The Ivory Dagger (6 page)

‘It’s Italian, isn’t it? What does it mean?’

He went on smiling.

‘Something like, “Fair beloved soul—we shall be united in heaven”. I don’t know Italian—I’m just picking out the words everybody knows.’

The record came to an end. Mabel Considine sprang up, went over to the radiogram, and demanded the Sextet, which proved to be quite unbelievably scratchy, with four of the performers providing loud background music, Caruso manfully shouting his way to the front, and Galli-Curci, crystal clear, hovering above the din.

When it was over Herbert Whitall directed a faint frown and a definitely sarcastic voice at Eric Haile.

‘I really don’t think we need bring in exhibits out of the Chamber of Horrors. May I suggest that we now hear something that we can listen to without wrecking the nervous system? Amazing to think that one used to pay a guinea for that sort of thing!’

Mabel Considine was shocked.

‘Oh, but Sir Herbert, they were wonderful! On the old gramophones, I mean.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t agree. We just didn’t know any better— that was all.’

Eric Haile smiled and shook his head. The Professor rushed into noisy disagreement.

‘I never heard such nonsense in my life, and I’m sure one hears enough one way and another! The pre-electrical record was made for the pre-electrical gramophone. The effect was remarkably pleasing. Of course if you go and put the poor thing on to an electrical machine, the result is just a massacre. But I maintain, and I shall continue to maintain, that the old records were good enough on the old machines.’

Herbert Whitall quite definitely sneered.

‘Of course if you really want the violin to sound like a flute!’

‘I do nothing of the sort!’

‘My dear fellow! Why not just put the clock back altogether and prove how superior the stage-coach was to the Daimler or the Rolls Royce?’

The blood was mounting to the Professor’s crown.

‘It didn’t kill so many people!’

‘Well, there weren’t so many people to be killed, were there? Anyhow I notice that you condescend to an autocycle. To be entirely logical, you should still be wearing woad and living in a cave.’

He got a red malevolent glare.

‘And if I were, do you know what I should do? I should come round some dark night to your cave and hit you over the head with my neolithic axe—and then where would you be?’

‘Still in the twentieth century, I hope.“

Professor Richardson burst out laughing.

‘Think you’ve got the last word, Whitall? I wouldn’t be too sure if I were you!’

Eric Haile’s dark eyes went dancing from face to face. They saw George Considine on the edge of embarrassment, a record in his hand. His wife, her attention caught by the rasp in the Professor’s voice, her hand at a fluttering end of hair, the desire to be helpful plainly written upon her face. It gave her rather the look of an anxious hen. Lila and Adrian bending over those eternal sketches. Amiable fellow, Adrian, but a bit of a bore. Come to think of it, so was the lovely Lila. Probably just as well. Beauty and brains would be a formidable combination—too formidable for Herbert Whitall. Sybil Dryden had had both. Wasn’t there something about ‘the monstrous regiment of women’? He thought the cap would fit her pretty well. But she could meet her match in Herbert. A cold devil—a cold, calculating, sneering devil. If he went on baiting Richardson, there would probably be a brawl. Better black them out.

He put on a magnificent orchestral record of a Bach toccata and fugue and turned up the volume control. An ocean of sound surged out and filled the room.

It was at half past ten, when the Considines were saying goodnight in the hall, that Miss Whitaker came down the stairs in her outdoor things—dark navy coat, small navy hat, umbrella and handbag. She went up to Herbert Whitall and spoke to him in a low voice. No one could hear what she said, but everyone could see that he was not pleased. He frowned, set his thin lips in a disagreeable line, and said, ‘Very sudden, isn’t it? Suppose I say no?’

George Considine, who was the nearest, did hear that. He also heard the reply, in which Miss Whitaker’s voice was a little raised.

‘I should go all the same.’

She turned abruptly and went over to where Mabel Considine was winding her head in a wisp of scarlet chiffon and pinning an elderly Shetland shawl across her chest.

‘Mrs. Considine, I wonder whether you would kindly give me a lift as far as the village? I can catch the last bus into Emsworth. I have just had a telephone message from my sister. She is ill, and I think I ought to go to her.’

‘Oh, my dear—of course! But so late! And if you miss the bus—Are you sure you must go?’

‘Quite sure. My sister is all alone there with her little boy. And I shan’t miss the bus—there is plenty of time.’

Mabel Considine thrust her arms hurriedly into the sleeves of what looked like a gardening-coat, added a massive scarf in the colours of the golf club of which George was a member, and said good-night all over again.

The door was opened, admitting a gusty draught. Someone said it was blowing up for rain. Lady Dryden moved back towards the drawing-room. The door banged, and Professor Richardson was understood to say he must be getting along.

