They Found Him Dead (2 page)

In the drawing room it was her first duty to see Mrs. Kane comfortably ensconced in her favourite chair, a footstool under her feet and her ebony cane within her reach. In the performance of these offices she was slightly hindered by Betty Pemble, who said: "Oh, do let me!" and brought up too high a footstool and tried to insert a cushion behind her hostess. As Mrs. Kane came of a stiff-backed generation and despised women who could not sit up without such soft support, this piece of thoughtfulness was not well received. Nor did Mrs. Pemble's next utterance tend to make her more popular. "I think Mr. Kane is simply marvellous!" she said.

Emily's faded blue eyes stared glassily at her. "In what way?" she asked.

Mrs. Pemble, forgetting that she was addressing a lady over eighty years old, said: "I mean, when you think of this being his sixtieth birthday, it just doesn't seem possible, somehow."

Emily looked at her with contempt and confined her response to one blighting dissyllable. "Indeed!" she said and, turning to Miss Allison, requested her to close one of the windows. "There is a nasty fog creeping up," she announced. "I can feel it in my bones."

"No more than a sea mist, I believe," said Mrs. Mansell.

"You may believe what you choose, Agatha," said Emily, "but I call it a nasty fog."

"Yes, I think it's a kind of a fog," said Betty.

Emily looked at her with renewed dislike. Betty plumped herself down upon the rejected footstool and said: "I simply must tell you what Peter said to me when I told him I was going to Uncle Silas' birthday-party! You know the children always call him Uncle. They absolutely worship him. But of course he's simply marvellous with children, isn't he? I mean, he has a kind of way with them. I suppose it's a sort of magnetism. I always notice how they go to him. I mean, even a shy mite like my Jennifer. It's as though she just can't help herself."

This portrait of her son drawn in the guise of some kind of boa constrictor did not appear to afford Emily any marked degree of gratification. She said dampingly: "And what did Peter say?"

"Oh God!" muttered Rosemary and, jerking herself up out of a deep chair, walked across the room towards Miss Allison and suggested to her that they should go into the conservatory.

Miss Allison realised with a slight sinking of the heart that she was to be made the recipient of confidences.

Mrs. Clement Kane had some few months before suddenly taken what appeared to be a strong liking to her and had signified it by recounting to her with remarkable frankness her various emotional crises.

"What a Godforsaken party!" Rosemary ejaculated as soon as she was out of Emily's ear-shot. "I can't think how you manage to put up with living here day in day out."

Miss Allison considered this. "It isn't as bad as you might imagine," she said. "In fact, it's really rather a pleasant life, taken all round."

Rosemary looked at her in wondering dismay. "But the utter boredom!" she said. "I should go mad."

"Yes, but I'm rather placid, you know," replied Miss Allison apologetically.

"I envy you. Cigarette?"

Miss Allison accepted one.

"It must be great to be able to take what comes, as you do," pursued Rosemary. "I wish I were like it. But it's no good blinking facts: I'm not."

"Well, I don't say that I should choose to be anyone's companion," said Miss Allison. "Only I'm a fool at shorthand and have no talents."

"I expect you have, really," said Rosemary in an absent voice and with her gaze fixed broodingly upon a spray of heliotrope. "I told you I was getting to the end of my tether, didn't I? Well, I believe I've reached the end."

There did not seem to be anything to say in answer to this. Miss Allison tried to look sympathetic.

"The ironic part of it is that having me doesn't make Clement happy," said Rosemary. "Really he'd be better off without me. I don't think I'm the sort of person who ought ever to marry. I'm probably a courtesan manquée. You see, I know myself so frightfully well—I think that's my Russian blood coming out."

"I didn't know you had any," remarked Miss Allison, mildly interested.

"Good God, yes! My grandfather was a Russian. I say, do you mind if I call you Patricia?"

"Not at all," said Miss Allison politely.

