“And where is my wife, may I ask?” said a pleasant, masculine voice from the doorway of the drawing room.
Mrs. Winton had a mouthful of scone and strawberry jam and could only stare wildly at the Marquess of Torrance in dumb silence. Miss Hammond sailed forward like a tweedy galleon.
“Annie must be somewhere around,” she said brightly.
“Annie? You mean my wife, Lady Torrance?”
“Yes. You must not think me presumptuous, my lord, but dear Annie simply begged me to call her by her Christian name.”
The marquess leaned one broad shoulder against the doorway and smiled benignly at the room full of women.
For some reason they all found themselves becoming ruffled and uncomfortable.
Mrs. Winton succeeded in gulping down her scone. “Lady Torrance was here a moment ago,” she said, peering around hopefully. Everyone began to look around in a ludicrous way as if the Marchioness of Torrance were a missing handbag.
“Then,” pursued the marquess, “since you cannot produce my wife, perhaps you can enlighten me as to why so many of you delightful ladies have called for tea.”
“It’s a meeting. We’re organizing a ball to raise funds to support the Vote for Women movement,” volunteered Mrs. Winton, after a short silence in which no one spoke.
“And it was my wife’s idea?”
“Well, no,” blustered Miss Hammond. “I asked dear Ann—Lady Torrance if we could use her house and she said we could. Of course, she is a devoted supporter.”
“Obviously a strong feminist,” said the marquess sweetly, “since my house has become not ‘our’ house but her house.”
“Oh, your lordship will have your little joke.”
“Yes, I will, won’t I. Ah, Shaw-Bufford! Have you just arrived?”
The chancellor had been trying to glide silently through the hall behind the marquess’s back, but somehow the marquess, in some peculiar way, had seemed to sense he was there without turning his head.
He came to stand beside the marquess in the open door-way.
“Perhaps you can tell me the whereabouts of my wife?” asked the marquess.
“I was talking to her a little moment ago. I sent her to fetch Miss Hammond and bring her to see me in the study. I…” His voice trailed off under the marquess’s look of bland surprise.
“Then perhaps you sent her scurrying off on another little errand? Dear me. Is it the servants’ day off by any chance? No, it can’t be. I quite distinctly see several of them at least, ministering to all your needs.”
“My lord, I—”
“So I suppose I had better look for her myself.” The marquess ambled off after bestowing another sweet smile on all and sundry.
There was an awkward silence. Mr. Shaw-Bufford collected his hat, cane, and long gray coat with the astrakhan collar. Two little spots of color burned on his cheeks. He could never understand why such a useless dilettante as the Marquess of Torrance always contrived to make him feel ridiculous.
Annie, tossing and turning on her bed in the throes of a fever, felt a cool hand laid on her brow. It was taken away to be replaced by a cloth soaked in iced water and cologne.
“Oh, that’s very good, Barton,” she mumbled, only to be answered by a masculine voice saying gently, “The doctor will be here soon. Try to lie still.”
“Jasper!” she said, reaching out and clutching his sleeve. “Where are you?”
“I’m here.”
“Don’t go away!”
“I won’t. Be still.”
Annie fell into, a feverish dream in which Mr. Shaw-Bufford was chasing Miss Hammond through the maze at Hampton Court. “I shan’t be caught,” Miss Hammond was crying. “I shall be a martyr instead.”
Then she awoke to the murmur of masculine voices, a Scottish one—the doctor?—saying, “Her ladyship has the influenza, my lord. I will go myself to the chemist’s and have her medicine made up and return with it directly.”
And then Annie plunged back into tortured dreams.
For the next forty-eight hours, it was hard for Annie to separate her dreams from reality. At one time it seemed as if Marigold was in the room, looking down at her with bright, malicious eyes. Marigold was saying shrilly, “Are you sure she is really ill? She would always do anything to get attention.”
And her husband’s voice replying, “Please leave my house and don’t dare come back until you are invited.”
And sometime later a pleasant sensation of strong hands lifting her into a warm, scented bath, rubbing her down with a fleecy towel, carrying her back to bed again.
And then it seemed, at last, as if she awoke properly. Her head was clear and everything in the room looked sharp and new.
Her husband was sleeping in a chair beside the embers of the fire. He was unshaven and wrapped in his dressing gown.
She lay quietly studying his face. It was much stronger than it usually seemed, devoid as it was in sleep of its indolent charm. The mouth was set in a firm line. Two grooves of weariness were etched from his nostrils down each side of his mouth. His hair was tousled, one thick lock falling over his forehead.
Annie tried to think that his vigil by her bedside was a sign of love but could not bring herself to believe it. She was sure he would also sit up all night in the stables if his favorite horse were sick. And on that cynical thought she fell asleep again, awaking again when the sun was high in the sky.
There was no sign of her husband. The fire was blazing cheerfully, the hearth had been swept, and the curtains pulled back. Great white castles of clouds were being tugged across a chill, blue sky. Of her husband, there was no sign. Annie began to wonder if she had imagined the whole thing.
Barton came in quickly and exclaimed on seeing her mistress awake. “We were very worried about you, my lady,” said the maid, coming forward to straighten the pillows behind Annie’s head. “Thank the Lord the fever has gone. There’s a epidemic of that nasty influenza all over London. People are dropping like flies. I told the master he should hire a nurse, but he insisted on doing all the work himself.”
“He did? I didn’t dream it?”
“No, my lady. He only went off to get some sleep when he found your fever had gone down. Everyone in London seems to have called, but he wouldn’t let anyone see you. Lady Marigold came straight up one day when he was out of the room for a moment, and he was so angry when he found her here.”
“I seem to remember something about it,” said Annie.
“Mr. Shaw-Bufford called as well,” said Barton. “He said to remind your ladyship that you had an engagement on Wednesday. I didn’t tell his lordship, for I was sure he would be annoyed. It was thoughtless of Mr. Shaw-Bufford when you are so ill.”
Annie flushed guiltily, suddenly remembering with awful clarity her promise to give the chancellor money.
