She had been walking on tiptoe. She must have been quite used to going barefoot, for each toemark was drawn separately in round spots on the flagstone like the print of a small animal in the snow.
3
Long ago in a great restaurant an elderly lady had stolen Cassidy’s fish. She had been sitting beside him at an adjoining table facing into the room, and with one movement she had swept the fish—a sole Waleska generously garnished with cheese and assorted seafoods—into her open tartan handbag. Her timing was perfect. Cassidy happened to look upwards in response to an inner call—a girl probably, but perhaps a passing dish which he had almost ordered in preference to his Waleska—and when he looked down again the fish had gone and only a pink sludge across the plate, a glutinous trail of cornflour, cheese and particles of shrimp, marked the direction it had taken. His first response was disbelief. He had eaten the fish and in his distraction not even tasted it. But how had he eaten it? the Great Detective asked himself. With his fingers? His knife and fork were clean. The fish was a mirage: the waiter had not yet brought it, Cassidy was looking at the dirty plate left by a guest who had preceded him.
Then he saw the tartan handbag. Its handles were clamped tight together, but a telltale pink smear was clearly visible on one brass ball of the clasp. Call the waiter, he thought: “This lady has stolen my fish.” Confront the thief, summon the police, demand that she open her handbag.
But her posture of spinsterly composure as she continued to sip her apéritif, one hand curled lightly in her napkin, was too much for him. Signing the bill he quietly left the restaurant, never to return.
Following the lantern into the smoke-filled drawing room, Cassidy underwent the same symptoms of psychic disarray. Had the girl existed, or was she the creation of his lively erotic fantasy? Was she a ghost? A de Waldebere heiress, for instance, murdered in her bath by the reckless Sir Hugo? But family ghosts do not leave footprints nor carry transistor radios, and are certainly not constructed of such eminently persuasive flesh. Assuming then that the girl was real and that he had seen her, should he as a matter of protocol venture some casual comment suggesting he had not? Imply that he had been studying a portrait or an architectural feature at the critical moment of her appearance? Ask his host whether he was all alone here or who looked after him?
He was still wrestling with the problem when he heard himself addressed in what he took to be a foreign language.
“Alc?”
To compound Cassidy’s sense of unreality he had the strong impression of being cut off by fog, for the enormous fireplace was emitting billows of cannon smoke over the stone floor and heavy palls already hung from the rafters overhead. The same fire, which seemed to consist entirely of kindling wood, provided their only source of light, for the lantern was now extinguished and the windows, like those in the Great Hall, were firmly shuttered.
“I’m awfully sorry. I don’t think I understand.”
“Alc, lover. Alcohol. Whisky.”
“O thank you. Alcohol. Alc.” He laughed. “Yes indeed I’d love an alc. It’s quite a long drive from Bath actually. Well fussy, you know. All those narrow lanes and side turnings. Alc. Haha.”
Mistress? Lecherous housemaid? Incestuous sister? A gypsy whore slunk in from the woods? Fiver a bang and free bath after?
“You want to try walking it.” Glass in hand, the tall figure rose massively at him out of the smoke. If we were the same size, thought Cassidy, how are you now bigger? “Eight bloody hours it took us, with all God’s limousines damn near running us into the hedge. It’s enough to turn a man to drink, I’m telling you.” The brogue was even stronger. “Still you wouldn’t do that would you, lover? Carve us into the ditch, and not even stop to set the bone?”
A call girl perhaps, sent down by disgraceful agencies? Question: how can you call a call girl when your phone’s cut off?
“Certainly not. I’m a great believer in defensive driving.”
“Are you now?”
The dark eyes seemed, with this question, to invade still further Cassidy’s unprotected consciousness.
“Look my name’s Cassidy,” he said as much to reassure himself as to inform his host.
“Cassidy? Jesus that’s a lovely native name if ever I heard one. Hey, was it you robbed all those banks then? Is that where you got your money from?”
“Well I’m afraid not,” said Cassidy silkily. “I had to work a little harder for it than that.”
Emboldened by the aptness of his retort, Cassidy now undertook an examination of his host as frank as that which he himself had recently undergone. The garment which encased his dark legs was neither a skirt nor a bath towel nor yet a kilt, but a very old curtain embroidered with faded serpents and ripped at the edges as if by angry hands. He wore it off the hip, low at the front and higher at the back like a man about to bathe himself in the Ganges. His breast under the black jacket was bare, but garnished with clusters of rich black hair which descended in a thin line down his stomach before opening again into a frank pubic shadow.
“Like it?” his host enquired, handing him a glass.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Shamus is the name, lover. Shamus.”
Shamus. Shamus de Waldebere . . . look him up in Debrett.
From the direction of the doorway Cassidy heard Frank Sinatra singing about a girl he knew in Denver.
“Hey Helen,” Shamus called over Cassidy’s shoulder. “It’s not Flaherty after all, it’s Cassidy. Butch Cassidy. He’s come to buy the house now poor Uncle Charlie’s dead and gone. Cassidy me old friend, shake hands with a very lovely lady, lately of Troy and now reduced to the abominable state of—”
“How do you do,” said Helen.