"And please call me Rosemary. You don't know how I hate that ghastly 'Mrs. Kane.' There's only one thing worse, and that's 'Mrs. Clement.'" She threw away her half-smoked cigarette and added with a slight smile: "I suppose I sound a perfect brute to you? I am, of course. I know that. You mustn't think I don't see my own faults. I know I'm selfish, capricious, extravagant and fatally discontented. And the worst of it is that I'm afraid that's part of my nature, and even if I go away with Trevor, which seems to me now the only way I can ever be happy, it won't last."

"Well, in that case you'd far better stick to your husband," said Miss Allison sensibly.

Rosemary sighed. "You don't understand. I wasn't born to this humdrum life in a one-eyed town, surrounded by in-laws, with never enough money, and the parlour-maid always giving notice, and all that sort of ghastly sordidness. At least I shouldn't have that if I went away with Trevor. We should probably live abroad, and anyway he would never make the fatal mistake of expecting me to cope with butcher's bills. It isn't that I won't do it, it's simply that I can't. I'm not made like that. I'm the sort of person who has to have money. If Clement were rich—really rich, I mean—I dare say I shouldn't feel in the least like this. You can say what you like, but money does ease things."

"Of course, but I was under the impression that you were pretty comfortably off," said Miss Allison bluntly.

Rosemary shrugged her shoulders. "It depends what you call comfortable. I dare say lots of women would be perfectly happy with Clement's income. The trouble is that I've got terribly extravagant tastes—I admit it freely, and I wish to God I hadn't, but the fact remains that I have. That's my Russian blood again. It's an absolute curse."

"Yes, it does seem to be a bit of a pest," agreed Miss Allison. "All the same, you've got any amount of English blood as well. Why not concentrate on that?"

Rosemary looked at her with a kind of melancholy interest and said simply: "Of course, you're awfully cold, aren't you?"

Miss Allison, realising that to deny this imputation would be a waste of breath, replied: "Yes, I'm afraid I am."

"I think that must be why I like you so much," Rosemary mused. "We're so utterly, utterly dissimilar. You're intensely practical, and I'm hopelessly impractical. You don't feel things in the frightful way that I do, and you're not impulsive. I shouldn't think you're terribly passionate either, are you?"

"No, no, not at all!" said Miss Allison.

"You're lucky," said Rosemary darkly. "Actually, of course, I suppose the root of the whole trouble is that Clement could never satisfy me emotionally. I don't know if you can understand at all what I mean? It's difficult to put it into words."

Miss Allison, hoping to avert a more precise explanation, hastened to assure her that she understood perfectly.

"I don't suppose you do really," said Rosemary rather thoughtfully. "It's all so frightfully complex, and you despise complex people, don't you? I mean, I've got that awful faculty of always being able to see the other person's point of view. I wish I hadn't, because it makes everything a thousand times more difficult."

"Does it? I should have thought it made things a lot easier."

"No, because, don't you see, one gets torn to bits inside. One just suffers doubly and it doesn't do any good. I mean, even though I'm in hell myself I can't help seeing how rotten it is for Clement, and that makes it worse. I'm simply living on my nerves."

Miss Allison, who from the start of this conversation had felt herself growing steadily more earthbound, said: "I expect you need a change of air. You've got things out of focus. You must have—have cared for your husband when you married him, so——"

"That's just it," Rosemary interrupted. "I don't think I did, really." She paused to light another cigarette and said meditatively: "I'm not a nice sort of person, you know, but at least I am honest with myself. I thought I could get on with Clement, and I knew it was no use marrying a poor man. I mean, with the best will in the world it just wouldn't work. I knew he was going to come into money when his cousin died, but I didn't in the least realise that Cousin Silas would go on living for years and years. Which of course he will. Look at Great-aunt Emily! I don't know that I actually put it all into words, but subconsciously I must have thought that Clement was going to inherit almost any day. They all say Cousin Silas has a weak heart, you know—not that I believe it."

"Would money make so much difference to you?" asked Miss Allison curiously.

