Watson's Choice (7 page)

‘Hullo, m’dear,’ said Sir Bohun, looking gravely concerned. ‘Gave you a bit of a turn? I’m sorry about that. But no fault of mine, as you’ll realize.’

Linda Campbell tried to smile, but her face was stiff with fright.

‘Basil, go and get her some brandy. She’s had a shock,’ said Brenda Dance, at once. Grimston, looking thunderous, went out for the restorative, and when he came back he announced that the orchestra had appeared and were thawing out in the servants’ hall.

‘They can’t waste time there,’ said Sir Bohun. ‘Grimston, you and Bell collect the voting papers. Now, Linda, how do you feel?’

‘Better,’ the pallid girl replied. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m terrified of dogs, and that was such a big one, and it looked – it looked so very horrible!’

Sir Bohun nodded, went out of the room and brought in the orchestra, who were certainly cold and damp and seemed delighted to get into the brilliantly-lighted, centrally-heated ballroom.

‘They’ve been delayed by the fog, as I expected, and I suppose they brought that great brute with them,’ he said, calmly appropriating the theory advanced by Brenda Dance. The orchestra leader, however, disclaimed all knowledge of the dog. He had not even
seen
a dog, he declared. He and his men tuned up and began to play.

Manoel again came over to where Mrs Bradley was sitting. He was a teak-faced, black-haired young man, grave and stern, with square, practical hands and a stocky yet sinuous body. He looked enquiringly at her. Mrs Bradley grinned, but this horrid sight appeared to encourage the boy. He showed white teeth in a foreign, attractive smile.

‘You offer psychological advice, yes?’ he said, giving a stiff little bow before seating himself beside her.

‘Certainly, if and when it is required of me.’

‘Good. I am in a difficulty. It is not easy to commit murder which is not found out, I believe?’

‘Not in England, at any rate.’

‘Not in any country. What would be the best way?’

‘To commit murder, or to avoid being found out?’

‘Of course, both. I ask for information so that in my thoughts I can think somebody not dear to me is murdered. An academic murder, I think I would call it.’

‘I see. Wouldn’t it be sufficient to imagine that this person had died naturally?’

‘Sufficient to me, no. I was born naturally. That is enough that is natural. I would like to think of his agony.’

‘We are referring to …?’

‘To my natural father. But I see that you do not find the subject interesting. Tell me, therefore, of something else. In English law, if he should die … when his time comes from God, you understand … shall I become his heir? There would be nobody with a higher claim, I think.’

‘He would have to acknowledge paternity, or else he would have to make the necessary testamentary depositions.’

‘I see. I must ask him to do one or the other, then. You admit that I could have the right to do that?’

‘I see nothing against it.’

‘Did
you
produce the big dog? I saw that you and Miss Menzies were the only ones not afraid.’

‘No, it was nothing to do with us. Laura likes dogs.’

‘And you? Are you an English dog-lover?’

‘Not particularly. But I saw that the dog was harmless.’

‘No, I do not believe you did. I think you have too much human dignity to run from an animal.’

‘Nonsense. If I met a really savage creature I should be out of sight in a moment.’

‘So you say. Will you give me once more of your help?’

‘Say on, as my secretary would remark.’

‘Suppose that my father should marry again, and have children, would my claim to the inheritance be gone?’

‘It would not be such a good claim, but, again, your share of the property would depend upon his last will and testament.’

‘Yet I should still be his eldest son,’ said Manoel, quietly. ‘Nothing can ever alter that. You know, when we
toreadores
come to the point at which the bull must die, we call it “the moment of truth”. One day I think my father must come to that moment. What, then, will he think of me?’ He looked thoughtful, and then added, ‘If I kill my father, what will
you
think of me?’

‘The same as I do at present,’ Mrs Bradley replied.

‘Comes a lady who wishes her luggage to be carried to her hotel,’ said Manoel. ‘She attempts to engage a mendicant who has asked her for alms. But, because he is a Spaniard, he replies that he is a beggar, not a station porter. And I am a bull-fighter, not an assassin, I think. You understand?’

Mrs Bradley nodded. She partly understood, even at that time. Later, she fully understood.

