The Brightener

CHAPTER II

UP AND IN

You may remember what Jim Courtenaye said in the garden: that he would probably have to support me.

Well, he dared to offer, through Mr. Carstairs, to do that very thing, "for the family's sake." At least, he proposed to pay off all our debts and allow me an income of four hundred a year, if it turned out that my inheritance from Paolo was nil.

When Mr. Carstairs passed on the offer to me, as he was bound to do, I said what I felt dear Grandmother would have wished me to say: "I'll see him d – d first!" And I added, "I hope you'll repeat that to the Person."

I think from later developments that Mr. Carstairs cannot have repeated my reply verbatim. But I have not yet quite come to the part about those developments. After the funeral, when I knew the worst about the entail, and that Paolo's brother Carlo was breaking it wholly for his own benefit, and not at all for mine, Mrs. Carstairs asked sympathetically if I had thought what I should like to do.

"Like to do?" I echoed, bitterly. "I should like to go home to the dear old Abbey, and restore the place as it ought to be restored, and have plenty of money, without lifting a finger to get it. What I must do is a different question."

"Well, then, my dear, supposing we put it in that brutal way. Have you thought – er – "

"I've done nothing except think. But I've been brought up with about as much earning capacity as a mechanical doll. The only thing I have the slightest talent for being, is – a detective!"

"Good gracious!" was Mrs. Carstairs' comment on that.

"I've felt ever since spy night at the Abbey that I had it in me to make a good detective," I modestly explained.

"'Princess di Miramare, Private Detective,' would be a distinctly original sign-board over an office door," the old lady reflected. "But I believe I've evolved something more practical, considering your name – and your age – (twenty-one, isn't it?) – and your looks. Not that detective talent mayn't come in handy even in the profession I'm going to suggest. Very likely it will – among other things. It's a profession that'll call for all the talents you can get hold of."

"Do you by chance mean marriage?" I inquired, coldly. "I've never been a wife. But I suppose I am a sort of widow."

"If you weren't a sort of widow you couldn't cope with the profession I've – er – invented. You wouldn't be independent enough."

"Invented? Then you don't mean marriage! And not even the stage. I warn you that I solemnly promised Grandmother never to go on the stage."

"I know, my child. She mentioned that to Henry – my husband – when they were discussing your future, before you both left London. My idea is much more original than marriage, or even the stage. It popped into my mind the night Mrs. Courtenaye died, while we were in a taxi between the Palazzo Ardini and this hotel. I said to myself, 'Dear Elizabeth shall be a Brightener!'"

"A Brightener?" I repeated, with a vague vision of polishing windows or brasses. "I don't – "

"You wouldn't! I told you I'd invented the profession expressly for you. Now I'm going to tell you what it is. I felt that you'd not care to be a tame companion, even to the most gilded millionairess, or a social secretary to a – "

"Horror! – no, I couldn't be a tame anything."

"That's why brightening is your line. A Brightener couldn't be a Brightener and tame. She must be brilliant – winged – soaring above the plane of those she brightens; expensive, to make herself appreciated; capable of taking the lead in social direction. Why, my dear, people will fight to get you – pay any price to secure you! Now do you understand?"

I didn't. So she explained. After that dazzling preface, the explanation seemed rather an anti-climax. Still, I saw that there might be something in the plan – if it could be worked. And Mrs. Carstairs guaranteed to work it.

My widowhood (save the mark!) qualified me to become a chaperon. And my Princesshood would make me a gilded one. Chaperonage, at its best, might be amusing. But chaperonage was far from the whole destiny of a Brightener. A Brightener need not confine herself to female society, as a mere Companion must. A young woman, even though a widow and a Princess, could not "companion" a person of the opposite sex, even if he were a hundred. But she might, from a discreet distance, be his Brightener. That is, she might brighten a lonely man's life without tarnishing her own reputation.

