Death in Fancy Dress Read online

  His last words to me, as he turned to leave my rooms, were, “I bet the chap you do take in my place will sneak your watch, and I hope he gets your links as well.”

  2

  His first words to me when we met in the bazaar were, “Hullo, Tony. Do I win my bet?”

  It was a minute before I realised what he meant; then I recollected, and handed him five pounds. “Though, as a matter of fact,” I said, “he didn’t take the links.”

  Whatever he had been doing for the past ten years it didn’t appear to have aged him at all. He was the same lean, cheerful, reckless chap, deeply tanned, with the same mad dark-blue eyes (they say that if a male Freyne got born with eyes of any other colour it would be promptly disowned), the same cool way of walking into danger, the same casual manner of trusting to the hour to provide its own requirements.

  “One of the lilies of the field, I am,” he said, complacently. “I toil not, neither do I spin, but I give you my word, I wouldn’t change places with any raven living. Come and spot the sacred ape with me, will you? They say he has to be seen to be believed. Personally, I thought we’d encountered his whole tribe.”

  He looked at the crowds of people surging all round us; representatives of practically every nation under Heaven jostled and muttered and bargained. We watched them surging to and fro; there was a good sprinkling of English and American tourists, easily distinguished by their expansive topees, white drill suits, that made them look like something on the suburban stage, cigars, wrist-watches, cameras and incredible boots. One couple, clearly sprung from the lower middle-class (probably been lucky in the war, Jeremy suggested, but not rancorously), paused near us. The woman said in a quarrelsome, disappointed tone, “It’s what I told you all along, Ern. It’s just like the Earl’s Court Exhibition, only they do have seats there.”

  Jeremy collapsed into wordless laughter. “Don’t let’s look for the ape,” he suggested. “He’d be pure anti-climax after that. I’ve found a place where you can get a God-fearing British drink.”

  “As British as Earl’s Court, I suppose?”

  “Or the British bathroom. Has it ever occurred to you, Tony, that the one real contribution of the Anglo-Saxon races towards culture is the bathroom? It’s become the most important room in the house. Why do you suppose magnates like to be interviewed at unconventional hours? The number of bigwigs, beginning with Lord B——k, that I’ve interviewed on the bath-edge, would surprise you. A bathroom is now such a thing of beauty that it puts a mere drawing-room in the shade. Of course, a man can’t very well say, ‘Cigarette, my dear fellow? Now what about a drink? Oh, and before you go, I must just show you my bathroom,’ so he stages the whole interview there. The ghosts of the ancient Romans must be getting a bit apprehensive about the way we’re overhauling them. What are you doing here?”

  I told him. “Nice job, yours,” he murmured, “though it wouldn’t suit me.”

  “What would?” I retorted.

  He said contentedly, “Oh, well, I rub along all right. I get what I want most.”

  “And that is?”

  “Adventure, novelty, danger, excitement. Those are at least as justifiable as the goals of other average men. The fact is, we live too much on a money basis. And fail to realise that most of the desirable things can’t be bought for cold cash. What about you? When do you ascend the next rung in the legal ladder?”

  “Take silk, d’you mean? My dear fellow, I’m not a barrister.”

  “No?” he asked in surprise. “Why? Couldn’t you manage it?”

  “I don’t want to be. Don’t want silk, either, if it comes to that.”

  “What a rum chap you are. I thought every legal pot looked forward to the time when he raked in the fees and saw his pictures in the Sunday press.”

  “Ah, but I, like yourself, am that rare creature, the man who doesn’t live wholly on a money basis.”

  “I didn’t mean merely money. I know you’ve wads of that. But there are other considerations… you have such a sordid mind.”

  “Kudos, you mean? But that’s only another name, as a rule, for notoriety. Besides, the solicitor sees what the barrister doesn’t, the actual working-out of the drama; the barrister only sees the consequences. Between him and his client stands the solicitor, the insatiable middleman. The barrister gets the fees, but the small fry get the fun.”

