Тринадцать гостей / Thirteen Guests

© КАРО, 2020

Все права защищены

Chapter I. Completion of the Number

Every station has its special voice. Some are of grit. Some are of sand. Some are of milk cans. Some are of rock muffled by tunnel smoke. Whatever the voice, it speaks to those who know it, sounding a name without pronouncing it; but those who do not know it drowse on, for to them it brings no message, and is merely a noise unilluminated by personal tradition.

The voice of Flensham station is gravelly. The queer softness of it is accentuated by the tunnel and the curve that precede it. The tunnel throbs blackly and the curve grinds metallically, but Flensham follows with a gravelly whisper that is as arresting as a shout. With eyes still closed the familiar traveller sees the neat little platform gliding closer and closer. He sees the lines of equally neat bushes that assist a wooden partition to separate the platform from the road. A notice, warning passengers not to cross the track when a train is standing in the station. A signal, arm slanting downwards. A station-master, large and depressed, fighting the tragedy of Cosmos with a time-table.

Of the two passengers who alighted at Flensham from the 3.28 one Friday afternoon in autumn, only one had an advance vision of these things. She was a lady of about thirty, and Puritans and Victorians would have called her too attractive. Her hair was tinged with bronze. Her nose delighted your thoughts and defied your theories. Her complexion was too perfect. Her frankly ridiculous lips annoyed you because by all the rules of sanity they should have disgusted you, yet they did not.

She had been described by her husband, now lying peacefully in his grave, as one of life’s most glorious risks, and he had consciously taken the risk when he had married her. “Let her tear me to pieces,” he said on his wedding-day. She had done so. She had jolted him from heaven to hell. And he had never reproached her. He had loved her without her make-up, and three hours before he died, during one of her rare moments of repentance—even the worst of us are softened as we watch the sands run out—he had waved her regrets aside. “How can you alter what God made?” he had said. “Some one has to suffer.”

The other passenger was a young man. To him the gravelly music of Flensham station told no story, and for this reason he almost ignored it. The lady was already on the platform, interviewing a liveried chauffeur, before the man realised that the train had stopped.

“Hallo—Flensham!” he exclaimed suddenly.

The train began to move on again. The young man jumped to his feet. On the rack above him was a suitcase. He seized it with one hand, while the other groped for the door-handle. A moment later the suitcase shot out on to the platform. The sight amused the lady, to whom every sensation was meat, but it insulted the large and depressed station-master, to whom every sensation was a menace to routine.

Worse followed. The owner of the suitcase shot out after his belonging, and as he shot out his foot caught in the framework of the door. Now the lady’s amusement changed swiftly to anxiety, and the station-master’s indignation to alarm.

“Quick! Help him!” cried the lady.

The station-master, the chauffeur, and a porter ran forward. The train chugged on. Its late passenger sat on the ground, holding his foot. He had been pale before; he was considerably paler now.

“Hurt, sir?” asked the station-master.

“Of course I’m hurt!” he retorted unreasonably. “Why the hell don’t you show the name of your station in larger letters?” Then he noticed Nadine, and apologised.

“Quite unnecessary,” Nadine answered graciously. This young man was immensely good-looking. He had a smooth, boyish face, and his eyes, though drawn with pain at the moment, held possibilities. “Swear as much as is good for you—and that’s probably a lot.”

He forgot his twinges for a moment. Nadine had the beauty that drugs. Her commanding ease, also, was a consolation, dissolving the oppressions of an unimaginative station-master, a staring porter, and a rather too superior chauffeur.

“Thanks—I’m all right,” he said, and fainted.

“Coo, ’e’s gorn off!” reported the porter.

“Looks like a case for a doctor,” muttered the station-master.

“Definitely,” nodded Nadine.

The chauffeur glanced at her, and read his own thought in her eyes. There was a faint green light in them. It generally came when she was intensely interested. Her husband had called it, anomalously, the red signal.

“Could you get him into the car, Arthur?” she asked.

“Easy,” replied the chauffeur.

“Then, if you don’t mind, I think we’ll stop at a doctor’s on the way.”

“Dr. Pudrow, madam—the same as attends Mrs. Morris. He’s the one.” He turned to the porter. “Give us a hand, Bill. And remember he’s not a trunk.”

The station-master interposed. He himself had been the first to suggest a doctor—he was glad of that—but a certain procedure had to be observed. This was his platform.

