Death in a White Tie

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Interlude for Love

Alleyn wondered if it was only because he knew the body of his friend had come home that he felt its presence. Perhaps the house was not more quiet than it had been that morning. Perhaps the dead did not in truth cast about them so deep a spell. And then he smelt lilies and all the hushed chill of ceremonial death closed about his heart. He turned to Bunchy’s old butler who was in the condition so often found in the faithful retainers of Victorian melodrama. He had been weeping. His eyes were red and his face blotted with tears, and his lips trembled. He showed Alleyn into Mildred’s sitting-room. When she came forward in her lustreless black clothes, he found in her face the same unlovely reflection of sorrow. Mildred wore the customary expression of bereavement, and though he knew it to be the stamp of sincere grief, he felt a kind of impatience. He felt a profound loathing of the formalities of death. A dead body was nothing, nothing but an intolerable caricature of something someone had loved. It was a reminder of unspeakable indignities, and yet people surrounded their dead with owlish circumstances, asked you, as Mildred was asking him now, in a special muted voice, to look at them. “I know you’d like to see him, Roderick.” He followed her into a room on the ground floor. The merciless scent of flowers was so heavy here that it hung like mist on the cold air. The room was crowded with flowers. In the centre, on three shrouded trestles, Robert Gospell’s body lay in its coffin. It was the face of an elderly baby, dignified by the possession of some terrific secret. Alleyn was not troubled by the face. All dead faces looked like that. But the small fat hands, which in life had moved with staccato emphasis, were obediently folded, and when he saw these his eyes were blinded by tears. He groped in his overcoat pocket for a handkerchief and his fingers found the bunch of rosemary from Mr Harris’s garden. The grey-green spikes were crisp and unsentimental and they smelt of the sun. When Mildred turned aside, he gave them to the dead.

He followed her back to her drawing-room and she began to tell him about the arrangements for the funeral.

“Broomfield, who as you know is the head of the family, is only sixteen. He’s abroad with his tutor and can’t get back in time. We are not going to alter his plans. So that Donald and I are the nearest. Donald is perfectly splendid. He has been such a comfort all day. Quite different. And then dear Troy has come to stay with me and has answered all the letters and done everything.”

Her voice, still with that special muted note, droned on, but Alleyn’s thoughts had been arrested by this news of Troy and he had to force himself to listen to Mildred. When she had finished he asked her if she wished to know anything about his side of the picture and discovered that she was putting all the circumstances of her brother’s death away from her. Mildred had adopted an ostrich attitude towards the murder and he got the impression that she rather hoped the murderer would never be caught. She wished to cut the whole thing dead and he thought it was rather clever and rather nice of her to be able to welcome him so cordially as a friend and pay no attention to him as a policeman.

After a minute or two there seemed to be nothing more to say to Mildred. Alleyn said good-bye to her, promised to attend the memorial service at eleven and to do his part at the funeral. He went out into the hall.

In the doorway he met Troy.

He heard his own voice saying: “Hullo, you’re just in time. You’re going to save my life.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“It’s nearly five. I’ve had six hours’ sleep in the last fifty-eight hours. That’s nothing for us hardy coppers but for some reason I’m feeling sorry for myself. Will you take tea or a drink or possibly both with me? For God’s sake say you will.”

“Very well, where shall we go?”

“I thought,” said Alleyn, who up to that moment had thought nothing of the sort, “that we might have tea at my flat. Unless you object to my flat.”

“I’m not a débutante,” said Troy. “I don’t think I need coddle my reputation. Your flat let it be.”

“Good,” said Alleyn. “I’ve got mother’s car. I’ll just warn my servant and tell the Yard where to find me. Do you think I may use the telephone.”

“I’m sure you may.”

He darted to telephone and was back in a minute.

“Vassily is tremendously excited,” he said. “A lady to tea! Come on.”

On the way Alleyn was so filled with astonishment at finding himself agreeably alone with Troy that he fell into a trance from which he only woke when he pulled the car up outside his own flat. He did not apologize for his silence: he felt a tranquillity in Troy that had accepted it, and when they were indoors he was delighted to hear her say: “This is peaceful,” and to see her pull off her cap and sit on a low stool before the fireplace.

“Shall we have a fire?” asked Alleyn. “Do say yes. It’s not a warm day, really.”

“Yes, let’s,” agreed Troy.

“Will you light it while I see about tea?”