Adrian and Lila had remained in the drawing-room, where Eric Haile was stacking the records preparatory to putting them away in the study. As Lady Dryden came in, Lila got up. The moment which she always dreaded had arrived. It was bedtime, and Herbert would kiss her good-night. She said in a fluttering voice,

‘I’m tired—I think I’ll go up now—’

Aunt Sybil wasn’t pleased. She looked down her nose and said,

‘I think you had better wait and say good-night to Herbert,’ and all at once it came over Lila that she would have to. Because if she tried to go up now she might meet Herbert in the hall and have to say good-night to him there, and that would be much, much worse, because they would be alone, and when they were alone he kissed her in a way that was indescribably different and dreadful. A little shudder passed over her. She went to the hearth and stood there, holding out her hands to the fire.

She turned with a start as someone came into the room, but it was only Marsham to help with the records. It came to her to wonder what a man like Marsham would be like when he wasn’t being a butler. She had no idea why this thought should have come to her. He was a very good butler. Everything in the house went as smoothly as clockwork. But underneath, when he wasn’t making up the fire, waiting at table, drawing the curtains, and putting the cushions straight, what would he be like then?

It was only just lately that Lila had begun to have thoughts like this. They came to her sometimes when she looked in the glass and saw herself in one of her new frocks. No one who looked at her as she was looking at herself would know how she was feeling deep down underneath. So every now and then when she looked at somebody else—at Miss Whitaker, at Eric Haile, at Sybil Dryden, and, just now, at Marsham, she had a queer frightened feeling that perhaps they were really quite different underneath. Just as she herself was different and they didn’t know it.

Marsham came over to the fire, trimming it, pulling the logs together. He looked exactly as he always did.

And then Herbert Whitall came in, and she forgot everything else. Lady Dryden moved to meet him.

‘We were just waiting to say good-night. I’m taking Lila off to bed. Your country air makes us all sleepy.’

He smiled.

‘You mean my country air—or my country guests?’

‘My dear Herbert! The Professor is anything but soporific. Do you really enjoy quarrelling with him?’

‘Oh, immensely. You see, I have a number of things which he would give his eyes to get, so he crabs them. If he could persuade me that they were fakes, I should get rid of them, and then even if he didn’t manage to get them himself he wouldn’t be aggravated by seeing them in my possession. Even if he can’t persuade me, he can perhaps plant a thorn here and there, or at the very least he can blow off steam.’

She looked at him curiously.

‘And what do you get out of it?’

He laughed.

‘My dear Sybil—can you ask? What used you to get out of it when you came into a room and knew that none of the other women could touch you? Wasn’t it meat and drink to you to be envied and—hated?’

Under the impact of the past tense her features had sharpened. He smiled.

‘Pleasant—wasn’t it? Well, that’s what I feel like when I see Richardson, Mangay, and the others full of envy, hatred, and malice over my ivories. Petty of course, but that’s how we are. Any toy is good enough to fight over. And a thing that isn’t worth fighting for isn’t worth having.’

He looked past her at Lila. It was a long look without passion in it—the look of the connoisseur in the auction room, cold, appraising. As he came towards her, she felt sick and shaken. Now he was going to touch her, kiss her. She couldn’t scream or run away. If she did—would Aunt Sybil still make her marry him?’

His hand fell upon her shoulder. He bent and kissed her cheek.

‘Good-night, my lovely Lila. Sleep well and dream of me.’

It was over. Her heart always seemed to stop for the moment of the kiss. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe—everything in her was tight and cold. But now it was over.

She went upstairs with Sybil Dryden and said good-night. When five minutes had gone by it would be safe to lock the door. Aunt Sybil wouldn’t come back.

When the key had turned she took a long breath, tipped hot water into the basin, and washed away Herbert Whitall’s kiss.

For a time all the normal sounds of an occupied house went on—water running; a door opening and closing again; footsteps on the stair, on landing and passage; the sound of voices muted to the edge of what could just be heard; small hushed movements in this or that of the bedrooms; the shutting of a drawer; the click of an electric light switch. And then, with a gradual fading out of all these things, that curious transition state during which the silence of a house which is still awake passes imperceptibly into the silence of a house which is very deeply asleep.

It was just before this transition period that Marsham made his final round of the house. The windows had all been fastened hours before, and the front door locked when Professor Richardson had followed the Considines. He shot the two bolts, top and bottom, and turned into the passage dividing the rooms which looked out upon the gravel sweep from those which faced the terrace and the view.

At the study door he paused, and stood for a moment listening. There was a sound of voices from within. As he said afterwards, he supposed that Sir Herbert was having a smoke and a drink with Mr. Haile, who was staying the night. Since Sir Herbert was often very late and he was not required to wait up for him, he did not find anything unusual in the fact that the gentlemen should be sitting over the fire with their drinks. He could hear two voices, but could distinguish no words. This is what he said afterwards. At the time, he lingered a little longer than was exactly necessary, but not so long as to lay himself open to a charge of eavesdropping. When he moved to go, it was with a slight shrug of the shoulders, and he had not taken more than a couple of steps before he turned back again. One of the voices had been raised. He stood for a moment, and then took his way to the end of the passage and through the green baize door which screened the back stairs.

