Georgie didn’t know anything of the sort, but he let it pass.
‘Capital! he said. ‘Everybody will be very glad.’
‘And it would give me great pleasure to reconcile that childish quarrel between Diva and Elizabeth,’ continued Lucia. ‘I’ll ask Elizabeth and Benjy to have tea with us there to-morrow; dear Diva will not refuse to serve a guest of mine, and their little disagreement will be smoothed over. A rubber afterwards.’
Georgie looked doubtful.
‘Perhaps you had better tell them that you will play for the usual stakes,’ he said. ‘Else they might say they were engaged again.’
Lucia, with her vivid imagination, visualized the horrid superior grin which, at the other end of the telephone, would spread over Elizabeth’s face, when she heard that, and felt that she would scarcely be able to get the words out. But she steeled herself and went to the telephone.
Elizabeth and Benjy accepted, and, after a reconciliatory eighteen-penny tea, at which Elizabeth ate jam-puffs with gusto (‘Dear Diva, what delicious, light pastry,’ she said. ‘I wonder it doesn’t fly away.’) the four retired into the card-room. As if to welcome Lucia back into gambling circles, the God of Chance provided most exciting games. There were slams declared and won, there was doubling and redoubling and rewards and vengeances. Suddenly Diva looked in with a teapot in her hand and a most anxious expression on her face. She closed the door.
‘The Inspector of Police wants to see you, Lucia,’ she whispered.
Lucia rose, white to the lips. In a flash there came back to her all her misgivings about the legality of Diva’s permitting gambling in a public room, and now the police were raiding it. She pictured headlines in the Hampshire Argus and lurid paragraphs … Raid on Mrs Godiva Plaistow’s gaming-rooms … The list of the gamblers caught there. The Mayor and Mayoress of Tilling … A retired Major. The Mayor’s husband. The case brought before the Tilling magistrates with the Mayor in the dock instead of on the Bench. Exemplary fines. Her own resignation. Eternal infamy …
‘Did he ask for me personally?’ said Lucia.
‘Yes. Knew that you were here,’ wailed Diva. ‘And my tea-shop will be closed. Oh, dear me, if I’d only heeded your warning about raids! Or if we’d only joined you in playing bridge for nothing!’
Lucia rose to the topmost peak of magnanimity, and refrained from rubbing that in.
‘Is there a back way out, Diva?’ she asked. ‘Then they could all go. I shall remain and receive my Inspector here. Just sitting here. Quietly.’
‘But there’s no back way out,’ said Diva. ‘And you can’t get out of the window. Too small.’
‘Hide the cards!’ commanded Lucia, and they all snatched up their hands. Georgie put his in his breast-pocket. Benjy put his on the top of the large cupboard. Elizabeth sat on hers. Lucia thrust hers up the sleeve of her jacket.
‘Ask him to come in,’ she said. ‘Now all talk!’
The door opened, and the Inspector stood majestically there with a blue paper in his hand.
‘Indeed, as you say, Major Mapp-Flint,’ said Lucia in an unwavering Oxford voice, ‘the League of Nations has collapsed like a card-house – I should say a ruin – Yes, Inspector, did you want me?’
‘Yes, Your Worship. I called at Mallards, and was told I should catch you here. There’s a summons that needs your signature. I hope Your Worship will excuse my coming, but it’s urgent.’
‘Quite right, Inspector,’ said Lucia. ‘I am always ready to be interrupted on magisterial business. I see. On the dotted line. Lend me your fountain-pen, Georgie.’
As she held out her hand for it, all her cards tumbled out of her sleeve. A draught eddied through the open door and Benjy’s cache on the cupboard fluttered into the air. Elizabeth jumped up to gather them, and the cards on which she was sitting fell on to the floor.
Lucia signed with a slightly unsteady hand, and gave the summons back to the Inspector.
‘Thank you, Your Worship,’ he said. ‘Very sorry to interrupt your game, ma’am.’
‘Not at all,’ said Lucia. ‘You were only doing your duty.’
He bowed and left the room.
‘I must apologize to you all,’ said Lucia without a moment’s pause, ‘but my good Inspector has orders to ask for me whenever he wants to see me on any urgent matter. Dear me! All my cards exposed on the table and Elizabeth’s and Major Benjy’s on the floor. I am afraid we must have a fresh deal.’
