Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Heart

CHAPTER X

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AUDREY ARUNDALE emerged from her privacy to preside at the final gala tea. She wore black, but like many primrose-and-silver blondes, she very frequently did wear black, and there was nothing to remark on in that. She was pale, her eyes a little remote, and shadowed by bluish rings that made them look larger and more lustrous; but there was nothing in her appearance to give rise to comment or curiosity. Her manner was as it had always been, but at one remove more, and the wall of glass that separated her from the rest of the world, even while she touched and conversed and was patently present in the flesh, was so thin and clear that happy people never noticed it.

She was about again on Follymead’s business, and had a couple of calls to make. On her way to the small drawing-room she looked in at the deputy warden’s office. Henry Marshall looked up from his laden desk as she entered, and came to his feet in quick concern.

“Mrs. Arundale, I’d no idea… You’re not going in to tea?”

“Yes, I must. I’m quite all right, I assure you, there’s no need to worry about me. I just wondered if there was anything I could help you with. I’m so sorry to have left everything to you, like this.”

“You mustn’t trouble about the running of the place at all, that’s what I’m here for.”

“I know,” she said, “and I know how well you can do it. I hope… I hope they’ll give you the job, Harry.”

“Thank you!” he said uncomfortably. He hadn’t thought of her bereavement, until then, as his opportunity. “I think we’ve got everything in order. It’s lucky that we had no special fixtures for the next few days. We’re circulating all the people who’ve booked for the course next week-end, and cancelling the arrangements. I thought it would be impossible to go through with it. I have it from the police that no statement will be given to the press until to-morrow, and I very much hope it will only affect the local and regional press at the moment.”

“But there’ll have to be an inquest, won’t there?” she said, contemplating the complexities of death with eyes of stunned distaste.

“It’s to open on Wednesday morning, I’m told. But Inspector Felse says it will be only a formal opening, and the police will be asking for an adjournment. At least that will allow time for the public to forget about us a little.”

“And find some newer sensations,” she said with the blanched ghost of a smile. “Yes… And what about the subscription concert, on Monday evening of next week? So difficult to cancel a thing like that, when all the tickets have been sold, and then it’s hardly fair to the artists…”

“I think we ought to go through with that. A whole week will have passed, and the public who do use Follymead will know by then what’s happened here, and I think they’ll be reassured to find that the work is to go on. I’m sure the governors will approve.”

“Good,” said Audrey. “I’m glad you feel that way about it, too. I thought myself we ought to honour the arrangements. It’s certainly what Edward would have wanted us to do. I’m so glad you’re here to look after everything, Harry. I see you don’t need me at all. Now I must go along and have a word with Inspector Felse before tea.”

He sprang to open the door for her, his anxious eyes searching her face, but there was nothing to be seen but a white calm. “I don’t think you should attempt too much. The social load is taking care of itself, you know, you’ve only to listen to them. And it’ll soon be over now. You weren’t thinking of attending this last concert, were you?”

“Yes, I feel I must. Edward would have wished it.”

She went along the corridor from the gallery to the warden’s private office. George Felse was sitting behind the desk with his head propped in his hands, the telephone silent now, the photograph of Audrey in her party dress, Audrey at sixteen, leaning against a trough of Edward’s books. George could look from the girl to the woman, and feel time whirl past over his head, and she, since the picture was hidden from her, would not even be able to guess at the reason for the look of wonder and compunction in his eyes.

“Mr. Felse, I hope I haven’t done something I shouldn’t have done, but it seemed to be my job. I’ve told Felicity, in confidence, that her uncle is dead; and I’ve telephoned her mother, and told her that I’m sending the child home by the half past five train. Wilson will drive her to the station. If you have no objection? I know you’ll probably need her, later on, but you’ll find Mrs. Cope’s address there in the book, and Felicity will be available whenever necessary.”

“I’m glad,” said George. “It’s the best thing you could have done. You may be sure we shall spare her as much as we can. It may not even be necessary to bring her into it at all. If we can avoid it, we will.”

“I know. She told me… she said you’ve been very kind to her. She… we have never understood each other, I know that. I feel guilty towards her.”

“So does she,” said George quietly, “towards you.”