Lila Dryden did not undress. She had no settled plan in her head, she was just waiting. Presently, when everyone was in bed and asleep, she would have to think what she was going to do. Of course the easiest thing would be not to do anything at all. That was what she had been doing all this time—the easiest thing, the easiest way. It was like being in a car when someone else was driving—you didn’t have to think, you just let yourself be carried along. Sybil Dryden was an extremely capable driver. She knew just where she was going, and how to get there. But tonight Lila had had a sudden horrifying glimpse of her destination. It was like seeing something in the flare of a lightning flash, and it had frightened her so much that she was almost ready to jump out of the car.

Lucy Ashton’s crazed eyes, and the ivory dagger red with blood.

The picture rose, and there was no Adrian to send it back to its own horrible place. Her heart failed and her breath fluttered.

She got up shaking from head to foot, went over to the hearth, and kneeled there. The fire had died down. But wood ash holds the heat for a long time. A comfortable warmth came from it, it helped her to stop shivering.

But she had not come there to warm herself. When Sybil Dryden tried the handle of her door before dinner, she had slipped Bill’s letter under the wooden kerb which guarded the hearth. She had read it, she had hidden it, and she had lied about it. Now she lifted the kerb and pulled it out, a little dusty and crumpled. Bill never wrote long letters. He got on with what he had to say, and when he had said it he stopped. This was almost too short to be called a letter at all. She knelt there in front of the pile of wood ash with the glow at its heart and read what he had written.

Lila—I’ve got to see you. If you want to marry Whitall you can marry him. If you don’t want to, I’ll take you to Ray tonight. I’ll be outside the window of the room on the left of the hall as you come in from half past eleven onwards. Show a light and I’ll knock three times so you’ll know it’s me.

Bill.

It was a way out. She could pack a suit-case. She could put on a dark coat and skirt and her fur coat, and when the big clock on the landing struck the half hour after eleven she could slip downstairs and get out of the window in the Blue Room, and Bill would take her away. She always wondered why it was called the Blue Room. Perhaps it was blue once, long ago. It wasn’t now. There was some very dull tapestry work on the chairs, and an ugly modern picture of a girl with a green face which Herbert said was very clever.

These things were in the confusion of her mind, all mixed up with listening for the clock to strike, showing a light in the Blue Room, and waiting for Bill to knock on the window. Bill would take her away, and she need never see Herbert again…

Aunt Sybil would make her. Herbert would make her. She couldn’t really get away from them.

Bill would take her away. He would take her to Ray. Then she would have to marry him. He would make her. Ray would make her. She didn’t want to marry him.

She knelt there for a long time. She didn’t know what to do. She went on kneeling until she began to feel giddy. Then she got up and huddled on the couch at the foot of the bed with the eiderdown pulled round her, because she was dreadfully cold, and you can’t really think when you are cold. She tried very hard to think, but it wasn’t any use. Bill said, ‘Come down and show a light, and I’ll take you away.’ Just for a moment she thought she could do it, but she couldn’t really. Sybil Dryden would never let her do it. However softly she opened her door, however softly she crept, Sybil would hear her. Sybil would come out of her room. Or Herbert. She had a most awful picture of being trapped in the dark, with no one to hear if she cried out. The room rocked and filled with mist. She couldn’t do it.

And then quite suddenly it came to her that she needn’t do it. Bill would wait, and then he would go away. And he would come back in the morning, because if Bill said he had got to see her, he would go on till he did. And it wouldn’t be nearly so frightening in the daytime. And she could tell Adrian and ask him—and ask him—

She drifted into an exhausted sleep. At first it was very deep. Then it began to be shot with dreams, like vague terrifying shadows—passing, fading, coming again. She did not know what they were, she only knew that they were dreadful. She moved among them like someone groping in a fog. She didn’t know where she was going or why. Something drove her. The dreams went too. They all drove together without any power to stop, like leaves driving in the wind—weak, fluttering leaves in a bleak and dreadful wind.

Suddenly the wind stopped. There was a stillness. Lucy Ashton’s eyes looked into hers.

She woke under a blaze of light. She was in the study. The overhead light was on, the room was as bright as day. Herbert Whitall was lying sprawled across the carpet. He was dead. She had never seen a dead person before, but she was very sure that he was dead. There was blood on his shirt-front. She drew a long sighing breath. Then she saw the blood on her white dress—a bright splash of it all down the front. Blood on her dress, and blood on her hand. It was her right hand, and it was dreadfully stained. On the floor at her feet lay the ivory dagger.