“You’d better wait till he comes to,” he said.

“Of course,” agreed Nadine. “We’re not going to abduct him.”

In a few seconds the young man opened his eyes. He now fought humiliation as well as pain.

“Did I go off?” he gasped, momentarily red.

“We all do silly ass things when we can’t help it,” smiled Nadine. “Don’t worry. But I think you ought to see a doctor.”

“She thinks,” reflected the station-master. “Taking it all to herself!”

“Believe you’re right,” murmured the young man. “Something or other seems to have gone wrong with my foot. Could you—send one along?”

“I’m glad you’re keeping your sense of humour.”

“Eh?”

“Why send one along when I can take you along?”

“That’s really frightfully decent of you.”

“Say when you’re ready.”

“Well, if it’s not too much trouble—sooner the better.”

She made a sign to the chauffeur, then turned back to him.

“Grit on to yourself. It mayn’t be nice when they lift you. I know what it’s like—I hunt.”

He closed his eyes, and kept them closed for two very unpleasant minutes. Then he found himself gliding through a land of gentle undulations and russet October hues. Above him the sky was crisp and clear. The tang of autumn was in his nostrils. The sounds of autumn came to him, too. Dogs bayed in the distance. He recognised the quality, and pictured red coats among them. From an opposite direction cracked the report of a gun. Now he pictured a pheasant flashing downwards from the blue dome, to end its short uneasy life in fulfilment of its destiny. Closer at hand were branches as gold as the pheasant’s breast. Closer still was a bronze curl.... His eyes, as they opened, focused on the bronze curl.

But pain intruded. Stags and pheasants were not suffering alone.

“How are you feeling?”

“Not too bad.”

“I expect I’d say the same.” Nadine’s voice was appreciative and sympathetic. “We’ll soon be at the doctor’s.”

It occurred to him that he ought to thank her, but when he began the bronze curl moved a little nearer to him and she placed her hand over his mouth. He rebelled against the pleasure of that momentary contact with her fingers. They were cool, while they warmed. He rebelled because he knew that she was conscious of his pleasure, that she had deliberately produced it. But he did not know that she was conscious, also, of his rebellion. She took her hand away. She had the sporting instinct. She did not fight a man who was down.

“But stags and foxes, eh?” her husband had once taxed her, when she had been forced to point out this virtue to him.

“They’re different,” she had retorted.

“Of course they are,” he agreed. “They don’t start fifty-fifty—and they can never get up again and smack you.”

The conversation had preceded one of their biggest rows.

The Rolls glided on. A small vine-covered house peeped over one of the brown hedges on their left. The sun, nearing the end of its shortened day, sent a low arrow of light into the vines and picked out a brilliant little plate-inscribed: “Dr. L. G. Pudrow, M.D.” The house was less pretentious than the plate, and therefore needed the plate to dignify it. But for the useful illness of a rich old lady and the daily visits this illness imposed, the house might have been even less pretentious. No doctor, however, could visit Bragley Court every morning, and sometimes every afternoon as well, without comfort to his bank-balance, and Dr. Pudrow had found Mrs. Morris a godsend. That was not why he had devoted so much earnest thought and care to the business of keeping the suffering old lady alive.

When the Rolls stopped outside the house, Dr. Pudrow was actually engaged in that rather unchristian occupation. A maid informed the chauffeur that her master was out.

“He’s at your place,” she said. “If you hurries you’ll catch him.”

“Is he coming straight back?” inquired Arthur, with the practical sense of one who has to deal with grit in carburettors.

“No, he’s not,” answered the maid, and added pertly, “he’s got a baby coming at six.”

Arthur considered. It was now eleven minutes to four. He pointed out that the baby was not due for over two hours, but the maid retorted that you never knew, and that the doctor was going right on anyway. “This’ll be No. 8—it’s that Mrs. Trump again,” the maid observed, “I call it disgusting!” She believed in good looks and Marie Stopes.

The chauffeur returned to the car and reported. Nadine looked at the young man. The green glint in her eyes was dancing once more.

“There’s only one way to catch the doctor,” she said. “And there’s only one doctor to catch. He’s attending a patient at Bragley Court—where I happen to be going myself. Shall I take you on there?”

“Why not deposit me here till he returns?” asked the young man. “I mustn’t go on being your responsibility like this.”