“Yes… we can hardly take a step, it seems, without infringing someone else’s liberties. I’ve suggested to Mrs. Cope that she should try sending Felicity abroad for a time, perhaps even to school abroad. A completely new environment, new companions…”

“It would be the very best thing for her. And I believe she could make good use of it, now.”

“I believe she could. Thank you, I’m glad you think I’ve done right.”

She closed the door gently after her, and went towards the hubbub in the drawing-room. And there she dispensed tea, and made conversation, and was everything the hostess of Follymead should be, always with the invisible and impenetrable veil between her and reality.

“Such a delightful week-end, my dear,” said Miss Southern, balancing a china tea-cup as old and fragile as her own thin, bluish fingers. “So wonderful to get away from this awful modern world and enjoy an island of such peace.”

“I’m so happy,” said Audrey, “that it’s been a success.”

“Oh, it has! Everyone’s enjoyed it so much. That charming little girl with the harp… I do think the harp’s such a graceful instrument for a woman, don’t you?”

“Mrs. Arundale,” shrilled the girl with the butterfly glasses, bounding between the chattering groups with a cucumber sandwich in one hand and a tea-cup in the other, “it’s been fab! I can’t wait for the next one.”

“I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed it. We must try to fit in another one as soon as we can.”

“I’m only sorry Arundale’s missed most of it,” said a thin gentleman in a dog-collar. “Do tell him, when he gets back, what an enormous success it’s been.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Audrey, and her glass smile never wavered.

Felicity came down the stairs from her room at a quarter to five, carrying a coat over her arm and a suitcase in her hand. She cocked an ear towards the small drawing-room, but on reflection did not go in. Instead, she looked round the recesses of the gallery for a secluded spot, and there in a cushioned corner of one of the built-in seats was Liri Palmer, sitting alone.

“Hullo!” said Felicity. “I was just thinking of going to look for you, only I was a bit scared, too. Do you mind if I sit with you? I’ve got ten minutes, and then I’ve got to go.”

“You’re leaving?”

“My aunt’s sending me home.” Felicity put down her case, and dropped into the cushions. “I think she thinks the children should be kept out of the way of crime and the law, and if there’s going to be unpleasantness, Felicity must be shipped off to more sheltered places. Very correct, very conventional, is my Aunt Audrey.” She looked along her shoulder at the clear, still profile and the glorious, envied hair. “You know my uncle’s dead, don’t you?” Her voice was low, level and determinedly unemotional, but her face was solemn and pale.

“I found him,” said Liri simply. “How did you find out?”

“Aunt Audrey told me. She knew I was in it already, up to the neck, so she told me how it turned out. I was grateful to her for that. It’s horrible to know bits… too much, but not enough… And to have to find out the rest maybe from a newspaper. Now at least I know where I am, even if I don’t like it much.”

“Who does?” said Liri.

“No… nobody, I suppose. But you haven’t done anything.”

“And you have?”

“Yes, that’s what I wanted to tell you. You see, the bits you know are different bits from mine. And I only found out to-day, from Dickie Meurice, that you and Lucien… You were engaged, weren’t you? Or as good as, what’s the difference? I wanted to tell you, I didn’t know that. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have tried to make him interested in me, and none of this would have happened. Not that that makes it much better for you, I suppose, because in any case he was playing you false.” The phrase came strangely but without affectation; whatever was on her mind now, Felicity was not pretending, even to herself. “He was Aunt Audrey’s lover. I suppose you knew that?”

Liri stared straight before her. “He broke three dates with me, always with a good excuse, always on the telephone. It’s easier to lie to somebody on the telephone. Twice I swallowed it, the third time I was a shade low, so I took myself out to dinner at a little place we sometimes used. He was supposed to be at rehearsal for a recording session, but he wasn’t. He was there with her. They were glowing like studio lights, and talking like bosom friends, as if they had a lifetime’s talking to make up. He was holding her hand, right there on the table. They didn’t see me. They weren’t seeing anyone but each other. I didn’t interrupt them. I waited until the next time he came for me, and then I threw it at him that he’d been standing me up for another woman. He said there was nothing in it, I was making a mistake. But I knew better. We both went mad, and that was the end of it.” She sat up abruptly and shook herself, between anger and amazement. “Why am I telling you this?”