Nobody made any allusion to the late panic, and Lucia dealt again.
Diva looked in again soon, carrying a box of chocolates.
‘Any more Inspectors, dear?’ asked Elizabeth acidly. ‘Any more raids? Your nerves seem rather jumpy.’
Diva was sorely tempted to retort that their nerves seemed pretty jumpy too, but it was bad for business to be sharp with patrons.
‘No, and I’m giving him such a nice tea,’ she said meekly. ‘But it was a relief, wasn’t it? A box of chocolates for you. Very good ones.’
The rubber came to an end, with everybody eating chocolates, and a surcharged chat on local topics succeeded. It almost intoxicated Lucia, who, now for weeks, had not partaken of that heady beverage, and she felt more than ever like Catherine the Great.
‘A very recreative two hours,’ she said to Georgie as they went up the hill homewards, ‘though I still maintain that our game would have been just as exciting without playing for money. And that farcical interlude of my Inspector! Georgie, I don’t mind confessing that just for one brief moment it did occur to me that he was raiding the premises –’
‘Oh, I know that,’ said Georgie. ‘Why, you asked Diva if there wasn’t a back way out, and told us to hide our cards and talk. I was the only one of us who knew how absurd it all was.’
‘But how you bundled your cards into your pocket! We were all a little alarmed. All. I put it down to Diva’s terror-stricken entrance with her teapot dribbling at the spout –’
‘No! I didn’t see that,’ said Georgie.
‘Quite a pool on the ground. And her lamentable outcry about her tea-rooms being closed. It was suggestion, dear. Very sensitive people like myself respond automatically to suggestion … And most interesting about Susan and her automatic script. She thinks, Elizabeth tells me, that Blue Birdie controls her when she’s in trance, and is entirely wrapped up in it.’
‘She’s hardly ever seen now,’ said Georgie. ‘She never plays bridge, nor comes to Diva’s for tea, and Algernon usually does her marketing.’
‘I must really go to one of her sèances, if I can find a free hour sometime,’ said Lucia. ‘But my visit must be quite private. It would never do if it was known that the Mayor attended séances which do seem akin to necromancy. Necromancy, as you may know, is divining through the medium of a corpse.’
‘But that’s a human corpse, isn’t it?’ asked he.
‘I don’t think you can make a distinction – Oh! Take care!’
She pulled Georgie back, just as he was stepping on to the road from the pavement. A boy on a bicycle, riding without lights, flew down the hill, narrowly missing him.
‘Most dangerous!’ said Lucia. ‘No lights and excessive speed. I must ring up my Inspector and report that boy – I wonder who he was.’
‘I don’t see how you can report him unless you know,’ suggested Georgie.
Lucia disregarded such irrelevancy. Her eyes followed the boy as he curved recklessly round the sharp corner into the High Street.
‘Really I feel more envious than indignant,’ she said. ‘It must be so exhilarating. Such speed! What Lawrence of Arabia always loved. I feel very much inclined to learn bicycling. Those smart ladies of the nineties used to find it very amusing. Bicycling-breakfasts in Battersea Park and all that. Our brisk walks, whenever I have time to take them, are so limited: in these short afternoons we can hardly get out into the country before it is time to turn again.’
The idea appealed to Georgie, especially when Lucia embellished it with mysterious a
nd conspiratorial additions. No one must know that they were learning until they were accomplished enough to appear in the High Street in complete control of their machines. What a sensation that would cause! What envious admiration! So next day they motored out to a lonely stretch of road a few miles away, where a man from the bicycle-shop, riding a man’s bicycle and guiding a woman’s, had a clandestine assignation with them. He held Georgie on, while Cadman, Lucia’s chauffeur, clung to her, and for the next few afternoons they wobbled about the road with incalculable swoopings. Lucia was far the quicker of the two in acquiring the precarious balance, and she talked all the time to Cadman.
‘I’m beginning to feel quite secure,’ she said. ‘You might let go for one second. No: there’s a cart coming. Better wait till it has passed. Where’s Mr Georgie? Far behind, I suppose.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Ever so far.’