The door opened and her husband strolled in. She searched his face for some sign of love, but his eyes held a strangely guarded look. He sat down on the edge of the bed and studied her face.
“I’m glad to see you well, my dear,” he said. “The doctor says you are to continue taking your medicine for the rest of the week and you are to rest in bed. He will be along to see you this afternoon. You gave us quite a fright. When I arrived home I found the house full of chattering women and the chancellor of the exchequer making free with my study.
“It puzzles me that Shaw-Bufford should champion women’s rights. I would have said that the only thing that man believed in intensely was the advancement of Shaw-Bufford.”
Annie avoided his gaze and plucked nervously at the satin quilt. Barton left the room.
“Now what is worrying you?” teased the marquess. “You have two little lines right in the middle of your forehead.”
“I was wondering if I had any money of my own,” said Annie, still not meeting his eyes.
There was a little silence. Then the marquess said lightly, “Did I not tell you? Your father deposited a great deal in a private account for you. He wrote to me only the other day about it, but you were too ill to receive the news. Certainly, it’s yours… as my money is yours.”
It was on the tip of Annie’s tongue to say that she believed he hadn’t any. Instead she said, “Do you have access to my money?”
“No,” he said, looking at her steadily, “which is a pity since I have already dissipated your dowry in riotous living. I assume that is what you expect to hear?”
“Yes… I mean, no… I mean… Oh, what would you do if someone asked you for a large sum of money for a certain organization?”
“If I believed in what the organization was doing and I thought they genuinely needed the money, and if I could afford it, then I would certainly give them a check. Them. Not he or she, if you take my meaning. I would take the precaution of making the check out in the name of the organization and not to the individual who asked for it.”
“But if it was someone in a high position, someone in a national position of trust…? What if, say. King Edward asked you for money for a certain charity?”
“Then I would most definitely insist that the check be made out to the charity,” replied the marquess, his eyes crinkling up with laughter.
“Oh.” Annie digested this in silence. Then she remembered that Barton had said that Marigold had called. And she also remembered Marigold looking down at her, but it still all seemed part of a fevered dream. And had he meant all that about having spent her dowry on riotous living?
“Barton says Marigold called,” she said. “When is she getting married?”
“I neither know nor care.”
Annie smiled. “So you were only teasing me…?”
“About what, my love?”
Annie blushed. “About wanting me to have a baby before Marigold.”
“Well, according to your father, if Marigold has a son, the child will be the heir to the title and fortune since Marigold is the eldest. I felt quite depressed when I heard the news. But, ah well, one can’t compete with Marigold forever.”
So he didn’t love her. How that thought pierced Annie’s heart. Her pain made her lash out. “It’s just not fair,” she said. “No matter what I do, she always seems to win.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. Was it her imagination or was there a certain hint of ice in his blue eyes? But the next second he was smiling amiably down at her. He yawned and stretched. “Well, my dear,” he said, rising from the bed, “I am glad you are better. I can now toddle off and frivol about London in my usual manner.”
“With Miss S.?” said Annie, bitterly.
“Unfortunately, she is still in Paris. Perhaps I shall send her a wire…” And with that, he strolled out of the room.
Annie lay, staring out at the cold sky and aching with misery. For the rest of the day, she tortured herself with pictures of her husband walking about London with some pretty charmer or another on his arm. She pictured Marigold’s false pity.
In her mind, her husband slowly turned into an evil and depraved monster, and by evening she had conjured up such a Frankenstein that it was something of a shock when the marquess ambled into the room looking very much his usual handsome self.
“What do you want?” said Annie harshly.
“I’ve come to read to you,” he answered mildly, settling himself down in the armchair in front of the fire.
“I don’t want be read to,” said Annie pettishly. “My head aches.”
“Then you will find my voice very soothing,” he said imperturbably.
He began to read while Annie lay and seethed with fury. At first she was so angry that she could not hear the words, but after some time, despite herself, she began to listen. He had chosen Surtees’s Handley Cross, and Annie’s attention was caught by the mad antics of that famous huntsman, Mr. Jorrocks. The marquess read in a rather flat, soothing voice. From time to time Annie would remember her hurt and open her mouth to say something wounding, but somehow she found she could not and began to listen to the story again.
She had just decided that as soon as he finished the next chapter she would tell him what she really thought of him, when all at once it was morning again and she had slept the whole night through.
After that he ambled in and out of her room for the next two days, sometimes chatting to her, sometimes reading to her, always ignoring the blazing hurt and fury in her wide eyes.
Mr. Shaw-Bufford had sent flowers daily; Miss Hammond had sent a large box of chocolates. Marigold contented herself by sending Annie a letter, sympathizing with her sister for having such a tyrannical beast of a husband. Annie sent a letter to Mr. Shaw-Bufford thanking him for the flowers and regretting that she would be unable to see him until she was feeling better.
And then, just as she was feeling fully recovered, just as she was beginning to thaw toward her infuriating husband, just as her slowly maturing brain was beginning to tell her that a man did not spend his days waiting on his wife unless he felt something for her, she received a note from him saying that he had gone back to the country.
He begged her to forgive him. He pointed out that the matter was urgent. One of his tenants had been arrested for murder. He had killed another man in a drunken brawl. Although he was undoubtedly guilty, arrangements had to be made for the welfare of his wife and children.
Annie did not believe a word of it.
All at once, it was not Marigold she wished revenge on; it was her husband. She had an intensely feminine longing to play his game and see how he liked it.
Her mind shrank from the idea of actually having an affair with anyone. But somehow she was sure she could arrange things so that her husband would think that she had fallen in love.
Annie was resting on the sofa in the morning room the day after her husband had left when Mr. Shaw-Bufford was announced.
She toyed with the idea of starting to flirt with the chancellor in order to make her husband jealous and then dismissed it, knowing instinctively that Mr. Shaw-Bufford was the last man to make her husband jealous.
The chancellor came in, wreathed in smiles and flowers. Annie gave his present of a handsome bunch of chrysanthemums to a housemaid to put in a vase and thanked him prettily for all his bouquets and messages.
