White Priory Murders

CHAPTER ONE Certain Reflections in the Mirror

"Humph," said H. M., "so you're my nephew, hey?" He continued to peer morosely over the tops of his glasses, his mouth turned down sourly and his big hands folded over his big stomach. His swivel chair squeaked behind the desk. He sniffed. 'Well, have a cigar, then. And some whisky. - What's so blasted funny, hey? You got a cheek, you have. What're you grinnin' at, curse you?"

The nephew of Sir Henry Merrivale had come very close to laughing in Sir Henry Merrivale's face. It was, unfortunately, the way nearly everybody treated the great H. M., including all his subordinates at the War Office, and this was a very sore point with him. Mr. James Boynton Bennett could not help knowing it. When you are a young man just arrived from over the water, and you sit for the first time in the office of an eminent uncle who once managed all the sleight-of-hand known as the British Military Intelligence Department, then some little tact is indicated. H. M., although largely ornamental in these slack days, still worked a few wires. There was sport, and often danger, that came out of an unsettled Europe. Bennett's father, who was H. M.'s brother-in-law and enough of a somebody at Washington to know, had given him some extra-family hints before Bennett sailed.

"Don't," said the elder Bennett, "don't, under any circumstances, use any ceremony with him. He wouldn't understand it. He has frequently got into trouble at political meetings by making speeches in which he absent-mindedly refers to their Home Secretary as Boko and their Premier as Horse face. You will probably find him asleep, although he will pretend he is very busy. His favorite delusion is that he is being persecuted, and that nobody appreciates him. His baronetcy is two or three hundred years old, and he is also a fighting Socialist. He is a qualified barrister and physician, and he speaks the world's most slovenly grammar. His mind is scurrilous; he shocks lady typists, wears white socks, and appears in public without his necktie. Don't be deceived by his looks; he likes to think he is as expressionless as a Buddha and as sour-faced as Scrooge. I may add," said the elder Bennett, "that at criminal investigation he is a good deal of a genius."

What surprised Sir Henry Merrivale's nephew was that he fulfilled the description exactly. Two hundred pounds of him were piled into a chair behind the big untidy desk, wheezing and grumbling. His big bald head showed against the window of the dingy room, high up and quiet above the bustle of the War Office. H. M.'s room, spacious in decayed finery, is in the most ancient part of the damp old rabbit-warren, once a part of Whitehall Palace: it looks down over a bleak strip of garden, the Victoria Embankment, and the river. A smoky blue twilight the frosty twilight of Christmas week — blurred the window now. Bennett could see reflections from the lamps along the parapet of the Embankment; he could hear the window rattle to the pelting and hooting of buses, and the stir of the fire under the battered white-marble mantelpiece. Except for the fire, there was no light. H. M. sat morosely, his glasses pulled down on his thick nose, blinking. Just over his head there hung from the chandelier a large red-paper Christmas bell.

"Ah!" growled H. J., peering at him with sudden suspicion. "I see you lookin' at it, young man. Don't think I hang things like that all around my room. But I never count for anything. That's the way they treat me around here. That's Lollypop's work."

"Lollypop?" said Bennett.

"Secretary," growled H. M. "Good girl, but a pest. She's always got me talkin' on the telephone when I give her strict orders I'm busy. I'm always busy. Bah. But she puts flowers on my desk, and hangs bells all about.

"Well, sir," observed Bennett reasonably, "if you don't like it, why don't you take it down?"

H. M: s heavy eyelids raised. He began to make violent noises like, "Rrrr!" and rumble and glare. Then he changed the subject abruptly.

"Fine way for a nephew to talk," he said. "Humph. You're like all the others. Let's see-you're Kitty's son, hey? The one that married the Yank? Yes. Do anything for a livin'? Yanks are hell on people working."

"I do something," admitted Bennett. "But I'm not certain what it is. Sort of international errand-boy for my father: that's the reason for my crossing the ocean in December."

"Hey?" wheezed H. M., peering up. "Don't tell me they've got you in this business too? Bad. Keep out of it! Mug's game. Dull. And they pester you to death. Home Office is always gettin' a scare about protecting the battleships we haven't got. - Are you in it?"