Nadine explained the situation. The doctor might be hours before he got back. Some babies were optimistic, and hurried; others showed less anxiety to enter a troubled world.

“Then—would you take me—?” began the young man, and paused.

“Yes? Where?” inquired Nadine.

Obviously, even a man who fell out of a train had some destination beyond the platform. For the sake of the adventure she had delayed referring to it.

“Not sure,” said the young man, and the reply pleased Nadine. The autumn sun was in a very generous mood, and she had no wish to end the adventure. “Isn’t there an inn somewhere?”

Nadine turned to the chauffeur, who was still awaiting instructions.

“Bragley Court, Arthur,” she said, “and don’t worry about speed limits.”

There was always something vaguely personal in her use of the word “Arthur.” It implied no social unbending on her part, and permitted no familiarity on his, but it recognised his existence; almost, his male existence. Now it added two miles to the speedometer.

“Bragley Court doesn’t sound like an inn,” commented the young man wearily. He found he couldn’t fight.

“It certainly isn’t an inn,” answered Nadine. “The only two inns within reasonable distance—as far as I know—are the Black Stag and the Cricketers’ Arms. The Black Stag is by the station. No stag has ever been known there, although I think there is a rumour that years ago one hid behind the bar, but there’s plenty of blackness. It comes from the tunnel. I believe the inn puts up one traveller a year, and never the same traveller. The Cricketers’ Arms is much more lively. That’s why it is even less desirable. All sorts of company. And I’m told the bed, like Venice, is built round seven lumps. I really think, if you went to the Cricketers’ Arms, you might die of it.”

He did his best to smile. Watching him closely, she assured him the smile was not necessary.

“You’re quite understanding,” he said suddenly.

“I know you’re in pain,” she replied. She had to restrain an impish desire to give him a more personal answer. “I was thrown once, and couldn’t listen to a funny story for a week. Does my prattle worry you?”

“No, please go on.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything to go on about. Oh, yes—Bragley Court. We are racing there to catch the doctor before he leaves one patient to go on to another, that’s all.” She laughed. “You are to be sandwiched between old age and youth—an old lady of over seventy, and a baby minus two hours.”

It was true her prattling did not worry him. It helped him wonderfully, for there was a vital quality behind its levity that forced some part of his attention, diverting it from his pain. But he did not quite know how to handle it.

“I hope the old lady is not very ill?” he said rather conventionally.

“She is very ill,” returned Nadine. “She does jig-saws, and is a lesson to everybody. That is, if anybody ever is a lesson to anybody else, which I doubt. I’ve only known two people in my life who could make me feel a pig. She’s one of them.”

“I know what it is,” thought the young man. “She’s so confoundedly natural!” Aloud he asked, “Your mother?”

“It would have been politer to have asked if she were my grandmother! I forgive you. She’s neither. She is our—my hostess’s mother. Bragley Court is the place of the Avelings, you know. Or don’t you know?”

“What! Lord Aveling?” She nodded. “I say—do you think you’d better take me there?”

“Why not? Are you Labour?”

He did not reply at once. He was frowning. In the distance the dogs were barking again. A bird, too fat to emigrate, sent a note of shrill sweetness from a bough. “I have just eaten a worm,” sang the bird. It was happy. The snow was a long way off.

“I don’t know whether you realise what I’m realising,” said the young man seriously, “but I may have to stay a bit where you set me down.”

“That’s exactly why—since you’ve given me no other address—I’m taking you to Bragley Court. I’ve already implied that if I took you to either of the local inns here I might be had up for murder.”

“But—”

“Do you think, if you tried terribly hard, you could stop worrying? If we catch the doctor, let him decide.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then Lord Aveling can decide. And I know his decision in advance, or I wouldn’t risk inviting it.”

“I’m not too sure of that,” said the young man. “You do take risks.”

“Do I?”

“You’ve risked—me!”

“So I have!”

“What makes you think Lord Aveling won’t kick against having a stranger lumped upon him, even temporarily?”

“Three things, my dear man. Is that too familiar? One, Lord Aveling. Conservatives with ambition are splendid hosts. Two, myself. I’ve an instinct—and Lord Aveling likes me, and knows I’d never let him down. Three—isn’t that an old school tie?”

This time he laughed.

“Satisfied?” she laughed back.

“Sounds pretty good,” he admitted.

