Death in a White Tie

CHAPTER 1 The Protagonists

‘Roderick,’ said Lady Alleyn, looking at her son over the top of her spectacles, ‘I am coming out.’

‘Out?’ repeated Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn vaguely. ‘Out where, mama? Out of what?’

‘Out into the world. Out of retirement. Out into the season. Out. Dear me,’ she added confusedly, ‘how absurd a word becomes if one says it repeatedly. Out.’

Alleyn laid an official-looking document on the breakfast-table and stared at his mother.

‘What can you be talking about?’ he said.

‘Don’t be stupid, darling. I am going to do the London season.’

‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’

‘I think perhaps I have. I have told George and Grace that I will bring Sarah out this coming season. Here is a letter from George and here is another from Grace. Government House, Suva. They think it charming of me to offer.’

‘Good Lord, mama,’ said Alleyn, ‘you must be demented. Do you know what this means?’

‘I believe I do. It means that I must take a flat in London. It means that I must look up all sorts of people who will turn out to be dead or divorced or remarried. It means that I must give little luncheon-parties and cocktail-parties and exchange cutlets with hard-working mothers. It means that I must sit in ballrooms praising other women’s grand-daughters and securing young men for my own. I shall be up until four o’clock five nights out of seven and I’m afraid, darling, that my black lace and my silver charmeuse will not be quite equal to the strain. So that in addition to buying clothes for Sarah I shall have to buy some for myself. And I should like to know what you think about that, Roderick?’

‘I think it is all utterly preposterous. Why the devil can’t George and Grace bring Sarah out themselves?’

‘Because they are in Fiji, darling.’

‘Well, why can’t she stay in until they return?’

‘George’s appointment is for four years. In four years your niece will be twenty-two. An elderly sort of débutante.’

‘Why has Sarah got to come out? Why can’t she simply emerge?’

‘That I cannot tell you, but George and Grace certainly could. I rather see it, I must say, Roderick. A girl has such fun doing her first season. There is nothing like it, ever again. And now we have gone back to chaperones and all the rest of it, it really does seem to have some of the old glamour.’

‘You mean débutantes have gone back to being treated like hothouse flowers for three months and taking their chance as hardy perennials for the rest of their lives?’

‘If you choose to put it like that. The system is not without merit, my dear.’

‘It may be quite admirable, but isn’t it going to be a bit too exhausting for you? Where is Sarah, by the way?’

‘She is always rather late for breakfast. How wonderfully these children sleep, don’t they? But we were talking about the season, weren’t we? I think I shall enjoy it, Rory. And really and truly it won’t be such hard work. I’ve heard this morning from Evelyn Carrados. She was Evelyn O’Brien, you know. Evelyn Curtis, of course, in the first instance, but that’s so long ago nobody bothers about it. Not that she’s as old as that, poor girl. She can’t be forty yet. Quite a chicken, in fact. Her mother was my greatest friend. We did the season together when we came out. And now here’s Evelyn bringing her own girl out and offering to help with Sarah. Could anything be more fortunate?’

‘Nothing,’ responded Alleyn dryly. ‘I remember Evelyn O’Brien.’

‘I should hope you do. I did my best to persuade you to fall in love with her.’

‘Did I fall in love with her?’

‘No. I could never imagine why, as she was quite lovely and very charming. Now I come to think of it, you hadn’t much chance as she herself fell madly in love with Paddy O’Brien who returned suddenly from Australia.’

‘I remember. A romantic sort of bloke, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes. They were married after a short engagement. Five months later he was killed in a motor accident. Wasn’t it awful?’

‘Awful.’

‘And then in six months or so along came this girl, Bridget. Evelyn called her Bridget because Paddy was Irish. And then, poor Evelyn, she married Herbert Carrados. Nobody ever knew why.’

‘I’m not surprised. He’s a frightful bore. He must be a great deal older than Evelyn.’

‘A thousand years and so pompous you can’t believe he’s true. You know him evidently.’

‘Vaguely. He’s something pretty grand in the City.’

Alleyn lit his mother’s cigarette and his own. He walked over to the french window and looked across the lawn.

‘Your garden is getting ready to come out, too,’ he said. ‘I wish I hadn’t to go back to the Yard.’