  “My own opinion,” agreed Jeremy, cheerfully. “How long are you staying?”

  “I go back to-morrow. And you?”

  “I’m considering a wildcat scheme for raising ivory. For some reason, I’ve always missed Africa. It can’t be that I’ve overlooked it. This might be my chance.”

  It seemed to me it was certainly his chance to lose his capital of three hundred pounds. Wildcats were cautious spinsters compared with Jeremy. The more I heard of the scheme the less I liked it.

  “It’s all right,” he said gaily, “I put my money into this push…”

  After that nothing emerged very clearly, beyond the certainty that the three hundred pounds never would. I said as much.

  “I dare say you’re right,” Jeremy speculated. “Anyway, I’d practically decided to change my mind, before you planted these doubts in it.”

  “Why?”

  “You make me feel homesick. I suddenly remember that there are such places as the Holborn Grill, the Nelson Monument and the Twopenny Tube. Do they still plaster them with advertisements? His vests he had discarded quite, since he became a Bovrilite. That’s you all over, Tony.” He hooked his arm into mine and we moved over to the shipping offices.

  3

  I didn’t see much of Jeremy on the homeward voyage. You might say he was in his element on board ship, if experience hadn’t proved that he is in his element wherever he is. He was in perpetual demand: he got up amateur theatricals, organised deck games, danced, flirted, romanced, found rugs and sheltered corners for elderly ladies, and was even roped in by the chaplain to help with the Sunday morning services.

  “I offered him my services carte-blanche,” Jeremy assured me. “To preach the sermons, read the lessons and carry the bag. I gather I’m to do the second.”

  So that, taking one thing with another, we didn’t have much opportunity for conversation till just before we reached port. There had been dancing on the upper deck as usual, and as usual I’d sat out. At last everything was done, the passengers had gone down to their cabins, and a large number of empty glasses had been retrieved by the stewards. I thought Jeremy looked a shade more serious than usual as he came up, observing lightly, “Too good a night to fug in a bunk. It’s almost the last of them, too.”

  We leaned against the rail in an amicable silence, smoking and watching the blaze of moonlight on the heaving water. Presently Jeremy shied the butt of his cigarette overboard. It described a glowing red arc and expired with a short indignant hiss.

  “You know, Tony,” his sighs, like that of the Victorian swain, increased the gale, as he lounged with his back to the sea, “it’s been pretty good fun.”

  “The voyage?”

  “The last ten years. I shall hate like hell letting it go.”

  “Why must you?” I asked foolishly. I should have known Jeremy better than that.

  “Because one of the basic rules of life is that you can’t live on the past, any more than you can live on the memory of paid bills. You have to let it drop, and go on to the next thing. And that, in my case, is going to be out of a very different book.”

  A swift suspicion stung me. “Jeremy, you haven’t let any of these affairs get serious? You’re not going to settle down?”

  “I believe settle up is a more graphic way of putting it.”

  The notion of our irrepressible Jeremy led tamely on a domestic leash was anything but consoling.

  “Can’t you put it off for a bit?” I urged.

  He shook his head. “T
oo risky.”

  “I thought you appreciated risks?”

  “Not where really important things are concerned. This counts.”

  “Is it anyone I know?”

  “You ought to.” He produced a tattered snapshot from his pocket-book, and let me glance at it. It was a picture of a girl tying up raspberry canes. She wore a cotton frock and no hat. She was laughing. I knew her at once.

  “Hilary!” I exclaimed.

  “Well?”

  I said impulsively, “But, Jeremy…”

  “You’re not trying to tell me you’re in love with the chit, are you? If I thought you were…”

  “But…”

  “I don’t approve of cousins marrying, and I’m sure Eleanor Feltham doesn’t either.”

  “She’s Eleanor Nunn now, but…”

  “I wish to Heaven I’d taken you to Africa and left you there.”

  “But, Jeremy…”

  “Though, if it comes to that, there’s plenty of nice empty sea, and not a soul in sight.”