He told her that the arrangements for the ball were going ahead. It would be held in a week’s time at Mrs. Winton’s and practically the whole of London society had paid for tickets.
“That’s very gratifying,” said Annie, surprised. “I did not think so many members of society would be interested in women getting the vote.”
“They aren’t,” said the chancellor. “We simply told them it was in aid of ‘Women of the World,’ which sounds vague enough to be reassuring.”
“Isn’t that dishonest?” asked Annie. “I mean, shouldn’t you tell them what the ball is really in aid of?”
“Why?” he said baldly. “They wouldn’t come if they knew exactly what it was in aid of.”
“Bur Mrs. Winton…?”
“Mrs. Winton has already forgotten.”
“Does anybody believe in anything?” said Annie.
“Of course,” he replied, hitching his chair a little closer. “We do, Lady Torrance, but we are diplomats. Diplomats! People of our intelligence know that the end justifies the means.”
“I don’t think I believe that exactly,” said Annie.
He patted her hand. “Then you must trust me to believe it for you. May I remind you that you were gracious enough to offer to donate a little something?”
Despite her embarrassment, Annie could not help saying, “Ten thousand pounds is not a ‘little something.’”
“Ha! Ha! No, of course not, but, however, you…”
“What is the name of Miss Hammond’s society?” interrupted Annie, rising and going over to a desk in the corner. “I mean, what is it really called now?”
“I believe ‘Women’s Rights, The Vote, and Feminine Equality.’”
“Dear me. I hope all that will fit on to one line of the checkbook.”
“There is no need for that.” Mr. Shaw-Bufford smiled. “Simply make out the check to me, and I will see the funds are given to the society.”
“No, I couldn’t do that,” said Annie, stubbornly. “My husband told me never to give money to an individual, always to a society.”
“Lady Torrance! That sounds just as if you didn’t trust me!”
Annie bit her lip. She could not forget how her husband had asked her whether Shaw-Bufford had approached her for money, and when she had told him that the chancellor had not, the marquess had calmly replied, “He will.”
“Why can’t I just make the check out to the society?” she asked.
“Because they do not have a banking account in their name yet.”
“Then what are they going to do with the money from the ball if they can’t bank it?”
“The money will be handed to me. I will put it into a separate account so that Miss Hammond and her supporters may draw on it whenever they wish.”
Annie looked very young and feminine in a long tea gown of blond lace. She picked up the checkbook, and Mr. Shaw-Bufford smiled his encouragement.
“I think I should explain something,” said Annie, with the open candor of a child. Only her husband would have recognized that look as being a preliminary to a whopping lie.
“I haven’t any money of my own. So this would be my husband’s money and he’s bound to ask questions.”
“You surely did not tell your husband…?”
“Oh, no,” said Annie gently. “I only discussed the matter with him in general terms. He told me I must never give a check to an individual who was asking for money for some society but only to the society itself. So perhaps if you would like to ask him…?”
“But you are a wealthy heiress!” exclaimed the chancellor.
“I’m afraid not.” Annie sighed. “Poor papa. He thought he had been left a fortune, but the legacy turned out to be only a few hundred pounds, which, of course, he is keeping for himself. But my husband…”
“I have been shamefully misled,” said the chancellor stiffly.
“Indeed, Mr. Shaw-Bufford,” said Annie coldly. “I thought we were friends.”
“But you led me to believe you were an heiress.”
“I was led to believe I was an heiress,” said Annie sweetly. “Now I find I am completely dependent on my husband for every penny. I am doing my best to help you, Mr. Shaw-Bufford. If there is nothing, er, about your request for money that is strange, then I do not see why you do not ask my husband. You will find him extremely sympathetic toward the feminist movement.”
“In that case, let us forget about the whole thing,” said Mr. Shaw-Bufford sourly.
“Will you stay for tea?” Annie stretched a hand out toward the bell.
“No,” he said harshly. “I have another appointment.”
“Then I shall see you at the ball,” replied Annie.
Mr. Shaw-Bufford hesitated in the doorway. “Since I have no intention of approaching your husband for the money, Lady Torrance, I beg you to keep the matter a secret between us.”
“Of course,” said Annie, opening her eyes very wide.
“Then good day to you, my lady.”
After he had gone, Annie sat down, feeling a bit weak in the knees. Marigold, she felt, would never have got herself into such a ridiculous situation as turning down the chancellor of the exchequer. Then it began to strike her as amusing that the chancellor of the exchequer should try to borrow money from her. And then, after her amusement, she began to wonder seriously why the chancellor of the exchequer should be in need of money.
After turning this problem over and over in her mind and finding no solution, she began to think of ways to show her husband that she did not care for him.
And then she had a splendid idea. She would flirt with Harry Bellamy, Marigold’s fiancé, and that way she would be revenged on two birds, Marigold and her husband.
Annie was still very young. She had not realized that she was deeply in love with her husband. She had not realized that Marigold was not worth the trouble.
Annie felt small and humiliated and alone in a hostile world. Her cold, aloof mother was of no help. Miss Winter appeared to have forgotten about her niece as soon as the marriage ceremony was over. Perhaps if she had had intimate friends to talk to, it might have made her life easier. But the society women she took tea with and chatted to at balls and parties were the kind that Annie knew instinctively would betray a confidence at the first possible opportunity. She never stopped to consider that her choice of friends was unfortunate. Her experience with women—her mother, her nanny, her governess, her sister, and her aunt—had made her think that the whole human race consisted of hanging judges.
So she bitterly turned her plan of revenge over in her head and saw nothing wrong with it.
To Annie it seemed as if everything was going her way.
Her husband had returned from the country in time to escort her to the ball, and Marigold and Harry Bellamy were to be present at it.
The marquess did not return until the morning of the day of the ball and seemed almost surprised by the enthusiastic reception he received from his wife. Annie had been frightened that he would be delayed and that her marvelous plan would have to be left until another time.
The day was foggy. It started with a thin fog in the morning, with a little red disk of a sun moving above it. Then in the afternoon it turned from gray to a thick, blackish yellow, and by evening it was a regular “pea souper.” It was a freezing fog, too, riming the railings and pavements with hoarfrost.
