Scandal at High Chimneys (5 page)

“Your pa don’t confide in me, Miss Brimstone.”

“Naturally not. Yet you always overhear—”

“Oh, shame!” breathed Mrs. Cavanagh, with shivering humility. Her rusty black dress, whose large crinoline resembled a hoop rather than a triangle, also shivered as she stepped backwards. “Shame, shame, shame to address your poor old Cavvy like that!
I
can’t help it if housemaids gossip, more’s the pity. I did hear your pa desired to see Mr. Victor—”

“Victor has always been your favourite, has he not?”

“But in the main it wasn’t to see Mr. Victor, or even because he suspected the madam of carrying on with a certain noble lord. In the main it was to see an officer of the detective police.”

“Indeed?”

“Leastways,” said Mrs. Cavanagh, “this person Jonathan Whicher
was
an Inspector of the detective police, the sharpest and the cunningest of ’em.”

“‘Was?’”

“To be sure. Your pa wouldn’t have let you read of the Road-Hill House murder five years gone. Inspector Whicher found the murderer; that he did. ‘I want you!’ says he. But, lawk! Good people couldn’t believe a well-brought-up young lady would cut the throat of her baby brother and dance for joy afterwards.”

“Couldn’t they?
I
could.”

“I daresay. Inspector Whicher had to resign because they hissed him. Oh, ah. And then, only a year ago, the young lady ups and confesses she did it. Constance Kent, her name was.”

“My father is concerned, then, about the identity of the man on the stairs?”

“That’s for him to say. Or don’t you believe there was a man in the house last night?”

“Oh, yes,” Kate answered curtly and firmly. “There was a man in the house last night. He walked up and down, up and down, like an evil spirit.”

“And attempted Penelope Burbage’s virtue? Eh?”

“‘Attempted her virtue,’” mimicked Kate. “Dear God, what a term!”

“You mind your language, Miss Pert, or your pa’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”

About Kate, in the dull-yellow velvet, there was a repressed and smouldering quality which suggested Matthew Damon himself. She held the lamp higher. Her right hand was clenched at her breast, as in the painting, and her neck inclined forward.

“I am concerned,” she said clearly, “with one thing only. My sister is not to be frightened by these bogey-tales. You will be good enough to obey me.”

“Hoity-toity! I know my place, I hope.”

“Do you?”

“Let your pa judge. As for Miss Celia—”

“Did someone call?” asked another voice.

The upheld lamp made an aureole in dusty air, against a morning-room of feminine gauds and knickknacks. Light also penetrated, from the long dining-room at the back, through strings of different-coloured beads forming a curtain across the archway between.

The bead curtain was pushed back. Another girl, in a heavily brocaded evening gown of dull purple, moved through with the crinoline swaying and cleaving. Less robust than the rather sensuous Kate, slender, with very large grey eyes fringed in black lashes, she wore her lustrous light-brown hair as her sister did.

Kate put down the white lamp on a table.

“Dear Celia!” she said with genuine affection.

“Dear Kate!” said Celia.

“Ah, ’tis all very well to be affectionate!” said Mrs. Cavanagh, folding big hands in front of her. “A husband is what you ought to have, both of you. The madam’s in the right of it there, even if she only wants attention on her ’stead of you. But you’ll never catch a husband, mark my words, if your pa goes on discouraging—”

The position of Clive Strickland, in the doorway to the hall, had already become embarrassing and was fast becoming intolerable.

A loud cough had failed to attract the attention of either Kate or Mrs. Cavanagh. It was Celia, nearly facing him, who glanced up. Her grey eyes dilated; her mouth opened. As three pairs of eyes turned towards him, a certain meekness descended on all of them.

Only the direct-seeming Kate advanced, after an appraising look which made her full lips tighten in an odd sort of way.

“You are Mr. Strickland, of course. And—and you have not seen Celia or myself since we were starchy little idiots in tartan dresses.
You
remember him, Celia?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so.”

Kate gave her a look.

“Celia dear! I think you must. Shall we shake hands, Mr. Strickland? I suppose we must come to it sooner or later; and why not sooner? There! How stupid of Burbage not to have shown you into the drawing-room.”