"I don't know," replied Rosemary. "I think it would. Not having enough of it makes me impossible to live with. I'm not a good manager. I hate everything to do with domesticity. It isn't in my line. I can't help getting into debt, because I see something I know I can't live without another moment—like this bracelet, for instance—and I buy it without thinking, and then I could kill myself for having done it, because I do see how hateful it is of me."

"I suppose," suggested Miss Allison somewhat dryly, "that it doesn't occur to you that you might send the bracelet back?"

"No, because I have to have pretty things. That's the Russian in me.
C'est plus fort que moi.
To do him justice Clement knows that. He doesn't grudge it me a bit, only it worries him not being able to make both ends meet. Now he says we shall have to move into a smaller house and do with only two maids. It's no use pretending to myself that I don't mind. I know I shouldn't be able to bear it. I feel stifled enough already."

"When are you moving out of Red Lodge?" inquired Miss Allison, with the forlorn hope of leading the conversation into less introspective channels.

"On quarter day, I suppose. I believe the people who've bought it would like to move in sooner, but I don't really know. We don't discuss it."

This magnificent unconcern made Miss Allison blink. She said practically: "But oughtn't you to be looking for another house? It'll be rather awkward if you don't, surely?"

Rosemary shrugged. "What's the use?" she said.

Miss Allison, feeling herself to be unable to cope with the problem, said apologetically that she thought she ought to go back to the drawing room.

"I often think," remarked Rosemary, preparing to follow her, "that you placid people must find life very easy. I wish I did."

Not thinking this observation worthy of being replied to, Miss Allison merely smiled and stood aside for her to pass into the drawing room.

Their reappearance coincided with the arrival of the gentlemen from the dining room. As the door opened old Mrs. Kane abandoned even the smallest show of interest in the diet of Betty Pemble's children and looked towards it. Her deeply lined countenance, with its close mouth and pale, rather starting eyes, had in repose a forbidding quality, but as her glance fell on Jim Kane her whole face seemed to soften, and her mouth to relax into one of its rare smiles. She said nothing, but when he came across the room towards her she looked pleased and made a little gesture towards a chair beside hers.

He paused by a table to stub out his cigarette before coming to her, and then drew up the indicated chair and sat down.

"Well, what have you got to say for yourself?" inquired Emily.

He smiled. "That sounds as though I've done something I shouldn't. Have I?"

She gave a grim chuckle. "I'll be bound you have. When are you coming to stay?"

"Next week. May I?"

She nodded. "They don't give you long enough holidays at that Treasury," she said. "Where's your mother gone gallivanting off to now?"

"Belgian Congo," replied Jim. "It's no use asking me precisely where in the Congo, because no one can make out the address on her last letter. It looks like Mwarro Gwarro, but we can't help feeling that that's improbable."

"Pack of nonsense!" said Emily, but without rancour. "At her age too. Leaving the boy—what's his name—with us, are you?"

"That was the general idea," Jim admitted. "Not mine, but Adrian's. Do you mind? Adrian says Cousin Silas was kind enough to invite him."

"I dare say. He won't bother me," said Emily. "I like young people about the place. Miss Allison can look after him." A gleam stole into her eye; she added sardonically: "You'd better talk it over with her." She looked towards her companion and nodded imperiously. Miss Allison came to her at once. "My great-nephew wants to talk to you about his stepbrother," she announced.

Jim Kane had risen at Miss Allison's approach but shook his head at her glance of mild surprise. "No, I don't," he protested. "I mean, not about Timothy."

"Well, you don't want to talk to an old woman when you might be talking to a pretty young one, I hope," said Emily. "Miss Allison, show my great-nephew the orange tree in the conservatory."

She dismissed them with a nod. Jim Kane said: "I wish you would. I haven't been able to exchange two words with you so far."

"Go along," said Emily, clinching the matter.

So Miss Allison entered the conservatory for the purpose of the
tête-à-tête
for the second time that evening.