Prelude to a Certain Midnight Read online

  Thea Olivia took off part of the crowning glory that was her hair, shook it out, brushed it, and put it carefully aside. A patterned vase on the mantelpiece offended her – it had been turned so that the visible part of the pattern did not match that of the vase on the other side. She readjusted this. A little rug was disarranged. She rearranged it. She did not touch the window, because she was convinced that she would find dust on the frame. The fire, she reassured herself, had settled down to a respectable dying glow, and the room was comfortably warm. Thea Olivia looked once more towards the jewellery she had taken off before she washed her handkerchief. She never moved a mile without a quaint little pale porcelain hand, mounted in a whimsical porcelain saucer: on the fingers of this little hand she always hung her rings, arranging her bracelets and brooches below.

  She felt the bed. It was dry and warm. A pillow was patted down, another pillow was shaken up, and everything was ready, except the night-light – a squat cylinder of wax in a rose-coloured saucer of water. She lit this with a very small match out of a tiny box tucked into a silver container, assured herself that it was burning, then turned out the main light, took off her clothes, put on a pale blue nightdress, and went to bed, settling down with a sigh of pleasure.

  Thea Olivia always said her prayers when she was comfortably arranged in her deep, warm bed. She did not like kneeling; it hurt her knees and distracted her. It was her contention that a prayer is more effective, goes quicker to God, if one can put one’s whole heart and soul into it. It was necessary to detach the mind from the body – and how could you do that if your knees ached? No, better to be comfortable, discard the body in a good feather bed, and then give all of your untroubled mind to asking the Lord to preserve you from the perils and the dangers of the coming night; throwing in a good word for your relatives and friends.

  Thea Olivia was not displeased with her evening. She had met all sorts of new people who would provide her with much to dream about. Yet she was not entirely happy.

  There was something wrong with Asta, poor Asta, dear Asta – sweet silly Asta who took upon her big shoulders all the troubles of the world. She felt tenderly towards Asta, and was grieved at having seen her broken down and wretched. And because of what? This murder of the little girl with the Russian, or Italian, name. How like Asta that was! As long as Thea Olivia could remember, Asta had always made a fool of herself, involving herself in affairs that were none of her business. Nice, foolish Asta had wasted her strength, her time, and her money on things that were the business of the Approved Societies, the National Institutions, and even the Police; and there Asta was, crying downstairs in a smoky sitting-room between two vases of dying chrysanthemums into which ill bred men and not unquestionable women had surreptitiously popped cigarette-ends. Dear Asta, good kind Asta – Asta was always on the go. Always sure of herself, always shouting at the top of her voice, making herself conspicuous, and in the end discrediting herself. Who but Asta would be so hot-headed, so crazily ambitious, as to butt her way into a murder case? Who but Asta would have been out, plodding about in dirty cellars when she might have been at home by a good clear fire reading an interesting or even an instructive book? Who but big-hearted, foolish Asta would take somebody else’s business so terribly to heart that she could weep noisily and without restraint into a sixpenny handkerchief – and a bright blue handkerchief at that?

  How different we are, thought Thea Olivia drowsily. We might almost be strangers. We are as different as kitten and bulldog. Poor Asta. Wild horses couldn’t drag her to Hartnell for something fit to wear. Poor Asta. I can picture her rushing into Barkers like a whirlwind: “Give me a suit, quick!… What suit? Any suit! None of your frills and fal-lals, girl! Just a suit. Something durable. There, that’ll do, that hairy check tweed thing over there. Take it off the hook. Wrap it up. Quick, where’s the Shoe Department?… Hey, you! Give me a good solid pair of brogues, size 7½ – get a move on! Very wide fitting – plenty of room in them – good heavy soles – ”

  Then in the middle of a little affectionate laugh, Thea Olivia thought of something so horrible that she cried aloud and sat bolt upright, with one fluttering hand over her fluttering heart.

  She remembered Asta’s shoes that afternoon when she had come in, sick and angry at the atrocity in the coal-cellar.

  She remembered the gritty, black grains she had washed out of the cambric handkerchief that was drying on the towel rail. She felt as if a cold, clammy hand had suddenly clutched at the base of her spine. It occurred to Thea Olivia that she, with her cambric handkerchief, had dusted away damning evidence from the trousers of a rapist and a child murderer.

