“Andy,” said his mother, giving a long hoot on her horn. “He’s going to fall in love with your secretary, I can see.”
“Already!” ejaculated Mr. Period.
“Going to. Heavily, I fancy. I took to the girl rather.”
“Charming! A really nice gel. I’m delighted with her.”
“P.P.,” Désirée said, as they drew near the house, “there’s something extra Harold’s done to inflame you, isn’t there?”
There was a silence.
“Don’t tell me if you’d rather not, of course.”
“It’s very painful to me. Something he said. One shouldn’t,” Mr. Period added in a constrained and unnatural voice, “let such things upset one, but — No, dearest Désirée, I shan’t bore you with it. It was nothing. I prefer to forget it.”
“Fair enough,” she said and pulled up.
Mr. Period did not immediately get out of the car. He made another little speech of thanks for his entertainment and then, with many hesitations and apologetic noises, hinted obscurely at bereavement.
“I haven’t said anything, my dear,” he murmured, “because I felt you preferred not. But I wouldn’t like you to think — But never mind, I only wanted you to know…” He waved his hands and was silent.
“Do you mean about Ormsbury?” she said in her direct way. Mr. Period made a small confirmatory sound. “You didn’t say anything,” he added. “So, of course—”
“There are some sorrows,” Désirée said and it was impossible to catch any overtones in her voice, “that go too deep for words.”
Mr. Period gave a little groan of sympathy, kissed her hand, and left her.
He went in by the side gate. She watched him, by the light of her headlamps, pick his way in a gingerly fashion over the planks that had been laid across the ditch. He was safely inside his house and Désirée was about to drive away when she caught sight of a figure in an upper window. She stopped her engine and got out of the car.
By midnight the winning pair had presented themselves with their prize, a magnum of champagne. They were, inevitably, Moppett and Leonard, all smiles, but with a curious tendency to avoid looking at each other. Leonard was effulgent in the matter of cuff links and lapels and his tie was large and plum-coloured. Bimbo looked upon him with loathing, gave them both drinks and put a jazz record on the machine. Leonard with ineffable grace extended his hands towards Désirée. “May we?” he said and in a moment was dancing with her. He was a superb dancer. “Much too good,” she said afterwards. “Like the really expensive gigolos used to be. He smells like them too: it quite took me back. I adored it.”
Bimbo, sulking, was then obliged to dance with Moppett, who made businesslike passes at him. These exercises were interrupted by the arrival in straggling pairs of the rest of the treasure hunters, Nicola and Andrew being the last to come in — both looking radiantly pleased with themselves.
Désirée had a talent for parties. Sometimes they began presentably and ended outrageously, sometimes they were presentable almost all the time and sometimes they began, continued and ended outrageously. It was for the last sort that she had gained her notoriety. This one was, at the moment, both gay and decorous, possibly because Andrew had unexpectedly said he hoped it would be.
They were all dancing, and the time was a quarter past one, when a rumpus broke out on the drive. Bimbo was changing records, so the noise established itself readily: it was that of a multiple dogfight.
Growls, yaps, full-blooded barking and strangulated cries of anguish mounted in a ragged crescendo.
Désirée said: “A rival show, it seems”—and then: “Bimbo! Ours! They must have got out!”
Bimbo swore, pulled back curtains and went through French windows to the terrace, followed by Andrew, Désirée and most of the men.
Nicola found herself on the terrace in a group composed of all the other ladies and Leonard.
The combat was joined among parked cars at the head of the drive and was illuminated by lights from the house. All was confusion. Some six or seven contestants bit at each other in a central engagement, others rolled together under cars. One very large, isolated dog sat on its haunches howling dispassionately, and one could be discerned bolting down the drive screaming its classic cry of “pen-and-ink.”
Bimbo, Andrew and an advance guard went down into the arena and at first added greatly to the confusion. They shouted, swore, grabbed and kicked. Désirée suddenly joined them, was momentarily hidden, but emerged carrying an outraged poodle by the scruff of its neck. Servants ran out, offering hunting crops and umbrellas. Expressions of human as well as canine anguish were now perceptible. Andrew detached himself, dragging two frenzied Aberdeens by their collars. They were Baynesholme dogs and were thrust with the poodle into a cloakroom, where they got up a halfhearted row on their own account.
Bimbo now appeared carrying an air-gun. He waved the other men aside and presented his weapon at the central mêlée. There was a mild explosion, followed by cries of distress, and suddenly the arena had emptied and the night was plangent with the laments of rapidly retreating dogs.
Only one remained. Exhausted, gratified, infamous and complacent, her tongue lolling out of one side of her mouth, and her lead trailing from her collar, sat a boxer bitch: Mr. Cartell’s Pixie, the Helen of the engagement. When Bimbo approached her she gathered herself together and bit him.
The next morning Connie Cartell woke slowly from a heavy sleep. She experienced that not unusual sensation, during half-consciousness, in which the threat of something unpleasant anticipates the recollection of the thing itself. She lay, blinking and yawning for a second or two. She heard her Austrian maid stump along the passage and knock on a door.
Damn! Connie thought. I forgot to tell her not to disturb either of them.
Then the full realization of all the horrors of the preceding evening came upon her.
She was not an imaginative woman, but it hadn’t taken much imagination, after her brother’s visit, to envisage what would happen to Moppett if Mr. Period’s cigarette case was not discovered. Connie had tried to tackle Moppett, and, as usual, had got nowhere at all. Moppett had merely remarked that P.P. and Mr. Cartell had dirty minds. When Connie had broached the topic of Leonard Leiss and his reputation, Moppett had reminded her of Leonard’s unhappy background and of how she, Moppett, was pledged to redeem him. She had assured Connie, with tears in her eyes and a great many caresses, that Leonard was indeed on the upward path.
If Connie herself had had any experience at all of the Leiss milieu and any real inclination to cope with it, she might possibly have been able to bring a salutary point of view to bear on the situation. She might, it is not too preposterous to suppose, have been able to direct Moppett towards a different pattern of behaviour. But she had no experience and no real inclination. She only doted upon Moppett with the whole force of her unimaginative and uninformed being. She was in a foreign country, and, like many another woman of her class and kind, behaved stupidly, as a foreigner.
So she bathed and dressed and went down to breakfast in a sort of fog, and ate large quantities of eggs, bacon and kidneys indifferently presented by her Austrian maid. She was still at her breakfast when she saw Alfred, in his alpaca jacket and the cloth cap he assumed for such occasions, crossing the Green with an envelope in his hand.
In a moment he appeared before her.
“I beg pardon, Miss,” Alfred said, laying the envelope on the table, “for disturbing you, but Mr. Period asked me to deliver this. No answer is required, I understand.”
She thanked him and, when he had withdrawn, opened the letter.
Silent minutes passed. Connie read and reread the letter. Incredulity followed bewilderment, and was replaced in turn by alarm. A feeling of horrid unreality possessed her and again she read the letter.