Bennett took a cigar from the box that was thrust at him across the desk. He said:

"No sir. I only wish I were. All I ever do is shake cocktails for visiting celebrities to my father's department; or else carry messages full of platitudes from the old man to the Foreign Offices of smaller governments. You know the sort of thing. `The Secretary presents his compliments, and assures His Excellency that the matter suggested will receive the fullest attention and so on. It. was only a freak of luck that I came to London at all." He hesitated, wondering whether he dared broach the subject on his mind. "It was because of Canifest. A certain Lord Canifest; maybe you know of him? He's the one who owns the string of newspapers."

H. M. knew everybody. His slovenly figure bumped everywhere through the crush; and even Mayfair hostesses had long since ceased to apologize for him. "Canifest, hey?" he inquired, as though the smoke of the cigar were unpleasant to his nostrils. "Sure I know him. He's the one that's whooping for an Anglo-American alliance, and damn the Japanese with their evil eye? Uh, yes. Big fella, with Prime-Ministerish airs and a manner like the world's grandpappa — buttery voice — likes to talk on every possible occasion, hey? Uh huh. Gay dog, too."

Bennett was startled.

"Well," he said feelingly, "I can tell you that's news to me, sir. 1 wish he had been; it would have been easier. You see, he came to the States on a semi-political mission, I gather. Good-will tour and all that. How about an Anglo-American alliance? Of course nobody could do anything, but it made a good impression. They gave him dinners," said Bennett, with dreary recollections of the platitudes that flowed of Canifest standing impressively bland and white-haired above a microphone and a table of roses. "And he spoke over the radio and everybody said what a wonderful thing brotherly love was. Part of my job as errand-boy was to go with his party and help conduct him round New York. But as to his being a gay dog-'

He paused, with a few uncomfortable half-memories that, made him wonder. But he saw H. M. regarding him curiously, and went on:

"I'll admit you never know quite what to do in those circumstances, because you have to know your man. The distinguished foreigner says he wants to see American life. All right. You arrange a lot of cocktail parties. And then it turns out that the distinguished foreigner wants to see Grant's Tomb and the Statue of Liberty. All Canifest wanted to do was ask a million questions about the state of America, which nobody can ever answer anyway. It's true, though, that when Marcia Tait arrived..”

H. M. took the cigar out of his mouth. He remained impassive, but there was a curious disconcerting stare in his eyes.

"Hey? What's that," he said, "about Marcia Tait?" "Nothing, sir."

"You're tryin'," said H. M., pointing the cigar at him malevolently, "you're tryin' to intrigue my interest, that's what. You got something on your mind. I mighta known it. I mighta known nobody ever calls on me out of filial piety or whatnot. Hah!"

All the baffling images of the past two days crowded in on Bennett. He saw the flat above the bleak park-the brown-paper parcel — Marcia Tait, laughing amid her furs, being photographed in the sleek torpedo of a roadster-and, finally, the red-haired man suddenly doubling up and sliding sideways from the stool at the bar. It had missed murder. But murder had been intended. He shifted uneasily.

"Not at all, sir. I was only answering your questions. After Canifest's visit, my father made a gesture of sending me here to carry a sort of thank-you-for-the-favors-of-your-noblecountryman letter to your Home Office: that's all. There's nothing to it. I had hoped to be back home in time for Christmas."

"Christmas? Nonsense!" roared H. M., sitting up straight. He glared. "Nephew, spend it with us. Certainly."

"As a matter of fact, I'd already had an invitation. To a place in Surrey. And I'll admit that there are reasons why I want to accept."

"Oh, ah," observed H. M. sourly. "Girl?"

"No. Curiosity-maybe. I don't know." He shifted again. "It's true that some very funny things have been happening. There's been an attempted murder. And a lot of strange people have been scrambled together, including Canifest and Marcia Tait. It's all friendly and social, but well, damn it, it worries me, sir."