  She got out of bed, pushed her slender little feet into her pretty slippers, and put on her dressing-gown. Her impulse was to run downstairs to Asta and tell her everything. That man, that man in the grey suit – she had forgotten his name – it would come back – that well-spoken, rather dreamy man – he ought to be questioned. The cuff of his trouser-leg was full of coal dust. The Police ought to be informed! There was no time to waste!

  She switched on the light, and paused while she looked in the mirror and patted her hair and arranged her dressing-gown so that it covered her throat. She was tremulous and very pale: she hated the idea of being seen in that state, so she gave herself a minute or two in which to compose herself.

  She soon became calm, and then she began to wonder…

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Thirty-Nine

  Downstairs in the stale-smelling sitting-room, Asta Thundersley, hot-eyed and melancholy, wrestled with shadows.

  She felt now that if a bit of grit flew into her eye she would have to argue with herself before she found it worth while to blink. She felt that if she sat on a pin she would not start up but shrug her shoulders; that if her worst enemy spat in her face she would quietly beg him for the loan of his handkerchief. She was in the No-Man’s-Land between light and dark. She felt like a long forsaken house in late autumn, under a grey sky, with a wet wind blowing while the night comes down and somewhere a broken gate lugubriously flaps. To her the lamp was only something that uncovered an emptiness. One last tarry bit of coal caught fire and shot out a spear-head of flame; and this, to Asta, was only another sharp white tooth in the closing jaws of the cold outer Dark. She was, she thought, a coffin in which there softly rattled the colourless dust that had been Asta Thundersley. She felt like the cooling cinders of a fire that is going out; like a hilt without a sword, a cracked pot, a gouged eye, a relic. There was no more life in her than there is poetry in an ink-pot.

  Once again, she was revealed to herself as a crazy, helpless woman at whom Satan laughed; a stumpy maypole set up for the diversion of all the dancing devils of hell.

  Midnight struck.

  Asta dozed, and in a second of sleep, between two nods, she had a vivid dream of something she had seen many years before, at the end of a happy birthday, when the world was as fresh as an apple. Her father had taken her to a music-hall, and there was a juggler who filled Asta’s soul with wonder and delight. Standing in a beam of light, twinkling like a skyful of stars in his spangled tights, the juggler did new and marvellous things. Last and best of all, turning off the applause with a twist of one supple hand, he took a piece of fine tissue-paper and balanced it on the end of his nose. The paper wanted to fly away on every current of air in the darkened, draughty theatre, but the juggler made it stand. He remained, a strong man straining all his muscles to balance this flimsy bit of paper, for about ten seconds. Then he struck a match and set fire to the upper end of the balanced tissue-paper. It burnt down until the flame touched his nose and went out. The ash remained, miraculously balanced, for another ten seconds. Then the juggler jerked his head and the ash, floating down, disintegrated in the sizzling spotlight.

  You know how, in a dream, you touch new heights and become aware of unexpected profundities in the most trivial of memories. You dream that you are untying a shoe-lace, and with the pleasant little
jolt of the undone knot, there comes into your mind a certain sensation of lightness and of power, as if you had done something great and wonderful. Or you may be dreaming that you are rocking on your heels on a window-ledge fifty storeys above a misty pavement; and you know that you cannot keep your balance, and are afraid. Sometimes, by God’s grace, you have time to get an aide-de-camp to the vedettes of a reserve of courage that waits – that is always waiting for a signal – on one of your flanks at the edge of the nightmare. Courage charges in, like the Greys and the Gordons in the old battle print; you are rallied; you hurl yourself right into the darkest, dirtiest part of the dream, and cut your way through.

  Instead of falling you are flying.

  The memory of that bit of burnt paper, coming back into Asta’s mind in that brief dream, made her laugh. She did not laugh as one laughs heartily at a good joke. She did not laugh at the end of her teeth in anger or in scorn. She laughed, in her little sleep, as a child laughs when you show it the solution to an exceptionally mystifying yet simple trick.

  The sound of this laugh awoke her. She felt a great deal better. Mrs Kipling, who had an eye on the heel-taps in the bottles and the dregs of the glasses, was loitering about the place with a hypocritical air of anxiety to be of service to her mistress.

  “Kipling, put out all the lights and go to bed,” said Asta, going upstairs.

  After two or three great clumping strides she remembered that her sister Tot had gone to bed and was probably asleep; so she took off her shoes, went on her way cautiously, and at last got to bed with as little noise as she was capable of making.

  Then Mrs Kipling and The Tiger Fitzpatrick slunk out to talk of old times over what the guests had left of the liquor.