‘Oh, what a jolt!’ she cried, as her front wheel went over a loose stone. ‘Enough to unseat anybody. I put on the brake, don’t I?’
After ringing the bell once or twice, Lucia found the brake. The bicycle stopped dead, and she stepped lightly off.
‘So powerful,’ she said remounting. ‘Now both hands off for a moment, Cadman.’
The day came when Georgie’s attendant still hovered close to him, but when Lucia outpaced Cadman altogether. A little way in front of her a man near the edge of the road, with a saucepan of tar bubbling over a pot of red-hot coals, was doctoring a telegraph-post. Then something curious happened to the co-ordination between Lucia’s brain and muscles. The imperative need of avoiding the fire-pot seemed to impel her to make a bee-line for it. With her eyes firmly fixed on it, she felt in vain for that powerful brake, and rode straight into the fire-pot, upsetting the tar and scattering the coals.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said to the operator. ‘I’m rather new at it. Would half a crown? And then would you kindly hold my bicycle while I mount again?’
The road was quite empty after that, and Lucia sped prosperously along, wobbling occasionally for no reason, but rejoicing in the comparative swiftness. Then it was time to turn. This was impossible without dismounting, but she mounted again without much difficulty, and there was a lovely view of Tilling rising red-roofed above the level land. Telegraph-post after telegraph-post flitted past her, and then she caught sight of the man with the fire-pot again. Lucia felt that he was observing her, and once more something curious occurred to her co-ordinations, and with it the familiar sense of exactly the same situation having happened before. Her machine began to swoop about the road; she steadied it, and with the utmost precision went straight into the fire-pot again.
‘You seem to make a practice of it,’ remarked the operator severely.
‘Too awkward of me,’ said Lucia. ‘It was the very last thing I wanted to do. Quite the last.’
‘That’ll be another half-crown,’ said the victim, ‘and now I come to look at you, it was you and your pals cocked up on the Bench, who fined me five bob last month, for not being half as unsteady as you.’
‘Indeed! How small the world is,’ said Lucia with great dignity and aloofness, taking out her purse. Indeed it was a strange coincidence that she should have disbursed to the culprit of last month exactly the sum that she had fined him for drunkenness. She thought there was something rather psychic about it, but she could not tell Georgie, for that would have disclosed to him that in the course of her daring, unaccompanied ride she had twice upset a fire-pot and scattered tar and red-hot coals on the highway. Soon she met him still outward bound and he, too, was riding unsupported.
‘I’ve made such strides to-day,’ he called out. ‘How have you got on?’
‘Beautifully! Miles!’ said Lucia, as they passed each other. But we must be getting back. Let me see you turn, dear, without dismounting. Not so difficult.’
The very notion of attempting that made Georgie unsteady, and he got off.
‘I don’t believe she can do it herself,’ he muttered, as he turned his machine and followed her. The motor was waiting for them, and just as she was getting in, he observed a blob of tar on one of her shoes. She wiped it off on the grass by the side of the road.
Susan had invited them both to a necromantic séance after tea that evening. She exclaimed that she would not ask them to tea, because before these sittings she fasted and meditated in the dark for an hour. When they got home from their ride, Georgie went to his sitting-room to rest, but Lucia, fresh as a daisy, filled up time by studying a sort of catechism from the Board of the Southern Railway in answer to her suggestion of starting a Royal Fish Express with a refrigerating van to supply the Court. They did not seem very enthusiastic; they put a quantity of queries. Had Her Worship received a Royal command on the subject? Did she propose to run the RFE to Balmoral when the Court was in Scotland, because there were Scotch fishing-ports a little closer? Had she worked out the cost of a refrigerating van? Was the supply of fish at Tilling sufficient to furnish the Royal table as well as the normal requirements of the district? Did Her Worship –’
Grosvenor entered. Mr Wyse had called, and would much like, if quite convenient, to have a few words with Lucia before the séance. That seemed a more urgent call, for all these fish questions required a great deal of thought, and must be gone into with Mrs Simpson next morning, and she told Grosvenor that she could give him ten minutes. He entered, carrying a small parcel wrapped up in brown paper.
‘So good of you to receive me,’ he said. ‘I am aware of the value of your time. A matter of considerable delicacy. My dear Susan tells me that you and your husband have graciously promised to attend her séance to-day.’