‘Many the heart that’s aching,

If you could read them all –

 Many the hope that has vanished

 – After the ball.’

Victorian Song

MANOEL LEFT MRS BRADLEY’S
side and went over to speak to Toby Dance whom alcohol had rendered somewhat gloomy. Scarcely had he dropped into a chair beside Dance when Bell returned from marking the competition papers. He was followed by the butler bearing a salver on which reposed a book, a very large envelope, a small gold-coloured box and a silver tankard, pint size. Bell walked up to the orchestra and stopped the music. The two couples – Brenda Dance and Gavin, Celia Godley and Grimston, who were the only dancers, retired to the side of the room, and Sir Bohun took the floor, with his secretary a half-step behind him and the butler a little more aloof.

‘Well, my dears,’ said Sir Bohun, ‘we have the competition results. Would you care to be seated?’

Laura, who had achieved ten correct answers, received the envelope. It contained, not the rumoured cheque for a thousand pounds, which she would have refused, but an autographed letter of Edgar Allan Poe.

‘Oh, I can’t take
that!
’ she cried delightedly. Sir Bohun wagged a kindly if consequential head.

‘Couldn’t offer a Highlander
dross
,’ he replied. Mrs Bradley, for Mrs Farintosh’s costume, received a ruby pendant embodying the five orange pips wrought in gold – ‘Blood, you see, blood,’ remarked Sir Bohun, indicating the rubies, which were many and tiny. Gavin, as runner-up to Laura, was presented with the tankard – ‘most unoriginal, my dear Chief-Inspector, but had not expected such a close finish’ – and the book, which proved to have a hand-tooled leather cover and to be a copy on hand-made paper of Keats’
Endymion
, was presented, amid applause, to Mrs Godley,
Celia’s
mother, with the gallant remark from its donor: ‘Here you are, Katie, my dear. You’ve borne with all the nonsense very patiently for a woman who doesn’t know
Silver Blaze
from the Great Fire of London!’

The presentation ceremony being over, the company tended to drift towards the room in which the drinks were still to be found. Laura gravitated towards Mrs Bradley, and they admired one another’s awards. Then Mrs Bradley asked:

‘Well? And what’s the matter?’

‘I don’t know, exactly,’ Laura replied. ‘Nothing. But Gavin doesn’t like it, either. He thinks there’s something cooking in this house, and so do I.’

‘An emanation from Sir Bohun, who goes in fear of his life?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. It’s a collection of tiny bits …’ Under cover of the music which the orchestra still deemed its duty to disseminate, although nobody was dancing, she recounted the events of the evening so far as they had affected her, and so far as she had exchanged opinions with Gavin.

Mrs Bradley nodded, but made no contribution regarding her own experiences that evening; neither did she put forward any suggestions to account for Laura’s feeling of unease beyond the one she had already offered. Herself aware of tension in the air, she felt it centred around Linda Campbell. She did not say this to Laura, but stated, instead, that she felt she had had enough of the Sherlock Holmes party and would now say good night.

She was on her way upstairs when she became aware of voices in altercation on the landing. She coughed, with the intention of indicating her presence, but had heard the following fragment of conversation before the voices ceased and a sound of scuffling, and then of light, running footsteps, indicated that the speakers had made off.

‘I can’t help it. I didn’t ask you to fall in love with me, so mind your own business!’

‘But, look here, Linda, he’s old enough to be your father! And you’ve let me think all this time, damn you – ’

‘I never intended to marry a poor man. We Jane Eyres have need to look out for ourselves and to seize our chance when it comes. I admit I
did
like you at first, but you’re never going to be anything better than an usher – ’

‘Oh, shut up, Linda! There’s no need – ’ At this point Mrs
Bradley
coughed again and the voice broke off. When she gained the landing, the doors leading to the servants’ staircase were still swinging, although neither of the wranglers slept in the servants’ wing. She had recognized the voices.

Although she had retired from the ballroom, she had no intention of going to bed; but she was glad to get out of her heavy costume and to take off her boots and her bonnet. She put on a dragon-strewn dressing-gown and fur-lined slippers, inspected the books on her bedside shelf, chose poetry, and settled down in an armchair beside a comfortable fire.