"Wait," said H. M. Wheezing and growling to himself, he hoisted his bulk out of the chair, and switched on a goosenecked reading lamp at the desk. A pool of green-shaded light revealed disarranged papers of official stamp sprayed over with tobacco-ash and rumpled where H. M. had put his feet on' the desk. Over the white-marble mantelpiece Bennett could see the thin, Mephistophelian portrait of Fouche. From a tall iron safe H. M. took a bottle, a syphon, and two glasses. Wherever he went, his lumbering progress seemed to upset things. In a nearsighted batlike waddling between desk and safe, he contrived to knock over a set of chessmen with which he had evidently been working out a problem, and a table of lead soldiers arranged for the solution of a puzzle in military tactics. He picked-nothing up. It was litter. It was also the paraphernalia of his weird, childlike, deadly brain. After measuring the drinks he said, "Honk, honk" with the utmost solemnity, drained his glass at a gulp, and sat back in wooden moroseness.

"Now, then," said H. M., folding his hands. 'I'm goin' to listen to you. Mind, I got work. The folks down the way he inclined his head sideways in a gesture that evidently meant another building, called New Scotland Yard, a short distance down the Embankment "they're still on hot bricks about that fella at Hampstead, the one who's got the heliograph on the hill. Let 'em wonder. Never mind. You're my nephew, and besides, son, you mentioned a woman I'm rather curious about. Well?'

"Marcia Tait?"

"Marcia Tait," agreed H. M., with a somewhat lecherous wink. "Haah. Movies. Sex plus-plus-plus. Always go to see her films." An evil glee stole over his broad face. "My wife don't like it. Why do thin women always get ferocious when you say a good word for the broad charms, hey? I admit she's plump; why not. - Funny things about Marcia Tait. I knew her father, the old general; knew him well. Had a shootin' box near me before the war. Couple of weeks ago I went to see her in that film about Lucrezia Borgia, the one that ran for months at the Leicester Square. Well, and who did I meet comin' out but old Sandival and Lady same? Lady same was snortin' into her sables. She was gettin' a bit rough on The Tait. I begged a ride home in their car. I hadda point out that Lady S. had better not walk out socially with old Tait's daughter. Accordin' to rules old Tait's daughter would go in to dinner before Lady S. Ho ho. She was nasty about it. " H. M. scowled again, and paused with his hand on the whisky-bottle. "Look here, son," he added, peering sharply across the desk; "you're not tangled up with Marcia Tait, are you?"

"Not," said Bennett, "in the way you mean, sir. I know her. She's in London."

"Do you good if you were," growled H. M. But his hand moved again, and the soda-syphon hissed. "Teach you some thing. No spirit in young 'uns nowadays. Bah. Well, go on. What's she doing over here?'

H. M.'s small, impassive eyes were disconcerting in their stare.

"If you know the background," Bennett went on, "you may know that she was on the stage first in London."

"A flop," said H. M. quietly. His eyes narrowed.

"Yes. I gather that the critics were pretty rough, and gently intimated that she couldn't act. So she went to Hollywood. By some sort of miracle a director named Rainger got hold of her; they trained her and groomed her and kept her dark for six months; and then they touched off their skyrocket. In six months she became what she is now. It was all Rainger's work, and a press agent's: fellow named Emery. But, so far as I can read it, she's got only one ambition, and that's to make London eat its own words. She's over here to take the lead in a new play."

"Go on," said H. M. "Another queen, hey? She's been playin' nothing but queens. Revenge. H'm. Who's producing it?"

"That's the whole story. It's independent. She's taken great pleasure in sneering hard at a couple of producers who offered terms. She won't touch 'em, because they refused to back her a second time when she failed in the Old days. Lot of wild talk. It isn't doing her much good, Emery tells me. What's more, she walked out of the studio in the middle of a contract. Emergy and Rainger are raving but they came along.”