“I don’t know,” said Felicity humbly, “unless it’s because I’ve grown up suddenly.”

“Afterwards I thought about it, and I thought, no, that was too big a thing to throw away like that, without even trying to straighten it out between us. So I came here to Follymead, because he had this engagement here. I came to make it up with him if I could. And the first person I saw when I got here – no, the second, actually, you were the first, through the lighted windows right here in this gallery – the second person I saw was this woman who’d been with him in the restaurant. So then I knew why Lucien had taken this engagement… maybe why the whole week-end course had been thought up. And that was the end of it as far as I was concerned. I thought! Actually it turns out things don’t just end when it’s appropriate, they go on whether you want them to or not. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“It isn’t that I wanted to know. But thank you, all the same. It makes it easier to understand. Me, I didn’t know any of all that, or even about you. All I could see was Lucien. I was in love with him, or I thought I was. I went out after him last Saturday afternoon…” She told that story over again, softening nothing; Liri had a right to know.

“That was what he said. And I did it. I went straight back to the house, and Uncle Edward and Aunt Audrey were sitting there together, and I said just exactly what Lucien had told me to say, right out loud to both of them. And that’s the part you didn’t know. That’s all. That’s why Uncle Edward went down there to kill him, only he got killed himself, instead. But whichever way it went, somebody died, and I was the cause of it.”

“You did that?” Liri had turned to study the girl at her side with wide-eyed attention. “Went and chucked his private invitation down on the table between them, ‘where they were sat at meat’?”

“Well, not exactly that,” said Felicity, puzzled. “They were just finishing coffee, actually.”

“Don’t mind me, it was just something that came into my head. It happens in one of the ballads, didn’t you know? Just like that.” She stared sombrely at the story that now unrolled before her remorseless and complete. “It’s something I might have done, too, if he’d done a thing like that to me.”

“Oh, might you? Do you really mean that? But you didn’t,” said Felicity, clouding over again. “I was the one who did it, and I was the one who caused Uncle Edward to get killed.”

“You and all the rest of us who’ve had any part in this affair. And Mr. Arundale himself, that’s certain. Don’t claim more than belongs to you,” said Liri hardly.

“That’s what Inspector Felse said,” admitted Felicity, encouraged.

“Inspector Felse is a pretty deep sort of man.”

“He is, isn’t he? There; that’s the station wagon for me.” The horn had blared cheerfully in the courtyard. Felicity picked up her coat and her case. “Good-bye! I wish things could turn out better than they look now. I’m sorry!”

She turned her slender, erect back, and marched away along the rear corridor towards the back stairs. At the warden’s office she hesitated for a moment, and then tapped on the door. It would be only polite, wouldn’t it, to say good-bye to Inspector Felse?

“Oh, hullo!” said George. “I heard you were off home.”

“It’s all right, isn’t it, for me to go? Aunt Audrey said she’d tell you.”

“Yes, it’s all right. If we need you, we shall know where to find you. Take care of yourself, and good luck. Better luck,” he said gently, “than you’ve had so far.”

“Thank you. You’ve been very kind.” He saw her glance stray involuntarily towards the glass over the hearth. “You did mean what you said, didn’t you? You do really think I’m going to be… pretty?”

“No,” said George firmly, “you’ve never going to be pretty, and that isn’t what I said.”

“I was afraid to say the other word,” Felicity admitted simply. “But you did mean it, didn’t you?”

“I meant it. You’ll see for yourself, before very long.”

“It’s not that it makes any difference to what’s happened,” she explained punctiliously. “But it’s something to start from – like having capital. You know!” She picked up her case sturdily. “Good-bye, then, and thanks!”

“Good-bye, Felicity! You’ll be all right?”

She understood that in its fullest meaning, and she said: “I’ll be all right.”

The station wagon taking Felicity away to catch her train left the courtyard and circled the house to the front drive just two minutes before Price drove in by the farm road. The tower clock, which was several minutes fast, was just chiming five. In one and a half hours the students would be dispersing, by car, by bus, by the house transport and the local trains, to homes scattered over the whole of the Midlands, and some even farther afield. Let them, at all costs, get off in peace. An extra car suddenly appearing at Follymead was nothing to wonder about at normal times, but better to take no chances now. Price parked carefully in the obscurity under the archway, where they could not be seen from the windows.