‘Now, darling? This minute?’

‘Afraid so. It’s this case.’ He waved some papers in his hand. ‘Fox rang up late last night. Something’s cropped up.’

‘What sort of case is it?’

‘Blackmail, but you’re not allowed to ask questions.’

‘Rory, how exciting. Who’s being blackmailed? Somebody frightfully important, I hope?’

‘Do you remember Lord Robert Gospell?’

‘Bunchy Gospell, do you mean? Surely he’s not being blackmailed. A more innocent creature—’

‘No, mama, he isn’t. Nor is he a blackmailer.’

‘He’s a dear little man,’ said Lady Alleyn emphatically. ‘The nicest possible little man.’

‘Not so little nowadays. He’s very plump and wears a cloak and a sombrero like GKC.’

‘Really?’

‘You must have seen photographs of him in your horrible illustrated papers. They catch him when they can. “Lord Robert (‘Bunchy’) Gospell tells one of his famous stories.” That sort of thing.’

‘Yes, but what’s he got to do with blackmail?’

‘Nothing. He is, as you say, an extremely nice little man.’

‘Roderick, don’t be infuriating. Has Bunchy Gospell got anything to do with Scotland Yard?’

Alleyn was staring out into the garden.

‘You might say,’ he said at last, ‘that we have a very great respect for him at the Yard. Not only is he charming—he is also, in his own way, a rather remarkable personage.’

Lady Alleyn looked at her son meditatively for some seconds.

‘Are you meeting him today?’ she asked.

‘I think so.’

‘Why?’

‘Why, darling, to listen to one of his famous stories, I suppose.’

II

It was Miss Harris’s first day in her new job. She was secretary to Lady Carrados and had been engaged for the London season. Miss Harris knew quite well what this meant. It was not, in a secretarial sense, by any means her first season. She was a competent young woman, almost frighteningly unimaginative, with a brain that was divided into neat pigeon-holes, and a mind that might be said to label all questions ‘answered’ or ‘unanswered’. If a speculative or unconventional idea came Miss Harris’s way, it was promptly dealt with or promptly shut up in a dark pigeon-hole and never taken out again. If Miss Harris had not been able to answer it immediately, it was unanswerable and therefore of no importance. Owing perhaps to her intensive training as a member of the large family of a Buckinghamshire clergyman she never for a moment asked herself why she should go through life organising fun for other people and having comparatively little herself. That would have seemed to Miss Harris an irrelevant and rather stupid speculation. One’s job was a collection of neatly filed duties, suitable to one’s station in life, and therefore respectable. It had no wider ethical interest of any sort at all. This is not to say Miss Harris was insensitive. On the contrary, she was rather touchy on all sorts of points of etiquette relating to her position in the houses in which she was employed. Where she had her lunch, with whom she had it, and who served it, were matters of great importance to her and she was painfully aware of the subtlest nuances in her employers’ attitude towards herself. About her new job she was neatly optimistic. Lady Carrados had impressed her favourably, had treated her, in her own phrase, like a perfect lady. Miss Harris walked briskly along an upstairs passage and tapped twice, not too loud and not too timidly, on a white door.

‘Come in,’ cried a far-away voice.

Miss Harris obeyed and found herself in a large white bedroom. The carpet, the walls and the chairs were all white. A cedar-wood fire crackled beneath the white Adam mantelpiece, a white bearskin rug nearly tripped Miss Harris up as she crossed the floor to the large white bed where her employer sat propped up with pillows. The bed was strewn about with sheets of notepaper.

‘Oh, good morning, Miss Harris,’ said Lady Carrados. ‘You can’t think how glad I am to see you. Do you mind waiting a moment while I finish this note? Please sit down.’

Miss Harris sat discreetly on a small chair. Lady Carrados gave her a vague, brilliant smile, and turned again to her writing. Miss Harris with a single inoffensive glance had taken in every detail of her employer’s appearance.