“Matrimony,” said Shamus.
She was covered, if not yet fully dressed.
Wife, he thought glumly. I should have known. The Lady Helen de Waldebere, and all doors closed.
There is no established method, even to a formalist of Cassidy’s stamp, of greeting a lady of great family whom you have just met naked in a corridor. The best that he could manage was a hog-like grunt, accompanied by a watery academic smile and a puckering of the eyes, designed to indicate to those familiar with his signals that he was a short-sighted person of minimal libido in the presence of someone who had hitherto escaped his notice. Helen on the other hand, with looks and breeding on her side and time to think in the dressing room, displayed a stately composure. She was even more beautiful dressed than not. She wore a housecoat of devotional simplicity. A high collar enfolded her noble neck, lace cuffs her slender wrists. Her auburn hair was combed long like Juliet’s and her feet were still bare. Her breasts, which despite his simulated myopia he could not help remarking, were unsupported, and trembled delicately as she moved. Her hips were similarly unbound, and with each balanced stride a white knee, smooth as marble, peeped demurely through the division of her robe. English to the core, thought Cassidy to his relief, what an entry; what a dash she’d cut in trade. Switching off the wireless with a simple movement of her index finger and thumb, she placed it on the sofa table, smoothed the dust cover as if it were the finest linen, then gravely shook his hand and invited him to sit down. She accepted a drink and apologised for the mess in a low, almost a humble tone. Cassidy said he quite understood, he knew what it was to move, he had been through it several times in the last few years. Somehow, without trying, he managed to suggest that each move had been for the better.
“My God, even moving the office, when one has secretaries and assistants, even one’s own workmen, it takes months. Literally months. So what it’s like here . . .”
“Where is your office?” Helen asked politely.
Cassidy’s opinion of her rose still higher.
“South Audley Street,” he said promptly. “West One. Just off Park Lane, actually. We went in there last spring.” He wanted to add that she might have read about it in the Times Business News but modestly he forebore.
“Oh how very
nice.” Chastely rearranging her skirts to cover her peerless thighs, she sat down on the sofa.
Towards her husband she showed a greater reserve. Her eyes seldom left his face and Cassidy did not fail to notice their darting expression of concern. How well, as always, did he understand a pretty woman’s feelings! A drunken husband was liability enough. But who could tell what other blows her pride had suffered in the last months, the fights with lawyers, the towering death duties, the painful partings from family retainers, the tattered keepsakes in the silent desk? And how many potential purchasers in that time had swept brutally through the treasured chambers of her youth, mouthed their gross objections, and left without a word of hope?
I will ease her burden, he decided; I will take over the conversation.
Having concisely rehearsed the reasons for his unheralded arrival, he laid the blame squarely at the door of Grimble and Outhwaite:
“I’ve nothing against them, they’re very good people in their way. I’ve dealt with them for a number of years and I shall go on dealing with them no doubt, but like all these old firms they get complacent. Slack.” Under the velvet, the steel showed. “I mean to take this up with them in quite a big way as a matter of fact.”
Shamus, who had crossed his legs under the curtain and was leaning back in an attitude of critical reflection, merely nodded with energetic approval and said, “Attaboy Cassidy,” but Helen assured him that his visit was perfectly convenient, he was very welcome at any time and it made no difference really:
“Does it Shamus?”
“None at all, lover,” said Shamus heartily. “We’re having a ball.”
And resumed, with a complacency amounting almost to pride of ownership, his study of his unexpected guest.
“I’m so sorry about the smoke,” said Helen.
“Oh it’s quite all right,” said Cassidy restraining himself with difficulty from wiping away a tear. “I rather like it actually. A wood fire is one of the things we just can’t buy in London. Not at any price I’m afraid.”
“It’s all my own fault,” Shamus confessed. “We ran out of firewood so I sawed up the table.”
Shamus and Cassidy laughed loudly at this good joke and Helen after a moment’s doubt joined in. Her laugh, he noticed with approval, was modest and admiring; he did not care for women’s humour as a rule, fearing it to be directed against himself, but Helen’s was different, he could tell: she knew her place and laughed only with the men.
“Now there’s a terrible thing about mahogany.” Leaping to his feet, Shamus wheeled away to where the bottle stood. “It just won’t bloody burn like the lower-class woods. It positively resists martyrdom. Now I count that very bad manners indeed, don’t you? I mean at a certain point we should all go gentle into that good night, don’t you think so, Cassidy?”
Though the question was facetious; Shamus put it with great earnestness, and waited motionless until he had his answer.
“Oh rather,” said Cassidy.
“He agrees,” said Shamus, with apparent relief. “Helen, he agrees.”
“Of course he does,” said Helen. “He’s being polite.” She leaned across to him. “It’s weeks since he met a soul,” she confided in a low voice. “He’s been getting rather desperate, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t give it a thought,” Cassidy murmured. “I love it.”
“Hey Cassidy, tell her about your Bentley.” Shamus’ brogue was all over the words: the drink had brought it to full flower. “Hear that, Helen? Cassidy’s got a Bentley, a dirty big long one with a silver tip, haven’t you lover?”
