Georgette Heyer.

They Found Him Dead.

CHAPTER ONE.

Miss Allison thought that Silas Kane's sixtieth-birthday party was going off rather better than anyone had imagined it would. Such family gatherings-for the Mansells, through long business partnership with Silas, might almost be ranked as relatives-were, in Miss Allison's sage opinion, functions to be attended in a spirit of considerable trepidation. Nor had this one promised well at its inception. To begin with, Silas was at polite variance with old Joseph Mansell. Their disagreement was purely on a matter of business, but although Joseph Mansell, a husband and a father, had existence outside the offices of Kane and Mansell, Silas and his business were one and indivisible.

He was not, at the best of times, a man who contributed largely to the gaiety of an evening party. He was invariably civil, in an Old-World style that seemed to suit his neat little imperial and the large stock-ties he wore, and he would listen as patiently to a discussion on Surrealism as to the description of the bird life on the Fame Islands which was being imparted to him at the moment by Agatha Mansell. Both subjects bored him, but he inclined his head with an a.s.sumption of interest, smiled kindly and coldly, and said Indeed! or Is that so? at the proper moments.

Miss Allison, glancing from his thin, pale face, with its austere mouth, and its calm, aloof eyes, to Mrs. Mansell's countenance, wondered whether a realisation of her host's complete indifference to her conversation would shake Agatha Mansell's magnificent a.s.surance.

Probably it would not. Mrs. Mansell had been to college in the days when such a distinction earned for a woman the t.i.tle of Bluestocking and the right to think herself superior to her less fortunate sisters. She had preserved through thirty years this pleasant feeling of superiority and an alarmingly cultured voice which could make itself heard without the least vulgar effort above any number of less commanding accents.

"We were disappointed at seeing no gannets," announced Mrs. Mansell. "Of course, when we were on Ionah last year we saw hundreds of gannets."

"Ah, is that so indeed?" said Silas Kane.

"I saw a film about a lot of gannets once," suddenly remarked young Mr. Harte. He added disparagingly: "It wasn't too bad."

Neither Silas nor Mrs. Mansell paid any heed to this contribution to the conversation, and young Mr. Harte, who was rising fifteen, returned unabashed to the rending of a drumstick.

Young Mr. Harte was not really a member of the family, but his mother, by reason of her first marriage with Silas' nephew James, ranked in the Kanes' estimation as a Kane. James had been killed in the Great War, and although the Kanes bore no ill-will towards Sir Adrian Harte, they could never understand why Norma, who was left in comfortable circ.u.mstances, had taken it into her head to marry him.

Neither Norma nor Sir Adrian was present at this gathering. Norma, who had developed in her thirties a pa.s.sion for penetrating into the more inaccessible parts of the world, was believed to be amongst pygmies and gorillas in the Belgian Congo, and Sir Adrian, though invited to the party, had excused himself with a vague and graceful plea of a previous engagement. He had sent in his stead, however, his son Timothy, in charge of Jim Kane, his stepson, who was even now trying to catch Miss Allison's eye over the bank of flowers in the middle of the table.

Timothy had come to stay. Jim had brought him down in his cream-coloured sports car with a charming note from Sir Adrian. Sir Adrian had providentially remembered that Silas, upon the occasion of Timothy's last visit, had said that he must come again whenever he liked and for as long as he liked, and Sir Adrian, confronted by the task of amusing his son during the eight weeks of his summer holidays, decided that the day of Timothy's liking to visit Cliff House again had dawned.

Miss Allison, sedately avoiding Jim Kane's eye, wondered what young Mr. Harte would find to do in a household containing herself in attendance upon an old lady of over eighty years, and Silas Kane.

He enlightened her. "Are there any decent films on in Portlaw this month, Miss Allison?" he inquired. "I don't mean muck about love and that sort of thing, but really good films, with G men and gangsters and things."

Miss Allison confessed ignorance but said that she would obtain a list of the entertainments offered.

"Oh, thanks awf'ly; but I can easily buzz into Portlaw on my bike," said Mr. Harte. "I sent it by train, and I dare say it'll be at the station now, though actually when you send things by train the y don't arrive until years after you do." He refreshed himself with a draught of ginger beer and added with a darkling look across the table: "As a matter of fact, it was complete drivel sending it by train at all; but some people seem to think nothing matters but their own rotten paint work."

