After we joined them out there, she attempted to put a good face and a plummy voice on everything, but she was transparently upset.
The two of them are having an affair, Evy. The daughter of the manor is secretly cavorting about, and with an American personal secretary (except that he’s not, really, and I’ll be coming to this). What other possible explanation for that remarkable announcement could there be?
Cecily is nicer, certainly, than I’d originally believed (she was really quite charming in her room); but could she actually be more interesting?
And doesn’t her heated denial suggest to you that she was, just then, refuting an accusation? And doesn’t that suggest to you that Mr Beaumont was, in this particular chase, the pursued and not the pursuer?
If she is cavorting, what on earth does she see in him? He’s good-looking enough, in a sullen, lumbering, American sort of way, but altogether too smirky and arrogant for my tastes.
Socially, of course, for someone like Cecily, he is hopeless, either as a personal secretary or as a private detective. (Have I mentioned that he’s a private detective?) Unless, on the other hand, he’s secretly a fabulously wealthy American financier masquerading as a private detective masquerading as a personal secretary. Which, given everything else that’s transpired here, is entirely possible.
What’s certain is that I shall be keeping a watchful eye on Cecily, to decide whether I can go back to belittling her; or whether I shall be forced, however reluctantly, to start admiring the wench.
We shall be getting to this private detective business in a moment.
Cecily was there, at tea time, having arrived (alone) shortly after the Allardyce and me. She sat at the table with us, and with Lady Purleigh, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the medium Madame Sosostris, and her husband, a Mr Dempsey.
Mrs Corneille, Sir David, and Dr Auerbach sat at another table, toward the far side of the room. Mr Houdini sat away by himself, scribbling something in a notebook, and occasionally looking up to smirk in the direction of Madame Sosostris.
Mr Dempsey and she look like Jack Sprat and his wife: he is tall and gaunt and cadaverous; she is round and roly-poly, fatter even than the Allardyce. Her gaudy silk robe, and her several layers of cosmetics, make her resemble a circus clown.
What a shrew I am. I should be kinder to the woman: she is crippled, poor thing, and gets about in a wheelchair.
Sir Arthur is besotted with her. Not (I think) in any sexual or romantic way; yet still besotted. He hangs upon her every banal word, nods gravely at her every dreary observation. (Even crippled people can be banal and dreary, it seems.)
He himself is a man much taller than I expected, at least six feet, four inches in height, who resembles a retired brewer more than a famous author: big and bluff and hearty, with a huge charming smile. He seems so typically English and matter-of-fact, so solid and commonplace, that his wholehearted belief in Spiritualism struck me at first as preposterous; and then, after a time, as rather sad.
The Afterlife was the subject of discussion. Sir Arthur was telling us that Death was no ending, but instead a wonderful doorway from this world to the next; very much, evidently, like the entrance to Harrods. In the Afterlife, he said, our existence will be substantially the same as it has been here, except that There we shall be spared all petty annoyances and physical discomforts. Which is not, as you know, altogether true of Harrods.
‘But what about servants?’ asked the Allardyce, who can always be relied upon to raise the level of discourse. ‘There will be servants, won’t there? There are so many things, after all, that one can no longer do for oneself.’ Such as packing and unpacking the luggage.
Sir Arthur smiled. As I said, he has an enormously charming smile. He is, I think, a genuinely kind and good man who believes everyone else to be as fundamentally decent and honest as he is. This would naturally render him susceptible to someone like Madame Sosostris, and polite to someone like the Allardyce.
‘There is no need for servants there,’ he said. ‘All our wants and needs will be provided us.’
All of them? I wondered, and glanced at Cecily, who was, so far as I knew, the only other potential nymphomaniac at the table.
She was pensive, perhaps wondering the same.
‘And we ourselves,’ Sir Arthur continued, ‘will be cast in new forms, strong and healthy and vibrant.’ He leaned toward Madame Sosostris. ‘Is that not as you understand it, madame?’
‘Yaas,’ she said. Her accent is odd, something Middle European, but not German, I think. ‘However, ifve are do-ink t’e sort of important verk dat requires us an assistant, one vill be given for us.’
I suspect that, like the Allardyce, when she dropped anchor on the Other Shore Madame S. would be expecting someone else to unpack the luggage.
Mr Beaumont arrived in the drawing room then, and Sir Arthur brought him over to the table, for introductions. The Honourable Cecily was pointedly indifferent to the American’s presence. After he left, she returned to her pensiveness. Sir Arthur returned to his Afterlife.
Suddenly, Lord Purleigh arrived. He looked harried, his white hair frazzled, his splendid moustache unkempt. He apologized to us, hurriedly, for his tardiness, and told Lady Purleigh that there had been some sort of accident in the Earl’s room, that the door was inexplicably locked. He would return, he said, after obtaining the assistance of Mr Houdini and trying again. He left the room with Sir Arthur, Mr Houdini, and Mr Beaumont. At this point, Mr Beaumont was still a personal secretary.
After they left, Cecily turned to Lady Purleigh and leaned forward to put her slender hand along her mother’s slender arm. ‘Mummy,’ she said, ‘Grandpere’s all right, isn’t he?’
This would have sounded affected and insipid, perhaps, if not for the genuine fear in Cecily’s voice.
Lady Purleigh was clearly agitated herself, but she forced a small smile and she patted Cecily’s hand. ‘I do hope so, darling.
He must be, mustn’t he?’
Madame Sosostris spoke. ‘You need not to vorry,’ she intoned. ‘Vatever happens, it is part of de Great Plan. It is for de best.’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Purleigh, rather uncertainly. ‘Yes, of course.’ Lord Purleigh returned within half an hour or so, looking very grim. He nodded abruptly to us, apologized again, and asked Lady Purleigh and Cecily to come with him for a moment. Lady Purleigh made her excuses and the three of them left the room. Cecily looked, for the first time since I’ve been here, confused and rather lost.
After the three of them left, for several minutes a kind of social limbo prevailed.
Have I mentioned that Lord Purleigh’s father, the Earl, is bedridden? I think that with all these alarums and excursions, most of us believed that something quite awful had happened to him. No one spoke; no one, perhaps, knew what to say. The Allardyce, consumed no doubt by worry, consumed a smoked salmon sandwich.
When he returned, alone, Lord Purleigh looked even grimmer than he had before. He stalked across the drawing room, spoke sofdy for a moment to the people at Mrs Corneille’s table. They all arose and followed him over to us, everyone moving silently. Apprehension seemed to congeal in the air. Some chairs were arranged, and we were transmuted from an afternoon tea into a solemn audience, with Lord Purleigh as the solitary, somber performer.
He was still standing, very formal, his hands held tautly at his sides. “Wanted to tell all of you,” he said. “Been a bit of an accident. My father, the Earl. Wounded himself. Gun went off. Potting at pigeons. Nothing serious, mind. Scratch, really. Barely broke the skin. Alice and Cecily, they’re attending to it. Won’t be long. Forgive them their absence, eh? Stay here, if you like. Return to your rooms, wander about. As you like. Dinner will be served at the usual time.”
There was a kind of soft, general letting out of breath, as though the room itself were sighing with relief.