“Now, Miss Harris,” Bridgie was saying, “are you sure you’re getting on all right? Have you had supper?”
“Well, thank you so much, Miss O’Brien, but really it doesn’t matter—”
Of course, it was Evelyn’s secretary. Nice of Evelyn to ask her. Nice of Bridgie to take trouble. He said:
“Hullo, m’dear. What a grand ball. Has your mother come this way?”
“She’s in the supper-room,” said Bridget without looking at him, and he realized that of course she had heard Donald’s side of their quarrel. He said:
“Thank you, Bridgie, I’ll find her.” He saw Miss Harris was looking a little like a lost child so he said: “Wonder if you’d be very nice and give me a dance later on? Would you?”
Miss Harris turned scarlet and said she would be very pleased thank you, Lord — Lord Gospell.
“Got it wrong,” thought Lord Robert. “Poor things, they don’t get much fun. Wonder what they think of it all. Not much, you may depend upon it.”
He found Lady Carrados in the supper-room. He took her to a corner table, made her drink champagne and tried to persuade her to eat.
“I know what you’re all like,” he told her. “Nothing all day in your tummies and then get through the night on your nerves. I remember mama used to have the vapours whenever she gave a big party. She always came round in time to receive the guests.”
He chattered away, eating a good deal himself and getting over his own unaccountable fit of depression in his effort to help Lady Carrados. He looked round and saw that the supper-room was inhabited by only a few chaperones and their partners. Poor Davidson was still in Lucy Lorrimer’s toils. Withers and Mrs Halcut-Hackett were tucked away in a corner. She was talking to him earnestly and apparently with great emphasis. He glowered at the table and laughed unpleasantly.
“Lor’!” thought Lord Robert, “she’s giving him his marching orders. Now why’s that? Afraid of the General or of — what? Of the blackmailer? I wonder if Withers is the subject of those letters. I wonder if Dimitri has seen her with him some time. I’ll swear it was Dimitri’s hand. But what does he know about Evelyn? The least likely woman in the world to have a guilty secret. And, damme, there is the fellow as large as you please, running the whole show.”
Dimitri had come into the supper-room. He gave a professional look round, spoke to one of his waiters, came across to Lady Carrados and bowed tentatively and then went out again.
“Dimitri is a great blessing to all of us,” said Lady Carrados. She said it so simply that he knew at once that if Dimitri was blackmailing her she had no idea of it. He was hunting in his mind for something to reply when Bridget came into the supper-room.
She was carrying her mother’s bag.
Everything seemed to happen at the same moment. Bridget calling gaily: “Really, Donna darling, you’re hopeless. There was your bag, simply preggy with banknotes, lying on the writing-table in the green boudoir. And I bet you didn’t know where you’d left it.” Then Bridget, seeing her mother’s face and crying out: “Darling, what’s the matter?” Lord Robert himself getting up and interposing his bulk between Lady Carrados and the other tables. Lady Carrados half-laughing, half-crying and reaching out frantically for the bag. Himself saying: “Run away, Bridget, I’ll look after your mother.” And Lady Carrados, in a whisper: “I’m all right. Run upstairs, darling, and get my smelling-salts.”
Somehow they persuaded Bridget to go. The next thing that happened was Sir Daniel Davidson, who stood over Evelyn Carrados like an elegant dragon.
“You’re all right,” he said. “Lord Robert, see if you can open that window.”
Lord Robert succeeded in opening the window. A damp hand seemed to be laid on his face. He caught sight of street lamps blurred by impalpable mist.
Davidson held Lady Carrados’s wrist in his long fingers and looked at her with a sort of compassionate exasperation.
“You women,” he said. “You impossible women.”
“I’m all right. I simply felt giddy.”
“You ought to lie down. You’ll faint and make an exhibition of yourself.”
“No I won’t. Has anybody —?”
“Nobody’s noticed anything. Will you go up to your room for half an hour?”
“I haven’t got a room. It’s not my house.”
“Of course it’s not. The cloakroom, then.”
“I — yes. Yes, I’ll do that.”
“Sir Daniel!” shouted Lucy Lorrimer in the corner.
“For Heaven’s sake go back to her,” implored Lady Carrados, “or she’ll be here.”
“Sir Daniel!”
“Damn!” whispered Davidson. “Very well, I’ll go back to her. I expect your maid’s here, isn’t she? Good. Lord Robert, will you take Lady Carrados?”
“I’d rather go alone. Please!”
“Very well. But please go.”
He made a grimace and returned to Lucy Lorrimer.
Lady Carrados stood up, holding her bag.
“Come on,” said Lord Robert. “Nobody’s paying any attention.”
He took her elbow and they went out into the hall. It was deserted. Two men stood just in the entrance to the cloakroom. They were Captain Withers and Donald Potter. Donald glanced round, saw his uncle, and at once began to move upstairs. Withers followed him. Dimitri came out of the buffet and also went upstairs. The hall was filled with the sound of the band and with the thick confusion of voices and sliding feet.
“Bunchy,” whispered Lady Carrados. “You must do as I ask you. Leave me for three minutes. I—”
“I know what’s up, m’dear. Don’t do it. Don’t leave your bag. Face it and let him go to the devil.”
She pressed her hand against her mouth and looked wildly at him.
“You know?”
“Yes, and I’ll help. I know who it is. You don’t, do you? See here — there’s a man at the Yard — whatever it is—”
A look of something like relief came into her eyes.
“But you don’t know what it’s about. Let me go. I’ve got to do it. Just this once more.”
She pulled her arm away and he watched her cross the hall and slowly climb the stairs. After a moment’s hesitation he followed her.
CHAPTER SIX
Bunchy Goes Back to the Yard
Alleyn closed his file and looked at his watch. Two minutes to one. Time for him to pack up and go home. He yawned, stretched his cramped fingers, walked over to the window and pulled aside the blind. The row of lamps hung like a necklace of misty globes along the margin of the Embankment.
“Fog in June,” muttered Alleyn. “This England!”
Out there in the cold, Big Ben tolled one. At that moment three miles away at Lady Carrados’s ball, Lord Robert Gospell was slowly climbing the stairs to the top landing and the little drawing-room.
Alleyn filled his pipe slowly and lit it. An early start tomorrow, a long journey, and a piece of dull routine at the end of it. He held his fingers to the heater and fell into a long meditation. Sarah had told him Troy was going to the ball. She was there now, no doubt.
“Oh, well!” he thought and turned off his heater.
The desk telephone rang. He answered it.
“Hullo?”
“Mr Alleyn? I thought you were still there, sir. Lord Robert Gospell.”
“Right.”
A pause and then a squeaky voice:
“Rory?”
“Bunchy?”
“You said you’d be at it till late. I’m in a room by myself at the Carrados’s show. Thing is, I think I’ve got him. Are you working for much longer?”
“I can.”
“May I come round to the Yard?”
“Do!”