Murder in Piccadilly (8 page)

“He's going to make you a fat allowance?” She sat up involuntarily. His face told the truth before he could frame a half-lie. “I thought so. What's the use of wasting time, Bobbie? You think your uncle cottoned to me? Well, I know he didn't. He and your mother are the same—they think I'm common.”

“Common?” he echoed, aghast. “If they think that they must be mad, but I'm sure they don't.”

She rose and shook herself.

“What a life! And fancy having to marry Billy? Ugh!” She gesticulated dramatically. “Life is hell without money, and don't I know it!”

“But listen, Nancy, I'm going to spend next weekend with uncle to talk over arrangements for our wedding.”

She stared into his face as if seeking a clue to what she suspected was a new and subtle form of humour.

“Say that again—I forgot to laugh,” she said aggressively.

“I mean it,” he answered, unable to lose his temper with her. “We had a chat about you before he left. Uncle is director of a bank and has lots of influence. I might get an opening—”

“The only worth while opening in a bank is the one that leads to the strong room,” she said with tired humour.

“I'm sorry, darling,” he whispered humbly.

She stroked his hair and smiled down at him as he sat transfixed with gloom on the arm of Nosey's vacated armchair.

“Bobbie,” she said, and her voice had tears in it, “I want to tell you something. I hate Billy.”

The surprise brought him to a standing posture.

“You mean it? Then why not leave him?”

“Because without him I'd be penniless. He's made me. It's him the agents want. Nosey is very kind, but it's Bright & Curzon he wants too—not Curzon & Bright. I'm no fool and I know it.”

“Well, let me take you away from him?”

“To what? From thirty-five quid a week to—your uncle's promises? Oh, Bobbie, you're a darling and a pet, but if only you had the Cheldon property! If only!” She covered her face with her hands.

“Darling!” She seemed pathetically light, almost gossamer-light in his grasp. “Can't you trust me? Won't you give me a chance?” She began to sob. “You make me wish I could send uncle into the next world,” he muttered to himself, but she overheard and a smile came into dry eyes hidden by the upper portion of his waistcoat.

“I don't think there'd be many mourners,” she ventured to say when she had concluded the ceremony of pretending to wipe her eyes. “But, of course, I'm only joking, Bobbie. You know that, don't you?”

“You couldn't have an evil thought, darling,” he protested.

“Just think of what it would mean to your mother, Bobbie,” she murmured in a voice which was dreamy with sympathy, “to have plenty of money. She was meant for something better than that rotten flat.”

“I'm so glad you like her, Nancy,” he said gratefully.

She returned to the subject which was uppermost in her mind.

“I know if the worst came to the worst you could always earn a decent living, Bobbie,” she resumed in an enticing tone, “but with your mother it's different. You're young and clever, and she's growing old. Oh, dear, what a curious world it is when an old bachelor is allowed to keep decent people out of their rights.”

He did not trouble to remind her that his and his mother's rights did not begin until his uncle died. Romance seldom demands precision.

“More than a hundred persons are killed each week by motor cars,” said Nancy reflectively. “Funny that should occur to me,” she added and laughed.

Bobbie for once was not thinking of her, for a vision of Florence and her blighted hopes was encircling him.

“Oh, well, it's nearly daylight and we're both fools to be thinking we'll ever be rich.” She stretched herself and yawned. “Billy.” Her shrill cry was immediately answered by Billy and Nosey in person. “I want Bobbie and Nosey to see me home,” she explained. “I'm dead beat.”

Nosey was first with the fur coat, but Bobbie was allowed the honour of escorting her down the rickety staircase, Nosey following close behind with elephantine fussiness.

To Bobbie's disappointment the walk had to be short as Nancy's rooms were less than a quarter of a mile away, and it was with reluctance that he turned from the doorstep of the unsavoury building.

“Isn't she amazing?” said Nosey Ruslin enthusiastically. “Isn't she worth taking any risk for?” He produced a nearly gold cigarette case and when they had lighted up they strolled leisurely towards Shaftesbury Avenue.

