“It does matter. I will know. What have you found out about him?”
“Sandra,” cried Hersey Amblington, “don’t. It’s not that. Don’t Sandra.”
“Nicky, my dear! You know! You’ve guessed.” Mrs. Compline’s eyes seemed to Mandrake to be living fires in her dead face. She, like Nicholas, looked at Madame Lisse. “I see,” she said. “You know too. You’ve told my son. Then it is true.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mother,” said Nicholas querulously.
“Nor I,” said Madame Lisse, and her voice was shriller than Mandrake could have imagined it. “This is ridiculous. I have said nothing.”
“Hersey,” said Mrs. Compline, “do you see what has happened?” She put her arms round Nicholas’ neck and her hand, with agonized possessiveness, caressed his shoulder. “Nicky has found out and threatened to expose him. He has tried to kill Nicholas.”
“Look here,” William demanded, “what is all this?”
“It’s a complete and miserable muddle,” said Hersey sharply, “and it’s certainly not for publication. Mr. Mandrake, do you mind…?”
Mandrake muttered “Of course,” turned away and shut the door, leaving himself, Chloris Wynne, and Madame Lisse alone in the passage.
“This woman is evidently insane,” said Madame Lisse. “What mystery is this she is making? What am I supposed to have told Nicholas Compline?”
Mandrake, conscious of a violent and illogical distaste for Madame Lisse, said loudly: “Mrs. Compline thinks you have told her son that Dr. Hart is the surgeon who operated on her face.”
He heard Chloris catch her breath, and whisper: “No, no, it’s impossible. It’s too fantastic.” He heard his own voice trying to explain that Jonathan was responsible. He was conscious, in himself, of a sort of affinity with Mrs. Compline, an affinity born of disfigurement. He wanted to explain to Chloris that there was nothing in the world as bad as a hideous deformity. Through this confusion of emotions and thoughts, he was aware of Madame Lisse watching him very closely, of the closed door at his back, of the murmur of Mrs. Compline’s voice beyond it in Nicholas’ room where, Mandrake supposed, her sons listened to the story of Dr. Franz Hartz of Vienna. The truth is, Mandrake was suffering from a crisis of nerves. His experience of the morning, his confession to Chloris, the sense of impending disaster that, like some grotesque in a dream, half comic, half menacing, seemed to advance upon Nicholas — all these circumstances had scraped at his nerves and wrought upon his imagination. When Jonathan came hurrying along the passage with a first-aid outfit in his hands, Mandrake saw him as a shifty fellow as cold-blooded as a carp. When Madame Lisse began to protest that she knew nothing of Dr. Hart’s past, that Mrs. Compline was insane, that she herself could endure no longer to be shut up at Highfold, Mandrake was conscious only of a sort of wonder that this cool woman should suddenly become agitated. He felt Chloris take him by the elbow and heard her say: “Let’s go downstairs.” He was steadied by her touch and eager to obey it. Before they moved away, the door opened and William came stumbling out, followed by Jonathan.
“Wait a bit, Bill,” Jonathan cried. “Wait a bit.”
“The bloody swine,” William said. “Oh God, the bloody swine.” He went blindly past them and they heard him run downstairs. Jonathan remained in the doorway. Behind him, Mandrake saw Hersey Amblington with her arms about Mrs. Compline, who was sobbing. Nicholas, very pale, stood, looking on.
“It’s most unfortunate,” Jonathan said. He shut the door delicately. “Poor Sandra has convinced William that there has been a conspiracy against her. That Hart has made a story of the catastrophe for Madame Lisse, that — Oh, you’re there, Madame. Forgive me, I hadn’t noticed. It’s all too distressing, Aubrey. Now William’s in a frightful tantrum and won’t listen to reason. Nicholas assures us he knew nothing of the past but he might as well speak to the wind. We’re in the very devil of a mess, it’s snowing harder than ever, and what in Heaven’s name am I to do?”
A loud and ominous booming sound welled up through the house. Caper, finding no one to whom he could announce dinner, had fallen upon an enormous gong and beaten it. Jonathan uttered a mad little giggle.
“Well,” he said, “shall we dine?”
The memory of that night’s dinner party was to be a strange one for Mandrake. It was to have the intermittent vividness and the unreality of a dream. Certain incidents he would never forget, others were lost the next day. At times his faculty of observation seemed abnormally acute and he observed, exactly, inflexions of voices, precise choice of words, details, of posture. At other times he was lost in a sensation of anxiety, an intolerable anticipation of calamity, and at these moments he was blind and deaf to his surroundings.
Only six of the party appeared for dinner. Madame Lisse, Mrs. Compline, and Dr. Hart had all excused themselves. Dr. Hart was understood to be in the “boudoir,” where he had gone after his speech in his own defence and where, apparently at Jonathan’s suggestion, he was to remain, during his waking hours, for the rest of his stay at Highfold. Mandrake wondered what Jonathan had told the servants. The party at dinner was therefore composed of the less antagonistic elements. Even the broken engagement of William and Chloris seemed a minor dissonance, quite overshadowed by the growing uneasiness of the guests. Nicholas, Mandrake decided, was now in a state of barely suppressed nerves. His injured arm was not in a sling but evidently gave him a good deal of pain and he made a clumsy business of cutting up his food, finally allowing Hersey Amblington to help him. He had come down with Hersey, and something in their manner suggested that this arrangement was not accidental. “And really,” Mandrake thought, “it would be better not to leave Nicholas alone. Nothing can happen to him if somebody is always at his side.” Mandrake was now positive that it was Hart who had made the attacks upon Nicholas and himself and he found that the others shared this view and discussed it openly. His clearest recollection of the dinner party was to be of a moment when William, who had been silent until now, leant forward, his hands gripping the edge of the table, and said: “What’s the law about attempted murder?” Jonathan glanced nervously at the servants, and Mandrake saw Hersey Amblington nudge William. “Oh, damn,” William muttered, and was silent again. As soon as they were alone, he returned to the attack. He was extraordinarily inarticulate and blundered about from one accusation to another, returning always to the ruin of his mother’s beauty. “The man who did that would do anything,” seemed to be the burden of his song. “The Oedipus complex with a vengeance,” thought Mandrake, but he was still too bemused and shaken to crystallize his attention upon William, and listened through a haze of weary lassitude. It was useless for Nicholas to say that he had never heard the name of his mother’s plastic surgeon. “Hart must have thought you knew,” William said. “He thought that Mother had told you.”
“Rot, Bill,” said Nicholas. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. It’s because of Elise Lisse. The fellow’s off his head with jealousy.”
“I’m older than you,” William roared out with startling irrelevancy. “I remember what she was like. She was beautiful. I remember the day she came back. We went to the station to meet her. She had a veil on, a thick veil. And when I kissed her she didn’t lift it up and I felt her face through the veil and it was stiff.”
“Don’t, Bill,” Hersey said.
“You heard what she said — what Mother herself said. She said up there in your room: ‘Nicky’s found out. He’s afraid Nicky will expose him.’ God, I’ll expose him. He’s gone to earth, has he? I’m damn well going to lug him out and—”