Ellis Peters - George Felse 10 - The Knocker On Death's Door (12 page)

He had been relying on Dinah to be present and equal to the occasion, as sisters should be when welcoming possible future sisters-in-law, but he had still refrained from telling her any more than that he was fetching a Miss Trent from Birmingham to volunteer some important information to the police, and might—
might
!—be bringing her home for tea later on. Not a word about how important the lady and the occasion were to him. So he could hardly complain when he found no Dinah in the house to greet them. Earlier in the day he had felt that he would need her as a guarantee of his seriousness and respectability; but when it came to the point, Alix and he were so relaxed and so close, after fulfilling their public duty, that they had no need of any third party or any guarantees.

Dinah, as was her habit in such circumstances, had left a note to explain her absence, written on the white card round which a new pair of stockings had once been folded inside its plastic envelope, and propped on the kitchen table, so that he could not miss it when he went to make tea.

“Gone out,” she had written unnecessarily. “Robert M.-M. rang up and asked me over to tea.
Very
pressing! Something fishy, or why pick the day Hugh’s away? Must go, if only out of curiosity.

Hugh called. Pipped for first place by just two points. Shame!

Dinah.”

“Something wrong?” asked Alix, observing the slight frown the note called up.

“Oh—no, not really, I suppose. Unusual, though!” On impulse he gave her the note to read; provided she chose to be, she was already as good as one of the family. “Of course, they did break the ice by asking her over to dinner a few days ago, but that was with Hugh. What can he have to discuss with Dinah that wouldn’t have waited until Hugh gets home tomorrow? Unless it’s
about
Hugh! And there’s no mention of the mother.”

“M-M.—that’s this Macsen-Martel family?” She was almost completely in the picture now, she knew who Hugh was, and what were his relations with his mother and brother. “Still, you know, they
are
his people. Maybe the elder brother feels bound to make an effort to be social.”

But she knew very well the source of his uneasiness. Suddenly every thread of this murder case seemed to be tracing its way back to the old house where the Macsen-Martels, entrenched and isolated, staved off a changing world. However reluctant he might have been to put his reservations into words, he would very much have preferred that Dinah should not go there alone.

“Excuse me a moment, I’ll just find out if she took the Mini.”

No, said Jenny Pelsall, looking up from her typewriter in the office, Dinah had chosen to walk. She had left probably no more than a quarter of an hour before Dave’s return.

He came back into the kitchen to find Alix making tea.

She looked at ease and at home, as though she had already mapped the working outfit in her mind’s eye.

“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling at him, “I shouldn’t take things for granted like this, but it seemed a pity just to let the kettle boil for nothing. Did she take the car?”

“No—walked. It gives me a good excuse to go and call for her, later on, but she hasn’t been gone all that long, so I suppose we’d better give them an hour or so. After all, it’s broad daylight.”

“And still will be in an hour’s time, or practically. I’ll come with you, if you like, I can be part of your excuse.”

“Would you, Alix?” Everything that prolonged her stay confirmed his conviction that in a sense she would never again be leaving. They had tea together in the kitchen, which had certainly not been his original intention. Whatever vicissitudes their relationship might be in for later, it had undoubtedly made the leap into intimacy with a speed and surefootedness in which Dave could hardly believe.

And after tea, when a decent interval had elapsed, they set off to rescue Dinah.

It was cold in the huge drawing-room at the Abbey, and the windows, pinched between heavy curtains faded with long use, brought in too little light, although the day was clear and the time still only late afternoon. But Robert had placed the small tea-table close to the fire, and turned Dinah’s chair—the most comfortable in the room, she noticed— considerately towards the warmth. He was a punctilious host; but then, so he would be even to his enemies.

Dinah had put on her most becoming dress, not so much to charm as on the principle of arming herself for battle with every weapon she had. She was even looking forward, with natural curiosity, to the encounter; with even more curiosity now, because there was no sign of the old lady, and the table was clearly prepared only for two. Robert had apologised at once, and with slight embarrassment, for his mother’s absence.

