Lucia Victrix (69 page)

‘What a banquet, Diva!' she exclaimed. ‘What a pretty tablecloth! If this is the sort of tea you will offer us when you open, I shan't be found at home often. I suppose you'll charge two shillings at least, and even then you'll be turning people away.'

Diva recalled herself from her speculations.

‘No: this will be only a shilling tea,' she said, ‘and usually there'll be pastry as well.'

‘Fancy! And so beautifully served. So dainty. Lovely flowers on the table. Quite like having tea in the garden with no earwigs … I had an unexpected guest to lunch to-day.'

Cataleptic rigidity seized the entire company.

‘Such a pleasant fellow,' continued Elizabeth. ‘Mr McConnell, the new Editor of the
Argus.
Benjy paid a morning call on him at the office and brought him home. He left his tiger riding-whip there, the forgetful boy, so I went and reclaimed it. Such a big man: Benjy looked like a child beside him.'

Elizabeth sipped her tea. The rigidity persisted.

‘I never by any chance see the
Hampshire Argus
,' she said. ‘Not set eyes on it for years, for it used to be very dull. All advertisements. But with Mr McConnell at the helm, I must take it in. He seemed so intelligent.'

Imperceptibly the rigidity relaxed, as keen brains dissected the situation … Elizabeth had sent her husband out to chastise McConnell for publishing this insulting caricature of herself. He had returned, rather tipsy, bringing the victim to lunch. Should the true version of what had happened become current, she would find herself in a very humiliating position with a craven husband and a monstrous travesty unavenged. But her version was brilliant. She was unaware that the
Argus
had contained any caricature of her, and Benjy had brought his friend to lunch. A perfect story, to the truth of which, no doubt, Benjy would perjure himself. Very clever! Bravo Elizabeth!

Of course there was a slight feeling of disappointment, for only a few minutes ago some catastrophic development seemed likely, and Tilling's appetite for social catastrophe was keen. The Padre sighed and began in a resigned voice ‘A'weel, all's well that ends well', and Georgie hurried home to tell Lucia what had really happened and how clever Elizabeth had been. She sent fondest love to Worshipful, and as there were now four of them left, they adjourned to Diva's card-room for a rubber of bridge.

Diva's Janet came up to clear tea away, and with her the bouncing Irish terrier, Paddy, who had only got a little eczema. He scouted about the room, licking up crumbs from the floor and found the riding-whip. It was of agreeable texture for the teeth, just about sufficiently tough to make gnawing a pleasure as well as a duty. He picked it up, and, the back door being open, took it into the wood-shed and dealt with it. He went over it twice, reducing it to a wet and roughly minced sawdust. There was a silver cap on it, which he spurned and when he had triturated or swallowed most of the rest, he rolled in the debris and shook himself. Except for the silver cap, no murderer could have disposed of a corpse with greater skill.

Upstairs the geniality of the tea-table had crumbled over cards. Elizabeth had been losing and she was feeling hot. She said to Diva ‘This little room – so cosy – is quite stifling, dear. May we have the window open?' Diva opened it as a deal was in progress, and the cards blew about the table: Elizabeth's remnant consisted of kings and aces, but a fresh deal was necessary. Diva dropped a card on the floor, face upwards, and put her foot on it so nimbly that nobody could see what it was. She got up to fetch the book of rules to see what ought to happen next, and, moving her foot disclosed an ace. Elizabeth demanded another fresh deal. That was conceded, but it left a friction. Then towards the end of a hand, Elizabeth saw that she had revoked, long, long ago, and detection was awaiting her. ‘I'll give you the last trick,' she said, and attempted to jumble up together all the cards. ‘Na, na, not so fast, Mistress,' cried the Padre, and he pounced on the card of error. ‘Rather
like cheating: rather like Elizabeth' was the unspoken comment, and everyone remembered how she had tried the same device about eighteen months ago. The atmosphere grew acid. The Padre and Evie had to hurry off for a choir-practice, for which they were already late, and Elizabeth finding she had not lost as much as she feared lingered for a chat.

‘Seen poor Susan Wyse lately?' she asked Diva.

Diva was feeling abrupt. It
was
cheating to try to mix up the cards like that.

‘This morning,' she said. ‘But why “poor”? You're always calling people “poor”. She's all right.'