The fog added to Annie’s feelings of excitement and anticipation: the bitter, smoky, autumn smell of it; the feeling of secrecy in the veiled streets outside.
Carriage lights flickered like fireflies through the gloom of the square outside as the fog swayed and thinned a little before thickening again and pressing against the window-panes.
Fog had crept into the house in St. James’s Square and lay in thick strata across the hall as Annie descended the staircase with Barton behind her carrying her evening cloak.
She was wearing a mauve silk evening skirt that rustled as she walked. Her blouse was of paler mauve lace, cut low over the bosom, and with pagoda sleeves. Around her neck she wore a thin band of black velvet holding her locket. Her fine, silky red hair had been dressed in a new style, gently waved over her brow and dressed in a chignon at the back and threaded with white silk flowers that were shaded at the edges with violet.
The door of the drawing room opened and her husband came out to meet her. Annie felt a queer little pain at her heart. She had forgotten how superb he looked in evening dress, with the gleaming white of his shirt setting off his handsome, tanned face.
His eyes had a strangely hooded look as he watched her descend. Annie waited for him to compliment her on her appearance, but he remained silent, merely taking her heavy black evening cloak trimmed with ermine and putting it about her shoulders. Did his hands remain on her shoulders for longer than was necessary?
But the next minute he was being helped into his own coat by Perkins and putting his tall silk hat on his head. The diamond studs on his shirtfront sparkled and flashed fire like the frost on the pavement outside.
He helped her into the brougham, then raised the trap in the roof with his cane and called to the coachman, “Do you think you can find your way? It’s a filthy night!”
“Think I’ll manage all right, m’lord,” came the coachman’s voice. “I’ll take her nice and slow.”
The marquess settled back against the leather upholstery as the coach began to edge its way through the fog-shrouded streets.
He pulled his coat tightly across his shirt. “Otherwise it will be filthy before we get there,” he said as if answering a question. And then, in the same tone of voice, he went on, “It’s a mercy that our prime minister is still alive! Certainly if Mrs. Winton had not changed the name of the society to Women of the World, I am sure that, in the circumstances, the ball would have to be canceled. As it is…”
“What happened? I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about?”
“Jimmy Macleod, our prime minister, was nearly killed today.” The marquess’s voice came out of the darkness of the carriage. “Some woman shot at him as he left the House. His papers had slipped from the seat of his carriage, so he bent down to pick them up. As he did so, a bullet whizzed over his head and buried itself in the upholstery.
“Whoever fired at him was an expert marksman—or markswoman rather. If he had not bent over at that precise moment, he would most certainly have been killed.”
“Did they catch the woman?”
“No,” said the marquess. “She escaped into the thick fog. A man saw her briefly. All he could say was that she was heavy-set and heavily veiled. She was carrying a rifle, which she thrust under her coat. You may not find your friend Miss Hammond at the ball tonight. The police are rounding up all the militant feminists in London.”
“Well, it can be nothing to do with Miss Hammond,” said Annie. “She’s in such a tizzy about the ball. And—and… she’s one of those women who really only talks. I think perhaps she’s a teensy bit mad.”
“Of course Shaw-Bufford must be a very disappointed man,” said the marquess.
“Why?”
“Well, if Mr. Macleod had been killed, then Shaw-Bufford would have been the natural successor.”
“Oh, I’m sure you are too hard on him,” said Annie quickly. “He never struck me as being particularly ambitious.”
“You’re lying, my sweet,” said her husband lazily.
“Don’t be rude,” snapped Annie. “By the way, what made you think the chancellor would ask me for money?”
“Because he needs a great deal of it in case he does not realize his ambition of becoming prime minister. It takes a lot of money to buy a peerage.”
“But if he’s ambitious and he’s in the Commons, what can he possibly want with a peerage? It would be the end of his political career.”
“In the Commons, yes. But what about the House of Lords?”
Annie shivered. “You make Mr. Shaw-Bufford sound quite sinister.”
“How much did he ask you for?” came her husband’s lazy voice.
“He didn’t ask me for anything.” Unfortunately, Annie, like most young girls who have been made to feel guilty all their young lives, was a spontaneous liar. She felt that she should never have agreed to give the chancellor money in the first place. She forgot that she had been ill and not in full possession of her wits at the time.
There was a silence. She was grateful that he could not see her face since the light from the carriage lamps was unable to penetrate the thickness of the fog. But, somehow, in the darkness, she fancied she could feel his brain searching hers, his sensitive antennae picking up her tension.
For one dreadful moment she sensed that he did not believe her, that he was about to say something.
But all he said was, “I wonder if we’ll ever get there. This is the filthiest fog I can remember.”
The fog became diffused with a yellow glare. They must be passing under the electric lights at Marble Arch. Then darkness descended again and the carriage began to move more rapidly.
Once again the marquess raised the trap.
“How is the going, John?” he called.
“Easier, my lord,” came the coachman’s voice over the rumble of the wheels. “Soon be there.”
The Wintons’ house was in Queens Gate. It was actually three houses knocked into one. The Wintons were very rich.
Fog had permeated the building so that despite the blazing fires, hundreds of candles, and banks of flowers, it was a bit like looking at a painting by Pissarro in reverse. Objects close up were distinct. A little distance away, however, and it was as if you were looking at them through gauze.
Two huge Indians in turbans waved enormous peacock fans back and forth at the entrance to the ballroom, but all their efforts did was to circulate the fog rather than to disperse it.
Annie had one dance with her husband, trying not to be seduced by thoughts of more intimate caresses conjured up by his nearness. For she had seen Harry Bellamy and was wondering how to make her move.
To her surprise, Harry Bellamy asked her for the next dance. He had been in the habit of dancing only with Marigold.
But after they had taken a few steps, his motives became clear. “Y’know,” he said anxiously, “I felt the best thing, don’t you know, was to ask you for a dance. Everyone’s talking about that to-do in the park. ’Course I told them, I said, it’s just a little tiff between sisters. Nothing to it, I said.”
