‘She is always rather late for breakfast. How wonderfully these children sleep, don’t they? But we were talking about the season, weren’t we? I think I shall enjoy it, Rory. And really and truly it won’t be such hard work. I’ve heard this morning from Evelyn Carrados. She was Evelyn O’Brien, you know. Evelyn Curtis, of course, in the first instance, but that’s so long ago nobody bothers about it. Not that she’s as old as that, poor girl. She can’t be forty yet. Quite a chicken, in fact. Her mother was my greatest friend. We did the season together when we came out. And now here’s Evelyn bringing her own girl out and offering to help with Sarah. Could anything be more fortunate?’
‘Nothing,’ responded Alleyn dryly. ‘I remember Evelyn O’Brien.’
‘I should hope you do. I did my best to persuade you to fall in love with her.’
‘Did I fall in love with her?’
‘No. I could never imagine why, as she was quite lovely and very charming. Now I come to think of it, you hadn’t much chance as she herself fell madly in love with Paddy O’Brien who returned suddenly from Australia.’
‘I remember. A romantic sort of bloke, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes. They were married after a short engagement. Five months later he was killed in a motor accident. Wasn’t it awful?’
‘Awful.’
‘And then in six months or so along came this girl, Bridget. Evelyn called her Bridget because Paddy was Irish. And then, poor Evelyn, she married Herbert Carrados. Nobody ever knew why.’
‘I’m not surprised. He’s a frightful bore. He must be a great deal older than Evelyn.’
‘A thousand years and so pompous you can’t believe he’s true. You know him evidently.’
‘Vaguely. He’s something pretty grand in the City.’
Alleyn lit his mother’s cigarette and his own. He walked over to the french window and looked across the lawn.
‘Your garden is getting ready to come out, too,’ he said. ‘I wish I hadn’t to go back to the Yard.’
‘Now, darling? This minute?’
‘Afraid so. It’s this case.’ He waved some papers in his hand. ‘Fox rang up late last night. Something’s cropped up.’
‘What sort of case is it?’
‘Blackmail, but you’re not allowed to ask questions.’
‘Rory, how exciting. Who’s being blackmailed? Somebody frightfully important, I hope?’
‘Do you remember Lord Robert Gospell?’
‘Bunchy Gospell, do you mean? Surely he’s not being blackmailed. A more innocent creature –’
‘No, mama, he isn’t. Nor is he a blackmailer.’
‘He’s a dear little man,’ said Lady Alleyn emphatically. ‘The nicest possible little man.’
‘Not so little nowadays. He’s very plump and wears a cloak and a sombrero like GKC.’
‘Really?’
‘You must have seen photographs of him in your horrible illustrated papers. They catch him when they can. “Lord Robert (‘Bunchy’) Gospell tells one of his famous stories.” That sort of thing.’
‘Yes, but what’s he got to do with blackmail?’
‘Nothing. He is, as you say, an extremely nice little man.’
‘Roderick, don’t be infuriating. Has Bunchy Gospell got anything to do with Scotland Yard?’
Alleyn was staring out into the garden.
‘You might say,’ he said at last, ‘that we have a very great respect for him at the Yard. Not only is he charming – he is also, in his own way, a rather remarkable personage.’
Lady Alleyn looked at her son meditatively for some seconds.
‘Are you meeting him today?’ she asked.
‘I think so.’
‘Why?’
‘Why, darling, to listen to one of his famous stories, I suppose.’
II
It was Miss Harris’s first day in her new job. She was secretary to Lady Carrados and had been engaged for the London season. Miss Harris knew quite well what this meant. It was not, in a secretarial sense, by any means her first season. She was a competent young woman, almost frighteningly unimaginative, with a brain that was divided into neat pigeon-holes, and a mind that might be said to label all questions ‘answered’ or ‘unanswered’. If a speculative or unconventional idea came Miss Harris’s way, it was promptly dealt with or promptly shut up in a dark pigeon-hole and never taken out again. If Miss Harris had not been able to answer it immediately, it was unanswerable and therefore of no importance. Owing perhaps to her intensive training as a member of the large family of a Buckinghamshire clergyman she never for a moment asked herself why she should go through life organising fun for other people and having comparatively little herself. That would have seemed to Miss Harris an irrelevant and rather stupid speculation. One’s job was a collection of neatly filed duties, suitable to one’s station in life, and therefore respectable. It had no wider ethical interest of any sort at all. This is not to say Miss Harris was insensitive. On the contrary, she was rather touchy on all sorts of points of etiquette relating to her position in the houses in which she was employed. Where she had her lunch, with whom she had it, and who served it, were matters of great importance to her and she was painfully aware of the subtlest nuances in her employers’ attitude towards herself. About her new job she was neatly optimistic. Lady Carrados had impressed her favourably, had treated her, in her own phrase, like a perfect lady. Miss Harris walked briskly along an upstairs passage and tapped twice, not too loud and not too timidly, on a white door.
‘Come in,’ cried a far-away voice.
Miss Harris obeyed and found herself in a large white bedroom. The carpet, the walls and the chairs were all white. A cedar-wood fire crackled beneath the white Adam mantelpiece, a white bearskin rug nearly tripped Miss Harris up as she crossed the floor to the large white bed where her employer sat propped up with pillows. The bed was strewn about with sheets of notepaper.
‘Oh, good morning, Miss Harris,’ said Lady Carrados. ‘You can’t think how glad I am to see you. Do you mind waiting a moment while I finish this note? Please sit down.’
Miss Harris sat discreetly on a small chair. Lady Carrados gave her a vague, brilliant smile, and turned again to her writing. Miss Harris with a single inoffensive glance had taken in every detail of her employer’s appearance.
Evelyn Carrados was thirty-seven years old, and on her good days looked rather less. She was a dark, tall woman with little colour but a beautiful pallor. Paddy O’Brien had once shown her a copy of the Madonna di San Sisto and had told her that she was looking at herself. This was not quite true. Her face was longer and had more edge and character than Raphael’s complacent virgin, but the large dark eyes were like and the sleek hair parted down the centre. Paddy had taken to calling her ‘Donna’ after that and she still had his letters beginning: ‘Darling Donna.’ Oddly enough, Bridget, his daughter, who had never seen him, called her mother ‘Donna’ too. She had come into the room on the day Miss Harris was interviewed and had sat on the arm of her mother’s chair. A still girl with a lovely voice. Miss Harris looking straight in front of her remembered this interview now while she waited. ‘He hasn’t appeared yet,’ thought Miss Harris, meaning Sir Herbert Carrados, whose photograph faced her in a silver frame on his wife’s dressing-table.
Lady Carrados signed her name and hunted