“She would have been happy to see you again, I know, but unfortunately—perhaps Hugh may have mentioned it to you?—she has a very bad cold. She’s been in bed since yesterday, the doctor is rather worried about her.” He accepted Dinah’s expressions of concern correctly, and went on to talk of other things, with some constraint but admirable fluency. The guest must not be pestered with family troubles and illnesses.

Everything he did and said, Dinah could have predicted; or so she thought repeatedly through the first half of this tête-à-tête. Of course he would take it for granted that she should preside, and place the tray conveniently to hand for her. Of course he would talk about general subjects until she had nibbled her way through a few minute sandwiches and a scone or two, and enjoyed her first cup of tea. First the social demands must be met, only later can a host talk business with a guest. But there was business to be talked, she sensed it in every meticulous word he spoke, and every nervous but controlled movement he made. A sad, withdrawn, proud, chilly person, she thought, gazing back steadily into his face because he was watching her with such undisguised and earnest concentration. His eyes reminded her of the eyes of certain portraits, trained so unwaveringly upon the observer that the presence of the sitter is palpable, alive inside there, behind the motionless trappings, but unable to get out. Perhaps no longer even wanting to get out.

“Hugh was hoping to win the Mid-Wales this year,” she said, making exemplary conversation in her turn when he fell suddenly and intensely silent. “It’s a pity—still, he did come in second, and there’ll be other years. I suppose events here recently haven’t exactly been conducive to concentration, not for any of us. It takes a lot to put Hugh off his stroke, but murder in the village isn’t a trifle, and we’ve all been rather shaken up.”

She had never seen Robert anything but pale, but now it seemed to her that his face had chilled into a clay-like shade of grey. His long fingers moved nervously on the arm of his chair. He leaned to tease the fire into brightness, and drop another meagre log at the back. To escape her glance for a moment? Whatever it was he wanted to say, he was finding great difficulty in embarking upon it.

“Miss Cressett, please don’t think I am interfering in any way… I know you’ll realise that as Hugh’s elder brother I have a natural and permissible interest in his plans and prospects, but I certainly have no right to more than interest. Will you forgive me if I presume to ask you a question? You need not answer it if you don’t wish, of course, but I hope you’ll feel able to be indulgent towards the liberty I’m taking, simply because I am his brother. I gather that Hugh is—very fond of you. But… do you—has he asked you to marry him?”

Her hackles had gone up long before he reached the end of this curious speech, and the only thing that prevented her from diving headlong into prophetic anger on the spot was her acute awareness of the appalling effort this approach had cost him. She felt it in his too intense stillness rather than in any visible excitement. The lines of his mouth had drawn thin and taut, as if in pain, and he was looking at her with what she could only think of as desperation. Out-of-date patricians who find themselves faced with the task of warning off undesirable girls from hoping for marriage with the younger son of the blood, she thought, ought not to be so sensitive. But could it really be what it sounded like? Surely nobody still existed as behind the times as all that? Living, human fossils!

“We’ve never discussed ourselves or our affairs in those terms, exactly,” she said coolly.

“No, that I can believe, of course. But you must know his feelings, and… and your own.”

Dinah smiled; for a moment she even wanted to laugh. This sort of thing was absurdly easy, when it came to the point; it was he who was at a disadvantage.

“Is one necessarily always so sure of one’s own feelings?” she asked innocently.

He got up suddenly from his chair, and walked away from her to the nearer window. She saw him in profile, tall and thin and straight, quite in control of himself and yet curiously agitated. With his face still turned away from her he said:

“Miss Cressett, you’re young and able and modern, and—please let me say it!—very attractive. You have all your life before you. Don’t take any step without being absolutely certain of what you’re doing. At your age there’s no need to be in a hurry, and mistakes are more easily made than rectified. You know Hugh’s background. You know what his family is, what its history has been—all those centuries of us… The record’s there to be read, surely you must know how difficult it would be—how precarious…”

She stopped him there, stung out of her complacency. “Really, I think we’d better drop this. Don’t say any more, please.”