“Thank God for that,” sighed Nadine. “Because here we are, and there’s no turning back now. By the way, what’s your name?”

Chapter II. Inventory

Half an hour later John Foss, bandaged and stretched out on a rose-coloured settee, reviewed his position.

He had been received at Bragley Court with the utmost ease and courtesy. Indeed, when he realised the vastness of the space in which Lord and Lady Aveling moved, he became a little less anxious over the dislocation he would cause. His advent at the Black Stag or the Cricketers’ Arms might have created a flutter, but Bragley Court gave no outward sign of vulgar emotion. The indoor and outdoor staff numbered twenty-six, and each member had been trained to meet any situation or emergency with smoothness and efficiency. Emotionally there was no difference between passing a toast-rack and conveying a stranger with a crocked ankle from a car to a couch.

Nevertheless, he was conscious that something more important than efficient service had dealt with his arrival and had sanctioned it. He might have been treated courteously as a necessary evil—his sensitive mind would quickly have fathomed that—but instead Lord Aveling had appeared in person while the doctor did unpleasant things to his leg, and had even half-humorously held the end of a bandage for the doctor, thereby proving (as Nadine pointed out later) that he, also, could be influenced by an old school tie.

Then, when the doctor had concluded his task, and had impressed on an elderly woman hovering in the background the necessity of frequent applications of surgical spirit, Lord Aveling had insisted that it would be wise for him to remain on the settee a while longer.

“You won’t be in the way here,” he said. “We can move you to your room later.”

“He will have to be moved very carefully,” commented the doctor.

“Why move him at all?” suggested Nadine. “Why not move the couch? When I missed my fence two years ago, I was rolled for the night into the ante-room.”

“Excellent idea,” agreed Lord Aveling. “Some time after tea.”

“Yes, when the poor man gets tired of being looked at,” smiled Nadine.

Lord Aveling had departed amiably. “The right sort,” ran his thoughts. “Good family, obviously. Interesting. Not many youngsters this week-end. Bultin coming down by next train. Make good paragraph. Yes, Bultin will use it. Another example of Aveling hospitality. Followed by list of guests. Wonder if this was the right week-end for Zena Wilding? And the Chaters? Still, of course, I had to have the Chaters.... Pity this young chap makes the thirteenth....”

But welcome alone did not reign in the spacious lounge-hall that glowed in the late afternoon sunshine and flickered in the light of an enormous log-fire. Something brooded as well. The shadows seemed to contain uneasy secrets, and none of the people John had so far met reflected complete mental ease. Lady Aveling, when she had momentarily deserted a card-table in the drawing-room for a kindly peep at the casualty, had appeared nervously anxious to get back again. Two guests—a thin, angular, cynical man in a black velvet coat and large artist’s tie, and a short, stout, grey-haired man of the retired-pork-butcher-and-made-a-damn-lot-out-of-it type (he had made a cool hundred thousand out of it, which alone explained his presence here)—struck a vaguely jarring note when they passed through the hall together. The elderly woman deputed to apply surgical spirit at intervals had been grim. A pretty maid on her way up the carved staircase with a tray had been flushed. A butler had followed her to the stairs, and then turned round and vanished.

“Something’s wrong,” reflected John. “What is it?”

He wondered whether the two new people who were just entering the hall would continue the impression.

They were a man and a girl in riding kit, and they bore the dust and atmosphere of hard going. The girl’s cheeks were tingling from her ride, and she instinctively brushed her hand across her forehead as she entered, as though to sweep away the sudden fuggy warmth of the blazing logs. She was beautiful, in a slim boyish way, and although she looked well in her dark green riding habit, a stranger longed instinctively to see her in more definitely feminine attire. It was odd that a certain hardness around her mouth, a hardness held there by the set of her lips, did not detract from her beauty. Possibly because one could not quite believe it.

The man, large and well-built, reminded you pleasantly of cricket, which in fact he played.

“Half-past four,” said the girl, glancing at a clock on her way to the wide staircase.

“Does that mean tea in your room?” inquired the man, pausing to light a cigarette.

“No, I’ll be down,” she replied. “But the bath comes first. These things are sticking to me.”

The settee on which John lay was fitted into a shadowed angle of the wall. The sun was slipping down behind a distant wood, preluding quick gloaming, and a servant entered the lounge-hall and switched on lights. The girl at the foot of the staircase turned her head and saw the patient.