Lucien awoke from a wretched and uneasy doze with the exaggerated alarm of nightmare, and stared round wildly to find the familiar and unwelcome apparition of Follymead enclosing him. He could face what he had to face, but he shied at the idea of added ordeals.

“Why have you brought me here?” he demanded, roused and resentful. “I thought we were going to the police station at Comerbourne.”

“I don’t remember that we mentioned exactly where we were going. Inspector Felse has been working from here, and this is where we shall find him.” Rapier got out of the back seat, and locked the car upon the two who remained; not that he thought the boy would try to make a break for it now, but, there was no point in leaving him even the meagre opportunity. The sergeant climbed the back stairs, and let himself into the warden’s office.

George looked up from the report he was compiling, short as yet of a few details, a date or two, a name, but by this time essentially complete. “Well, how did it go?”

“No trouble,” said Rapier complacently. “He’s below in the car.” He laid his notebook on the desk, and flicked through the close pages of shorthand. “There you are! He insisted on making a statement, didn’t seem able to rest until he had in all in order. I’ll send it up to you as soon as I can get it typed. He’s made a full confession.”

“Ah,” said George, with a faint smile that Rapier found, in retrospect, more than a little puzzling. “Yes, I thought he might.”

“He says Arundale attacked him, and he killed him in self-defence. You won’t have any trouble, he’s filled in all the details, and they all fit.”

“Oh, yes, I quite thought he’d make a good job of it.” The smile was still present, wry, private and sad, and yet understandably touched with the pride and satisfaction of a man whose judgement has been vindicated by events. “And what about Mrs. Arundale?”

“She has nothing to do with it. I will say that for him, he went out of his way to make that clear. He hardly knew her. He says he used her name to shock the kid, because he knew she was jealous of her, anyhow, and the kid must have gone and told her uncle. Oh, he’s made your case for you.”

“All right,” said George, “bring him up.”

Rapier went back down the staircase and unlocked the car, dropping the keys into Price’s hand. “Ready for you now, Mr. Galt. Up the stairs, that’s right.”

Lucien heard the distant, starling clamour from the great drawing-room, and reared his head in a wild gesture of mingled ardour and revulsion. “But they… do they know about this?” He climbed the tight spiral flight, tensed and suspicious, his ears stretched. They surely couldn’t know. The high-pitched din was eager and innocent, untouched by death.

“You’d better ask the inspector that. In here.”

Lucien entered the warden’s office, and the door was closed quietly behind him.

George rose from behind the desk. “Sit down, Mr. Galt. You must have made very good time. I was reckoning on this final concert being over, or nearly over, by the time you arrived.”

It was like coming into a familiar room which had been emptied of its furniture, and was no longer familiar. All the echoes were wrong, all the tones distorted so acutely that Lucien felt his balance affected, and spread his feet aggressively to grip reality more firmly. Even in the car he had this feeling of disorientation, but now it went over him as acutely as panic, and left him sick and frightened. He had made a detailed statement admitting his responsibility for the death of Arundale, why wasn’t he under arrest? Even if his escorts from London had been instructed only to deliver him safely to the man in charge, here, presumably, was the man in charge, and still nothing seemed to be about to happen. He gripped the back of the chair that was offered him, and stood taut and distrustful, his eyes roving the room.

“I don’t understand. Why did I have to come back here? Was that fair? I haven’t made any trouble for your men, I’ve co-operated as well as I can, I’m not disputing anything I’ve done. So why…?”

“Sit down,” said George.

It wasn’t worth arguing about; Lucien sat. George came round the desk and sat on the front corner, looking his capture over with interest. Black as a gypsy, strung fine as a violin, a slender, dark, wild creature, with arrogant eyes shadowed now by grief and fear, and a hypersensitive, proud mouth that was ready to curl even at this moment. Like his picture, but even more like the picture his friends and enemies had built up of him for the man who had never set eyes on him until now.

“I’ve made a statement,” said Lucien. “It should clear up everything for you. I suppose he has to transcribe it, or whatever. I don’t know what more you want.”