"After all," Mrs. Carstairs went on, "in spite of what's said against him, Man is a Fellow Being. If a cat may look at a King, Man may look at a Princess. And unless he's in her set, he can be made to pay for the privilege. Think of a lonely button or boot-maker! What would he give for the honour of invitations to tea, with introductions and social advice, from the popular Princess di Miramare? He might have a wife or daughters, or both, who needed a leg up. They would come extra! He might be a widower – in fact, I've caught the first widower for you already. But unluckily you can't use him yet."

"Ugh!" I shuddered. "Sounds as if he were a fish – wriggling on a hook till I'm ready to tear it out of his gills!"

"He is a fish – a big fish. In fact, I may as well break it to you that he is Roger Fane."

"Good heavens!" I cried. "It would take more electricity than I'm fitted with to brighten his tragic and mysterious gloom!"

"Not at all. In fact, you are the only one who can brighten it."

"What are you driving at? He's dead in love with Shelagh Leigh."

"That's just it. As things are, he has no hope of marrying Shelagh. She likes him, as you probably know better than I do, for you're her best pal, although she's a year or so younger than you – "

"Two years."

"Well, as I was going to say, in many ways she's a child compared to you. She's as beautiful as one of those cut-off cherubs in the prayer-books, and as old-fashioned as an early Victorian sampler. These blonde Dreams with naturally waving golden hair and rosebud mouths, and eyes big as half-crowns, have that drawback, as I've discovered since I came to live in England. In my country we don't grow early Victorian buds. You know perfectly well that those detestable snobs, the Pollens, don't think Fane good enough for Shelagh in spite of his money. Money's the one nice thing they've got themselves, which they can pass on to Shelagh. Probably they forced the wretched Miss Pollen, who was the male snob's sister, to marry the old Marquis of Leigh just as they wish to compel Shelagh to marry some other wreck of his sort – and die young, as her mother did. The girl's a dear – a perfect lamb! – but lambs can't stand up against lions. They generally lie down inside them. But with you at the helm, the Pollen lions could be forced – "

"Not if they knew it!" I cut in.

"They wouldn't know it. Did you know that you were being forced to marry that poor young prince of yours?"

"I wasn't forced. I was persuaded."

"We won't argue the point! Anyhow, the subject doesn't press. The scheme I have in my head for you to launch Fane on the social sea (the sea in every sense of the word, as you'll learn by and by) can't come off till you're out of your deepest mourning. I'll find you a quieter line of goods to begin on than the Fane-Leigh business if you agree to take up Brightening. The question is, do you agree?"

"I do," I said more earnestly than I had said "I will" as I stood at Paolo's side in church. For life hadn't been very earnest then. Now it was.

"Good!" exclaimed Mrs. Carstairs. "Then that's that! The next thing is to furnish you a charming flat in the same house with us. You must have a background of your own."

"You forget – I haven't a farthing!" I fiercely reminded her. "But Mr. Carstairs won't forget! I've made him too much trouble. The best Brightening won't run to half a Background in Berkeley Square."

"Wait," Mrs. Carstairs calmed me. "I haven't finished the whole proposition yet. In America, when we run up a sky-scraper, we don't begin at the bottom, in any old, commonplace way. We stick a few steel girders into the earth; then we start at the top and work down. That's what I've been doing with my plan. It's perfect. Only you've got to support it with something."

"What is it you're trying to break to me?" I demanded.

The dear old lady swallowed heavily. (It must be something pretty awful if it daunted her!)

"You like Roger Fane," she began.

"Yes, I admire him. He's handsome and interesting, though a little too mysterious and tragic to live with for my taste."

"He's not mysterious at all!" she defended Fane. "His tragedy – for there was a tragedy! – is no secret in America. I often met him before the war, when I ran over to pay visits in New York, though he was far from being in the Four Hundred. But at the moment I've no more to say about Roger Fane. I've been using him for a handle to brandish a friend of his in front of your eyes."

My blood grew hot. "Not the ex-cowboy?"

"That's no way to speak of Sir James Courtenaye."

"Then he's what you want to break to me?"

"I want – I mean, I'm requested! – to inform you of a way he proposes out of the woods for you – at least, the darkest part of the woods."