‘Do you think she's got over the budgerigar?' asked Elizabeth.

‘Quite. Wearing it to-day. Still raspberry-coloured.'

‘I wonder if she has got over it,' mused Elizabeth. ‘If you ask me, I think the budgerigar has got over her.'

‘Not the foggiest notion what you mean,' said Diva.

‘Just what I say. She believes she is getting in touch with the bird's spirit. She told me so herself. She thinks that she hears that tiresome little squeak it used to make, only she now calls it singing.'

‘Singing in the ears, I expect,' interrupted Diva. ‘Had it sometimes myself. Wax. Syringe.'

‘– and the flutter of its wings,' continued Elizabeth. ‘She's trying to get communications from it by automatic script. I hope our dear Susan won't go dotty.'

‘Rubbish!' said Diva severely, her thoughts going back again to that revoke. She moved her chair up to the fire, and extinguished Elizabeth by opening the evening paper.

The Mayoress bristled and rose.

‘Well, we shall see whether it's rubbish or not,' she said. ‘Such a lovely game of bridge, but I must be off. Where's Benjy's riding-whip?'

‘Wherever you happened to put it, I suppose,' said Diva.

Elizabeth looked in the corner by the fireplace.

‘That's where I put it,' she said. ‘Who can have moved it?'

‘You, of course. Probably took it into the card-room.'

‘I'm perfectly certain I didn't,' said Elizabeth, hurrying there. ‘Where's the switch, Diva?'

‘Behind the door.'

‘What an inconvenient place to put it. It ought to have been the other side.'

Elizabeth cannoned into the card-table and a heavy fall of cards and markers followed.

‘Afraid I've upset something,' she said. ‘Ah, I've got it.'

‘I said you'd taken it there yourself,' said Diva. ‘Pick those things up.'

‘No, not the riding-whip; the switch,' she said.

Elizabeth looked in this corner and that, and under tables and chairs, but there was no sign of what she sought. She came out, leaving the light on.

‘Not here,' she said. ‘Perhaps the Padre has taken it. Or Evie.'

‘Better go round and ask them,' said Diva.

‘Thank you, dear. Or might I use your telephone? It would save me a walk.'

The call was made, but they were both at choir-practice.

‘Or Mr Georgie, do you think?' asked Elizabeth. ‘I'll just inquire.'

Now one of Diva's most sacred economies was the telephone. She would always walk a reasonable distance herself to avoid these outlays which, though individually small, mounted up so ruinously.

‘If you want to telephone to all Tilling, Elizabeth,' she said, ‘you'd better go home and do it from there.'

‘Don't worry about that,' said Elizabeth effusively; ‘I'll pay you for the calls now, at once.'

She opened her bag, dropped it, and a shower of coins of low denomination scattered in all directions on the parquet floor.

‘Clumsy of me,' she said, pouncing on the bullion. ‘Ninepence in coppers, two sixpences and a shilling, but I know there was a threepenny bit. It must have rolled under your pretty sideboard. Might I have a candle, dear?'

‘No,' said Diva firmly. ‘If there's a threepenny bit, Janet will find it when she sweeps in the morning. You must get along without it till then.'

‘There's no “if” about it, dear. There
was
a threepenny bit. I specially noticed it because it was a new one. With your permission I'll ring up Mallards.'

Foljambe answered. No; Mr Georgie had taken his umbrella when he went out to tea, and he couldn't have brought back a riding-whip by mistake … Would Foljambe kindly make sure by asking him … He was in his bath … Then would she just call through the door. Mrs Mapp-Flint would hold the line.

As Elizabeth waited for the answer, humming a little tune, Janet came in with Diva's glass of sherry. She put up two fingers and her eyebrows to inquire whether she should bring two glasses, and Diva shook her head. Presently Georgie came to the telephone himself.

‘Wouldn't have bothered you for words, Mr Georgie,' said Elizabeth. ‘Foljambe said you were in your bath. She must have made a mistake.'

‘I was just going,' said Georgie rather crossly, for the water must be getting cold. ‘What is it?'

‘Benjy's riding-whip has disappeared most mysteriously, and I can't rest till I trace it. I thought you might possibly have taken it away by mistake.'