Lucia referred to her engagement-book.
‘Quite correct,’ she said. ‘I found I could just fit it in. 5.30 p.m. is my entry.’
‘I will speak but briefly of the ritual of these séances,’ said Mr Wyse. ‘My Susan sits at the table in our little dining-room, which you have, alas too rarely, honoured by your presence on what I may call less moribund occasions. It is furnished with a copious supply of scribbling-paper and of sharpened pencils, for her automatic script. In front of her is a small shrine, I may term it, of ebony – possibly ebonite – with white satin curtains concealing what is within. At the commencement of the séance, the lights are put out, and my Susan draws the curtains aside. Within are the mortal remains – or such as could be hygienically preserved – of her budgerigar. She used to wear them in her hat or as a decoration for the bosom. They once fell into a dish, a red dish, at your hospitable table.’
‘I remember. Raspberry something,’ said Lucia.
‘I bow to your superior knowledge,’ said Mr Wyse. ‘Then Susan goes into a species of trance, and these communications through automatic script begin. Very voluminous sometimes, and difficult to decipher. She spends the greater part of the day in puzzling them out, not always successfully. Now, adorbile Signora –’
‘Oh, Mr Wyse,’ cried Lucia, slightly startled.
‘Dear lady, I only meant Your Worship,’ he explained.
‘I see. Stupid of me,’ she said. ‘Yes?’
‘I appeal to you,’ continued he. ‘To put the matter in a nutshell, I fear my dear Susan will get unhinged, if this goes on. Already she is sadly changed. Her strong common sense, her keen appreciation of the comforts and interests of life, her fur coat, her Royce, her shopping, her bridge; all these are tasteless to her. Nothing exists for her except these communings.’
‘But how can I help you?’ asked Lucia …
Mr Wyse tapped the brown-paper parcel.
‘I have brought here,’ he said, ‘the source of all our trouble: Blue Birdie. I abstracted it from the shrine while my dear Susan was meditating in the drawing-room. I want it to disappear in the hope that when she discovers it has gone, she will have to give up the séances, and recover her balance. I would not destroy it: that would be going too far. Would you therefore, dear lady, harbour the Object in some place unknown to me, so that when Susan asks me,
as she undoubtedly will, if I know where it is, I may be able to tell her that I do not? A shade jesuitical perhaps, but such jesuitry, I feel, is justifiable.’
Lucia considered this. ‘I think it is, too,’ she said. ‘I will put it somewhere safe. Anything to prevent our Susan becoming unhinged. That must never happen. By the way, is there a slight odour?’
‘A reliable and harmless disinfectant,’ said Mr Wyse. ‘There was a faint smell in the neighbourhood of the shrine which I put down to imperfect taxidermy. A thousand thanks, Worshipful Lady. One cannot tell what my Susan’s reactions may be, but I trust that the disappearance of the Object may lead to a discontinuance of the séances. In fact, I do not see how they could be held without it.’
Lucia had ordered a stack of black japanned boxes to hold documents connected with municipal departments. The arms of the Borough and her name were painted on them, with the subject with which they were concerned. There were several empty ones, and when Mr Wyse had bowed himself out, she put Blue Birdie into the one labelled ‘Museum’, which seemed appropriate. ‘Burial Board’ would have been appropriate, too, but there was already an agenda-paper in that.
Presently she and Georgie set forth for Starling Cottage.
Susan and Algernon were ready for them in the dining-room. The shrine with drawn curtains was on the table. Susan had heated a shovel and was burning incense on it.
‘Blue Birdie came from the Spice Islands,’ she explained, waving the shovel in front of the shrine. ‘Yesterday my hand wrote “sweet gums” as far as I could read it, over and over again, and I think that’s what he meant. And I’ve put up a picture of St Francis preaching to the birds.’
Certainly Susan, as her husband had said, was much changed. She looked dotty. There was an ecstatic light in her eye, and a demented psychical smile on her mouth. She wore a wreath in her hair, a loose white gown, and reminded Lucia of an immense operatic Ophelia. But critical circumstances always developed Lucia’s efficiency, and she nodded encouragingly to Algernon as Susan swept fragrantly about the room.