"I told Mr. Carstairs I'd see James Courtenaye d – d rather than – "

"This is a different affair entirely. You must listen, my dear, unless I'm to wash my hands of you! What I have to describe is the foundation for the Brightening."

I swallowed some more of Grandmother's expressions which occurred to me, and listened.

Sir James Courtenaye's second proposition was not an offer of charity. He suggested that I let Courtenaye Abbey to him for a term of years, for the sum of one thousand five hundred pounds per annum, the first three years to be paid in advance. (This clause, Mrs. Carstairs hinted, would enable me to dole out crumbs here and there for the quieting of Grandmother's creditors.) Sir James's intention was, not to use the Abbey as a residence, but to make of it a show place for the public during the term of his lease. In order to do this, the hall must be restored and the once-famous gardens beautified. This expense he would undertake, carrying the work quickly to completion, and would reimburse himself by means of the fees – a shilling a head – charged for viewing the house and its historic treasures.

When I had heard all this, I hesitated what to answer, thinking of Grandmother, and wondering what she would have said had she been in my shoes. But as this thought flitted into my mind, it was followed by another. One of Grandmother's few old-fashioned fads was her style of shoe: pattern 1875. The shoes I stood in, at this moment, were pattern 1918. In my shoes Grandmother would simply scream! And I wouldn't be at my best in hers. This was the parable which commonsense put to me, and Mrs. Carstairs cleverly offering no word of advice, I paused no longer than five minutes before I snapped out, "Yes! The horrid brute can have the darling place till I get rich."

"How sweet of you to consent so graciously, darling!" purred Mrs. Carstairs. Then we both laughed. After which I fell into her arms, and cried.

For fear I might change my mind, Mr. Carstairs got me to sign some dull-looking documents that very day, and the oddness of their being all ready to hand didn't strike me till the ink was dry.

"Henry had them prepared because he knew how sensible you are at heart – I mean at head," his wife explained. "Indeed, it is a compliment to your intelligence."

Anyhow, it gave me a wherewithal to throw sops to a whole Zooful of Cerberuses, and still keep enough to take that flat in the Carstairs' house in Berkeley Square. Of course to do all this meant leaving Italy for good and going back to England. But there was little to hold me in Rome. My inheritance from my husband-of-an-hour could be packed in a suitcase! Shelagh and her snobs travelled with us. And as soon as they were demobilized, Roger Fane and James Courtenaye followed, if not us, at least in our direction.

I don't think that Aladdin's Lamp builders "had anything on" Sir Jim's (as he himself said), judging by the way the restorations simply flew. From what I heard of the sums he spent, it would take the shillings of all England and America as sightseers to put him in pocket. But as Mr. Carstairs pointed out, that was his business.

Mine was to gird my loins at Lucille's and Redfern's, in order to become a Brightener. For my pendulum was ticking regularly now. I was no longer down and out. I was up and in. Elizabeth, Princess di Miramare, was spoiling for her first job.

CHAPTER III

THUNDERBOLT SIX

Looking back through my twenty-one-and-three-quarter years, I divide my life, up to date, into thunderbolts.

Thunderbolt One: Death of my Father and Mother.

Thunderbolt Two: Spy Night at the Abbey.

Thunderbolt Three: My Marriage to Paolo di Miramare.

Thunderbolt Four: The "Double Blow."

Thunderbolt Five: Beggary!

Which brings me along the road to Thunderbolt Six.

Mrs. Percy-Hogge was, and is, exactly what you would think from her name; which is why I don't care to dwell at length on the few months I spent brightening her at Bath. It was bad enough living them!

