Читать книгу: «The Deductions of Colonel Gore», страница 2

‘Nerves, poor thing,’ Gore reflected. ‘Another of ’em that doesn’t know why she was born.’

As a silvery-toned clock somewhere in the room chimed eight fleetly, Clegg announced the last guest.

‘Mr Barrington.’

For a moment the hum of voices died. The man who had entered surveyed the occupants of the room with smiling composure as he moved towards his hostess.

‘My wife has charged me with the most abject of apologies, Mrs Melhuish. She had hoped until the last moment to be able to come.’

‘We are so sorry,’ Mrs Melhuish assured him. ‘But it would have been folly for her to have ventured out on an evening like this. Of all afflictions in the world, I can imagine none worse than earache.’

‘Dreadful. Quite dreadful,’ Barrington agreed. He included Melhuish in his smile. ‘However, she has retired to bed with a large supply of aspirin tabloids at hand … How are you, doctor? Worked to death, I suppose, as usual? I see you rushing about in that big car of yours from morning to night. Lot of sickness about, isn’t there?’

‘Yes,’ said Melhuish simply.

Not a brilliant conversationalist, Dr Sidney Melhuish, Gore reflected—an exceedingly dry stick indeed. No one could suspect him of shyness or nervousness; his clean-cut face was as cool as a chunk of ice. Just one of those men who just didn’t want to talk most of the time and wouldn’t. Grim-looking chap, when his mouth set. Sort of chap that would look at your tongue and tell you you had six months to live and touch the bell for his man to show you out. Poor Pickles … What sparkling conjugal tête-à-têtes …

And yet, a moment later, when Melhuish crossed the room, Gore caught a glimpse of another man—a man whose kind, wise eyes and almost boyish sincerity and simplicity of manner and gesture brought a faint flush of animation to Angela Heathman’s apathetic face as he smiled at her. No doubt she, too, was a patient of his. For that matter, as far as Gore had been able to discover, everybody in Linwood was, though it was only four years or so, he had learned, since Melhuish had purchased an old and decaying practice and installed himself in that most conservative of Westmouth’s suburbs, a stranger and an interloper. True, he had brought with him from Bath, where he had been in practice for several years before the war, a reputation for brilliance, especially in heart cases. But Gore knew the stiff reserve and suspicion of Linwood too well to believe that a reputation for anything in the world acquired, anywhere else in the world could influence it in the least. Something—something which no doubt Pickles had found out for herself—there must be in this difficult husband of hers that was not vouchsafed to the common or garden general practitioner … Something, for instance, that had been able to win for him not merely the patronage but the friendship of a man like James Wellmore, whose sole standard of judgment was value for his money.

His eyes returned to the shrivelled, peevish face of the tobacco magnate, bent obstinately on the fire, its underlip protruding sulkily as he listened to something which Barrington was saying to him. There was no trace of affection, paternal or otherwise, in his expression just then. Indeed as Barrington moved away from him towards Mrs Melhuish, Wellmore turned to look after him with an unmistakable scowl until, detecting Gore’s interest in him, he switched his erring gaze back to the fire once more.

‘I have succeeded in finding that cutting for you, Mr Barrington,’ said Mrs Melhuish.

‘How kind of you to have remembered,’ replied Barrington, displaying his small, even teeth in a smile of open admiration. He was an extraordinarily handsome man, Gore admitted ungrudgingly—quite the handsomest man he had seen for some time—with some quality of charm that lay deeper than the perhaps slightly theatrical effect of his dark aquilinity and reckless gray eyes. Thirty-five at most, broad-shouldered, slim-flanked, easily—a little too easily, perhaps—sure of himself, he was one of those men at whom no woman could look without interest or without the awakening of her oldest and strongest instinct. Already Gore had noticed with amusement that, as he moved across the room to his hostess, the regards of the other three women had followed him with a speculative intentness. And that the charms of this smiling Adonis were not lost upon Mrs Melhuish herself was no less evident. Her colour had brightened beneath the flattery of his look; her poise and intonation as she spoke to him were tinged with the subtle challenge of her sex—the indefinable yet unmistakable blending of defiance and invitation that—by a cynic as hardened as Wick Gore—could be taken for nothing but … well, what any chap with two eyes in his head would take it for. Miss Pickles hadn’t changed all her spots, then—for all the rash vows of holy matrimony. Still a flash of colour and a sparkling eye for an agreeable-looking young fellah. She had always preferred ’em dark … and a bit hooky about the beak.