Kate had spoken rapidly. Now she raised her eyes to him. For perhaps ten seconds she and Clive looked at each other without moving. The realization, whether with prayers or an inward curse, had come to him several minutes ago. Whatever she herself might feel, he knew past doubt or denial that Kate Damon was the one woman on earth for him; and he meant ‘woman,’ with all that term implies; he did not mean ‘girl’ or sugar-candy doll.

“Burbage did show me into the drawing-room, Miss Damon,” he told her in a loud voice. “Accept my apologies; I fear I intruded on you.”

“
I
don’t think you did!” said Kate. “Shall we go into the drawing-room now?”

“Yes; by all means.”

Becoming aware that he was still holding Kate’s hand, he pressed the fingers hard before releasing them. Kate did not look away. Celia, the delicate sugar-and-spice beauty, suddenly watched them with what might have been wonder.

“Good evening, sir,” observed Mrs. Cavanagh, with all her old air of self-effacing humility. “If I may say so, sir, it’s a great pleasure to see you again.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Cavanagh,” said Clive, still unable to take his eyes from Kate.

“If I might further make so bold, sir, would your presence have anything to do with marriage?”

“Marriage?”

“Or with a certain noble lord whose initials might be A. T.?”

Clive had stepped aside so that Kate and Celia could go past him into the hall. Both sisters stopped short in the hall, though without turning round. A glance darted between them, sending the emotional temperature up still further.

“Surely that is thunder I hear in the distance?” asked Celia, with a gesture of cupping her hand near her ear. “There will be a storm, I think?”

“Yes!” said Kate. “That is all, Cavvy. You may go.”

Many petticoats rustled as two crinolines, several inches off the uncarpeted floor, moved across the hall and squeezed into the drawing-room. Celia, modestly pressing the skirt round her, glanced back once over her shoulder. In the drawing-room Kate swung round.

“Really, now, this is too provoking! Only one lamp here? Only one lamp lighted, and the fire not yet properly made up?”

“Kate, dear!” said Celia, with gentle and puzzled remonstrance.

“Yes?”

“Whatever can be the matter with you?”

Kate did not reply. But her mouth and eyes expressed much.

“Do look at the clock!” begged Celia. She nodded towards the white-faced clock on the mantelpiece. “It is not yet a quarter past six, dear. No one is
ever
in this room until a quarter to seven at the very earliest. No one ever comes downstairs, even, except for father in his study.”

Kate spoke abruptly. “Oh. Yes. I forgot.”

“It would be most unjust to blame poor Burbage, would it not? Things seem to be all at sixes and sevens tonight. I could not help wondering why you yourself made ready so early.”

“Made ready?”

“I mean …” And Celia nodded towards Kate’s evening-gown.

“Well!” said Kate, after a quick-breathing pause. She stared at Celia’s evening-gown. “For that matter, why did you do it?”

“Because
you
did, dear. I heard you in your room.”

“Can it make any possible difference, Celia, that for once in this house someone is too punctual rather than too late?”

“No, dear, of course not.” Celia looked a little shocked. “But I did not wish Mr. Strickland to gain the impression that we were in any way an odd or a strange household.” Here Celia laughed, a deprecating laugh for which she apologized with a wry little mouth. “He must have thought Cavvy almost too outrageous and impertinent even for an old nurse. After all, it is most unlikely that Mr. Strickland should be here to discuss any such subject as—as Cavvy mentioned. That is
not
the reason for your visit, Mr. Strickland?”

Clive had been dreading the question.

“Well, yes,” he admitted. “Yes, it is.”

Kate and Celia exchanged glances.

“If you had asked me that question before I took the train from London,” Clive went on, “I should have had to tell you the details. At the moment, as it happens, I can’t. When I mentioned the matter to your father, I feared he would have a seizure. He made me promise to say no more until he had told me everything.”

“About what?” Kate asked sharply.

“About one of you.”

The effect of this statement was extraordinary. Both Kate and Celia regarded him with an expression that might have been incredulity, or bewilderment, or a sense that they could not have understood him, or some darker feeling in the depths of the heart.

“One of us?” cried Kate.

“Which one?” asked Celia.

“I don’t know. Presumably—well, I don’t know. Your father said he must tell me everything, whatever the consequences. He also said he would be at peace before dinner tonight.”