Now, if I were a Hogge instead of a Courtenaye, plus Miramare, I would be one, plain, unadulterated, and unadorned. She adulterated her Hogg with an "e," and adorned it with a "Percy," her late husband's Christian name. He being in heaven or somewhere, the hyphen couldn't hurt him; and with it, and his money, and Me, she began at Bath the attempt to live down the past of a mere margarine-making Hogg. Whole bunches of Grandmother's friends were in the Bath zone just then, which is why I chose it, and they were so touched by my widow's weeds that they were charming to Mrs. P. – H. in order to please me. As most of them – though stuffy – were titled, and there were two Marchionesses and one Duchess, the result for Mrs. Percy-Hogge was brilliant. She, who had never before known any one above a knight-ess, was in Paradise. She had taken a fine old Georgian house, furnished from basement to attic by Mallet, and had launched invitations for a dinner-party "to meet the Dowager-Duchess of Stoke," when – bang fell Thunderbolt Six!

Naturally it fell on me, not her, as thunderbolts have no affinity for Hoggs. It fell in the shape of a telegram from Mrs. Carstairs.

She wired:

Come London immediately, for consultation. Terrible theft at Abbey. Barlows drugged and bound by burglars. Both prostrated. Affair serious. Let me know train. Will meet. Love.

Caroline Carstairs.

I wired in return that I would catch the first train, and caught it. The old lady kept her word also, and met me. Before her car had whirled us to Berkeley Square I had got the whole story out of her; which was well, as an ordeal awaited me, and I needed time to camouflage my feelings.

I had been sent for in haste because the news of the burglary was not to leak into the papers until, as Mrs. Carstairs expressed it, "those most concerned had come to some sort of understanding." "You see," she added, "this isn't an ordinary theft. There are wheels within wheels, and the insurance people will kick up a row rather than pay. That's why we must talk everything over; you, and Sir James, and Henry – and Henry is never quite complete without me, so I intend to be in the offing."

I knew she wouldn't stay there; but that was a detail!

The robbery had taken place the night before, and Sir James himself had been the one to discover it. Complication number one (as you'll see in a minute).

He, being now "demobbed" and a man of leisure, instead of reopening his flat in town, had taken up quarters at Courtenaye Coombe to superintend the repairs at the Abbey. His ex-cowboy habits being energetic, he usually walked the two miles from the village, and appeared on the scene ahead of the workmen.

This morning he arrived before seven o'clock, and went, according to custom, to beg a cup of coffee from Mrs. Barlow. She and her husband occupied the bedroom and sitting room which had been the housekeeper's; but at that hour the two were invariably in the kitchen. Sir Jim let himself in with his key, and marched straight to that part of the house. He was surprised to find the kitchen shutters closed and the range fireless. Suspecting something wrong, he went to the bedroom door and knocked. He got no answer; but a second, harder rap produced a muffled moan. The door was not locked. He opened it, and was horrified at what he saw: Mrs. Barlow, on the bed, gagged and bound; her husband in the same condition, but lying on the floor; and the atmosphere of the closed room heavy with the fumes of chloroform.

It was Mrs. Barlow who managed to answer the knock with a moan. Barlow was deeper under the spell of the drug than she, and – it appeared afterward – in a more serious condition of collapse.

The old couple had no story to tell, for they recalled nothing of what had happened. They had made the rounds of the house as usual at night, and had then gone to bed. Barlow did not wake from his stupor until the village doctor came to revive him with stimulants, and Mrs. Barlow's first gleam of consciousness was when she dimly heard Sir James knocking. She strove to call out, felt aware of illness, realized with terror that her mouth was distended with a gag, and struggled to utter the faint groan which reached his ears.

As soon as Sir Jim had attended to the sufferers, he hurried out, and, finding that the workmen had arrived, rushed one of them back to Courtenaye Coombe for the doctor and the village nurse. The moment he (Sir Jim) was free to do so, he started on a voyage of discovery round the house, and soon learned that a big haul had been brought off. The things taken were small in size but in value immense, and circumstantial evidence suggested that the thief or thieves knew precisely what they wanted as well as where to get it.