‘I put it down somewhere,’ said Mrs Melhuish, glancing about her. ‘Now … where …? Oh, yes. I remember.’

She moved to the piano, and picked up an envelope that lay on some music. Barrington took the envelope from her smilingly, opened it, glanced casually at the newspaper cutting which it contained.

‘Thanks so much,’ he said, as he replaced the cutting and put the envelope away in a pocket. ‘As a matter of fact I had rather thought of running up to look at another shoot in that part of Wiltshire this week.’

‘Really?’

Mrs Melhuish’s colour had forsaken her now. Her eyes consulted with anxiety the little Sèvres clock on the table beside Gore, rose to his brown, hard profile, and rested there for a moment warily. He stood but an arm’s-length from her; but he was listening with the most flattering of attention to Lady Wellmore’s views upon the sinister aims of Labour. The slightest movement of her golden head showed her her husband and Sylvia Arndale grouped by the big chair near the fire into which Wellmore had subsided with a yawn. At the other side of the room Arndale struggled feebly with Miss Heathman’s vague-eyed listlessness, pausing between each laborious effort to regard a water-colour above her head vacantly. Mrs Melhuish’s hand strayed to a bowl of chrysanthemums by the piano, touched a great gold and russet bloom caressingly.

‘If the door is shut, go away,’ she said softly—almost inaudibly. ‘I may not be able to manage tonight. I will ring you up tomorrow at eleven if not.’

Barrington bent to examine the gorgeous blossom.

‘It will be open,’ he smiled.

His reckless eyes dwelt in hers victoriously for an instant. As she turned to introduce him to Gore, Clegg appeared once more, slightly flushed and seven minutes late.

‘Dinner is served, madam.’

CHAPTER II

IT was, it appeared, Sir James Wellmore’s inviolable rule to get out of his bed at seven o’clock and get into it again before midnight, and at half-past eleven he and Lady Wellmore departed in an immense limousine. Miss Heathman, silent and vague-eyed to the last, accompanied them; the big house on the Promenade of which she was the capricious mistress, lay on the Wellmores’ homeward way across the Downs to their palatial mansion at Bishops Leaze. The Arndales had gone away before eleven o’clock hurriedly, disturbed by a telephone-message requiring, Gore presumed, Mrs Arndale’s immediate return to some urgent trouble of the baby, with details of whose incredible brilliancy of intellect and beauty of form she had regaled him at intervals during dinner. It was twenty minutes to twelve when he and Barrington made their adieux to Mrs Melhuish and went down the stairs accompanied by their host.

As Clegg helped him into his overcoat, in the hall, Gore glanced at the artistically-arranged trophy which occupied the wall space between the hall door and the door of the dining-room. His wedding present made, he reflected, quite a decent display, the two befeathered Masai head-dresses and the scarlet-and-ochre magic-mask forming an effective centre to the design. The shaft of one of the Wambulu spears had developed some mysterious breed of worm some months after its arrival, Melhuish told him, and had been replaced by a new one.

‘Hope your maids aren’t curious about cutlery, doctor,’ Gore grinned, as he accepted a light for his cigarette. ‘I mean—those hunting spears are probably quite safe. But those little arrows—and the knives—Well, I think I inserted lavish warnings in the packing-cases. I hope I did.’

Barrington fitted a cigarette into a long amber holder.

‘What?’ he asked. ‘Bad medicine, are they?’

‘Possibly very nasty indeed,’ said Gore—‘some of them.’ He touched the beaded sheaths of two small knives, crossed to form the lower point of the trophy. ‘These two little brutes, for instance … I shouldn’t mind betting that if you were thoughtless enough to scratch yourself with one of these—even after three years—something exceedingly unpleasant would happen you in the next few minutes. I’ve actually seen a poor beggar die in less than two minutes from a prick of one of those little throwing-knives … Die most untidily, too.’

‘What’s the poison?’ asked Melhuish, with professional interest. ‘I remember now that my wife did say something about the cautions you sent her. But I’m afraid we had both forgotten all about them.’