Annie turned a glowing face up to his. “Oh, Mr. Bellamy.” She sighed. “How clever you are. How diplomatic! Marigold is such a lucky girl.”
“Well, I say, that’s dashed decent of you. I thought it was the right move m’self, but Marigold called me a fool.”
“She must be joking,” said Annie, bringing her long eyelashes into play. “No one could ever take you for a fool, Mr. Bellamy. Oh!”
“What’s the matter?” said Harry Bellamy, anxiously, as Annie stumbled and clung to him.
“My ankle,” said Annie, with a brave smile. “I twisted my ankle.”
“I shall fetch your husband…”
“Oh, no, don’t do that. If you could lead me to some anteroom where I could rest for a moment… I don’t think it’s too bad. And I would like an opportunity to ask your advice.”
“I say,” said Mr. Bellamy, fingering his moustache, “if you’re sure it’s all right…”
He placed an arm around her waist and led her from the ballroom. Marigold danced by with her partner and watched them leave, a look of shock on her face.
There was a small morning room on the ground floor, and it was there that Mr. Bellamy led Annie. He seemed to know the Wintons’ house quite well.
Annie, who had not hurt her ankle at all, of course, tried to remember to limp on the same foot but found herself alternating from the left to the right. As they reached the door of the morning room, Annie heard someone calling her name and bit her lip in vexation. Miss Mary Hammond came sailing up. Her large face looked very white.
“Have you seen Mr. Shaw-Bufford, Annie?” she panted.
“No, I have not,” said Annie crossly. “If he is anywhere, it will be in the ballroom with the rest of the guests.”
“I’ll look again,” said Miss Hammond. “Annie, I wonder if I could speak to you for a moment. I… well, I’m most awfully frightened and worried, and I don’t know what to do.”
Annie could not think of anyone as large as Miss Hammond being frightened. All she saw was an end to her plan to revenge on Marigold and her husband if she stayed to chat.
“I can’t,” she said. “Mary, I have wrenched my ankle and must rest it. Also I want to speak to Mr. Bellamy. I shall see you as soon as I can.”
There was a step somewhere on the landing above, and Miss Hammond turned even whiter. She threw an anguished look at Annie, hesitated, and then hurried off.
“You know, I think that woman’s mad,” said Mr. Bellamy.
“Yes,” agreed Annie, allowing him to lead her into the morning room.
Fog lay in long bands across the room. The air was musty and chilly.
They sat down on a small gilt sofa in front of the empty fireplace.
Annie, with well-feigned impulsiveness, took Mr. Bellamy’s hands in her own and gazed intently up into his face while trying to think of a problem urgent enough to justify taking him away from the ballroom. All at once she thought she had it.
“I feel this ball is a sham, Mr. Bellamy,” she said.
“Oh, I say,” said Mr. Bellamy, fingering his waxed moustache.
“Yes. They say it’s to raise funds for Women of the World, but it’s really to raise funds for a society called Women’s Rights, The Vote, and Feminine Equality.”
“What! That’s disgraceful,” said Mr. Bellamy, roused to rare animation. “I say, the whole pack of ’em ought to be arrested. Particularly after nearly killing poor Macleod. Women get the vote. Ridiculous!”
Annie felt like striking him, felt like howling that there was absolutely nothing wrong in women getting a say in the running of the country, but instead she said meekly, “What should I do?”
She gazed up at him with shining eyes, leaning very close to him. She was wearing the perfume her husband had given her, being unable to keep the bottle stoppered any longer. Its exotic scent curled about Mr. Bellamy’s pink ears. He looked down at her and grasped her hands more tightly, his rather prominent eyes beginning to bulge.
“Leave it to me,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll have a little word in Tommy Winton’s ear. I mean, we shouldn’t encourage these women. This could lead to anarchy. Anarchy! Little ladies like yourself should leave it to us strong men to handle things for you. You were very right to come to me. By Jove, I say, your eyes are awfully beautiful…”
He suddenly seized her in his arms and planted a wet kiss on her mouth just as the door opened.
The guilty couple released each other and swung around.
The marquess and Marigold stood on the threshold. The marquess looked calm and amused. But Marigold’s eyes were wide with a mixture of fear and anger. She looked much younger than Annie at that moment, younger and lost and vulnerable. All at once, Annie realized how very badly she was behaving.
Marigold would have rushed forward, but the marquess held her back with a gentle hand on her arm.
“We were looking all over for you,” he said lightly.
“Your partners are languishing upstairs, my love.”
“I—I sprained my ankle,” said Annie wildly. “Mr. Bellamy brought me here so that I could rest it.”
“How very kind of him,” said the marquess. “But you really must not neglect your fiancée, Bellamy. My wife has me to look after her, you know. I shall have a little talk with you about that afterwards.” Mr. Bellamy visibly cringed although the marquess’s voice was as good-natured as ever. “Run along with Lady Marigold. You’re missing all the fun.”
For once Marigold was speechless. Harry Bellamy went over and took her arm, and she looked up at him with an odd, beseeching look.
The door closed behind them, leaving Annie and the marquess alone.
“We will give them a few moments to get back to the ballroom and then we will talk,” said the marquess.
“I had better get back as well…”
“Oh, but you can’t, my love. Not with your poor sprained ankle. Come with me!”
Annie opened her mouth to protest, shut it again, and took the arm he was holding out to her.
“I wish you would make up your mind which ankle it was you sprained,” he said as he led her across the vast, deserted entrance hall. “You are limping on one foot and then the other.”
“I think I sprained both,” said Annie wretchedly, wondering why it was that one lie always led to a whole regiment of lies.
“I think you have sprained your brain. In here.”
He pushed open the door of the Wintons’ library. A fire was burning brightly in the hearth. Gaslight hissed quietly in the brackets over the mantel. Books that looked as if they had never been opened stood in serried ranks behind the glass fronts of the cases.
“Now,” said her husband, turning to face her. His smiling mask had dropped and he looked very grim indeed. “Explain yourself!”