  “I’m not in love with her, you ass,” I shouted.

  “Well, why not say so at once. And there’s no need to sound so pleased with yourself. I don’t suppose she’d look at you anyway.”

  I gave him his head. I was thinking of Hilary, whom I hadn’t seen for nearly three years. She had been seventeen then, a tall, fair-haired grey-eyed girl, as reckless as Jeremy himself. She had been an attractive minx, with a fiendish love of making men look fools. I thought they’d be pretty well matched, if they did make a pair of it. Anyway, neither would be able to complain of the tediousness of married life.

  After a short pause, I remarked tentatively, “Bit of a hurry, aren’t you? The girl’s only twenty.”

  “My mother was engaged at sixteen and married within the year.”

  “You won’t be allowed to be the ship’s flirt once you’re married.”

  “I shall have another and even more entrancing occupation.”

  I grinned. “That of Hilary’s husband?”

  “What else?”

  “You don’t find the word husband a trifle—er—overwhelming?”

  “Like Humpty Dumpty, I have educated words to bear my own particular meaning. Unquestionably, in the hands of many men the word husband has a peculiarly revolting significance; it is heavy, solid, like the puddings of the old-fashioned nursery with few sultanas to atone for its suety flavour. But with me the word assumes an air, a fascination, a charm, a delight—in short, the prospect of being Hilary’s husband satisfies me completely.”

  I sighed. “I suppose you know your own mind. It’s a pity you couldn’t postpone the event, though, for a little while.”

  “It wouldn’t be safe. Too many good things are lost in that way. I remember my mother telling me once about a hat she’d seen in a shop window, a purple felt hat with a black veil, it was priced at two-and-eleven, I think (I wished Hilary could have heard the bland assurance of his tone). Well, twenty-two-and-eleven, perhaps, or forty-two-and-eleven—they’re all obscene prices—whatever it was, she decided to brood over a cup of tea, and when she came back the hat had vanished.”

  “And Hilary’s your two-and-elevenpenny hat?”

  “Precisely.”

  “I see.” A new thought occurred to me. “Does she know of this—er—arrangement of yours?”

  “Not yet. I’m going to tell her as soon as I get back.”

  “But suppose she doesn’t agree? Suppose the idea of being your wife doesn’t appeal to her as a position of charm, fascination and delight?”

  He swung round, astonished, perplexed, stupefied. “By Jove,” he exclaimed. “I never thought of that.”

  I watched him saunter down the deck, his hands in his coat pockets; he was softly whistling a lilting Spanish air. I found myself wondering if any woman could resist him; so far he’d kept himself free from serious entanglements.

  I had already forgotten the moral of the purple hat.

  Chapter II

  We reached Southampton on a day of flying mist and grey ribbons of cloud. It was cold and cheerless with a leaden sky, hanging low over the roofs. The docks were sodden and dripping. My heart sank, but Jeremy’s spirits rose mercurially as we came ashore. Every mile that the train drew nearer to London his air of debonair excitement increased, though whether he was inspired by the return to his own city, that he knew like an American fanatic, or whether it was because each mile brought him nearer to Hilary I couldn’t determine. At Charing Cross he leaped out, greeting the porters as if they were his family come to welcome him home. People stared, laughed, were attracted, startled, amused. He went to buy cigarettes at the kiosk and said something to the girl there that made her exclaim, “Well, you are a one,” a remark neither of us has ever been able to elucidate, because, said Jeremy, how could we be a two or any other figure? Then he bought an armful of papers and hung about the station reading them, while I expostulated with a porter about a damaged suit-case. This debate appeared likely to continue interminably, when I felt a touch on my arm. I glanced up, explanatory words on my lips. But Jeremy’s face silenced me. All the vitality and fun had died out of it. He was like something locked and impenetrable.

  “Sorry to interrupt you,” he said, curtly. “But I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  “I shan’t be long,” I assured him, with what appeared to me pardonable irritation.