He stared at the pool of light. on the desk, remembering another weird light. That was the last night in New York, at the Cavalla Club. He was dancing with Louise. He was looking over her shoulder through a smoky gloom, with the grotesque shadows of dancers grown big and weaving against faint gleams, towards the table where Marcia Tait sat. There were scarlet hangings behind her, twisted with gilt tassels. She wore white, and had one shoulder with a swashbuckling air against a pillar. She was drunk but composed. He saw her teeth as she laughed, brilliant against the faintly swarthy skin. On one side of her sat Emery, very drunk and gesticulating; on the other side of her the tubby Rainger, who always seemed to need a shave and drank nothing, lifting his shoulders slightly as he examined a cigar. It was hot in the smoky room, and a heavy drum pounded slowly behind the bandmusic. He could hear fans whir. Through the humped shadows of dancers he saw Tait lift a thin glass; Emery's gesticulations spilled it suddenly across her breast, but she only laughed at it. It was John Bohun who leaned out of the gloom, swiftly, with a handkerchief..

"The latest," Bennett went on, looking up from the hypnotic glow, "is that the Cinearts people have given her a month to get back on the lot. She won't — or says she won't. The answer, she says, will be this."

He lifted his cigar and traced letters in the air as though he were writing a poster.

H. M frowned. He pushed the shell-rimmed spectacles up and down his broad nose.

"Good!" he said abstractedly. "Good! That'd suit her style of beauty, son. You know. Big heavy lidded eyes, swarthy skin, small neck, full lips: exactly like one of those Restoration doxies in the Stuart room at the National Portrait Gallery. Hah! Wonder nobody's thought of it before. I say, son, go round and browse through the Gallery sometime. You'll get a lot of surprises. The woman they call Bloody Mary is a baby-faced blonde, whereas Mary Queen of Scots is nearly the ugliest wench in the lot. H'm." Again he moved his glasses. "But that's interestin' about Tait: She's got nerve. She's not only courting hostility, but she's challenging competition. Do you know who Jervis Willard is? He's the best characteractor in England. And an independent producer has snaffled off Willard to play opposite her. She must think she can-"

"She does, sir, said Bennett.

"H'm. Now what about this Bohun-Bohun combination, keeping it in the family? And how does it affect Canifest?"

"That," said Bennett, "is where the story begins, and the cross-currents too. These Bohuns are brothers; and they both seem to be contradictions. I haven't met Maurice — he's the elder-and this part of it is gossip. But it seems to strike everybody who knows him, except John, as hilariously funny that he should be the author of this play. It would be strange, Marcia says, if he wrote any play: except possibly in five acts and heroic blank verse. But a light, bawdy, quick-repartee farce of the smart school. "

"'Dr. Dryasdust,' " said H. M. suddenly. He raised his head "Bohun! Got it! But it can't be the same, son. This Bohun I was thinkin' of — no. Senior Proctor. Oxford. 'Lectures on the Political and Economic History of the Seventeenth Century.' Do you mean to tell me —!'

Bennett nodded.

"It's the same man. I told you I'd been invited to a place in Surrey for the holidays. It's the Bohuns' place called White Priory, near Epsom. And, for a certain historical reason I'll describe in a minute, the whole crowd is going down in quest of atmosphere. The doddering scholar, it seems, has suddenly begun to cut capers on paper. On the other hand, there's John Bohun. He has always played around with theatrical enterprises; never done much, never interested in much else, I understand. Well, John Bohun appeared in America as the close friend and boon travelling-companion of Lord Canifest.

"He didn't say much; he rarely does. Bohun is the taciturn, umbrella-carrying, British-stamp type. He walked around, and he looked up at the buildings, and exhibited a polite interest. That was all. Until — it appears now it was a prearranged plan — until Marcia Tait arrived in New York from Hollywood."

"So?" said H. M. in a curious voice. "Amatory angle?"

This was the thing that puzzled Bennett, among others. He remembered the echoing gloom at Grand Central, and flashbulbs popping in ripples over the crowd when Marcia Tait posed on the steps of the train. Somebody held her dog, autograph-books flew, the crowd buckled in and out; and, standing some distance off, John Bohun cursed. He said he couldn't understand American crowds. Bennett remembered him craning and peering over the heads of smaller men: very lean, with one corded hand jabbing his umbrella at the concrete floor. His face was a shade swarthier than Marcia Tait's. He had not ceased to glare by the time he fought his way to where she stood..