John endured an awkward moment. It occurred to him that perhaps, after all, the routine of Bragley Court had its little flaws. It should have protected him against the necessity of explaining himself. Yet it was unreasonable to expect some one to be in perpetual attendance on him, and even Lord Aveling’s generously-planned staff did not run to a Cook’s guide. So, after enduring the girl’s curious scrutiny for a moment or two, he remarked bluntly:

“I’ve had an accident, and Lord Aveling’s been good enough to give me temporary shelter.”

“Bad luck,” said the man. “Not riding, was it?”

“No—a prosaic train. I jumped out while it was moving, and it tried to take my foot on to the next station.”

The man smiled, and held out his case.

“Have one?” he invited. “We smoke anywhere. Reassure him, Anne.”

The girl advanced with a little nod.

“Of course—quite in order,” she said. “I am Lord Aveling’s daughter. And this is Mr. Harold Taverley.”

“Thanks awfully,” answered John. The momentary awkwardness created by these two had vanished very quickly. “It does help knowing! Mine’s John Foss. And my whole object in life just now is not to be a confounded nuisance. Please don’t delay that bath.”

Anne laughed. Her mouth lost its hardness. She turned and ran upstairs. But her companion lingered.

“Don’t you feel sticky?” asked John.

“Oh, I’ve got a few minutes,” replied Taverley. He had a clear, full voice, but rarely raised it. The retired Pork King could only make his carry when he shouted. “I suppose there’s nothing I can do?”

“Well—yes, there is,” said John impulsively. This was the kind of fellow you could talk to. “I’d like to know something about the people here. One feels such a fool, you know. Rather like a monkey in a zoo.”

“I know,” smiled Taverley. “That is, if monkeys really do feel like that.” He squatted on a stool. “I suppose you’ll be staying a bit?”

“There’s been some talk of rolling me into an ante-room for the night. Everybody’s frightfully decent.”

“The ante-room? That’s where—” He paused. “Well, let’s run over the inventory. Who’ve you seen so far?”

“Lord Aveling.”

“He’s easy. Fifth baron. Hopes to be first marquis or earl. Conservative. I hope politics don’t make you feel suicidal?”

“One has to bear them; but I’m not particularly interested.”

“Just as well. You’ll be able to keep out of arguments. Have you seen Lady Aveling?” John nodded. “She needn’t worry you. She follows her husband’s lead. The daughter you’ve just met. The Honourable Anne. Keen on horses. Hunting people here, you know. And golfing. Private course. Anne can drive two hundred.”

“I like her,” said John.

“She’s O.K.” Taverley paused for an instant, then added: “She liked you.”

“You made up your mind quickly!”

“So did she about that. So did you. Well, let’s finish the family. There’s only one more.”

“The son?”

“No. That’s the disappointment. Lady Aveling’s mother. Mrs. Morris. You’re not the only invalid in the house. But you won’t see Mrs. Morris—she sticks to her room!”

At that moment Mrs. Morris was lying two floors above, propped up on pillows, in an ecstasy of joy. She was almost free from grinding pain. The world was very good....

“Fine old lady,” said Taverley. “Example to the lot of us. Right. Now for the guests. Who have you seen of those?”

“A lady brought me here.”

“Rather large and stout? Impressive glasses?”

“My God, no!”

“Would ‘distracting’ be the adjective?”

“I can’t think of a better,” agreed John, fighting an annoying moment of self-consciousness.

“That sounds like Nadine Leveridge. I heard she was coming on the 3.28. Was that your train? The one that tried to pull you to bits?”

“Yes. And Leveridge was the name.”

“Our attractive widow. Susceptible people need to keep out of her way. She can break hearts while she passes.”

“That almost sounds like advice,” said John.

“Well, if it is, it’s good advice,” parried Taverley unrepentantly. “That kind of woman can put a man through hell. Make pulp of his will-power. And—what’s the use?”

“I see you don’t like her.”

“You’re wrong, Foss. I like her immensely. What’s a woman to do with her beauty? Scrap it? One sticks to oneself. I like her, and I liked her husband. He and I played cricket together. He used to tell me that the only moment he could forget Nadine was when he brought off a leg-glide. There’s something about a leg-glide. Then only he got perfect peace. After he’d passed through a particularly difficult time you could always bowl Leveridge l.b.w.—he would try for that leg-glide. Even with the ball on the off-stump.”