“I did,” said Annie miserably. “I sprained my ankle… ankles… and Harry Bellamy took me away to rest a little. I saw nothing wrong in it. He is soon to be my brother-in-law.”
“It seemed to me as if you were trying to make sure he would never be your brother-in-law but your lover instead.”
“Why should you care?” Annie flashed back. “You and your fancy women!”
“Yes, me and my fancy women. Well, my dear, I manage not to disgrace you by kissing them in public. You simply got that poor sap, Bellamy, all roused up in order to make Marigold jealous. Is there no end to your jealousy? Or perhaps you would rather have married an idiot like Bellamy?”
“At least he would have been faithful to me.”
“I think we should get one thing clear,” said the marquess, coming to stand over her. “I, my dear, have certainly not led a celibate life. But I have at least been faithful to you since the day I married you.”
“Pooh! Balderdash and tommyrot! What about the seductive Miss S.?”
“An old love. I met her in Paris and walked her down the Champs Elysées where I was photographed by a society photographer. We had an aperitif in a café and then I delivered her into the arms of her latest protector.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
He looked at her curiously. “Tell me, Annie,” he asked, “are you so wrapped up in yourself that you never stop to think that other people have feelings, that other people get hurt? It’s time you grew up and stopped behaving like a child thumbing her nose at adults. What you did this evening was childish and thoughtless and cruel.”
“Nothing,” said Annie, fiercely, “nothing I could ever do to you would be as cruel as your treatment of me. To go away and leave me alone for months. To cancel our honeymoon.”
“A honeymoon is for lovers, Annie. It is not for a girl who has simply married me to compete with her sister.”
“Will you never forget that?” said Annie bitterly.
“Make me.” He stood looking down at her. “Make me, Annie. Make me forget your words.”
She looked at him, trying to summon up the courage to take a step toward him, to throw herself into his arms and beg his forgiveness. She looked beyond him to the window, where the curtains were drawn back, trying to forget all the hurt.
The fog outside the window swirled in a rising wind. Through the curling, swirling fog, in the square of light cast on the garden outside by the gaslight in the room, a horrible, distorted, bloated face turned and danced.
It was much like one of the faces of the South Sea carvings back at Crammarth Castle with its mouth protruding from lips drawn back in a ghastly sort of grin.
Annie turned paper white.
She opened her mouth, but it was like one of those horrible dreams where you try to scream and no sound comes out, where you try to run, but your feet won’t move.
The marquess turned around and looked at the window.
He gave a muttered exclamation and rang the bell by the fireplace.
“Sit down!” he said to Annie. “And put your head between your knees.”
The door opened and a liveried footman came in.
The marquess waved his hand at the window. “There is a body out there, hanging,” he said. “Be a good fellow and inform the police, the local hospital, and Mr. Winton, in that order.”
The footman stared at the horror that was turning slowly outside the window. The thinning fog revealed that it was the body of Miss Hammond hanging from the rope.
From the open door came the laughter and chatter from the ballroom upstairs. The orchestra was playing a polka.
“Very good, my lord,” said the footman.
“I never turned an ’air,” he told the kitchen proudly afterwards. “I went up to Mr. Winton and I said: ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘the Marquess of Torrance presents ’is compliments and says to tell you that there is a body a-hanging from a rope outside the ’ouse. I ’ave informed the Yard, sir, as per ’is lordship’s instructions.’”
“Come along,” said the marquess to Annie. “What a bloody, sickening sort of evening. The police will know where to find me if they want me.”
Annie silently allowed him to help her out of the house. She could not get the memory of that dreadful face out of her mind. Somewhere at the back of her mind was a growing fear. Somewhere, somehow, someone had said something. She knew something quite dreadful and yet she could not think of what it was.
The silence of her rooms at home weighed down on her. After Barton had made her mistress ready for bed, Annie sat in front of her dressing table, brushing her long red hair with automatic strokes of the brush. Barton had told her in a hushed whisper that two gentlemen from Scotland Yard had called to see the master.
The little gilt clock on the mantel chimed a silvery two in the morning.
The door opened and her husband stood there. His face was set in harsh, stern lines as he studied her reflection in the glass.
“They’ve gone,” he said curtly. “Go to bed.”
Now was the time to say she was sorry, but a dreadful, stubborn pride held her back.
Almost as if he knew what was going through her head, he said, “Oh, go to bed and dream of ruining Marigold’s life—and pray for the wisdom to realize you are ruining your own.”
The door slammed. Annie stared miserably at her reflection. Why did she always feel like a naughty child? Couldn’t he understand? He ought to know.
“But he’s not psychic,” said the cynical voice of her conscience. “And he’ll never know unless you tell him.”
But it was too late, tonight anyway, thought cowardly Annie. And—and she had seen a dead body. And—and he should have realized her feminine feelings were lacerated and have been proud of her, yes proud. For she had not screamed or fainted.
All at once, she remembered the feel of Harry Bellamy’s soft, hot mouth and writhed with shame. Then there was that lost, hurt look in Marigold’s eyes.
Oh, why couldn’t life be black and white?
Annie trailed miserably to bed.
But sleep would not come.
Every time she closed her eyes, the bloated, dead face of Miss Hammond rose before her inner vision.
Like a sleepwalker, Annie swung her legs out of bed and walked slowly out of her room and along to her husband’s door. She gave the door a jerk to open it and went inside.
Light was shining from the bedroom beyond his sitting room. Annie hesitated, longing to turn back and yet frightened of the nightmares that lay in wait for her, frightened of her own guilty conscience.
He was lying propped up on the pillows reading a book. As she entered, he put the book down on the covers and looked at her, his face rigid, his eyes cold.
Annie couldn’t help remembering his former lazy good humor, his smiling eyes, as she looked at the stem, handsome face against the whiteness of the pillows.
“What is it?” he said.
“I’m frightened,” whispered Annie.
“No doubt,” he said in a flat voice. “It is not every day one sees a dead body. I suggest you wake Barton and ask her to sleep in your room for the night.”