"As a lovers' meeting," said Bennett slowly, "no. But then you can't describe an atmosphere, any more than you can describe a sultry day. And it's atmosphere that Tait carries with her. For a public face she tries to be-what's the word? effervescent. She's not. You've hit it exactly in saying she looks like one of those Restoration women on canvas. Quiet. Speculative. Old-time, if you follow me. Patches and languor, and thunder in the distance. You could feel it in the air, again like a sultry day. I suppose all these fancy words simply mean Sex, but I should say there's something else too; something," said Bennett, with more vehemence than he had intended, "that really did make great courtesans in the old days. I can't make it quite clear. "

"Think not?" said H. M., blinking over his spectacles. "Oh, I don't know. You're doin' pretty well. You seem to have been a good deal bowled over yourself."

Bennett was honest. "God knows I was — for a while. Everybody is who has the customary number of red corpuscles. But," he hesitated, "competition aside, I don't think I'd care for the emotional strain of staying bowled over by that woman. Do you see, sir?"

"Oh, ah," said H. M. "Competition was brisk, then?"

"It was ceaseless. There was even a gleam in Canifest's eye, I'm fairly sure. Thinking back on what you said.

"So. She met Canifest?"

"She'd known him in England, it seems; he was a friend of her father. Canifest and his daughter-Louise, her name is; she was acting as his private secretary — Canifest and his daughter and Bohun were staying at the Brevoort. Very fine and sedate and dignified, you see. So (to the astonishment of everybody) the flamboyant Tait also puts up at the Brevoort. We drove straight there from Grand Central. Canifest was photographed shaking hands with and congratulating the famous British artiste who had made her name on the screen: that sort of thing. It was as fatherly and disinterested as though she were shaking hands with Santa Claus. Where I began to wonder was when Carl Rainger, her director, arrived the next day with almost as big a public following; and the press agent with him. It was none of my affair — I was there to escort Canifest. But Bohun had arrived with the script of his brother's play: Tait made no secret of that. There was a sort of armed truce between Tait and Bohun on one side, and Rainger and Emery on the other. Whether we liked it or not, we were all mixed up together. It was explosive material. And in the middle of it was Marcia Tait, as expressionless as ever."

Staring at the lamp on H. M.'s desk, he tried to remember just when he had first been conscious of that ominous tension, that uneasiness which scratched at the nerves in this incongruous company. Sultriness again. Like that drum-beat, muffled under the music, at the Cavalla Club. It would be, he thought, in Tait's suite on the night Rainger arrived. An old-fashioned suite in an ancient hotel, heavy with guilt and plush and glass prisms that suggested gaslight: yet with the pale glitter of Fifth Avenue outside the windows. Tait's sultry beauty was appropriate to the setting. She wore yellow, and sat back in an ornate chair under a lamp. Bohun, who always looked thinner and more high-shouldered in black and white, was manipulating the cocktail-shaker. Canifest, fatherly and heavy-mouthed, was talking interminably with his usual unction. Nearby Canifest's daughter sat on a chair which somehow seemed lower than the others; silent, efficient, and freckled, Louise was a plain girl made plainer still by her father's wishes; and she was permitted only one cocktail. "Our Spartan English mothers," declared Lord Canifest, evidently scenting a moral somewhere, "knew nothing of it. No." It was shortly afterwards that the house-phone buzzed.

John Bohun — Bennett tried to explain it to H. M.- John Bohun straightened up and looked at it sharply. He made a movement to answer it, but Marcia Tait intercepted him: her face had a faint incurious smile, and her hair under strong light was brown instead of black. She said only, "Very well," before she replaced the receiver, still smiling. John Bohun asked who it was, in a voice that seemed as incurious as hers. He was answered in no very long time. Somebody knocked briefly at the outer door of the suite and threw it open without waiting for an invitation. There entered a quiet little man, pudgy but not comical in stiff-jawed anger, with two days' growth of beard on his face. Paying no attention to the others, he said quietly, "Exactly what the devil do you mean by walking out on us?" Marcia Tait asked to be allowed to present Carl Rainger.

"— and that," said Bennett, "was nearly three weeks ago. It was, in a way, the beginning of it. But the question is this."

He leaned across and put his finger on H. M.'s desk. "Who in our party would send Marcia Tait a box of poisoned chocolates?"