Kate, about to speak, hesitated as there were footsteps in the main hall. Following the direction of her eyes, Clive saw Burbage in the doorway.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the house-steward. “Mr. Damon’s compliments, and could you find it convenient to join him in the study?”

“Yes; of course.”

“At once, sir?”

“At once.”

Impulsively Kate moved forward and put her hand on Clive’s arm. The fingers tightened. Clive’s impetuousness might be matched by Kate’s scorn for conventions, but she was not perhaps as free from the conventions as she liked to think.

“I held you in high esteem,” she said. “I have thought about you, if I must own it, more often than was good for me or for my own peace of mind.” Despite herself, almost to her horror, colour flooded into Kate’s cheeks. “No matter! At least I
esteemed
you. I never thought to find you the messenger in a sordid affair like this.”

“Sordid, you call it?”

“Yes!”

“Well, you may be right. I am not proud of my behaviour. But I came as an excuse to meet
you,
and at least no harm is done. If Tress wants to marry your sister, that is no reason for her to agree. She can always refuse.”

Kate’s hand dropped from his arm.

“Marry Celia? Marry
Celia?
What are you saying?”

“Just that. This is the nineteenth century; Miss Celia is under no compulsion to marry against her will.”

“Dear God!” said Kate.

Burbage’s voice rose up in the silence.

“If you will follow me, sir?”

Kate retreated a step, glancing at Burbage. Celia stood motionless. The fashionable lamp, its shade painted with blue forget-me-nots against a background of red and white, threw cold shadows across both their faces.

“If you will follow me, sir?” repeated Burbage, more shocked than either Clive or Kate that they had blurted out personal matters in the presence of a servant.

The corner of Clive’s eye caught the movement of the little gold pendulum on the clock. It was just fifteen minutes past six. Clive looked beyond it towards the archway, covered with another curtain of different-coloured beads, which gave on a dark library. Beyond that library was the closed door to Matthew Damon’s study. Automatically Clive had taken a step in that direction when Burbage’s restrained gesture corrected him.

“This way, sir, if you please.”

Bowing to Kate and Celia, he followed the house-steward out into the hall.

If a disquiet haunted these airless rooms, even the solid Burbage felt it. Clive, walking after him towards the rear of the hall, could see only the man’s back: an uncompromising back in a dark coat like a clergyman’s; with something clerical, too, about his gaiters and even the cut of his thick sandy hair.

Nor did Burbage himself escape.

At the rear of the hall, facing front, a thick green-baize door cut off the kitchen and other servants’ quarters from the rest of the house. A lamp in a wall-bracket, its flame turned very low, illumined the green-baize door. It also illumined a second door to Matthew Damon’s study, in the wall towards their right.

It was the green-baize door which opened abruptly.

“Father—” began a woman’s voice.

Burbage stopped. The back of his head showed as much, or as little, eloquence as his face.

“Your place is not here, Penelope.”

“I ask your pardon, father, indeed I do. All daughters, one supposes, must keep a stock of apologies for existing at all.”

Clive also stopped. The woman’s voice, low and cultured and sweet, made so great a contrast with her face and figure that you looked twice to make sure it was she who had spoken. Intelligence and irony, too, tinged the eyes which were her one good feature against a heavy jowl and a snub nose. Short and dumpy, her hair severely bound round her head as was Mrs. Cavanagh’s, she lurked under the dim lamp-flame.

“Your place is not here, Penelope. Even with your near-sightedness, you see this gentleman?”

“It is because I am near-sighted—”

“You see this gentleman?”

“I ask
his
pardon. I have remembered a fact, or at least an impression, about what I saw on the stairs.”

For perhaps five seconds nobody spoke.

“May I not at least,” said Penelope Burbage, “beg leave for a word with Mr. Damon?”

“No, you may not.”

“Hang it all,” Clive burst out, “why shouldn’t she be here?”

“Allow me, sir. Allow me! Penelope, our meal is on the table. Be off.”

Penelope Burbage made a small gesture which was at once hopeless and strangely pathetic. She looked past her father, beneath the oak staircase which dominated the hall as so many tall and top-heavy chimney-stacks dominated the roof of this house; and Penelope’s expression altered again.

“You have barred the front door!” she said. “You have barred the front door on the inside.”