“Have you really?” said Helen over the top of her glass. “Gosh.”
“Well not new of course.”
“But isn’t that rather a good thing? I mean aren’t the old ones better in lots of ways?”
“Oh absolutely, well in my judgment anyway,” said Cassidy. “The pre-sixty-three models were a much superior job. Well certainly this one has turned out pretty well.”
Before he knew it, with only the smallest prompting from Shamus, he was telling her the whole story, how he had been driving through Sevenoaks in his Mercedes—he’d had a Merc in those days, very functional cars of course, but no real handwriting if they knew what he meant—and had spotted a Bentley in the showroom of Caffyns.
“In Sevenoaks, hear that?” Shamus called. “Fancy buying a Bentley in Sevenoaks. Jesus.”
“But that’s half the fun of it,” Cassidy insisted. “Some of the very finest models come from as far away as India. Maharajahs bought them for safaris.”
“Hey, lover.”
“Yes?”
“You’re not a maharajah yourself by any chance?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Only in this sort of light you can’t always see the colour of a person’s skin. Are you a Catholic then?”
“No,” said Cassidy pleasantly. “Wrong again.”
“But you are holy?” he insisted, returning to an earlier theme. “You do worship?”
“Well,” said Cassidy doubtfully, “Christmas and Easter, you know the kind of thing.”
“Would you call yourself a New Testament man?”
“Please go on,” said Helen. “I’m riveted.”
“Or would you say you were more in favour of the barbaric and untrammelled qualities of the Ancient Jews?”
“Well . . . neither or both I suppose.”
“You see this fellow Flaherty in County Cork now—”
“Please,” said Helen, directing a second quelling glance at her husband.
Well, Cassidy had had this feeling that the car was right, he couldn’t explain it really, and so in the end he’d stopped and gone back to take a second look. And anyway to cut a long story short this young salesman hadn’t pushed him at all but recognised one of the breed, so to speak, and in ten minutes they’d done the deal. Cassidy wrote out a cheque for five thousand pounds dated that same day and drove away in the car.
“Goodness,” Helen breathed. “How terribly brave.”
“Brave?” Shamus repeated. “Brave? Listen he’s a lion. You should have seen him out there on the terrace. He frightened the hell out of me. I’ll tell you that for nothing.”
“Well of course I did have the weekend to stop the cheque,” Cassidy admitted a little injudiciously, and would have gone on with a great deal more of the same thing—the Automobile Association’s report for instance which had been one long paean of technical praise, the car’s genealogy which he had only stumbled on months after he had bought her—if Shamus, suddenly bored, had not suggested that Helen show him round the house.
“After all, if he’s a compulsive buyer, maybe he’ll buy us too, eh: I mean Jesus, we can’t pass over an opportunity like this. Now Cassidy have you brought your cheque book? Because if you haven’t you’d best get in that grey bedpan and hurry back to the West End and fetch it, I’m telling you. I mean we don’t show the house to just anyone, don’t you know. After all, if you’re not God, who are you?”
Once more Cassidy’s seismographic spirit recorded Helen’s reticence and understood it. The same worried glance troubled her serious eyes, the same innate courtesy prevented her from putting her anxiety into words. “We can hardly show it to him in the dark, darling,” she said quietly.
“Of course we can show it to him in the bloody dark. We’ve got the lamp haven’t we? Christ, he could buy the place by Braille if he felt like it, couldn’t you, lover? I mean look here, Cassidy’s quite clearly a very influential person and very influential persons who can wander round Sevenoaks signing cheques for five thousand pounds don’t bloody well like having their time wasted, Helen, that’s something you have to learn in life—”
Cassidy knew it was time for him to speak. “Oh now look here please don’t worry. I can perfectly well come another time. You’ve been so good already—”
In an effort to make his intention real, he rose falteringly to his feet. The woodsmoke and the whisky had had more effect on him tha
n he knew. His head was dizzy and his eyes were smarting.
“I can perfectly well come back another time,” he repeated foolishly. “You must be tired out, what with all the packing and making do.”
Shamus was also standing, leaning his hands on Helen’s shoulders, and his dark, inward eyes were watching Cassidy intently.
“So why don’t we make a date for next week?” he suggested.
“You mean you don’t like the house,” Shamus said in a flat, menacing tone, more as a statement than a question. Cassidy hastened to protest but Shamus rode him down. “It’s not good enough for you, is that it? No central heating, no poncy fittings like you’ve got in Londontown?”
“Not at all, I merely—”
“What do you want for Christ’s sake? A tart’s parlour?”
Cassidy in his day had handled scenes like this before. Angry trade unionists had beaten his rosewood desk, deprived competitors had shaken their fists in his face, drunken maids had called him fat. But finally such situations had remained within his control, occurring for the greater part on territory he had already bought, among people he had yet to pay. The present situation was altogether different, and neither the whisky nor his misted vision did anything to improve his performance.
“Of course I like the house. I thought I’d made that abundantly clear, as a matter of fact it’s the best I’ve seen for a long time. It’s got everything I’ve been looking for . . . peace . . . seclusion . . . garage space.”