In at the slightly-open window swirled the fog, not even the heavy curtains serving to keep it out. The smell of it was ghostly, and Mrs Bradley, unimaginative where the supernatural was concerned, found herself speculating, with detached, analytical mind upon the theories that ghosts materialize more easily in fog than in clear weather, and that the most dreadful apparitions are not those that wait upon the chimes of midnight, but those that emerge, sudden and silent, at noonday.

Upon these thoughts intruded another – that somewhere downstairs she had heard a door slam. It was an outside door, she felt certain, but there seemed no reason to believe that, in the thick fog, even supposing she went to the window and drew aside the curtain, she would be able to see who had gone out. It was somebody leaving early; that was what it would be.

Instinct, however – too strong for reason – caused her to cross to the window, draw aside the curtain and peer out. The terrace was so brilliantly illuminated that, in spite of the fog, she caught a glimpse of the person below, but all that she could distinguish for certain was that the midnight stroller was a woman who might have been the governess, but might equally well have been Brenda Dance. In any case, in an instant the woman had stepped into the fog and was lost to sight. Mrs Bradley, realizing that, although her curiosity was aroused, the incident was none of her business, settled down again to Dylan Thomas, and at half past one went to bed and to sleep – this in spite of the orchestra, which had come to play dance music whether anybody danced or not.

Breakfast was served to her in her room next morning and she did not get downstairs until a quarter to eleven. The fog had not entirely disappeared, but it had lost its impenetrability. From the morning-room windows she could see the vague outlines of trees
and
above them a faint blue sky. She decided to go for a walk, and to do so before anyone could find the opportunity to suggest accompanying her.

She slipped out of the morning-room, therefore, hoping that she would not encounter any other of the house-party. Nobody seemed to be about. She supposed that the party had ended not before four o’clock, and that those who had seen it out to the end were spending the morning in bed. These probably included her secretary, she thought.

As she came downstairs again with her hat and coat on, she came face to face with the tutor and the delicate-looking child, Philip.

‘Oh, I say, Mr Grimston, couldn’t
we
go for a walk?’ exclaimed the boy, at the sight of Mrs Bradley in her outdoor clothes.

‘No, Philip,’ replied the young man. ‘We’re late for work already. You’ve a lot to catch up, you know, if you’re going to be ready for school in Switzerland in the spring.’

He nodded to Mrs Bradley, and took the boy off to the library. He was not the
Noble Bachelor
of last night’s ball, Mrs Bradley remembered, but the owner of one of the two quarrelling voices on the landing, and she wondered again whether the woman who had left the house at midnight was the person with whom he had been quarrelling. She could not help wondering, also, at what time the governess had returned to the house, if it had been indeed she who had gone out. It was rather unlikely, though, that she had risked encountering the mysterious dog on the terrace, for there was no doubt that her terror of the animal had been genuine. Mrs Bradley was not the person to be deceived when the primitive instincts were involved. Grimston, she thought, looked strained and over-tired, but that might be due to the late hour at which the ball had ended. No doubt he had not liked to leave early as he was an employee in the house. He had gone back to the ballroom, probably after the quarrel with Linda Campbell, and had remained there until the party was over.

The library door had scarcely shut behind him and his charge when another door opened and the grey-haired Nanny Call appeared with the younger boy.

‘I beg your pardon, madam,’ said the woman in respectful tones, ‘but could you tell me anything about Miss Campbell? She should have come for Master Timothy an hour ago, but I haven’t set eyes on her yet, and she’s not in her room.’

‘I have not seen her either, Mrs Call,’ said Mrs Bradley, who had been personally responsible for introducing Nanny Call when Sir Bohun had demanded a nurse for little Timothy. ‘I wonder whether Philip’s tutor would know anything about it? He has just gone into the library.’

‘I’d better ask him, madam, though I don’t suppose he’ll thank me if he’s begun work with Master Philip. He’s a very conscientious young gentleman.’ Her tone indicated that he was also rather a disagreeable one, and Mrs Bradley, recollecting the conversation she had overheard on the previous evening, thought that there might be some reason why he should be.