“I tell you what, Mr. Cheldon,” said Nosey, pausing as if he had just made a momentous discovery and must record it vocally, “if I were twenty years younger and built a little more on Ronald Colman lines I'd commit murder if there was no other way to get her.”

Bobbie meant to greet the remark with a laugh and tried his best to carry out his intention, but all he could do was to blink at the speaker.

“But I suppose I'm talking rot,” Nosey added in a different tone. “I'm middle-aged and if it came to the point it would be Safety First with me from start to finish. But she's a marvel, Mr. Cheldon, and a regular knock-out.”

Bobbie's opinion of Mr. Ruslin was rising every minute. He was the cleverest man he had yet met.

“I can't tell you how I feel about her,” he answered under his breath.

Nosey Ruslin stopped again. They had not only the pavement to themselves but apparently the whole of London. Somewhere in the background there was a policeman and a pedestrian or two, but their immediate boundary was formed by the periphery of the light from the street lamp.

“I'm not in love with Nancy and never have been. But I'm fond of her. She's got that touch of genius that appeals to the artist in me.” He repeated the tapping of Bobbie's chest. “Between you and me, Mr. Cheldon, I think Billy Bright a cad, and if Nancy's fool enough to marry him she's finished. You know what it is with these dancers—the men, I mean. They select a pretty girl, train her and tour with her for a year or two. After that she is too well known to be any longer a draw. The public require youth and beauty and freshness—particularly the freshness—in a girl. So the male gets rid of her and finds a substitute.”

“But supposing she's his wife?”

“Then so much the worse for the wife.” Mr. Ruslin laughed as harshly as he could.

They resumed their walk and in another ten minutes they were standing outside another of London's imitation mansions.

“I'm home, Mr. Cheldon,” said Nosey genially. “Hope you haven't far to go. But remember what I've said. I like the look of you and if you're in love with Nancy you'll save her from the clutches of that dago Billy Bright. I've spoken freely to you because you've got sense, and if you want to hear me talk more Nancy will tell you where to find me if I'm not at home.”

To his astonishment Bobbie clutched him by the arm.

“What about that contract? They didn't say what their decision was.”

“Oh, the contract.” Mr. Ruslin threw away half a cigarette. “Nancy insisted on my giving her a week to think it over.” He laughed. “Think it over, indeed! What she really meant was that she wanted time to consider if you could prove you were in a position to marry her. She's dead crazy on becoming Mrs. Cheldon but not in a tenth-rate flat. She can keep herself in luxury—”

“For a time,” Bobbie interjected.

“Exactly—for a time. But do you think she knows that? Nancy is like all of them—she's under the delusion that she's got about twenty years of dancing ahead of her.” He held out a massive hand. “Good night, Mr. Cheldon, and take my advice.”

“What advice?”

“Don't count the cost if Nancy's the prize, and don't waste your time imagining that she'll give up thirty-five quid a week for a husband and a fifth of that sum. But I do want an invitation to your wedding.” He chuckled with all the force of his ever-present good humour. “I know—we all know, Mr. Cheldon—that you're a bit above us. You belong to the upper ten and we're just—well just ordinary people. You would raise Nancy to your level, and she's ambitious, believe me, yes, sir.” He held out his hand again, and Bobbie animated by the flattery he had had poured into him, pressed it gratefully.

“Good night, Mr. Ruslin,” he said in a shaky voice, “and if I may I will have another chat with you before I go down to my uncle's place at the weekend.”

Nosey vanished into the darkness of the entrance to Ambassador Mansions and Bobbie strode homewards keenly alive to the soothing properties of the wind that blew gently on his face. His thoughts took him in turn from the extremes of triumph to the depths of despair and in between he found innumerable reasons for doubts and fears which clamoured for remedies. By the time he reached Galahad Mansions they had grown in number and strengthened in persistence.

“Anyhow I've got a real pal in Mr. Ruslin,” he muttered to himself by way of escape from his worries.

By a coincidence Mr. Ruslin was at that moment discussing Bobbie, who might have been troubled had he known that when Nosey climbed the stairs to his third-floor flat a shadow congealed and became Billy Bright.