Jim Kane, at whom this embittered remark was levelled, grinned amiably and recommended his stepbrother to put a sock in it.

Miss Allison glanced down the long table to where her employer was seated. Old Mrs. Kane, who was over eighty, had been carried downstairs to grace her son's birthday party, not against her wishes (for she would have thought it impossible that any function should be held at Cliff House without her), but firmly denying any expectation of enjoyment. "I shall have Joseph Mansell on my right and Clement on my left," she decreed.

Miss Allison, who filled the comprehensive role of companion-secretary to Emily Kane, ventured to suggest that more congenial dinner partners might be found than the two selected by her employer.

"It is Joe Mansell's right to take the seat of honour," responded Mrs. Kane bleakly. "And Clement is senior to Jim."

So there was Emily Kane, sitting very upright in her chair at the end of the table, with Joe Mansell, a heavy man with gross features and a hearty laugh, seated on one side of her, and on the other, her great-nephew Clement, the very ant.i.thesis of Joe Mansell but equally displeasing to her.

Clement, a thin, desiccated man in the late thirties, with spa.r.s.e hair rapidly receding from his brow, did not seem to be making much effort to entertain his great-aunt. He sat crumbling his bread and glancing every now and then in the direction of his wife, who was sitting between Joe Mansell and his son-in-law, Clive Pemble, on the opposite side of the table. Miss Allison, separated from Rosemary Kane by Clive Pemble's impressive form, could not see that sulky beauty, but she knew that Rosemary had come to the party in what the family called "one of her moods." She had many moods. On her good days she could brighten the dullest party by the very infection of her own tearing spirits, but her good days were growing farther and farther apart, so that during the past six months, reflected Miss Allison, glancing back in retrospect, it had been more usual to see Rosemary as she was tonight, with her eyes clouded and her full mouth drooping, boredom and discontent in every line of her lovely body.

Clement, who was a partner in the firm of Kane and Mansell, was a man of considerable substance, and, since he was heir to his cousin's private possessions, a man of large expectations also.

Miss Allison supposed that Rosemary must have married him for these reasons, for there did not seem to be any other. She was obviously impatient of him, and as careless of showing her impatience as she was of showing her predilection for the society of one Mr. Trevor Dermott. Mrs. Kane, who thought Clement a poor creature, had claimed the prerogative of extreme old age to tell him two days before that if he did not look after his wife better she would run off with "that Dermott." Miss Allison, mentally contrasting Trevor Dermott's handsome face and n.o.ble form with Clement's uninspiring mien and manner, could not but feel that so pa.s.sionate a creature as Rosemary might be pardoned for throwing her cap over the windmill.

Matters between the Clement Kanes were certainly becoming uncomfortably strained. In the drawing room, before dinner, Rosemary had sat a little withdrawn from the rest of the company, preoccupied and ungracious, while Clement, trying to appear unconcerned, all the time watched her.

Like two characters out of a problem play, thought Miss Allison, who preferred drama to be confined to the stage. And really it made things rather awkward and unreal when two members of a very ordinary family behaved in this neurotic manner. Even Clive Pemble, who was not sensitive to atmosphere, seemed to be aware of tension.

He had made several hearty efforts to engage Rosemary in conversation, but though her lips smiled mechanically, her replies were monosyllabic and discouraging.

Miss Allison had a fleeting suspicion that the beautiful Mrs. Clement Kane was seeing herself in a tragic role and banished it n.o.bly. "Cat!" said Miss Allison to herself.

On the opposite side of the table Betty Pemble was chattering to Jim Kane, from time to time appealing to Clive to corroborate her statements. There was no trace of her mother's majesty in Betty.

