Symposium (19 page)

They are in the sitting-room
with their cups of coffee. Luke swims round with the tray of liqueurs. Helen
can see Luke better now. She thinks, What a nice-looking boy.

A trill
at the bell. The sound of the front door being opened and, as it seems, a
multitude of voices. In then come four young people who seem to be far more
than four in all, they are so vibrant and flowing over. Pearl, who is Brian’s
daughter, is extremely pretty. She has brought two girls and a young man. The
girls are all dressed in short dark hanging-rags over very long legs; in their
elegance they make the other women in their expensive party clothes look rather
frumpy, while the men suddenly feel they have missed the boat. The fourth
member of the incoming party is a young man with a black velvet suit, a
snowy-white wisp of beard and a snowy-white tuft of hair rising from the front
of his head, which is otherwise bald. When they are settled with the fruit
juices and other drinks that they want, it emerges that all except Pearl are at
an art school and that Pearl, too, is enrolled for an art course next term. The
great draw of the evening, for them, is obviously Hurley.

He says
to himself, Everyone goes to art school nowadays. There won’t be enough walls
left to hang their stuff on. But he makes the noises of an avuncular maestro,
asking each in turn about their work, their ideas. The young man wants to be
polemical but Hurley throws him deftly at every turn. ‘Have you seen the
Rouault exhibition? — You should see it. It’s well worth a trip to Paris.’ ‘Have
you seen those Raeburns, talking of public portraiture — they’re on show till
November the 8th.’ So he steers them away from personal probing, and Chris,
catching his eye, knows what he is thinking. He is longing for tomorrow to get
back to his studio. She mixes up the guests by moving about herself, a little,
from place to place. William looks at his watch. ‘I don’t expect Mother will be
coming, now.’ ‘Oh, there’s still time,’ says Hurley, getting up to refill
someone’s glass. But Chris knows that the party is virtually over.

Hilda arrives at Hampstead
at about nine with the picture. It is heavier than she expected but the
taxi-man has come up in the lift to the flat with her, has been duly rewarded
and has gone away. Hilda has no intention of hanging the picture. She is going
to leave it against any wall of the sitting-room, where William and Margaret
can see it when they come in.

She has
no opportunity of setting it against any wall. No sooner has she closed the
front door after the departure of the taxi-driver, but three men are upon her.
They come along from the kitchen. They are unmasked, recognizable. This is
something they have not expected and this is the tragic fact for which Hilda
dies. She screams as loud and long as she can. Two of the men, agile and young,
take the painting quietly out of the flat, while the third, burly and rather
older than the others, smothers Hilda. She is not strangled, as the papers are
to give out at first, she is smothered, her head held down hard and firm on the
sofa, the man with one knee on her body, until she is dead.

Still,
her screams have been heard. Two cars outside have been seen to drive off at a
suspicious rate. Two neighbours in the building have called the police.

Before
ten o’clock the police have caught the gang for whom they have been looking for
weeks; they have found Hilda’s body, beyond resuscitation.

Hurley and Chris are
saying good-night to their friends when the bell rings.

‘Hilda!’
says Chris.

It is
not Hilda, but a police officer. They have found Hurley’s name in her diary:
‘Look
in after dinner.’

Hurley
stands at the front door with the policeman. Another officer sits outside in
the police car, waiting. ‘Hilda Damien? Her son is here.’ William is staring at
the man in uniform.

‘They
stole a picture. I’m very sorry to tell you that Mrs Damien has been the victim
of a misfortune. My condolences. If you wouldn’t mind coming along.’

‘No, it
can’t be,’ Margaret shrieks. ‘Not till Sunday.’

‘Chris,
look after Margaret. I’ll go with William, ‘Hurley says.

The
policeman is looking along towards the kitchen where in the back hall Luke is
changing his waiter’s coat very hurriedly for his outdoor jacket. ‘Where are
you going?’ the policeman calls out to him.

‘Home,’
says Luke.

‘You’re
in a hurry.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well,
you’re coming with us,’ says the officer.

Hurley
says to his guests, who stand gasping and exclaiming, ‘Good-night, everyone.
Please go home.‘

From
upstairs comes Margaret’s wild cry: ‘It shouldn’t have been till Sunday!’

Next morning Andrew J. Barnet
will read in
The Times
that his new friend and fellow-magnate Hilda
Damien has been murdered by a gang of house-robbers, fed by domestic informers,
who have been active in the wealthy suburbs in the last few weeks.

Andrew
Barnet will not at first be able to grasp the fact that he will not be taking
her to dinner that evening. He will remember her on the plane, attractive, and
so used to wealth and success that everything was easy between them as they
talked. Like speaks unto like. He had ordered and sent her the flowers.

He will
not now be able to face his working day. He will give instructions to cancel
meetings, and will then look in his address book for the telephone numbers of
some English friends of whom he will stand in great need. He will want more
than anything to talk, to tell them how he had met Hilda Damien.