Annie dimly realized that he must have once had some feeling, some affection for her. Why else would she now notice the sudden lack of it?
“I want to sleep with you,” said Annie, trembling with the cold and nerves.
“Very well. So long as you don’t mind if I go on reading.”
Annie removed her dressing gown and placed it on a chair. She was wearing a white satin nightgown chosen for her by her mother. It covered more of her body than a ball gown. She walked around to the far side of the bed and pulled back the covers, noticing before she climbed in that her husband was naked.
She pulled the blankets up and lay very still. But she found that she had exchanged one sort of agony for another. She could feel the heat emanating from his body a few inches away from her own. Her whole being started to throb and ache for his touch. Her treacherous body started to shake and tremble.
“If you are cold,” he said, without raising his eyes from the page, “I will fetch some more blankets.”
“It’s not that,” said Annie miserably. “It’s…” At a loss for words, she turned on her side to face him and put one small, cold, trembling hand on his chest.
He twisted his head and looked at her. Her eyes were wide and pleading and bright with unshed tears. Her soft mouth trembled.
“Bloody, bloody hell!” said the marquess savagely. He threw his book on the floor and jerked the bedclothes down to the foot of the bed.
“Take off that repellent thing you’re wearing,” he commanded.
“Put out the light,” pleaded Annie. The room was lit by the soft glow of one oil lamp on the marquess’s side of the bed.
“No. I said, take it off.”
Blushing, Annie pulled her nightdress over her head.
“Now,” said the Marquess of Torrance. “Come here and kiss me.”
Annie threw herself on his chest and kissed him inexpertly on the mouth.
He gathered her into his arms and rolled over so that he was lying on top of her, propped up on his elbows.
“Do you want me to make love to you?” he demanded.
“Yes, Jasper,” whispered Annie shyly.
“Do you want me?”
“Yes.”
“How much?” he said. “Tell me how much!”
“Very much,” she said in such a low voice that he had to strain his ears to hear.
Then his eyes gleamed with laughter. He lowered himself down on top of her, the hard weight of his chest pressing against her breasts. “Prepare for a long night, my lady.” He grinned. “Let’s spend our first passion quickly so that I may explore this delicious body of yours at my leisure. I will stop only when I have discovered that your passion matches your temper.”
After the first violent lovemaking was over, Annie felt so exhausted that she thought she would sleep forever. But his lips were moving down her body and every nerve leaped in response until she buried her hands in his thick hair and cried to him to take her again. As the pale dawn light filtered into the room, Annie looked up into her husband’s eyes and saw that they were filled with tenderness and a sort of amazed gratitude.
Her last waking thought was that for the first time in her life she had done something right.
His caressing hands woke her some hours later. The birds were singing outside, and the noises of the street came to their ears.
But, for Annie, all worries and fears had gone. All of the busy world had gone away. All of the universe was reduced to the touch of his lips and the feel of his long fingers, stroking her and turning her from one delicious position to another.
Mary Hammond, Mr. Shaw-Bufford, Marigold, and Harry Bellamy whirled and turned and disappeared from her mind as the Marchioness of Torrance proved over and over again that her passion could outmatch her temper.
Annie floated downstairs sometime in midafternoon, dressed and ready to face what was left of the day. She had retired to her own rooms to bathe and change after the long and exhausting night and morning in her husband’s arms.
A servant had told her that the marquess wished to see her downstairs as soon as she was ready.
A small smile curved Annie’s bruised mouth. He had not said he loved her during their exquisite, shared passion. Now she was sure he would.
She was therefore startled to find her husband waiting for her at the foot of the stairs with a grim look on his face.
Annie tilted her face up for a kiss and closed her eyes.
He seemed not to notice, for when she opened them again he was half turned away from her and saying, “Those two chaps from Scotland Yard are back. I put them in the study. They want to speak to you.”
All of Annie’s newfound esteem crumbled away. She did not care who was waiting for her in the study. All she cared about was that he had not kissed her. He did not care for her. Last night meant nothing to him. It did not dawn on her for a moment that her husband was very worried about something and had not even noticed her offered kiss.
“Well, if they’ve come to see me, I suppose I’d better see them,” she said in a brittle voice, sweeping in front of him toward the study.
Two middle-aged men rose at her entrance. Her husband followed her in and closed the door. “May I present Detective Inspectors Carton and Johns of the Yard. Mr. Carton, Mr. Johns, my wife.”
Annie gave them a chilly nod and took a seat facing them. The marquess stood behind her chair.
Mr. Carton was the spokesman. He was not like Annie’s idea of a policeman at all. He was very tall and distinguished-looking with a thin, intelligent face.
“We wish to ask you a few questions, my lady,” he began. “It concerns the death of Miss Hammond.”
Annie flushed guiltily. Suddenly it seemed terrible that she had not given one thought since last night to that poor woman’s death.
“I found Miss Hammond a trifle eccentric,” she said hesitantly. “But I would not have said she was the sort of lady to take her own life.”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Carton, in a level voice.
“But she seemed very worried… almost frightened… when I last saw her. Oh, dear!” Annie blushed miserably again. She remembered the look on Mary Hammond’s white face and how she had turned even whiter at the sound of a step on the landing above.
“You have remembered something,” prompted Mr. Carton gently.
“Yes, I…” Annie twisted her head and looked up anxiously at her husband.
His face wore a closed, shuttered look as he stared straight in front of him.
“Yes?” Mr. Carton prompted again.
“Well, it was at the ball. She said she wanted to speak to me about something.”
“And did she?”
“Well, no. You see, I was talking to my future brother-in-law, Mr. Harry Bellamy, so I said I’d see her later. Oh, she asked me if I had seen Mr. Shaw-Bufford.”
“I gather Mr. Shaw-Bufford arrived after the body of Miss Hammond had been found.”
“Perhaps,” said Annie miserably, “if I had given her the time, if only I had spoken to her, she would not have done this terrible thing.”
“You are under the impression that Miss Hammond committed suicide?”
Annie stared at the inspector, wide-eyed. “But of course she did. You can’t mean…?”