“I saw you on the other side of the street,” said Nosey cheerfully, opening the door with his latchkey. “Once I thought that young fool would have spotted you.”

“He'd never have recognised me,” said Billy, entering the living-room which with a bedroom comprised ninety per cent of the flat. Without troubling to ask permission he began to operate with the whisky decanter and the soda siphon. “What happened, Nosey?”

His host rubbed his hands.

“Planted the seed, my dear Billy, planted the seed,” he exclaimed with enthusiasm. “Dropped a hint that he ought to scrag his uncle and the next moment laughed at the notion. Then I flattered him. Compared him to you to your disadvantage.”

The dancer grinned.

“I've never met a bigger ass in my life,” he said, but without heat or jealousy. “But what can you expect from a chap who's been brought up in a hothouse by his darling mamma? You heard Nancy's description of the old lady?”

“A scream. Billy,” he lowered his voice not because there could be any danger of an eavesdropper but in order to impress on his companion the seriousness of his words. “Billy, it's a cinch. I thought when we first mentioned the affair that there was going to be some risk for us, but now I know there won't. He believes everything, even that hundred quid a week tour on the continent.”

Billy laughed spontaneously.

“If he believes that he'll believe anything,” he remarked, unconsciously paraphrasing Macaulay.

“He's so much in love with Nancy that he'd believe the crowned heads of Europe were fighting one another to secure her for their state theatres. He can't see that at her best she's only second-rate. Billy, don't yell when I tell you that he believes it's her dancing that makes the partnership—that if you lost her you'd never get another engagement.”

Billy, lounging in an armchair, did no more than wink.

“Poor Nancy!” he said pityingly. “I haven't told her yet that when our engagement with the ‘Frozen Fang' ends next Saturday week there's nothing more. I don't want to chuck her unless—”

“You can get someone better,” Nosey added. “My dear Billy, she's a rotten dancer. Her youth and good looks have helped her, but there are so many girls with looks and youth who can dance better that there's no future for her.”

“Unless I married her,” said the dancer lazily.

“Billy.” Nosey's voice was almost stern. “It's no use going on with our little scheme unless you stick to business. I can't have you working in Nancy's camp as well as in mine. You understand? Marry her by all means, but let's finish here and now.”

Billy stared at him in surprise.

“Now you're the fool!” he growled. “How can I marry Nancy or anyone else? I'm up to my neck in debts; next week I may be kicked out of my flat; there's not a restaurant in London that'll give me credit, and the agents are getting so tired of me that they send the office boy out to say that there's nothing doing at the moment. Nosey, when agents do that it's as good as a signed statement that I'm not worth a cent in the dancing market, that no one wants me.”

“What about me?” asked Nosey dolefully. “I've been fighting to stave off bankruptcy for months and—” he paused and forced a smile.

Billy nodded understandingly.

“That little affair with Jack Fraddon? Still worrying about the money he invested in that theatrical agency?”

Nosey became positively grim.

“The last letter I had from his solicitor hinted at criminal proceedings.” He raised the growl to something akin to a shout. “What if I did use the partnership money to pay off a private debt; does it amount to theft? Of course not. Fraddon's solicitor may say that I forged his client's signature to three partnership cheques, but—”

“Don't worry about that,” said Billy. “Keep all your energy and brains for the scheme that's to make us rich.”

Nosey's equanimity returned. Optimism suited him better than pessimism.

“He's weak and he thinks he's strong. I worked on his passion for Nancy, hinted that she was in danger from you, and appealed to his sense of chivalry without letting him guess my object. ‘You're above us in class' I said, and, Billy, he swallowed it all. He'll go down to see his uncle or he'll get at him in some way and all the time he'll be thinking that it's his uncle's life against Nancy's. That's how I dropped a seed here and there, my boy.” He leaned back to chuckle appreciation of his finesse and subtlety.

“But supposing he doesn't do the uncle in?” asked Billy doubtfully.

“I'll lay any odds he won't,” was the surprising answer.