“Then I’ll tell you. I want another hour and a half of apparent normality here. After that we can be as businesslike as you please.” He saw the tired eyes question doubtfully, and smiled. “Mr. Galt, I believe you’ll have a certain sympathy with our concern for this place. It may not be perfect, what it does may not go very far, or be very profound. But with all that, it is a pretty remarkable institution. It brings music, and what’s more, knowledge and desire of music, to people who’ve perhaps never really experienced it before. If its appeal fell off as the result of a scandal and a notorious case, or if its enemies – oh, yes, anything that can be called cultural has always more than enough enemies – if its enemies got an effective weapon to use against it, it might be killed for good, and that would be a real loss. There’s going to be publicity, inquest and trial can’t be avoided. There’s going to be a bad period; but if we can minimise the effect as much as possible, Follymead may survive. That’s why I want to take no action whatever until this course has dispersed. The next can be called off without too much backwash. So let’s at least wait until the house is empty to-night, before we start talking in terms of guilt and arrests.”

After a brief and dubious silence Lucien said slowly: “I’m not sure what it is you want of me.”

“I want you to give me your word not to try to get away, just to wait and behave normally until the party has left.”

Lucien moistened his lips. His eyes kindled suddenly into a slightly feverish glitter. “This is a straightforward concert for the finish?”

“Yes. Until half past six. Then they all go home.”

“Is Liri taking part?”

“Yes, Liri’s taking part.”

He thought of her head bent over the guitar, the great braid of hair coiled on her neck, the suave curve of her cheek and the intent, burnished brow, and of the voice achingly pure and clear and passionate. He thought of a future blank with confinement and solitude, where the voice could not penetrate.

“If you’ll let me sit in on this concert, all right, I give you my word I won’t cause you any trouble.”

He didn’t believe there would be any response to that offer, he was sure they’d never risk him among the crowd.

But Inspector Felse had got to his feet briskly, and swept his papers into a drawer.

“Agreed, if you don’t mind my company. And in that case we’d better go in, hadn’t we? They’ll be starting any minute.”

From her place among the artists, Liri saw them come in.

The lights were already dimmed, the hum of voices was becoming muted and expectant, and it was time. There at the back of the great room people moved about gently in obscurity, settling themselves, changing their places, finding comfortable leg-room. For once Professor Penrose came a little late to his place, and in haste, having taken too long a nap after tea; but for that the programme would have begun before the padded door at the back of the room opened again, and her attention would have been on the singers, and not on the two late-comers. As it was, she was gazing beyond the last rank of chairs in the shadow, beyond even the walls of the room, when the opening of the door caused her to shorten her sights, and return to here and now. And the person who came in was Lucien.

Her heart turned in her, even before she saw George Felse follow him into the room, and edge along after him behind the audience, to a seat against the wall. So they had him, after all. He wasn’t used to running from things, and he hadn’t run fast enough, and now they had him, back here where the thing had happened that never should have happened, the wasted, meaningless thing in which she still couldn’t believe. She felt the walls closing in on her, too.

And yet if he was under arrest, what was he doing here? There seemed to be no constraint upon him, even if the inspector had come in with him, and taken a seat beside him on the elegant little gilt and velvet couch against the tapestried wall. They sat there like any other two members of the audience, she even saw them exchange a few words, with every appearance of normality. What was happening? There was something here that was not as it seemed to be, and she could not make out what it was, or whom it threatened.

She looked to the inspector for a clue, but his face was smooth and reserved and quite unreadable, there was no way of guessing what was going on in the mind behind it. If she had gone in terror of the obvious end, now she found herself equally afraid of some other eventuality beyond her grasp. Why bring a prisoner here into this room? She could understand that the police might prefer to get all these people out of here before they took decisive action, but even so, why bring Lucien to the gathering?

A hand jogged her arm. The professor’s insinuating voice begged her winningly: “Your legs are younger than mine, lass. Run and fetch my notebook for me, will you? I went and left it in the warden’s office before tea, and forgot to collect it again.”

His notebook was a joke by that time. He couldn’t talk without it open before him, and yet he had never been known to consult it for any detail, however abstruse.

“You’ve never needed it yet,” protested Liri, her eyes clinging to the distant pair at the back of the room, lost now in an even dimmer light. Someone had turned out the strip-lights over the pictures. “You’re not likely to start tonight.”