“No, I can’t stop now, I must try to make you realise… If only I knew how!” he said in a voice that was almost a groan. His hand was gripping the folds of the curtain so hard that a little flurry of dust-motes floated out slowly and uncurled upon the air; she saw them in the cross-light from the window.

“Don’t try too hard, because the one thing I’ve liked about you,” said Dinah, bristling, “is that you find this so hard to do.”

They were concentrating so furiously upon each other that neither of them heard the soft crunching of gravel under the wheels of a car rolling slowly up the drive.

“I suppose it was your mother who asked you to approach me—though as the head of the household, of course, you must feel pretty strongly yourself, too. What is it you find so unsuitable about me?”

He swung round on her with a face so transfigured by shock and consternation that it was like looking’at a new person, suddenly dauntingly alive and acutely vulnerable. But whatever he was about to say remained unsaid; for loud and suddenly the door-bell rang.

The sudden blaze of light in him went out on the instant. He stood for a moment breathing slowly and deeply, himself again, correct and calm.

“Please, excuse me, there’s no one else here to answer it.”

Dinah sat quivering a little with exasperation, rage and amusement, as he went to open the door. Dave’s voice, familiar and welcome, advanced into the hall. A girl’s voice after it, low-pitched and cool; he’d brought his Miss Trent with him to extricate his sister from the ogre’s castle. Not that Dinah felt herself to be any damsel in distress, but after the moment she had just experienced she had to admit that withdrawal was going to be a little more civilised in company. And after all, this was probably the last time she need ever enter this house. She rose from her chair as they all came into the room, and met them with a creditable smile, looking round for her bag and gloves as though the visit had drawn to a perfectly normal conclusion.

“I’m sorry if we’re too early,” said Dave, “but I knew you hadn’t got transport, and I thought we’d better fetch you. Alix won’t have too much time to spend with us, and I wanted you to meet her. I’m sure Mr. Macsen-Martel will understand.”

“Of course,” said Robert, a little stiffly, but not noticeably more so than usually. His manner could never be described as relaxed. “It was very good of Miss Cressett to give me her company at such short notice.” He looked at her, and his face was drawn and pale and fastidious as always, the long, straight strands of light-brown hair lying lank and dry on his high forehead. Somewhere behind the fixed, painted eyes the live creature lurked, either in ambush or in prison. Perhaps both at once.

So departure was easy. Robert fetched her coat, but it was Dave who took it from him and held it for her. Alix made a little light conversation about the house and its history. Alix might be a very dependable ally, Dinah thought, appraising her. Then they were all out on the doorstep, and Dave was opening the door of the car for the girls to get into the back seat together.

“Good-bye, Mr. Macsen-Martel!” No need to give him her hand; she was glad about that.

“Good-bye, Miss Cressett!”

They were back where they had started from, with the difference that he wouldn’t dare try that again. The door closed upon them, Dave got into the driving-seat; the car circled the island of flower-beds and moved away down the drive. Robert stood for a moment where they had left him, and then turned and went back into the house.

“You did come just a little too early, as a matter of fact,” she said, stretching in the back seat with a sigh of relief. “He never really got started on what he wanted to say, but by all the signs his job was to put me off marrying Hugh. Put me off or pay me off—he never got as far as offering me money, I really do wonder if he would have! Who do they think they are, with their ridiculous anemic faces and their feeble blue blood? In this day and age, I ask you! Hugh will be
furious
! At least, he would, only I haven’t the faintest intention of ever telling him.”

“He’s not the only one,” said Dave grimly from the driving seat, “who’s got a right to be furious.”

“But that’s nothing, you should hear how his mother says ‘
in trade
’—about
you
, love! She’s the one who gave Robert the job of getting rid of me, of course, to do him justice he wasn’t all that happy about it. She kept out of the way. Said to be ill in bed and under the doctor, but I suspect it’s a diplomatic illness.” Dinah was simmering down somewhat more slowly than she had expected of herself; was it possible that she could be really upset about such an absurd interview?