Mourning Raga
Ellis Peters
Felse Family 09
A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
click for scan notes and proofing history
Contents
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Copyright © 1969 Ellis Peters
First published in 1969
by Macmillan & Co. Ltd, London
First published in paperback in 1988
by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING PLC
109 8 765
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN 0 7472 3121
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Collins, Glasgow
HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING PLC
Headline House
79 Great Titchfield Street
London W1P7FN
I
^ »
The whole affair began, as the unexpected and chaotic so often did, with Tossa’s mother. And as usual, on the telephone.
Tossa’s mother was herself unexpected and chaotic, though contained in as neat and trim a package as you could wish, slim and brown and perennially young, even after three marriages and two widowhoods. She had begun life – indeed, she still continued it, with unflagging verve and success – as Chloe Bliss, a perfect name for the stage though it also happened to be her own by the grace of fate; had been in succession Chloe Barber, until Tossa’s professor father inconsiderately died in his charming prime, Chloe Terrell, until the infinitely less interesting and less suitable Herbert Terrell fell off a mountain in Slovakia and got the worst of it in the consequent collision with a slab of white trias limestone, and Chloe Newcombe, which after two years, rather surprisingly, she still was. Perhaps Paul Newcombe, on the face of it a depressingly solid and stolid type of business manipulator, was more durable than he looked; perhaps, even, there was more to him than met the eye. If he was to hold Chloe’s vagrant interest much longer there would certainly need to be.
The enchanting creature who was such a problem to her husbands was no less a headache to her daughter, with the rueful difference that there was only one daughter, and she could never shuck off the load on to a successor. It was late now for Chloe to produce a co-custodian, even if she did still look no more than thirty. In lieu of a son she had cheerfully set up a stake in a prospective son-in-law. In any case, Chloe could never resist putting on her maximum charm for any young man who was drawn into her orbit. Usually they succumbed; in Dominic Felse’s case she was content to play it as a delicious game, and close her devastating purple-brown eyes to the consideration of whether she was winning or losing. After all, Miss Theodosia Barber was her daughter, and in her complex and evasive heart Chloe had a natural love for her, and – even better – a very healthy and wary respect.
They were in Tossa’s rooms in a genteelly decaying corner of north Oxford when the call came through, and Dominic’s recently-acquired third-hand Mini was sitting at the kerb outside, waiting to take them down for the Christmas vacation. They were looking forward to a peaceful celebration in the bosom of his family, and privately congratulating themselves on the fact that Chloe was frantically filming, well behind schedule, somewhere in Somerset, and hardly likely to give a thought to her daughter’s activities while the panic lasted. Conscience prompted her to manifest mother-love from time to time, with an over-exuberance which was designed to make up for the long neglects in between; but conscience knew better than to interfere with business. Consequently the maternal interludes usually came when they could do the most devastating damage to Tossa’s plans, and none whatsoever to Chloe’s.
The phone rang in the hall below. Across the case on which Dominic was kneeling they looked sharply and speculatively at each other. Dominic’s left eyebrow elevated itself dubiously. He said: ‘Uh-huh!’ in a tone Tossa was inclined to resent, though she herself frequently said very much more on the same subject.
‘It may not be for me,’ she said, convincing nobody.
But it was for her. Her landlady’s voice called up to her with the promptness of a derisive echo, and she went down resignedly to fend off the inevitable. Distant and guarded, gruffer than usual with defensive tension, her miniature baritone eddied up the staircase:
‘Tossa Barber here – Oh, yes… hullo, Mother! How are you? How is the shooting going?’ Side-track her back into her proper sphere, that was the strategy; but Chloe could always talk twice as sweetly and three times as fast. ‘Yes, well, darling, you know we were going up to Midshire…’
Were going! Dominic stopped wrestling with the recalcitrant lock of Tossa’s big case, and conveyed himself across the room and halfway down the stairs in a hurry, to a position where he could sit and brood balefully over the conversation, and make entirely sure that his interests were not forgotten. Every time she raised her eyes she could not help but see him, shamelessly listening and willing her to harden her heart. Chloe had a particularly annoying way of erupting just when they were all set for a holiday.
Computing the total content of a telephone conversation from one end of it, and the passive end at that, is never easy. With a kingfisher mind like Chloe’s at the far end of the line it was next door to impossible.
‘Yes, I remember you said she had… terribly interesting! Oh, really! Well, but what can I…’ A long interval of the distant purring, while Tossa’s eyes took on a stunned and glazed look first of shock and then of total non-comprehension. Something fearful was going on. Dominic loomed threateningly, and she flashed him a helpless glance and shook her head at him to show she hadn’t forgotten everything they had arranged between them. ‘Where? But… No, but you’re serious? I… well, of course I do see how marvellous, but… So far! And I’d be scared, alone! Oh!… Oooohh!’ she breathed in a long, awakening sigh, and a gleam came to life, far behind the glassy astonishment of her eyes, and grew and grew, like a moonrise. A hint of excited colour flicked her cheeks. Drat the girl, she was falling for it, whatever it was, after all her years of experience with that infuriating, lovely mother of hers. Dominic shuffled his feet and cleared his throat menacingly, and Tossa looked up and smiled at him with the eerie bliss of a sleepwalker. ‘But would she really… for both of us? Well, of course, I do realise it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance… But, gosh, Mother, I don’t know! I would love to… I bet he would, too… Look, let me talk to him and call you back…’
‘Yes,’ said Dominic grimly, just too quietly to be heard at the other end, ‘you do that! Get her off there and give me a chance to get some sense into you. That Chloe!’
‘A quarter of an hour, Mother, yes, I promise. Give me that number again…’
She cradled the receiver and came drifting up the stairs muttering it to herself, and Dominic gave her his ball-pen to write it down, before she lost herself among the digits. She looked a little drunk, on what manner of intoxicant he couldn’t imagine. She was usually the one who had all the evasions ready when Chloe sent out distress signals. She, after all, could be as cynical as she liked about her own mother; Dominic knew better than to venture on the same terms. He had an instinct for the exact line where his privilege ran out, and he was light on his feet, and could always stop short of it. He took her by the hand and towed her back into her own room. Her knees gave under her; she sat down dreamily on the bed, staring through him into the pale December sky.