She had enjoyed a certain measure of success as a girl through a natural ingenuousness which was pretty in a debutante but slightly tedious in a woman of thirty-five. She had a vivacious way of talking, pleasing manners, and a good heart, but her habit of telling interminable and incoherent stories about her own experiences made her a wearisome person to be with for more than an hour or two together. Fortunately Clive Pemble profoundly mistrusted clever women, and if he sometimes was bored by his wife's conversation, this boredom was more than compensated for by her blind faith in his omniscience. She was often heard to say that Clive was a Rock, and Clive, who knew that he was no Rock but a man like other men, and hated the knowledge, found this faith in him a comfort and a stay. So when Betty told Jim Kane that if there was the least hint of thunder in the air she simply couldn't sleep a wink and demanded inevitably: "Can I, Clive?" he smiled placidly and replied with perfect good humour: "No, rather not!" Other men, thought Miss Allison, would have brained the silly wench.

Between Betty Pemble and her mother the last member of the party was seated, taking a polite interest in an anecdote about Betty's children. Knowing his attention to be fully engaged, Miss Allison allowed herself to steal a look at Mr. James Kane's admirable profile.

The Kane family tree was a spreading one, and while Silas was the last representative of the senior line, Jim was the last of the junior. Nor could any two people have been more dissimilar.

The original founder of the family's fortune had left four sons. From the eldest son's marriage to Emily Fricker had sprung Silas. Clement was the grandson of the second. The third, emigrating to Australia, had drifted out of the Kane circle, his only surviving descendant being a granddaughter, of whose existence the English Kanes were no more than vaguely aware. The fourth son had left one daughter, who died a spinster, and one son, who was killed in Gallipoli. To this son and his wife Norma had been born Jim, the last of the Kanes.

The last of the Kanes bore very little resemblance to the rest of the family and was not a member of the firm of Kane and Mansell. He was a large fair young man with a frank smile and a pair of direct grey eyes which had a habit of gazing in Miss Allison's direction.

He worked at the Treasury, and although this was a very respectable occupation his cousins Silas and Clement could never feel that he was a really serious or responsible person. He professed no interest in the manufacture of netting, and he spent a great proportion of his spare time engaged in sports which held no lure for his cousins at all. At Cambridge he had got his Blue for Rugger, a circ.u.mstance which seemed right and commendable (though strangely un-Kane-like) to Silas and Clement. But when he continued to play Rugger on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, after he had come down from Cambridge, the cousins shook their heads and were afraid that he would never settle down.

They thought it a great pity, for they were fond of Jim. Clement said he had a very sound brain if only he could be brought to take life seriously; and Silas, watching in astonishment Jim's handling of a speedboat, feared that the poor boy had taken after his mother. He disapproved of the speedboat as profoundly as he disapproved of the flighty-looking sports car, but, all the same, he let Jim keep it in his boathouse at the bottom of the cliff and, little as he understood the lure of such sports, derived a queer pleasure from recounting his young cousin's exploits to such people as Joe Mansell, whose nephews and cousins achieved no speed records and broke no limbs at Twickenham.

Since young Mr. Harte, upon her right, was fully occupied with the consumption of ice pudding, and Clive Pemble, on her left, had become involved in the intricacies of his wife's anecdote, Miss Allison had leisure to observe the last of the Kanes. Having decided some months previously that it was no part of a companion-secretary's duties to fall in love with any member of her employer's family, she had a.s.sured herself that she was wholly impervious to Mr. James Kane's charm of manner and made up her mind to demonstrate clearly to him her utter unconcern. Unfortunately he seemed to be insensitive to snubs, and, in spite of having received from her a very cold greeting upon his arrival at Cliff House, he had had the audacity to try to catch her eye three times during the course of dinner. She was happy to think that upon each occasion she had managed to avoid his gaze.

At this moment the object of her reflective scrutiny turned his head. Miss Allison demonstrated her indifference by blushing hotly and thereafter devoted her attention to his stepbrother.

It seemed a very long time before old Mrs. Kane rose from the table. Jim Kane held open the door for the ladies to pa.s.s out of the room, and Miss Allison's kind heart overcame her judgment. He was looking rather worried and certainly puzzled. She was afraid all at once that her studied disregard of him had hurt his feelings, and, instead of going out of the room without paying any heed to him, she raised her eyes to his face and gave him a faint smile. His brow cleared; he smiled back at her so warmly that she almost repented of her humane impulse.

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 gla.s.sily 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 G.o.d!" 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 G.o.dforsaken party!" Rosemary e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 manquee. 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.sure 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 h.e.l.l 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.