Evelyn Carrados was thirty-seven years old, and on her good days looked rather less. She was a dark, tall woman with little colour but a beautiful pallor. Paddy O’Brien had once shown her a copy of the Madonna di San Sisto and had told her that she was looking at herself. This was not quite true. Her face was longer and had more edge and character than Raphael’s complacent virgin, but the large dark eyes were like and the sleek hair parted down the centre. Paddy had taken to calling her ‘Donna’ after that and she still had his letters beginning: ‘Darling Donna.’ Oddly enough, Bridget, his daughter, who had never seen him, called her mother ‘Donna’ too. She had come into the room on the day Miss Harris was interviewed and had sat on the arm of her mother’s chair. A still girl with a lovely voice. Miss Harris looking straight in front of her remembered this interview now while she waited. ‘He hasn’t appeared yet,’ thought Miss Harris, meaning Sir Herbert Carrados, whose photograph faced her in a silver frame on his wife’s dressing-table.

Lady Carrados signed her name and hunted about the counterpane for blotting-paper. Miss Harris instantly placed her own pad on the bed.

‘Oh,’ said her employer with an air of pleased astonishment, ‘you’ve got some! Thank you so much. There, that’s settled her, hasn’t it?’

Miss Harris smiled brightly. Lady Carrados licked the flap of an envelope and stared at her secretary over the top.

‘I see you’ve brought up my mail,’ she said.

‘Yes, Lady Carrados. I did not know if you would prefer me to open all—’

‘No, no. No, please not.’

Miss Harris did not visibly bridle, she was much too competent to do anything of the sort, but she was at once hurt in her feelings. A miserable, a hateful, little needle of mortification jabbed her thin skin. She had overstepped her mark.

‘Very well, Lady Carrados,’ said Miss Harris politely.

Lady Carrados bent forward.

‘I know I’m all wrong,’ she said quickly. ‘I know I’m not behaving a bit as one should when one is lucky enough to have a secretary but, you see, I’m not used to such luxuries, and I still like to pretend I’m doing everything myself. So I shall have all the fun of opening my letters and all the joy of handing them over to you. Which is very unfair, but you’ll have to put up with it, poor Miss Harris.’

She watched her secretary smile and replied with a charming look of understanding.

‘And now,’ she said, ‘we may as well get it done, mayn’t we?’

Miss Harris laid the letters in three neat heaps on the writing-pad and soon began to make shorthand notes of the answers she was to write for her employer. Lady Carrados kept up a sort of running commentary.

‘Lucy Lorrimer. Who is Lucy Lorrimer, Miss Harris? I know, she’s that old Lady Lorrimer who talks as if everybody was deaf. What does she want? “Hear you are bringing out your girl and would be so glad—” Well, we’ll have to see about that, won’t we? If it’s a free afternoon we’d be delighted. There you are. Now, this one. Oh, yes, Miss Harris, now this is most important. It’s from Lady Alleyn, who is a great friend of mine. Do you know who I mean? One of her sons is a deadly baronet and the other is a detective. Do you know?’

‘Is it Chief Inspector Alleyn, Lady Carrados? The famous one?’

That’s it. Terribly good-looking and remote. He was in the Foreign Office when the war broke out and then after the war he suddenly became a detective. I can’t tell you why. Not that it matters,’ continued Lady Carrados, glancing at the attentive face of her secretary, ‘because this letter is nothing to do with him. It’s about his brother George’s girl whom his mother is bringing out and I said I’d help. So you must remember, Miss Harris, that Sarah Alleyn is to be asked to everything. And Lady Alleyn to the mothers’ lunches and all those games. Have you got that? There’s her address. And remind me to write personally. Now away we go again and—’

She stopped so suddenly that Miss Harris glanced up in surprise. Lady Carrados was staring at a letter which she held in her long white fingers. The fingers trembled slightly. Miss Harris with a sort of fascination looked at them and at the square envelope. There was a silence in the white room—a silence broken only by the hurried inconsequent ticking of a little china clock on the mantelpiece. With a sharp click the envelope fell on the heap of letters.

‘Excuse me, Lady Carrados,’ said Miss Harris, ‘but are you feeling unwell?’

‘What? No. No, thank you.’

She put the letter aside and picked up another. Soon Miss Harris’s pen was travelling busily over her pad. She made notes for the acceptance, refusal and issuing of invitations. She made lists of names with notes beside them and she entered into a long discussion about Lady Carrados’s ball.