“There has to be a first time for everything. Go on, now, like a good girl.”

And she went, impatiently but obediently, flashing to the doorway and running along the corridor. Her heels rang on the polished wood with a solitary and frightening sound, for outside the great yellow room the house hung silent and deserted. Nothing now was quite real, so much of her mind laboured frenziedly with this crisis she could not comprehend. She pushed open the door of the warden’s office, which for the past three days had become an extension of police headquarters, while the house went about its blithe business oblivious of all evil. The massive folder of the professor’s notes lay on a walnut table near the window. She tucked it under her arm, and turned to the door again, and then as abruptly turned back, and crossed to the desk.

Would he leave anything, any unconsidered trifle, where she could find it and make sense of it? She had to know; there was a feverish pulse beating in her blood that insisted it was imperative for her to know.

She put down her portfolio on the desk, and began trying all the drawers one by one, but they were fast locked. She should have guessed that. There was nothing here for her.

But there was. Her eyes fell on it as she straightened up with a sigh from her useless search. There it was, propped against Arundale’s rack of reference books, eye to eye with her, the half-plate photograph of a young girl in a white party-dress. She had never seen the living face joyous like this, but she knew it at once, as she knew the little silver disc that hung round the girl’s neck on a thin chain.

Lucien’s medal, the one he had worn ever since she had known him, long before he met Audrey Arundale. The one thing that had been his father’s. And yet here it hung round the neck of the sixteen-year-old Audrey, how many years ago, how many worlds away?

Now she did understand. Intuitively, without need of details or evidence, she understood everything. Yes, even why Lucien was sitting there among the audience in the dressing-room, under no restraint, though he surely expected arrest afterwards. Liri knew better. She knew what was going to happen afterwards; she knew what went on behind George Felse’s unrevealing face.

She caught up the portfolio and slipped from the room, to run like a wild thing through the silent libraries, and along the corridors to the warden’s private quarters. But there was no one there. The lights were out and the rooms deserted. And she must go back, she couldn’t hunt any farther. Too late now to make any amends, too late to look for Audrey, too late to warn her. A minute more, and someone else would be out hunting for her.

She went back to the yellow drawing-room, back to her place on the dais. She gave the professor his notes, which of course he would not need or use. It was no use now; there was no way of reaching her. Liri raised her eyes and looked carefully over the array of attentive faces, little moons in a mild twilight. Those two at the back, side by side on their crazy little gilded perch, looked improbably at ease. The professor was talking about the summing-up of all that they had experienced together, the relationship of folk-music to the wider and deeper field of music itself. Presently the Rossignol twins were singing, two angelic voices, eerie and sweet.

The long range of windows that led out on to the terrace brought the dim and cloudy day in upon them in tints of subdued violet and green. Not even dusk yet, not by a couple of hours, and yet the low and heavy cloud hung like a pall, turning this after-tea hour into night.

The most distant of the long windows, down there at the back of the room, stood ajar. A while ago they had all been closed. The last chair at the end of that row, certainly empty then, was occupied now. Someone had come in by the window, and moved the chair aside into the embrasure, drawing a fold of the heavy curtains round it to screen her from at least half the room. A dead black dress, the sheen of pale, piled hair.

Edward Arundale’s widow, still chatelaine of Follymead, had come to the final concert. They were there in the same room together, there was only about fifteen yards of air between them, and yet they could not communicate.

Or was there still a way? That curious conversation with Felicity had started a tune running in Liri’s head, and it would not be quieted. It plagued her with reminders of the rogue page who tossed just such an apple of discord in among Lord Barnard’s household “where they were sat at meat.” The verse ranged through her head, in the light of what she had just learned, with a new and terrifying aptness. If they talked to her, they could talk to another person, one, the only one except George Felse and Lucien Galt, who knew the whole story, and would recognise only too well the full implications. She might still misunderstand; but that had to be risked. Liri could not leave her to step over the edge of the pit without so much as reaching a hand to her. Whatever her own wrongs, she owed Audrey that and more. She was indebted to her for a world, and she could make so little repayment now.

Liri folded her hands on her guitar, and waited. She knew now what she had to do.