real misfortune of the afternoon. As he was jostled to and fro among the crowd Mr Campion made an interesting discovery. The company was mixed by a hand that pure ignorance could scarcely have directed. The snobbish distinctions which are the whole structure of any country society in England had been deliberately flouted. Campion was inclined to suspect a telephone directory as the source of the selection. The upper stratum had come because it had called and been called upon in return and was therefore technically acquainted with the Sutanes; the others were simply those who had been gratified to receive an invitation from a celebrity. Since the one fraternity waited on the other for the most part in the way of trade and were therefore well known to each other, it was a particularly unfortunate mixture.

Altogether it was a disastrous gathering.

A man called Baynes, who appeared to be a Councillor from some borough unstated, since the two excited young women who accompanied him persistently addressed him by that title, was inclined to be noisily friendly, but the remainder of the gathering was stiff and mulishly uncomfortable.

Chloe's bathing dress was not a success in spite of her crimson skirt, and her brush with the old lady who had been the first to arrive provided an unhappy five minutes for all within earshot.

Sutane did his best, but his entrance with Slippers instead of his wife, which was the purest accident, was not forgiven him.

Campion saw him standing at one corner of the room, slender and excitable, talking gracefully to people he did not know, with Sock at his elbow lending moral if not sartorial support.

Linda was even less fortunate. A great many of the visitors were her own country kind and they believed that she had deliberately embarrassed them. Campion saw unwonted colour in the small face with the wide mouth and the eyes with gold flecks in them, and was profoundly sorry for her.

Uncle William strode about manfully and made conversation of a somewhat sporadic and explosive kind, addressing his remarks to anyone who did not actually scowl at him, and Eve did her sulky best.

It was a harrowing experience for all concerned. The cars began to leave. The called-upon departed in a measured rout, the others followed, taking their cue from their leaders.

Finally only the Councillor remained and even his friendliness vanished when Sutane, his brittle nerves breaking beneath the strain of an hour's acute embarrassment, told him brusquely not to call him ‘old pal'.

As the last car vanished down the drive with its cargo of nettled guests Linda sat down abruptly in an arm-chair and blew her nose. Sutane stared at her.

‘We'll sell the damned place,' he said.

She shook her head. ‘They'll get over it in time.'

‘So I should hope.' Sutane was contemptuous. ‘Good heavens, they must have seen we were taken by surprise. Surely they don't imagine anyone in his right mind would ask two hundred people to tea one Sunday afternoon and provide them with forty cups between them?'

Linda looked up.

‘They think
we
might,' she said. ‘They've always suspected we were a little queer and now I'm afraid they're convinced of it. The trouble is they think we're rude as well. They've gone home thinking it was just slackness.'

Sutane remained looking down at her, his face growing dark. In common with many members of his profession he had a strong streak of the snob in him and her suggestion was both distasteful and convincing. He turned to Campion.

‘Now am I imagining things?' he demanded, his voice rising. ‘It's got to stop, I tell you! It's driving me off my head. It's got to stop.'

‘Jimmy, old man, I told you four-thirty.'

An injured voice from the doorway interrupted the outburst and Campion glancing up saw a little man with a tragic, ugly face hesitating on the threshold. Everything about him was tiny but very masculine. His hands were coarse but minute and his chin was as blue as Mercer's own.

He came quickly across the room and spoke in a low and confidential tone, which Campion afterwards discovered was habitual with him.

‘I didn't know you were having a tea-fight. We arrived in the middle of it and I took Bowser straight up to the den. He's a busy man, Jimmy. Come along.'

Sutane sighed with exaggerated weariness and grimaced at Campion with a flicker of his old charm.

‘I'm coming,' he said, and they went out together.

‘That's Poyser, Jimmy's manager,' murmured Sock, lounging across the room to Campion. ‘This is a bit of bad luck, isn't it? He was nervy enough already. It's got to be stopped somehow.'

Campion nodded. He was standing by the chair in which Linda sat and his long angular form shadowed her. He looked down and spoke apologetically.

‘I seem to have been here a long time and done nothing of the faintest use to anybody,' he said. ‘D'you know anyone who came this afternoon well enough to take into your confidence? If we had one of the invitation cards which were presumably sent round we might be able to locate the printer, or at least find out when they were sent and where from.'

‘No, there was no one,' she said stiffly. ‘I recognised two or three people who called on us when we first came, but the rest were complete strangers.'

Sock grinned. ‘They knew each other all right, didn't they?' he said. ‘There were some pretty sizzling remarks floating around.'

‘I heard them.' The girl looked up at them and they were embarrassed to see tears in her eyes. ‘I'll go and talk to the kitchen,' she murmured. ‘I'm afraid there may be a minor crisis down there.'

As the door closed behind her Sock thrust his hands in his pockets and smiled wryly.

‘Poor old girl, she's rattled,' he said. ‘But we can't do anything. That idea of yours would be perfectly sound in the ordinary way, but you see the difficulty in the present case. These good people, whoever they are, can chatter among themselves about the funny actors, but they can only say the place was in a bit of a mess and there wasn't enough food to go round. But once the hoax story gets out it makes a little news par, doesn't it? See what I mean?'

‘It seems a bit hard on Mrs Sutane.'

The other man looked at Campion curiously.

‘Quite a lot of things are hard on Mrs Sutane,' he observed. ‘You'll notice that if you stick around.'

A cold meal was served at half past eight, at which no mention of the incident of the afternoon was made, out of deference to a solid, frightened-looking person called Bowser, who sat between Sutane and his manager and kept his eye on his plate.

Mercer, who had appeared again as soon as the coast was clear, made several attempts to bring up the matter, in which he was assisted by Chloe, who was in mischievous mood, but they were both restrained by the able Mr Petrie.