Death and the Dancing Footman. Ngaio Marsh
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at me. Please go on dressing and let me tell you.’
Hersey returned to the dressing-table, and presently Mrs Compline began to speak. The thin, exhausted voice, now well controlled, lent no colour to the story of despoiled beauty. It trailed dispassionately through her husband’s infidelities, her own despair, her journey to Vienna, and her return. And Hersey, while she listened, absently made up her own face, took off her net, and arranged her hair. When it was over she turned towards Mrs Compline, but came no nearer to her.
‘But can you be sure?’ she said.
‘It was his voice. When I heard of him first, practising in Great Chipping, I wondered. I said so to Deacon, my maid. She was with me that time in Vienna.’
‘It was over twenty years ago, Sandra. And his name –’
‘He must have changed it when he became naturalized.’
‘Does he look at all as he did then?’
‘No. He has changed very much.’
‘Then –’
‘I am not positive, but I am almost positive. I can’t face it, Hersey, can I?’
‘I think you can,’ said Hersey, ‘and I think you will.’
V
Jonathan stood in front of a blazing fire in the drawing room. Brocaded curtains hung motionless before the windows, the room glowed with reflected light and, but for the cheerful hiss and crackle of burning logs, was silent. The night outside was silent too, but every now and then Jonathan heard a momentary sighing as if the very person of the North Wind explored the outer walls of Highfold. Presently one of the shutters knocked softly at its frame and then the brocaded curtains stirred a little, and Jonathan looked up expectantly. A door at the far end of the room opened and Hersey Amblington came in.
‘Hersey, how magnificent! You have dressed to please me, I believe. I have a passion for dull green and furs. Charming of you, my dear.’
‘You won’t think me so charming when you hear what I’ve got to say,’ Hersey rejoined. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Jo.’
‘What an alarming phrase that is,’ said Jonathan. ‘Will you have a drink?’
‘No, thank you. Sandra Compline has been threatening to go home.’
‘Indeed? That’s vexing. I hope you dissuaded her?’
‘Yes. I did.’
‘Splendid. I’m so grateful. It would have quite spoiled my party.’
‘I told her not to give you the satisfaction of knowing you had scored.’
‘Now, that really is unfair,’ cried Jonathan.
‘No, it’s not. Look here, did you know about Sandra and your whey-faced boy-friend?’
‘Mandrake?’
‘Now, Jo, none of that nonsense. Sandra confides in her maid, and she tells me the maid is bosom friends with your Mrs Pouting. You’ve listened to servants’ gossip, Jo. You’ve heard that Sandra thought this Hart man might be the Dr Hartz who made that appalling mess of her face.’
‘I only wondered. It would be an intriguing coincidence.’
‘I’m ashamed of you, and I’m furious with you on my own account. Forcing me to be civil to that blasted German.’
‘Is she a German?’
‘Whatever she is, she’s a dirty fighter. I’ve heard on excellent authority she’s started a rumour that my Magnolia Food Base grows beards. But never mind about that. I can look after myself.’
‘Darling Hersey! If only you had allowed me to perform that delightful office!’
‘It’s the cruel trick you’ve played on Sandra that horrifies me. You’ve always been the same, Jo. You’ve a passion for intrigue, wedded to an unholy curiosity. You lay your plans, and when they work out and people are hurt or angry, nobody is more sorry or surprised than you. It’s a sort of blind patch in your character.’
‘Was that why you refused me, Hersey, all those years ago?’
Hersey caught her breath, and for a moment was silent.
‘Not that I agree with you, you know,’ said Jonathan. ‘One of my objectives is a lavish burial of hatchets. I hope great things of this weekend.’
‘Do you expect the Compline brothers to become reconciled because you have given Nicholas an opportunity to do his barn-yard strut before Chloris Wynne? Do you suppose Hart, who is obviously in love with The Pirate, will welcome the same performance with her, or that The Pirate and I will wander up and down your house with our arms round each other’s waists, or that Sandra Compline will invite Hart to have another cut at her face? You’re not a fool, Jo.’
‘I had hoped for your co-operation,’ said Jonathan wistfully.
‘Mine!’
‘Well, darling, to a certain extent I’ve had it. You made a marvellous recovery from your own encounter with Madame Lisse, and you tell me you’ve persuaded Sandra to stay.’
‘Only because I felt it was better for her to face it.’
‘Don’t you think it may be better for all of us to face our secret bogey-men? Hersey, I’ve collected a group of people each one of whom is in a great or small degree hag-ridden by a fear. Even Aubrey Mandrake has his little bogey-man.’
‘The poetic dramatist? What have you nosed out from his past?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘No,’ said Hersey, turning pink.
‘You are sitting beside him at dinner. Say, in these exact words, that you understand he has given up footling, and see what sort of response you get.’
‘Why should I use this loathsome phrase to Mr Mandrake?’
‘Why, simply because, although you won’t admit it, darling, you have your share of the family failing – curiosity.’
‘I don’t admit it. And I won’t do it.’
Jonathan chuckled. ‘It is an amusing notion. I shall make the same suggestion to Nicholas. I believe it would appeal to him. To return to our cast of characters. Each of them, Sandra Compline to an extreme degree, has pushed his or her fear into a cupboard. Chloris is afraid of her old attraction to Nicholas, William is afraid of Nicholas’s fascination for Chloris and for his mother, Hart is afraid of Nicholas’s fascination for Madame Lisse, Sandra is afraid of a terrible incident in her past, Madame Lisse, though I must say she does not reveal her fear, is perhaps a little afraid of both Hart and Nicholas. You, my dearest, fear the future. If Nicholas has a fear it is that he may lose prestige, and that is a terrible fear.’
‘And you, Jo?’
‘I am the compère. Part of my business is to unlock the cupboards and show the fears to be less terrible in the light of day.’
‘And you have no bogey-man of your own?’
‘Oh, yes, I have,’ said Jonathan, and the light gleamed on his spectacles. ‘His name is Boredom.’
‘And therein am I answered,’ said Hersey.
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