“It was made to look like suicide, yes, but in fact Miss Hammond was murdered. The autopsy was performed this morning and it revealed that Miss Hammond had been strangled by someone before the rope was put around her neck.”
“Oh,” said Annie weakly. Everything suddenly seemed unreal: the two detectives sitting so solemnly across from her, her husband standing rigidly behind her, the ticking of the black marble clock above the fireplace.
“We also found evidence in Miss Hammond’s lodgings that points to the fact that she may well have been the lady who tried to kill the prime minister yesterday. She bungled the job, so someone killed her. A powerful woman could do the job.”
Annie began to feel sick.
“So,” pursued Mr. Carton, “we want you to tell us about this society. Miss Hammond gave lectures, that we know. But she has no record of having undertaken any militant action before. We would have said she simply enjoyed public speaking. Can you think of any members of her society who might have killed her?”
Annie shook her head. “It’s silly, but I never really got to know any of them. She was a sort of one-woman organization when I first met her at Britlingsea. Then she called and asked if she could use this house for a committee meeting. I agreed. I knew some of the women who came, certainly Mrs. Tommy Winton, who gave the ball, and some of the other society ladies. But the ones I knew, well, I think they were simply using the whole thing as an excuse to have a sort of charity ball.
“The other women—there were about three—who seemed to belong to Miss Hammond’s new movement, I hadn’t seen them before, and I doubt if I would recognize any of them again.”
“Were the speeches—I assume there were speeches—particularly militant? Was there any mention of Mr. Macleod’s name?”
Annie passed a hand over her brow. “I can’t remember. I was coming down with influenza and I was already running a fever, you see, and I was out of the room most of the time Miss Hammond was talking.”
“Where did you go? To lie down?”
“N-no. Mr. Shaw-Bufford wanted to talk to me—in the study.”
Mr. Carton leaned forward. “What did he want to see you about, my lady?”
Annie stared at the floor.
“My lady,” said Mr. Carton, “this is a murder investigation. You must tell me why the chancellor wished to talk to you in private.”
“He wanted to ask me for money,” mumbled Annie.
She could almost feel her husband’s hands tightening on the back of the chair. She had lied to him. She had told him that Mr. Shaw-Bufford had not asked her for money.
“For himself?”
“No. For Miss Hammond’s society.”
“How much, my lady?”
“T-ten thousand pounds.”
“Ten thousand pounds! That’s a great deal of money. A fortune!”
“I didn’t give it to him,” said Annie quickly.
“And that was the end of the matter?”
There was a long silence. The fog had cleared, but a dismal, gusty, blustery wind was howling through the streets of London. A torn newspaper danced an erratic ballet in front of the window. The window frame rattled. The fire crackled and the clock ticked.
“My lady,” said Mr. Carton, “the only way we are going to solve this business is by demanding complete honesty from all the people we have to interview. Now, I will repeat my question. Did the chancellor just let the matter drop?”
Oh, thought Annie, miserably, Jasper is going to find out how I have lied and lied again.
“I felt ill. I needed time,” she said wearily. “I told him to come back on Wednesday. He did. But I was too ill to see him. When I finally did see him, I said I would make out the check to the society. My husband had told me to do that. He said I was never to make a check out to an individual. Mr. Shaw-Bufford was… well, rather insistent. So I told him I had no money of my own. I lied. I said that he should ask my husband. And he left. He—he was angry.”
“Well, then, my lady,” said Mr. Carton. “Don’t distress yourself. We shall probably find that Mr. Shaw-Bufford wanted the money for the society and for no other reason. Now, is there anything else you can think of that might help us?”
There was. Annie was sure there was something there at the back of her mind, but, for the life of her, she couldn’t think of what it was.
She shook her head dumbly.
“I may as well tell you, my lady, that I spoke to Mr. Harry Bellamy this morning. He said that you were worried about the ball being a sham. That it was not really for something vague like Women of the World, but for a feminist society run by Miss Hammond. In fact, he called in person at the Yard to tell us. Were you, in fact, very upset by this deception?”
Poor Annie felt that she had told enough truth for one morning.
“Yes,” she said.
“I am afraid that was not the case,” came the voice of her husband from behind her. “My wife pretended to sprain her ankle so as to manufacture an opportunity of being alone with Mr. Bellamy. I think you will find that my wife doesn’t care two pins whether women get the vote or not. She merely wanted to make her sister jealous. Lady Marigold Sinclair is affianced to Mr. Bellamy.”
“Is this true, my lady?” asked Mr. Carton.
“Yes,” said Annie, in a stifled voice. In that moment she could have killed her husband. How dare he hold her actions up to ridicule?
“Then I think that will be all for the moment,” said the inspector, signaling to his colleague. “I hope I do not have to trouble you again. My lord, my lady, good day to you.”
After the policemen had left, Annie walked to the window and stared out at the dismal day.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” she said in a low voice.
“Yes,” came her husband’s infuriatingly bland voice.
“It was necessary to tell the police the truth. That way you cannot be suspected of murder.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Annie, whirling around to face him.
“It also cleared the air. There has been too much misunderstanding between us. I ask you not to lie to me again, Annie.”
“You pompous ass,” howled Annie. “How dare you stand there and pontificate? How dare you tell those coppers that I have no interest in women getting the vote? I care very much. I think women have a damn hard time time of it. I think I have a hard time of it being married to you.”
“On the contrary, you have a very easy time. You are very much your own mistress. You came to me willingly last night, or do I have to remind you of that?”
“That was because I was afraid,” Annie flashed back. “I had just seen a dead body for the first time in my life, and a pretty awful one at that!”
“And what went on between us last night? How do you interpret that, my fair lady?”
“Lust!”
Although he did not move an inch, it was as if he were retreating from her, step by step, moving away, moving far away to the other side of a great, black gulf of resentment and hurt and misunderstanding.
The silence seemed to go on forever.
Then he gave a little shrug. “I have business to attend to,” said the Marquess of Torrance.
And so he left.
Annie had never felt more alone in her life.