A Christmas Party: A Seasonal Murder Mystery/Envious Casca

Paula Herriard did not arrive at the Manor until after seven, when everyone else was changing for dinner. Her appearance on the scene was advertised, even to those in remote bedrooms, by the unusual amount of commotion heard downstairs. Paula’s entrances always commanded attention. It was not that she deliberately staged them: merely, her personality was rather overpowering, her movements as impetuous as her vivid little face. In fact, Mathilda said with gentle malice, she seemed to have been born with the hall-marks of a great emotional actress.

She was several years younger than her brother Stephen, and resembled him scarcely at all. She was pretty, in the style made popular by Burne-Jones, with thick, springy hair, a short, full upper lip, and dark eyes set widely under discontented brows. There was an air of urgency about her; you could see it in her restless movements, in the sudden glow in her changeable eyes, and in the hungry line of her mouth. She had a beautiful voice, like a stringed instrument. It was mellow, and flexible, which made her the ideal choice for a Shakespearean rôle. It cast into shocking relief the light, metallic tones of her contemporaries, with their clipped vowels, and the oddly common inflexions they so carefully cultivated. She knew how to throw it, too: no doubt about that, thought Mathilda, hearing it float upstairs from the hall.

She heard her own name. ‘In the Blue Room? Oh! I’ll go up!’

Mathilda sat back on her dressing-stool to await Paula’s entrance. In a minute or two there was a perfunctory knock on the door, and before she could call Come in! Paula had entered, bringing with her that uncomfortable feeling of impatience, of scarcely curbed energy.

‘Mathilda! Darling!’

‘’Ware my make-up!’ Mathilda exclaimed, dodging the embrace.

Paula chuckled, deep in her throat. ‘Idiot! I’m so glad to see you! Who’s here? Stephen? Valerie? Oh, that girl! My dear, if you knew the feeling I have here about her!’ She struck her chest as she spoke; her eyes quite blazed for a moment, but then she blinked her thick lashes, and laughed, and said: ‘Oh, never mind that! Brothers – ! I’ve brought Willoughby.’

‘Who is Willoughby?’ demanded Mathilda.

There was again that disconcerting flash. ‘One day no one will ask that question!’

‘Pending that day,’ said Mathilda, intent on her own eyebrows, ‘who is Willoughby?’

‘Willoughby Roydon. He has written a play…’

It was strange how much that throbbing voice and those fluttering hands could express. Mathilda said: ‘Oh? Unknown, dramatist?’

‘So far! But this play – ! Producers are such fools! We must have backing. Is Uncle Nat in a good mood? Has Stephen upset him? Tell me everything, Mathilda, quick!’

Mathilda laid down the eyebrow-pencil. ‘You haven’t brought your playwright here in the hope of winning Nat’s heart, Paula? My poor girl!’

‘He must do it for me!’ Paula said, impatiently pushing back the hair from her brow. ‘It’s art, Mathilda! Oh! When you have read it – !’

‘Art plus a part for Paula?’ murmured Mathilda.

The shaft glanced off Paula’s armour. ‘Yes. A part. Such a part! It was written for me. He says I inspired it.’

‘Sunday performance, and an audience composed of intellectuals. I know!’

‘Uncle has got to listen to me! I must play it. I must, Mathilda, do you hear me?’

‘Yes, my sweet, you must play it. Meanwhile, dinner will be ready in twenty minutes’ time.’

‘Oh, it doesn’t take me ten minutes to change!’ Paula said impatiently.

Mathilda reflected that this was true. Paula never bothered about her clothes. She was neither dowdy nor smart; she flung raiment on, and somehow one never knew what she was wearing: it didn’t count, it was nothing but a covering for Paula’s thin body: you were aware only of Paula herself. ‘I hate you, Paula; my God, how I hate you!’ Mathilda said, knowing that people remembered her by the exquisite creations she wore. ‘Go away! I’m less fortunate.’

Paula’s gaze focused upon her. ‘Darling, your clothes are perfect.’