‘It’s a root called “nmakato.” Not in the B.P., I rather fancy, doctor. We didn’t succeed in seeing the root itself. As a matter of fact, the old witch-doctors who distill the stuff are rather reticent about little trade-secrets of that sort. I saw the flowers of the thing, though—yellow—not unlike our gorse, both to look at and to smell. They use the flowers to make wreaths for their young women when they retire into seclusion to think over the joys of matrimony for a month or so before they plunge into them.’

He held out his hand. ‘Well, we shall meet again, doctor, no doubt.’

‘You haven’t decided yet how long you’ll stay in Linwood?’

‘Some weeks, at any rate, I hope. Good-night.’

‘You coming my way, Colonel?’ Barrington asked, as the hall door opened to let them out into the foggy dampness of the November night.

‘I’m at the Riverside,’ Gore replied. ‘Just across the way.’

‘Oh.’

Barrington turned to his host.

‘Good-night, doctor. I shall run in and see you tomorrow or next day. I’ve been sleeping a lot better since I cut tobacco right out. But I still get those nasty twinges …’

Melhuish nodded gravely.

‘Come and see me. I hope you’ll find Mrs Barrington’s earache better when you get back. Please tell her how sorry we were that she was unable to come.’

‘I will. Good-night.’

‘Good-night.’

The two departing guests sauntered side by side for a few yards, chatting desultorily until their paths diverged—Gore’s towards the hotel, the lights of whose upper windows were visible through the branches of the trees in the Green, his companion’s along the deserted vista of Aberdeen Place, at the end of which the Corinthian façade of the club rose palely in the glare of the arc-lamps in the Mall.

‘My old heart’s worrying me a bit,’ Barrington explained. ‘I’ve had to cut out most of the joys of life—temporarily, at any rate.’

Gore murmured sympathetically.

‘Bad luck. You’re in good hands, though.’

‘Melhuish’s? None better. You a bridge player?’

‘Incurable.’

‘Then I expect I shall run into you at the club.’

‘I expect so. Remember me to your wife, won’t you? She and I are very old friends.’

‘Indeed? She’ll be delighted so see you any afternoon you care to run in. Hatfield Place—Number 27. Don’t forget.’

‘Twenty-seven. Many thanks. Good-night.’

‘Good-night, Colonel.’

The two parallel rows of tall houses which formed Aberdeen Place and Selkirk Place respectively faced one another, at the distance of a long stone’s-throw, across the Green—a pleasant strip of ornamental garden enclosed by railings for the exclusive use of residents, and running the entire length from Albemarle Hill at the western end to the Mall at the eastern. For convenience’ sake two transverse passages of roadway divided the Green into three detached sections, roughly equal in length. Gore’s path from the Melhuish’s house to the back entrance to the Riverside Hotel—the front entrance was in Albemarle Hill, overlooking the river—lay along one of these two cross passages, and when he had parted from his fellow-guest, therefore, a very few steps interposed between him and Barrington the railings of the middle section of the Green and the shrubs and trees which formed, inside the railings, the ornamental border of the garden. Happening to glance backwards, however, for no more particular reason than that his ears had informed him that the retreating sound of his late companion’s footsteps on the pathway had ceased abruptly, he caught a glimpse of Barrington halted beneath a lamp, facing another man—taller, and wearing a light-coloured raincoat—the sound of whose voice, raised, it seemed to Gore angrily, reached his ears indistinctly during the instant for which he slackened pace to look back. Afterwards he recalled that in that brief instant he had wondered a little from where that taller, raincoated figure had emerged; since, while he had lingered chatting with Barrington not a soul had been in sight in Aberdeen Place against the glare of the Mall. He was to recall, too, that something in the build and size of the second man had suggested Cecil Arndale vaguely—but just how vaguely or how accurately he was afterwards quite unable to weigh. These particular speculations, to which at the moment he attached no importance of any kind, were destined subsequently to assume one of very serious concern to him. For, in fact, as it proved, that hurried, careless, backward view of Barrington, partially blocked out by the laurels, yet unmistakable, was the last he was to see of him alive.

