Death and the Dancing Footman. Ngaio Marsh
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just yet, perhaps. Patience. Now, in order to savour the full bouquet of the experiment you must be made happily familiar with the dramatis personæ. And to that end,’ said Jonathan cosily, ‘I propose that we ring for sherry.’
III
‘I propose,’ said Jonathan, filling his companion’s glass, ‘to abandon similes drawn from painting or music, and to stick to a figure that we can both appreciate. I shall introduce my characters in terms of dramatic art and, as far as I can guess, in the order of their appearance. You look a little anxious.’
‘Then my looks,’ Mandrake rejoined, ‘do scant justice to my feelings. I feel terrified.’
Jonathan uttered his little cackle of laughter. ‘Who can tell?’ he said. ‘You may have good cause. You shall judge of that when I have finished. The first characters to make their unconscious entrances on our stage are a mother and two sons. Mrs Sandra Compline, William Compline, and Nicholas Compline. The lady is a widow and lives at Penfelton, a charming house some four miles to the western side of Cloudyfold village. She is the grand dame of our cast. The Complines are an old Dorset family and have been neighbours of ours for many generations. Her husband was my own contemporary. A rackety, handsome fellow, he was, more popular perhaps with women than with men, but he had his own set in London and a very fast set I fancy it was. I don’t know where he met his wife, but I’m afraid it was an ill-omened encounter for her, poor thing. She was a pretty creature and I suppose he fell in love with her looks. His attachment didn’t last as long as her beauty, and that faded pretty fast under the sort of treatment she had to put up with. When they’d been married about eight years and had these two sons, a ghastly thing happened to Sandra Compline. She went to stay abroad somewhere and, I suppose with the idea of winning him back, she had something done to her face. It was more than twenty years ago, and I dare say these fellows weren’t as good at their job as they are nowadays. Lord knows what the chap she consulted did with Sandra Compline’s face. I’ve heard it said (you may imagine how people talked) that he bolstered it up with wax and that the wax slipped. Whatever happened, it was quite disastrous. Poor thing,’ said Jonathan, shaking his head while the lamplight glinted on his glasses, ‘she was a most distressing sight. Quite lop-sided, you know, and, worst of all, there was a sort of comical look. For a long time she wouldn’t go out or receive anyone. He began to ask his own friends to Penfelton, and a very dubious lot they were. We saw nothing of the Complines in those days, but local gossip was terrific. She used to hunt, wearing a thick veil and going so recklessly that people said she wanted to kill herself. Ironically, though, it was her husband who came a cropper. Fell with his horse and broke his neck. What d’you think of that?’
‘Eh?’ said Mandrake, rather startled by this sudden demand. ‘Why, my dear Jonathan, it’s quite marvellous. Devastatingly Edwardian. Gloriously county. Another instance of truth being much more theatrical than fiction, and a warning to all dramatists to avoid it.’
‘Well, well,’ said Jonathan. ‘I dare say. Let’s get on. Sandra was left with her two small sons, William and Nicholas. After a little she seemed to take heart of grace. She began to go about a bit; this house was the first she visited. The boys had their friends for the holidays, and all that, and life became more normal over at Penfelton. The elder boy, William, was a quiet sort of chap, rather plain on the whole, not a great deal to say for himself; grave, humdrum fellow. Well enough liked, but the type that – well, you can never remember whether he was or was not at a party. That sort of fellow, do you know?’
‘Poor William,’ said Mandrake unexpectedly.
‘What? Oh yes, yes, but I haven’t quite conveyed William to you. The truth is,’ said Jonathan, rubbing his nose, ‘that William’s a bit of a teaser. He’s devoted to his mother. I think he remembers her as she was before the tragedy. He was seven when she came back, and I’ve heard that although he was strangely self-possessed when he saw her, he was found by their old nurse in a sort of hysterical frenzy, remarkable in such a really rather commonplace small boy. He is quiet and humdrum certainly, but for all that there’s something not quite – well, he’s a little odd. He’s usually rather silent, but when he does talk his statements are inclined to be unexpected. He seems to say more or less the first thing that comes into his head, and that’s a sufficiently unusual trait, you’ll agree.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes. Odd. Nothing wrong really, of course, and he’s done very well so far in this war. He’s a good lad. But sometimes I wonder … However, you shall judge of William for yourself. I want you to do that.’
‘You don’t really like him, do you?’ asked Mandrake suddenly.
Jonathan blinked. ‘What can have put that notion into your head?’ he said mildly. He darted a glance at Mandrake. ‘You mustn’t become too subtle, Aubrey. William is merely rather difficult to describe. That is all. But Nicholas!’ Jonathan continued. ‘Nicholas was his father over again. Damned good-looking young blade, with charm and gaiety, and dash, and all the rest of it. Complete egoist, bit of a showman, and born with an eye for a lovely lady. So they grew up and so they are today. William’s thirty-two and Nick’s twenty-nine. William (I stress this point) is concentrated upon his mother, morbidly so, I think, but that’s by the way. Gives up his holidays for no better reason than she’s going to be alone. Watches after her like an old Nanny. He’s on leave just now, and of course rushed home to her. Nick’s the opposite, plays her up for all she’s worth, never lets her know when he’s coming or what he’s up to. Uses Penfelton like a hotel and his mother like the proprietress. You can guess which of these boys is the mother’s favourite.’
‘Nicholas,’ said Mandrake. ‘Of course, Nicholas.’
‘Of course,’ said Jonathan, and if he felt any disappointment he did not show it. ‘She dotes on Nicholas and takes William for granted. She’s spoilt Nicholas quite hopelessly from the day he was born. William went off to prep-school and Eton; Nick, if you please, was pronounced delicate, and led a series of tutors a fine dance until his mother decided he was old enough for the Grand Tour and sent him off with a bear-leader like some young regency lordling. If she could have cut William out of the entail I promise you she’d have done it. As it is she can do nothing. William comes in for the whole packet, and Nick, like the hero of Victorian romance, must fend for himself. This, I believe, his mother fiercely resents. When war came she moved heaven and earth to find a safe job for Nicholas, and took it in her stride when William’s regiment went to the front. Nick has got some department job in Great Chipping. Looks very smart in uniform, and his duties seem to take him up to London pretty often. William, at the moment, as I have told you, is spending his leave with his mamma. The brothers haven’t met for some time.’
‘Do they get on well?’
‘No. Remember the necessary element of antagonism, Aubrey. It appears, splendidly to the fore, in the Compline family. William is engaged to Nicholas’s ex-fiancée.’
‘Really? Well done, William.’
‘I need scarcely tell you that the lady is the next of my characters, the ingénue, in fact. She will arrive with William and his mamma, who detests her.’
‘Honestly, my dear Jonathan –’
‘She is a Miss Chloris Wynne. One of the white-haired kind.’
‘A platinum blonde?’
‘The colour of a light Chablis, and done up in plaster-like sausages. She resembles the chorus of my youth. I’m told that nowadays the chorus looks like the county. I find her appearance startling and her conversation difficult, but I have watched her with interest and I have formed the opinion that she is a very neat example of the woman scorned.’
‘Did Nicholas scorn her?’
‘Nicholas wished to marry her, but being in the habit of eating his cake in enormous mouthfuls, and keeping it, he did not allow his engagement to Miss Chloris to cramp his style as an accomplished philanderer. He continued to philander