‘I know they are. What have you done with your playwright?’

‘I don’t know. Such an absurd fuss! As though the house weren’t big enough – ! Sturry said he’d see to it.’

‘Well, as long as your playwright doesn’t wear soft shirts and a plume of hair – !’

‘What do these things matter?’

‘They’ll matter fast enough to your Uncle Nat,’ prophesied Mathilda.

They did. Nathaniel, introduced without warning to Willoughby Roydon, glared at him, and at Paula, and could not even bring himself to utter conventional words of welcome. It was left to Joseph to fill the breach, and he did so, aware of Nat’s fury, and covering it up with his own overflowing goodwill.

The situation was saved by Sturry, announcing dinner. They went into the dining-room. Willoughby Roydon sat between Mathilda and Maud. He despised Maud, but Mathilda he liked. He talked to her about the tendency of modern drama, and she bore it very meekly, realising that it was her duty to draw his fire.

He was a sallow young man, with rather indeterminate features, and an over-emphatic manner. Listening, a little inattentively, to his conversation, Mathilda pictured him against a middle-class background of indifference. She felt sure that his parents were worthy people, perhaps afraid of their clever son, perhaps scornful of a talent they could not understand. He was unsure of himself, aggressive from very lack of poise. Mathilda felt sorry for him, and schooled her features to an expression of interest in what he was saying.

Paula, seated beside Nathaniel, was talking to him about Roydon’s play, forgetting to eat her dinner in her earnestness, annoying him by gesticulating with her thin, nervous hands, insisting on his attending to her, even though he didn’t want to, wasn’t interested. Valerie, on his right, was bored, and taking no pains to hide it. She had pretended at first to be deeply interested, saying: ‘My dear, how marvellous! Do tell me about your part! I shall adore coming to see you in it!’ But Paula didn’t want to capture Valerie’s interest; she brushed her aside with that careless contempt which made her look suddenly like Stephen. So Valerie sighed, patted her sleek curls into position, and despised Paula for wearing a dress which didn’t suit her, and for combing her hair so casually off her face.

It was being a bad evening for Valerie. She had wanted to come to Lexham (in fact, she had insisted on Stephen’s bringing her) because she knew that Nathaniel did not like her. She hadn’t doubted her ability to captivate him, but even the Chanel model she was wearing had failed to bring that admiring look into his eyes which she was accustomed to see in men’s eyes. Joseph had twinkled appreciation, but that was no use (though pleasant) because Joseph had no money to leave.

The arrival of an unexpected male guest had been exciting, but he seemed to be absorbed in conversation with Mathilda. Valerie wondered what men saw in Mathilda, and glanced resentfully across at her. It happened that Roydon looked up at that moment, and their eyes met. He seemed to see her for the first time, and to be shaken. He stopped in the middle of what he was saying, flushed, and picked up the thread again in a hurry, Valerie began to feel more cheerful. Playwrights! One never knew about them; they became famous overnight, and made pots and pots of money, and were seen about everywhere with the best people.

Joseph, whom Nathaniel suspected of having connived from the start at Willoughby’s arrival, said that he could smell the sawdust again, a figure of speech which apparently left Roydon with the impression that he had been a circus-artist. Joseph speedily disillusioned him. ‘I remember once in Durban, when I was playing Hamlet…’ said Joseph.

‘Go on, Joe! You never played Hamlet in your life!’ interrupted Mathilda. ‘Your outline’s all wrong.’

‘Ah, the days when I was young!’ Joseph said.

But Roydon wasn’t interested in Joseph’s Hamlet. He shrugged Shakespeare aside. He said that he himself owed a debt to Strindberg. As for Pinero’s comedies, which Joseph had played in, he dismissed them with the crushing label: ‘That old stuff!’

Joseph felt depressed. He had a charming little anecdote to tell, about the time he had played Benedick, in Sydney, but it didn’t seem as though Roydon would appreciate it. A conceited young man, thought Joseph, dispiritedly eating his savoury.