He went on his way, turning left-hand as he reached the roadway of Selkirk Place, which terminated in a cul-de-sac at the pillared gates admitting to the grounds of the Riverside. Beside the gates a three-storied red-brick building, comprising a retail-bar on the ground floor with some living-rooms used by the staff above, formed the rear of the hotel, connected with the main block facing the river by the annexe in which Gore’s suite lay. The bar, a discreetly-managed, quiet little place, unexpected in that exclusive residential quarter of the suburb, catered principally, Gore surmised, for a regular little clientèle of chauffeurs and coachmen from Selkirk Lane. The lane which branched off northwards from Selkirk Place at its doors was bordered by stables, most of them now converted into garages, and provided, no doubt, a considerable number of such customers.

But at that hour the bar had long closed its doors for the night; the wan illumination of an arc-lamp suspended above its portals accentuated its effect of cold inhospitality. One window of the seven that looked up Selkirk Place was still, however, lighted up. A shadow moved across the yellow blind as he passed—possibly the shadow of the tawny-haired Hebe who presided over the bar, and of whom Gore had caught glimpses as she went to and fro across the annexe between her domain and the main building of the hotel. Rather a pretty little thing, he had noticed, if somewhat excessively embellished; not too severe, either, to refuse a smile in return to his ‘Good-morning’ or ‘Good-afternoon.’ Betty, he had gathered, was her name—Betty Rodney. Rather a pretty name. He yawned, crossed the grounds, and was admitted into the annexe by the night porter.

‘I want to get a couple of letters off in half an hour or so,’ he said, when the man had roused his sitting-room fire, ‘if you’ll leave the door into the gardens open for me, I’ll stroll up myself and drop them into the box in Selkirk Place, when I’ve written them.’

Left alone, he manufactured himself a modest whisky-and-soda and seated himself to compose with its aid and that of a very terrible pipe, applications for two vacant positions for either of which, it seemed to him, he might hope to be considered as eligible as the next fellow. One was the secretaryship to a small London club devoted to the consolation of the Very Poor of the Services; the other the secretaryship of a golf club in Hampshire. A cheerful fire glowed and crackled soothingly; there was no other sound to disturb his efforts at ingratiating composition. Presently he finished his drink, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, refilled it, and slewed round in his chair to regard the fire-irons thoughtfully. On the uppermost page of his writing block the words—

‘RIVERSIDE, HOTEL,

‘LINWOOD, WESTMOUTH.

‘Nov. 6, 1922.

‘GENTLEMEN,—’

lay reproachful and forgotten.

‘If the door is shut, go away. I may not be able to manage tonight. I will ring you up tomorrow at eleven if not.’

That was what she had said, furtively, nervously, under cover of the clumsiest interest in the chrysanthemums. And Barrington, as cool and cocksure as be-dam, had said, ‘It will be open.’

What door? When was it to open? What the devil did it mean?

What the devil could it mean? Was it possible that, in her own house—under her husband’s very nose, Pickles—the Pickles whose image, idealised, no doubt, in parts, yet always extraordinarily vivid, had cheered him and bucked him up and made him feel a bit better in even the darkest hours of the past nine years—was it possible that she was playing the rotten, silly old game—carrying on with that sleek-headed— Gore’s private surmise used at that point an epithet of Anglo-Saxon vigour which it instantly deprecated. No. The thing was incredible.

Incredible—unthinkable. A bit of a flirtation, perhaps—perhaps not even that. He drew a breath of relief to find his loyalty to the Pickles of the old days still staunch enough to hold her clear in the face of any suspicion, however insidious.

Straight as a die she had always been—in everything. It wasn’t possible that she could have changed—could have become one of those treacherous, loathsome little cats whose exploits filled the papers nowadays. There was some quite simple explanation of that remark of hers about the door. There must be. It was pretty rotten of him to have believed anything else for a moment, he told himself—the sort of thing one might expect from some half-baked young cub eager to sniff out filth in every corner. He turned, rather peevishly, in his chair, took up his pen, dipped it in ink, and resumed his correspondence with determination.