‘I’m getting Dimitri—the Shepherd Market caterer, you know—to do the whole thing,’ explained Lady Carrados. ‘It seems to be the—’ she paused oddly ‘—safest way.’

‘Well, he is the best,’ agreed Miss Harris. ‘You were speaking of expense, Lady Carrados. Dimitri works out at about twenty-five shillings a head. But that’s everything. You do know where you are and he is good.’

‘Twenty-five? Four hundred, there’ll be, I think. How much is that?’

‘Five hundred pounds,’ said Miss Harris calmly.

‘Oh, dear, it is a lot, isn’t it? And then there’s the band. I do think we must have champagne at the buffet. It saves that endless procession to the supper-room which I always think is such a bore.’

‘Champagne at the buffet,’ said Miss Harris crisply. ‘That will mean thirty shillings a head, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, how awful!’

‘That makes Dimitri’s bill six hundred. But, of course, as I say, Lady Carrados, that will be every penny you pay.’

Lady Carrados stared at her secretary without replying. For some reason Miss Harris felt as if she had made another faux pas. There was, she thought, such a very singular expression in her employer’s eyes.

‘I should think a thousand pounds would cover the whole of the expenses, band and everything,’ she added hurriedly.

‘Yes, I see,’ said Lady Carrados. ‘A thousand.’

There was a tap at the door and a voice called: ‘Donna!’

‘Come in, darling!’

A tall, dark girl carrying a pile of letters came into the room. Bridget was very like her mother but nobody would have thought of comparing her to the Sistine Madonna. She had inherited too much of Paddy O’Brien’s brilliance for that. There was a fine-drawn look about her mouth. Her eyes, set wide apart, were deep under strongly marked brows. She had the quality of repose but when she smiled all the corners of her face tipped up and then she looked more like her father than her mother. ‘Sensitive,’ thought Miss Harris, with a mild flash of illumination. ‘I hope she stands up to it all right. Nuisance when they get nerves.’ She returned Bridget’s punctilious ‘Good morning’ and watched her kiss her mother.

‘Darling Donna,’ said Bridget, ‘you are so sweet.’

‘Hullo, my darling,’ said Lady Carrados, ‘here we are plotting away for all we’re worth. Miss Harris and I have decided on the eighth for your dance. Uncle Arthur writes that we may have his house on that date. That’s General Marsdon, Miss Harris. I explained, didn’t I, that he is lending us Marsdon House in Belgrave Square? Or did I?’

‘Yes, thank you, Lady Carrados. I’ve got all that.’

‘Of course you have.’

‘It’s a mausoleum,’ said Bridget, ‘but it’ll do. I’ve got a letter from Sarah Alleyn, Donna. Her grandmother, your Lady Alleyn, you know, is taking a flat for the season. Donna, please, I want Sarah asked for everything. Does Miss Harris know?’

‘Yes, thank you, Miss Carrados. I beg pardon,’ said Miss Harris in some confusion, ‘I should have said, Miss O’Brien, shouldn’t I?’

‘Help, yes! Don’t fall into that trap whatever you do,’ cried Bridget. ‘Sorry, Donna darling, but really!’

‘Ssh!’ said Lady Carrados mildly. ‘Are those your letters?’

‘Yes. All the invitations. I’ve put a black mark against the ones I really do jib at and all the rest will just have to be sorted out. Oh, and I’ve put a big Y on the ones I want specially not to miss. And—’

The door opened again and the photograph on the dressing-table limped into the room.

Sir Herbert Carrados was just a little too good to be true. He was tall and soldierly and good-looking. He had thin sandy hair, a large guardsman’s moustache, heavy eyebrows and rather foolish light eyes. You did not notice they were foolish because his eyebrows gave them a spurious fierceness. He was not, however, a stupid man but only a rather vain and pompous one. It was his pride that he looked like a soldier and not like a successful financier. During the Great War he had held down a staff appointment of bewildering unimportance which had kept him in Tunbridge Wells for the duration and which had not hampered his sound and at times brilliant activities in the City. He limped a little and used a stick. Most people took it as a matter of course that he had been wounded in the leg, and so he had—by a careless gamekeeper. He attended military reunions with the greatest assiduity and was about to stand for Parliament.