When Maud rose from the table, Paula was obliged to stop telling Nathaniel about Roydon’s play. She glowered at being interrupted, but went out with the other women.

Maud led the way to the drawing-room. It was a big room, and it felt chilly. Only two standard-lamps, placed near the fireplace, lit it, and the far corners of the room lay in shadow. Paula gave a shiver, and switched on the ceiling-lights. ‘I hate this house!’ she said. ‘It hates us, too. You can almost feel it.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’ asked Valerie, looking round half-fearfully, half-sceptically.

‘I don’t know. I think something happened here, perhaps. Can’t you feel how sinister it is? No, I suppose you can’t.’

‘You don’t mean that it’s haunted, do you?’ Valerie asked, her voice rising slightly. ‘Because nothing would induce me to spend a night here, if it is!’

‘No, I don’t mean that,’ Paula answered. ‘But there’s something about it – I’m always conscious of it. Cigarette, Mathilda?’

Mathilda took one. ‘Thank you, my love. Shall we gather round the fire, chicks, and tell ghost stories?’

‘Oh, don’t!’ shuddered Valerie.

‘Don’t let Paula impress you!’ Mathilda advised her. ‘She is just being fey. There’s nothing wrong with this house.’

‘It is a pity that there are no radiators in this room,’ said Maud, ensconcing herself by the fire.

‘It isn’t that,’ said Paula curtly.

‘I expect that’s what gives Nat lumbago,’ said Maud. ‘Draughts –’

Valerie began to powder her nose before the mirror over the fireplace. Paula, who seemed to be restless, drifted about the room, smoking a cigarette, and nicking the ash on to the carpet.

Mathilda, taking a chair opposite to Maud, said: ‘I wish you wouldn’t prowl, Paula. And if you could refrain from badgering Nat about your young friend’s play I feel that this party might go with more of a swing.’

‘I don’t care about that. It’s vital to me to get Willoughby’s play put on!’

‘Love’s young dream?’ Mathilda cocked a quizzical eyebrow.

‘Mathilda! Can’t you understand that love doesn’t come into it? It’s art!’

‘Sorry!’ Mathilda apologised.

Maud, who had opened her book again, said: ‘Fancy! The Empress was only sixteen when Franz Josef fell in love with her! It was quite a romance.’

‘What Empress?’ demanded Paula, halting in the middle of the room, and staring at her.

‘The Empress of Austria, dear. Somehow one can’t imagine Franz Josef as a young man, can one? But it says here that he was very good-looking, and she fell in love with him at first sight. Of course, he ought to have married the elder sister, but he saw Elizabeth first, with her hair down her back, and that decided him.’

‘What on earth has that got to do with Willoughby’s play?’ asked Paula, in a stupefied voice.

‘Nothing, my dear; but I am reading a very interesting book about her.’

‘Well, it doesn’t interest me,’ said Paula, resuming her pacing of the room.

‘Never mind, Maud!’ said Mathilda. ‘Paula has a one-track mind, and no manners. Tell me more about your Empress!’

‘Poor thing!’ said Maud. ‘It was that mother-in-law, you know. She seems to have been a very unpleasant woman. The Archduchess, they called her, though I can’t quite make out why she was only an Archduchess when her son was an Emperor. She wanted him to marry Hélène.’

‘A little more, and I shall feel compelled to read this entrancing work,’ said Mathilda. ‘Who was Hélène?’

Maud was still explaining Hélène to Mathilda when the men came into the drawing-room.

It was plain that Nathaniel had not found the male company congenial. He had apparently been buttonholed by Roydon, for he cast several affronted glances at the playwright, and removed himself as far from his vicinity as he could. Mottisfont sat down beside Maud; and Stephen, who appeared to sympathise with his uncle, surprised everyone by engaging him in perfectly amiable conversation.

‘Stephen being the little gentleman quite takes my breath away,’ murmured Mathilda.

Joseph, standing near enough to overhear this remark, laid a conspiratorial finger across his lips. He saw that Nathaniel had observed this gesture, and made haste to say, in bracing accents: ‘Now, who says Rummy?’