He went out of the room to give Vassily a series of rather confused orders, and when he returned there was Troy before the fire, bareheaded, strangely familiar.

“So you’re still here,” said Alleyn.

“It’s a nice room, this.”

He put a box of cigarettes on the floor beside her and took out his pipe. Troy turned and saw her own picture of Suva at the far end of the room.

“Oh, yes,” said Alleyn, “there’s that.”

“How did you get hold of it?”

“I got someone to buy it for me.”

“But why—”

“I don’t know why I was so disingenuous about it except that I wanted it so very badly for reasons that were not purely aesthetic and I thought you would see through them if I made a personal business of it.”

“I should have been rather embarrassed, I suppose.”

“Yes.” Alleyn waited for a moment and then said: “Do you remember how I found you that day, painting and cursing? It was just as the ship moved out of Suva. Those sulky hills and that ominous sky were behind you.”

“We had a row, didn’t we?”

“We did.”

Troy’s face became rather pink.

“In fact,” said Alleyn, “there is scarcely an occasion on which we have met when we have not had a row. Why is that, do you suppose?”

“I’ve always been on the defensive.”

“Have you? For a long time I thought you merely disliked me.”

“No. You got under my guard.”

“If it hadn’t been for that damned case, things might have gone better,” said Alleyn. “What a pity it is that we cannot sometimes react to situations like characters in the less honest form of novel. The setting should have been ideal, you know. A murder in your house. You with just enough motive to make a ‘strong situation’ and not enough seriously to implicate you. Me, as the grim detective finding time for a bit of Rochester stuff. You should have found yourself drawn unwillingly into love, Troy. Instead of which I merely acquired a sort of post-mortem disagreeableness. If you painted a surrealist picture of me I would be made of Metropolitan Police notebooks, one eye would be set in a keyhole, my hands would be occupied with somebody else’s private correspondence. The background would be a morgue and the whole pretty conceit wreathed with festoons of blue tape and hangman’s rope. What?”

“Nonsense,” said Troy.

“I suppose so. Yes. The vanity of the male trying to find extraordinary reasons for a perfectly natural phenomenon. You don’t happen to love me. And why the devil should you?”

“You don’t happen to understand,” said Troy shortly, “and why the devil should you.”

She took a cigarette and tilted her face up for him to give her a light. A lock of her short dark hair had fallen across her forehead. Alleyn lit the cigarette, threw the match into the fire and tweaked the lock of hair.

“Abominable woman,” he said abruptly. “I’m so glad you’ve come to see me.”

“I tell you what,” said Troy more amiably. “I’ve always been frightened of the whole business. Love and so on.”

“The physical side?”

“Yes, that, but much more than that. The whole business. The breaking down of all one’s reserves. The mental as well as the physical intimacy.”

“My mind to me a kingdom is.”

“I feel it wouldn’t be,” said Troy.

“I feel it rather terrifyingly still would be. Don’t you think that in the closest possible union there must always be moments when one feels oneself completely separate, completely alone? Surely it must be so, otherwise we would not be so astonished on the rare occasions when we read each other’s thoughts.”

Troy looked at him with a sort of shy determination that made his heart turn over.

“Do you read my thoughts?” she asked.

“Not very clearly, Troy. I dare not wish I could.”

“I do yours, sometimes. That is one of the things that sends my defences up.”

“If you could read them now,” said Alleyn, “you might well be frightened.”

Vassily came in with tea. He had, Alleyn saw at a glance, excitedly rushed out to his favourite delicatessen shop round the corner and purchased caviare. He had made a stack of buttered toast, he had cut up many lemons, and he had made tea in an enormous Stuart pot of Lady Alleyn’s which her son had merely borrowed to show to a collector. Vassily had also found time to put on his best coat. His face was wreathed in smiles of embarrassing significance. He whispered to himself as he set this extraordinary feast out on a low table in front of Troy.

“Please, please,” said Vassily. “If there is anysink more, sir. Should I not perhaps —?”

“No, no,” said Alleyn hastily, “that will do admirably.”

“Caviare!” said Troy. “Oh, how glad I am — a heavenly tea.”

Vassily broke into a loud laugh, excused and bowed himself out, and shut the doors behind him with the stealth of a soubrette in a French comedy.

“You’ve transported the old fool,” said Alleyn.

“What is he?”

“A Russian carry-over from a former case of mine. He very nearly got himself arrested. Can you really eat caviare and drink Russian tea? He’s put some milk there.”