The son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of soldiers, he had found himself at his father’s death a subaltern in his father’s old regiment, with exactly two hundred a year in addition to his pay. To most people, since the average income of the men in the Westshires was some ten times that amount, such a position would have appeared embarrassing. He had contrived, however, to endure it with fortitude, aided by a practically imperturbable smile, a useful dexterity in all sports and pastimes beloved of youth, and a quite special brilliancy as a polo-player—an amusement which he had pursued, unavoidably, on other people’s ponies for the greater part, but to the great glory of the Westshires. In the year 1912–13, the year in which he had obtained his company, he had been, with one unpublished reservation, as blithe and contented a young man as was to be discovered in the length of the Army List. The reservation was Miss Barbara Letchworth—better known to her intimates as Pickles. But of that fact Wick Gore took very great pains to ensure that neither she nor anyone else should have the slightest inkling. To the day in 1913, when he went out to drink three cups of tea and eat eleven sandwiches and take a cheerful farewell of Miss Letchworth—then one-and-twenty or thereabouts and horribly sweet in cool, fluffy, summer things—preparatory to his departure to India, that extremely intelligent young woman had no faintest suspicion that night and morn for three whole years past he had cursed, for her sake, the day on which he had been born—born, at all events, to two hundred a year in addition to his pay.

From India the battalion had gone, very abruptly, to France in 1914. In the course of the following four years Pickles had written quite a number of charming letters to Captain, Major, and Lieutenant-Colonel Gore successively, accompanied by superior brands of cigarettes and sundry strange garments, each of which he had worn solemnly at least once. A year on the Rhine had completed his military career. Chance had thrown in his way an offer to form a member of an expedition to Central Africa; he had accepted the offer eagerly, sent in his papers, and disappeared for two years. A pleasant twelve months in Rhodesia, where his book—the record of the expedition’s adventures and discoveries—had been written, had induced him to consider seriously the project of settling there permanently.

But at that point a childless and long-widowed aunt had chosen to die and leave for distribution amongst a horde of nephews and nieces a very considerable portion of the money which her husband had extracted from a small colliery in the north. Gore’s share in this good fortune, long despaired of, had amounted on final examination, to an income of three hundred and fifty pounds a year. Two days after his forty-second birthday he had landed in England, spent a week interviewing solicitors and tailors and such things, and, bored to extinction by a London which seemed to him entirely populated by Jews, had fled westwards in search of such of his kith and kin as still survived.

The Riverside Hotel had commended itself to him as a headquarters for various reasons. Its advantages for that purpose had been in no way discounted by the fact that the entrance to the very comfortable private suite with which the management provided him lay within just one minute’s walk from a certain hall door in Aberdeen Place which bore the plate of Dr Sidney Melhuish.

On the very afternoon of his arrival in Linwood, as he returned along Aberdeen Place to the hotel, he had caught a glimpse of a slim figure in moleskins as it disappeared through that hall door. A quite amusing acceleration of his heart-beat had been perceptible for some moments. The same amusing symptom had manifested itself when next morning he had rung up Mrs Melhuish from the Riverside and heard, for the first time for nine years, her voice say, ‘Yes?’ He had found the operation of breathing troublesome for an instant—an instant so long that she had added: ‘Who is speaking, please?’ Quite amusing. Especially in view of her placidity when at length—after nine years—he had replied, a little curtly, ‘Gore.’

There had been a silence, and then a calm, unsurprised ‘Gracious. Why, you said you were going to stay in Rhodesia for ever and ever.’

And then:

‘I’m so sorry. But my husband has just come in for lunch. I must fly. Can you ring me up this evening … about seven? I shall be—’

And then, of course, after nine years, the exchange had cut off.

But her invitation to dinner had made up a good deal for that first flat disappointment.

‘Do come early, like a dear,’ she had said. ‘We want to have you to ourselves for a few minutes. Sidney is pining to meet you. You’ll love him. He’s just the darlingest old thing in the world.’

He recalled now exactly the inflection of her voice as she had said that—

With fresh determination he dipped his pen once more in ink and after the word ‘Gentlemen’ wrote the words, ‘I beg to apply—’

It was then five minutes to one.

It was twenty-five minutes past one when he stamped his two letters. He slipped into an overcoat, and let himself out into the chill clamminess of the fog. The pillar-box for which he was bound lay half-way along Selkirk Place, a couple of hundred yards from the back entrance to the Riverside. At the gates he paused for a moment to light a cigarette, and observed that the window above the bar was still illuminated. As his eyes rested on it, the yellow blind was drawn a little aside, and someone feminine—the tawny-haired Miss Betty Rodney, he presumed—was visible for a moment, peeping down at him.

No doubt Miss Rodney’s attention had been attracted by the halting of his footsteps beneath her window at that hour. He went on his way towards the pillar-box, reflecting, perhaps not entirely originally, that in general and in particular women were curious things.