No one said Rummy; several persons, notably Nathaniel, looked revolted; and after a pause, Joseph, a little crestfallen, said: ‘Well, well, what shall it be?’

‘Mathilda,’ said Nathaniel, fixing her with a compelling eye, ‘we want you to make up a fourth at Bridge.’

‘All right,’ said Mathilda. ‘Who’s playing?’

‘Stephen and Mottisfont. We’ll have a table put up in the library, and the rest of you can play any silly – can do anything you like.’

Joseph, whose optimism nothing could damp, said: ‘Just the thing! No one will disturb you earnest people, and we frivolous ones can be as foolish as we like!’

‘It’s no good expecting me to play!’ announced Roydon. ‘I don’t know one card from another.’

‘Oh, you’ll soon pick it up!’ said Joseph. ‘Maud, my dear, I suppose we can’t lure you into a round game?’

‘No, Joseph, I will do a Patience quietly by myself, if someone will be kind enough to draw that table forward,’ replied Maud.

Valerie, who had not been at all pleased to hear that her betrothed proposed to spend the evening playing Bridge, bestowed a dazzling smile upon Roydon, and said: ‘I’m simply dying to ask you about this play of yours. I’m utterly thrilled about it! Do come and tell me all about it!’

Since Willoughby, sore from the lack of appreciation shown by Nathaniel, at once moved across to Miss Dean’s side, only Paula was left to make up Joseph’s round game. He seemed to feel the impossibility of organising anything very successful under such conditions, and with only a faint, quickly suppressed sigh, abandoned the project, and sat down to watch his wife playing Patience.

After continuing to walk about the room for some time, occasionally joining in Roydon’s conversation with Valerie, Paula cast herself upon a sofa, and began to flick over the pages of an illustrated paper. Joseph soon moved over to join her, saying in a confidential tone: ‘Tell your old uncle all about it, my dear! What sort of play is it? Comedy? Tragedy?’

‘You can’t label it like that,’ Paula answered. ‘It’s a most subtle character-study. There isn’t another part in the world I want to play more. It’s written for me! It is me!’

‘I know exactly how you feel,’ nodded Joseph, laying a hand over hers, and pressing it sympathetically. ‘Ah, how often one has been through that experience! I daresay it seems funny to you to think of your old uncle on the boards, but when I was a young man I shocked all my relations by actually running away from a respectable job in a solicitor’s office to join a travelling company!’ He laughed richly at the memory. ‘I was a romantic lad! I expect a lot of people called me an improvident young fool, but I’ve never regretted it, never!’

‘I wish you’d make Uncle Nat listen to reason,’ said Paula discontentedly.

‘I’ll try, my dear, but you know what Nat is! Dear old crosspatch! He’s the best of good fellows, but he has his prejudices.’

‘Two thousand pounds wouldn’t make any difference to him. I can’t see why I shouldn’t have it now, when I need it, instead of having to wait till he dies.’

‘You bad girl! Counting your chickens before they are hatched!’

‘I’m not. He told me he’d leave me some money. Besides, he’s bound to: I’m his only niece.’

It was plain that Joseph could not quite approve of this cool way of putting the matter. He said tut-tut, and squeezed Paula’s hand again.

Maud, who had brought the Diplomat to a triumphant conclusion, was inspired to suggest suddenly that Paula should recite something. ‘I am very fond of a good recitation,’ she said. ‘I remember that I used to know a very touching poem about a man who died of thirst on the Llano Estacado. I forget why, but I think he was riding to some place or other. I know it was extremely dramatic, but it is many years since I last did it, and I have forgotten it.’

Everyone breathed again. Paula said that she didn’t go in for recitations, but that if Uncle Nat had not elected to play Bridge, she would have asked Willoughby to read his play to them.

‘That would have been very enjoyable, I expect,’ said Maud placidly.