In the picture gallery a portrait of King Charles I (given by himself to a General Courtenaye of the day) had been cleverly cut out of its frame, also a sketch of the Long Water at Hampton Court, painted and signed by King Charles. The green drawing room was deprived of its chief treasure, a quaint sampler embroidered by the hand of Mary Queen of Scots for her "faithful John Courtenaye." From the Chinese boudoir a Buddha of the Ming period was gone, and a jewel box of marvellous red lacquer presented by Li Hung Chang to my grandmother. The silver cabinet in the oak dining room had been broken open, and a teapot, sugar bowl, and cream-jug, given by Queen Anne to an ancestress, were absent. The China cabinet in the same room was bared of a set of green-and-gold coffee cups presented by Napoleon I to a French great-great-grandmother of mine; and from the big dining hall adjoining, a Gobelin panel, woven for the Empress Josephine, after the wedding picture by David, had vanished.

A few bibelots were missing also, here and there; snuff boxes of Beau Nash and Beau Brummel; miniatures, old paste brooches and buckles reminiscent of Courtenaye beauties; and a fat watch that had belonged to George IV.

"All my pet things!" I mourned.

"Don't say that to any one except me," advised Mrs. Carstairs. "My dear, bits of a letter torn into tiny pieces – a letter from you – were found in the Chinese Room, and the Insurance people will be hatefully inquisitive!"

"You don't mean to insinuate that they'll suspect me?" I blazed at her.

"Not of stealing the things with your own hands; and if they did, you could easily prove an alibi, I suppose. Still, they're bound to follow up every clue, and bits of paper with your writing on them, apparently dropped by the thieves, do form a tempting clue. You can't help admitting it."

I did not admit it in the least, for at first glance I couldn't see where the "temptation" lay to steal one's own belongings. But Mrs. Carstairs soon made me see. Though the things were mine in a way, in another way they were not mine. Being heirlooms, I could not profit by them financially, in the open. Yet if I could cause them to disappear, without being detected, I should receive the insurance money with one hand, and rake in with the other a large bribe from some supposititious purchaser.

"On the contrary, why shouldn't our brave Bart be suspected of precisely the same fraud, and more of it?" I inquired. "If I could steal the things, so could he. If they're my pets, they may be his. And he was on the spot, with a lot of workmen in his pay! Surely such circumstantial evidence against him weighs more heavily in the scales than a mere scrap of paper against me? I've written Sir Jim once or twice, by the way, on business about the Abbey since I've been in Bath. All he'd have to do would be to tear a letter up small enough, so it couldn't be pieced together and make sense – "

"Nobody's weighing anything in scales against either of you – yet," soothed Mrs. Carstairs, "unless you're doing it against each other! But we don't know what may happen. That's why it seemed best for you and Sir James to come together and exchange blows – I mean, views! – at once. He called my husband up by long-distance telephone early this morning, told him what had happened, and had a pow-wow on ways and means. They decided not to inform the police, but to save publicity and engage a private detective. In fact, Sir J – asked Henry to send a good man to the Abbey by the quickest train. He went – the man, I mean, not Henry; and the head of his firm ought to arrive at our flat in a few minutes now, to meet you and Sir James."

"Sir James! Even a galloping cowboy can't be in London and Devonshire at the same moment."

"Oh, I forgot to mention, he must have travelled up by your train. I suppose you didn't see him?"

"I did not!"

"He was probably in a smoking carriage. Well, anyhow, he'll soon be with us."

"Stop the taxi!" I broke in; and stopped it myself by tapping on the window behind the chauffeur.

"Good heavens! what's the matter?" gasped my companion.

"Nothing. I want to inquire the name of that firm of private detectives Sir James Courtenaye got Mr. Carstairs to engage."

"Pemberton. You must have seen it advertised. But why stop the taxi to ask that?"

"I stopped the taxi to get out, and let you run home alone while I find another cab to take me to another detective. You see, I didn't want to go to the same firm."

"Isn't one firm of detectives enough at one time, on one job?"

"It isn't one job. You're the shrewdest woman I know. You must see that James Courtenaye has engaged his detective to spy upon me – to dog my footsteps – to discover if I suddenly blossom out into untold magnificence on ill-got gains. I intend to turn the tables on him, and when I come back to your flat, it will be in the company of my very own little pet detective."