‘What, the tiger one?' said Georgie, much interested in spite of the draught round his ankles. ‘What a disaster. But I haven't got it. What a series of adventures it's had! I saw you bring it into Diva's; I noticed it particularly.'

‘Thank you,' said Elizabeth, and rang off.

‘And now for the police-station,' said Diva, sipping her delicious sherry. ‘That'll be your fourth call.'

‘Third, dear,' said Elizabeth, uneasily wondering what Georgie meant by the series of adventures. ‘But that would be premature for the present. I must search a little more here, for it must be somewhere. Oh, here's Paddy. Good dog! Come to help Auntie Mayoress to find pretty riding-whip? Seek it, Paddy.'

Paddy, intelligently following Elizabeth's pointing hand, thought it must be a leaf of Diva's evening paper, which she had dropped on the floor, that Auntie Mayoress wanted. He pounced on it, and worried it.

‘Paddy, you fool,' cried Diva. ‘Drop it at once. Torn to bits and all wet. Entirely your fault, Elizabeth.' She rose, intensely irritated.

‘You must give it up for the present,' she said to Elizabeth who was poking about among the logs in the wood-basket. ‘All most mysterious, I allow, but it's close on my supper-time, and that interests me more.'

Elizabeth was most reluctant to return to Benjy with the news that she had called for the riding-whip at the office of the
Argus
and had subsequently lost it.

‘But it's Benjy's most cherished relic,' she said. ‘It was the very riding-whip with which he smacked the tiger over the face, while he picked up his rifle and then shot him.'

‘Such a lot of legends aren't there?' said Diva menacingly. ‘And if other people get talking there may be one or two more, just as remarkable. And I want my supper.'

Elizabeth paused in her search. This dark saying produced an immediate effect.

‘Too bad of me to stop so long,' she said. ‘And thanks, dear, for my delicious tea. It would be kind of you if you had another look round.'

Diva saw her off. The disappearance of the riding-whip was really very strange: positively spooky. And though Elizabeth had been a great nuisance, she deserved credit and sympathy for her ingenious version of the awkward incident … She looked for the pennies which Elizabeth had promised to pay at once for those telephone-calls, but there was no trace of them, and all her exasperation returned.

‘Just like her,' she muttered. ‘That's the sort of thing that really annoys me. So mean!'

It was Janet's evening out, and after eating her supper, Diva returned to the tea-room for a few games of patience. It was growing cold; Janet had forgotten to replenish the wood-basket, and Diva went out to the wood-shed with an electric torch to fetch in a few more logs. Something gleamed in the light, and she picked up a silver cap, which seemed vaguely familiar. A fragment of chewed wood projected from it, and looking more closely she saw engraved on it the initials B. F.

‘Golly! It's it,' whispered the awe-struck Diva. ‘Benjamin Flint, before he Mapped himself. But why here? And how?'

An idea struck her, and she called Paddy, but Paddy had no doubt gone out with Janet. Forgetting about fresh logs but with this relic in her hand, Diva returned to her room, and warmed herself with intellectual speculation.

Somebody had disposed of all the riding-whip except this metallic fragment. By process of elimination (for she acquitted Janet of having eaten it), it must be Paddy. Should she ring up Elizabeth and say that the riding-whip had been found? That would not be true, for all that had been found was a piece of overwhelming evidence that it never would be found. Besides, who could tell what Elizabeth had said to Benjy by this time? Possibly (even probably, considering what Elizabeth was) she would not tell him that she had retrieved it from the office of the
Argus
, and thus escape his just censure for having lost it.

‘I believe,' thought Diva, ‘that it might save developments which nobody can foresee, if I said nothing about it to anybody. Nobody knows except Paddy and me.
Silentio
, as Lucia says, when she's gabbling fit to talk your head off. Let them settle it between themselves, but nobody shall suspect
me
of having had anything to do with it. I'll bury it in the garden before Janet comes back. Rather glad Paddy ate it. I was tired of Major Benjy showing me the whip, and telling me about it over and over again. Couldn't be true, either. I'm killing a lie.'

With the help of a torch and a trowel Diva put the relic beyond reasonable risk of discovery. This was only just done when Janet returned with Paddy.

‘Been strolling in the garden,' said Diva with chattering teeth. ‘Such a mild night. Dear Paddy! Such a clever dog.'