It was not Nathaniel’s custom to keep late hours, nor was he the kind of host who altered his habits to suit the convenience of his guests. At eleven o’clock, the Bridge-players came back into the drawing-room, where a tray of drinks was awaiting them, and Nathaniel said that for his part he was going to bed.

Edgar Mottisfont ventured to say: ‘I had hoped to have a chat with you, Nat.’

Nathaniel darted a look at him from under his bushy brows. ‘Can’t talk business at this hour of night,’ he said.

‘Well, I want a word with you, too,’ said Paula.

‘You won’t get it,’ Nathaniel replied, with a short laugh.

Maud was gathering up her cards. ‘Dear me, eleven already? I think I shall go up too.’

Valerie looked rather appalled at this prospect of having to retire at such an unaccustomed hour, but was relieved to hear Joseph say cheerfully: ‘Well, I hope no one else means to run off yet! The night’s young, eh, Valerie? What do you say to going into the billiard-room, and turning on the wireless?’

‘You’d be a great deal better in bed,’ said Nathaniel, on whom Joseph’s high spirits seemed to exercise a baleful influence.

‘Not I!’ Joseph declared. ‘I’ll tell you what, Nat: you’d be much better enjoying yourself with us!’

His evil genius prompted him to clap his brother on the back as he said this. It was plain to everyone that the playful blow fell between Nat’s shoulders, but Nathaniel, who hated to be touched, at once groaned, and ejaculated: ‘My lumbago!’

He left the room with the gait of a cripple, holding his hand to the small of his back, in a gesture which his relatives knew well, but which made Valerie open her lovely eyes very wide, and say: ‘I’d no idea lumbago was as bad as that!’

‘It isn’t. That’s just my dear Uncle Nat playing up,’ said Stephen, handing a whisky-and-soda to Mathilda.

‘No, no, that isn’t quite fair!’ protested Joseph. ‘Why, I’ve known poor old Nat to be set fast with it! I’m a stupid fellow: I daresay I did jar him. I wonder if I had better go after him?’

‘No, Joe,’ said Mathilda kindly. ‘You mean well, but you’ll only annoy him. Why is our little Paula looking like the Tragic Muse?’

‘This awful house!’ ejaculated Paula. ‘How any of you can spend an hour in it and not feel the atmosphere – !’

‘Pray silence for Mrs Siddons!’ said Stephen, regarding her with a sardonic eye.

‘Oh, you can scoff!’ she flung at him. ‘But even you must feel the tension!’

‘Well, do you know, it’s an awfully funny thing, because I’m not a bit psychic, or anything like that, but I do see what Paula means,’ said Valerie. ‘It’s a kind of an atmosphere.’ She turned to Roydon. ‘You could write a marvellous play about it, couldn’t you?’

‘I don’t know that it would be quite in my line,’ he replied.

‘Oh, I have an absolute conviction that you’re the sort of person who could write a marvellous play about simply anything!’ said Valerie, raising admiring eyes to his face.

‘Even guinea-pigs?’ asked Stephen, introducing a discordant note.

The playwright flushed. ‘Very funny!’

Mathilda perceived that Mr Roydon was unused to being laughed at. ‘Let me advise you to pay little if any heed to my cousin Stephen!’ she said.

Stephen never minded what Mathilda said to him; he only grinned; but Joseph, at no time remarkable for tact, brought the saturnine look back to his face by saying: ‘Oh, we all know what an old bear Stephen likes to pretend to be!’

‘God!’ said Stephen, very distinctly.

Paula sprang up, thrusting the hair back from her brow with one of her hasty gestures. ‘That’s what I mean! You’re all of you behaving like this because the house has got you! It’s the tension: something stretching and stretching until it snaps! Stephen’s always worse when he’s here; I’m on edge; Valerie flirts with Willoughby to make Stephen jealous; Uncle Joe’s nervous, saying the wrong thing: not wanting to, but impelled to!’

‘Well, really!’ exclaimed Valerie. ‘I must say!’