“I don’t want milk and I shall eat any quantity of caviare,” said Troy.

When they had finished and Vassily had taken away the tea things, Troy said: “I must go.”

“Not yet.”

“Oughtn’t you to be at Scotland Yard?”

“They’ll ring me up if I’m wanted. I’m due there later on.”

“We’ve never once mentioned Bunchy,” said Troy.

“No.”

“Shall you get an early night tonight?”

“I don’t know, Troy.”

Alleyn sat on the footstool by her chair. Troy looked down on his head propped between his long thin hands.

“Don’t talk about the case if you’d rather not. I only wanted to let you know that if you’d like to, I’m here.”

“You’re here. I’m trying to get used to it. Shall you ever come again, do you think? Do you know I swore to myself I would not utter one word of love this blessed afternoon? Well, perhaps we’d better talk about the case. I shall commit a heinous impropriety and tell you I may make an arrest this evening.”

“You know who killed Bunchy?”

“We believe we do. If tonight’s show goes the right way we shall be in a position to make the arrest.”

He turned and looked into her face.

“Ah,” he said, “my job again! Why does it revolt you so much?”

Troy said: “It’s nothing reasonable — nothing I can attempt to justify. It’s simply that I’ve got an absolute horror of capital punishment. I don’t even know that I agree with the stock arguments against it. It’s just one of those nightmare things. Like claustrophobia. I used to adore the Ingoldsby Legends when I was a child. One day I came across the one about my Lord Tomnoddy and the hanging. It made the most extraordinary impression on me. I dreamt about it. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I used to turn the pages of the book, knowing that I would come to it, dreading it, and yet — I had to read it. I even made a drawing of it.”

“That should have helped.”

“I don’t think it did. I suppose most people, even the least imaginative, have got a bogey man in the back of their minds. That has always been mine. I’ve never spoken of it before. And so you see when you and I met in that other business and it ended in your arrest of someone I knew—” Her voice wavered. ”And then there was the trial and — the end—”

With a nervous movement she touched his head.

“It’s not you. And yet I mind so much that it is you.”

Alleyn pulled her hand down against his lips.

There was complete silence. Everything he had ever felt; every frisson, the most profound sorrow, the least annoyance, the greatest joy and the smallest pleasure had been but preparation for this moment when her hand melted against his lips. Presently he found himself leaning over her. He still held her hand like a talisman and he spoke against the palm.

“This must be right. I swear it must be right. I can’t be feeling this alone. Troy?”

“Not now,” Troy whispered. “No more, now. Please.”

“Yes.”

“Please.”

He stooped, took her face between his hands, and kissed her hard on the mouth. He felt her come to life beneath his lips. Then he let her go.

“And don’t think I shall ask you to forgive me,” he said. “You’ve no right to let this go by. You’re too damn particular by half, my girl. I’m your man and you know it.”

They stared at each other.

“That’s the stuff to give the troops,” Alleyn added. “The arrogant male.”

“The arrogant turkey-cock,” said Troy shakily.

“I know, I know. But at least you didn’t find it unendurable. Troy, for God’s sake can’t we be honest with each other? When I kissed you just then you seemed to meet me like a flame. Could I have imagined that?”

“No.”

“It was as if you shouted with your whole body that you loved me. How can I not be arrogant?”

“How can I not be shaken?”

When he saw that she was indeed greatly shaken an intolerable wave of compassion drowned his thoughts. He stammered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Troy began to speak slowly.

“Let me go away now. I want to think. I will try to be honest. I promise you I did not believe I loved you. It seemed to me that I couldn’t love you when I resented so much the feeling that you made some sort of demand whenever we met. I don’t understand physical love. I don’t know how much it means. I’m just plain frightened, and that’s a fact.”

“You shall go. I’ll get a taxi. Wait a moment.”

He ran out and got a taxi. When he returned she was standing in front of the fire holding her cap in her hand and looked rather small and lost. He brought her coat and dropped it lightly across her shoulders.

“I’ve been very weak,” said Troy. “When I said I’d come I thought I would keep it all very peaceful and impersonal. You looked so worn and troubled and it was so easy just to do this. And now see what’s happened?”

“The skies have opened and the stars have fallen. I feel as if I’d run the world in the last hour. And now you must leave me.”

He took her to the taxi. Before he shut the door he said: “Your most devoted turkey-cock.”