  “Well, good-bye.” He held out his hand.

  “What the devil?” I expostulated. “Where are you going?”

  “To that place in the Strand where you buy passages…”

  “Passages?”

  “Yes. In a ship. To the East. To-night if possible.”

  I said stupidly, “But you’ve only just arrived.”

  “Well, I’ve seen my native land. Now I can let her alone for a few more years.”

  Too much taken aback to attempt to fathom the reason for this amazing volte-face, I could only murmur, “But Nelson’s Monument. You told me you were hungering for a sight of that.”

  “I’ve bought a picture postcard that I can carry in my waistcoat pocket.”

  “And the Thames? You’ve been positively lyrical about the Thames.”

  “Goodness knows why! I can see plenty of shipping on plenty of other rivers.”

  I abandoned my suit-case; its battered condition and the probable ruin of its contents became matters of no moment.

  “Have you gone crazy, Jeremy? You’ve just arrived…”

  “And am now about to depart. This evening. If possible. By boat. Would you like me to wax lyrical about that? I dare say I could try.”

  I exclaimed in despair, “But Hilary…?”

  “Hilary?” repeated Jeremy in a surprised voice, as if her name had never been mentioned between us, “Oh, she’s quite capable of fixing up her own future. She won’t need to consult me.”

  I began to see daylight. “You mean?”

  He sighed, like a man afflicted with an idiot son. “Would you like me to spell it out for you?”

  I said in my driest voice, “Suppose you let me have that paper for an instant,” and he passed it to me with a contemptuous air that made me first resentful and then wretched for him. I knew Jeremy pretty well. It took a good deal to break down his gay nonchalance. Then I looked at the paper. It had been folded back at the picture page. It wasn’t a very good likeness of Hilary; there wasn’t a picture of the man at all, but the caption under the photograph read, “Miss Hilary Feltham, whose engagement to Mr. Arthur Dennis of the Foreign Office is announced.” And in the gossip column there was a further paragraph, saying that Hilary was the only daughter of the late Sir Percy Feltham and stepdaughter of Lady Nunn.

  There was, of course, no reference to Feltham’s startling career, and I supposed that most of Hilary’s contemporaries had barely left the nursery at the
time of the scandal. Dennis had held one or two not very important appointments and was now domiciled in London. The wedding was spoken of as taking place during the summer.

  I wondered who this fellow was and what was his attraction for Hilary. I said as much.

  Jeremy, replying to the first, said, “Fellow she’s going to marry, apparently,” and to the second, “Why not ask her?”

  I said, “I suppose he’s all right, as Eleanor’s agreed to the announcement,” and Jeremy asked if I could think of anything, short of a young tank, that would stop Hilary once she’d made up her mind.

  “Still, Eleanor could have refused to sanction the announcement. Hilary’s under twenty-one.”

  Jeremy asked cynically if she had control of her money, about ten thousand pounds saved by Percy Feltham from the wreck. I said I believed she came into it on her twenty-first birthday, in about a week. Jeremy said, “Well, that may be the answer to your questions.”

  “I wasn’t wondering why any man should want to marry Hilary,” I corrected him, and instantly fell to pondering on these possibilities. Ten thousand pounds isn’t a great sum, I admit, but Jeremy interrupted to say that to the majority of the world, who weren’t bloated capitalists like myself, it was a devil of a lot of money, particularly when you got a girl like Hilary thrown in. “Give them my blessing,” he added. “I take it you’ll be going down to the Abbey.”

  “I am. I hoped you’d be coming with me.”

  “Another time, perhaps. Just at the moment urgent pressure of business at the other side of the world demands my presence.”

  “You can’t go till you’ve had a drink for luck,” I urged.

  “I doubt if I have time.”

  “That’s rot. A man with your reputation for absorbing liquor can’t go back without putting his lips to a glass. Besides, you won’t be able to buy a ticket now. All the shipping offices will be shut for lunch.”