‘Let no one think I’m not enjoying myself!’ begged Mathilda. ‘Yule-tide, children, and all that! These old-fashioned Christmases!’

Roydon said thoughtfully: ‘I know what you mean, of course. Personally, I believe profoundly in the influence of environment.’

‘“After which short speech,”’ quoted Stephen, ‘“they all cheered.”’

Joseph clapped his hands. ‘Now, now, now, that’s quite enough! Who says radio?’

‘Yes, let’s!’ begged Valerie. ‘The dance music will be on. Mr Roydon, I just know you’re a dancer!’

Willoughby disclaimed, but was borne off, not entirely unwillingly. He was a little dazzled by Valerie’s beauty, and although a sane voice within him told him that her flattery was inane, he did not find it unpleasant. Paula was a more stimulating companion, but although she admired him, and had an intelligent appreciation of his work, she was apt to be exhausting, and (he sometimes thought) distinctly over-critical. So he went off with Valerie and Joseph, reflecting that even geniuses must have their moments of relaxation.

‘I must say, I don’t blame Uncle Nat for barring your intended, Stephen,’ said Paula fairly.

Stephen did not seem to mind this candid opinion of his taste. He strolled over to the fire, and lowered his long limbs into an armchair. ‘The perfect anodyne,’ he said. ‘By the way, I don’t think your latest pick-up so bloody hot.’

‘Willoughby? Oh, I know, but he’s got genius! I don’t care about anything else. Besides, I’m not in love with him. But what you can see in that brainless doll beats me!’

‘My good girl, what I see in her must be abundantly plain to everyone,’ said Stephen. ‘This playwriting wen of yours sees it too, not to mention Joe, whose tongue is fairly hanging out.’

‘Close-up of the Herriards,’ said Mathilda, lying back in her chair, and lazily regarding brother and sister. ‘Cads, both. Carry on: don’t mind me.’

‘Well, I believe in being honest,’ said Paula. ‘You are a fool, Stephen! She wouldn’t have got engaged to you if she hadn’t thought you’d come in for all Uncle Nat’s money.’

‘I know,’ said Stephen blandly.

‘And if you ask me she came down here with you on purpose to mash Uncle Nat.’

‘I know,’ said Stephen again.

Their eyes met; Stephen’s lips twitched suddenly, and, while Mathilda lay and watched them, he and Paula went off into fits of helpless laughter.

‘You and your Willoughby, and me and my Val!’ gasped Stephen. ‘Oh, lord!’

Paula dried her eyes, instantly sobered by the mention of her playwright. ‘Yes, I know it’s funny, but I’m serious about that, because he really has written a great play, and I’m going to act the lead in it, if it’s the last thing I do. I shall get him to read it aloud to you all tomorrow –’

‘What? Oh, God, be good to me! Not to Uncle as well? Don’t, Paula, it hurts!’

‘When you’ve quite finished,’ said Mathilda, ‘will you explain the exact nature of this treat you have in store for us, Paula? Are you going to read your own part, or is it to be a one-man show?’

‘I shall let Willoughby read nearly all himself. He does it very well. I might do my big scene, perhaps.’

‘And you actually think, my poor, besotted wench, that this intellectual feast is going to soften your Uncle Nat’s heart? Now it’s my turn to enjoy a laugh!’

‘He’s got to back it!’ Paula said fiercely. ‘It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted, and it would be too wickedly cruel not to do it for me!’

‘I will lay you odds you’re in for a disappointment, ducky. I don’t wish to throw a damper on your girlish enthusiasm, but the moment doesn’t seem to me propitious.’

‘It’s all Stephen’s fault for bringing that sickening blonde here!’ Paula said. ‘Anyway, I’ve got Uncle Joe to put in a word for me.’

‘That’ll help a lot,’ mocked Stephen. ‘Just fancy!’

‘Lay off Joe!’ commanded Mathilda. ‘He may be God’s own ass, but he’s the only decent member of your family I’ve ever been privileged to meet. Besides, he likes you.’

‘Well, I don’t like being liked,’ said Stephen.