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Forty

  Asta was awake, as usual, by seven o’clock in the morning, but she made less noise than usual while she dressed. She was almost tone-deaf, yet she sang Russian drinking songs in her bath when she was alone in the house. But she would not for any consideration disturb the dangerous old lady whom she described as her ‘little sister’. After a silent, unsatisfactory bath, she got into her loose tweed suit, knotted about her bullock-throat a yellow-dotted tie, and went (quietly for her) down to breakfast.

  She was astonished to find Thea Olivia downstairs before her, dressed in a becoming garment of pink and grey, and seated in a Queen Anne chair with a high back. Mrs Kipling was dancing attendance, as she always did when Thea Olivia paid a visit.

  “What are you doing up so early, Tot?” said Asta.

  “Good morning, Asta dear.”

  “Good morning. What are you doing up so early? What’s the matter with you? Couldn’t you sleep? Since when did you get out of bed before nine o’clock?”

  Thea Olivia said: “Dear Asta!”

  “Look at her! Bags under her eyes!” said Asta. “What happened? I know. That idiot Kipling. If I’ve told her once I’ve told her a thousand times to give you a hot-water bottle. Two bottles. I didn’t have time to see to it myself. I know, I know you, I know you to the heart and soul, Tot – you’d suffer on the rack rather than complain, but I know. Kipling!”

  “No, please. Everything was just as it should be, Asta dear, I assure you.”

  “What are you so angry about? I was only asking. I’ve never known you to be visible before nine or ten o’clock before.”

  “I think your party excited me.”

  “All the better. You need exciting, Tot. You know,” said Asta, half defiantly, “you know I live my own kind of life here. Breakfast is breakfast. What are you going to have? Kidneys? Bacon? Eggs? Kippers? Finnon haddie? Say the word. Have an egg and haddock.”

  Thea Olivia, to Asta’s astonishment, said: “I only want a cup of tea.”

  For the first time in living memory Asta Thundersley was quiet at the breakfast table. She was marvelling at her sister’s presence; and her sister was amazed at her silence.

  They looked at each other. There was suspicion on both sides. Asta was full of a desire to slap her sister on the back, take hold of her with her enormous red hands, pick her up and swing her round and whirl her off her feet. Asta wanted to make conversation, to talk about people.

  “What did you think of the party?” she asked. “It struck me as being a complete failure. Didn’t it you?”

  “Do you mean as a party?”

  “Yes, Tot darling, as a party. As anything. A failure. Socially or otherwise – not a success. How did it strike you? Be honest. D’you know what? Before I went to bed I found Pink asleep on the floor – fast asleep on the floor. I’ve often wondered whether that man was one of God’s holy innocents or just another common drunk. What’s your impression, Tot darling?”

  “Mr Pink. That’s the little gentleman who keeps talking about God, isn’t it? Well, I don’t think he’s just a common drunk. I think he’s a good sort of man, don’t you?”

  “Look here, Tot, I insist on your having at least an egg. Come now, a lightly-boiled egg in a cup. Then you can put little bits of bread into it like you used to.”

  “I couldn’t face an egg,” said Thea Olivia, almost in agony. “I only want… I’ll have some toast, some toast and some marmalade; some of that dark brown marmalade. On the whole, Asta, I think it was a very good party.”

  “You seemed to make quite a hit.”

  “No, you don’t really mean that? I didn’t do a thing. I just kept still. Who were all those young men that kept talking to me?”

  “Why, Tot darling, everybody was talking to you all the time. Which young men do you mean? There was young Hemmeridge, and there was Mothmar Acord. There was – ”

  “That young man in the grey suit.”

  “Oh, you mean Tobit Osbert.”

  “The one that got so drunk.”

  “They were all drunk, Tot my sweet. And lots of them were wearing grey suits. You mean Tobit Osbert, do you? Why, I do believe you’ve fallen in love with him. Now what on earth for? You’re old enough to be his mother.”

  “Oh dear Asta, my dear Asta – can’t I just make ordinary conversation without your assuming all kinds of things? Tobit Osbert, that’s the man. He promised to get in touch with me about… a book I wanted to borrow. There’s a book he has, and he said he’d lend it to me.”

  “What sort of book?”

  “A book about the Crusaders.”

  “I’ve got his address somewhere in my little black book,” said Asta, referring to her address book. “I’ll get it for you later. Or do you want it now?”

  “Oh no, not now. Any time will do.”

  After breakfast Asta remembered that she had an appointment with a certain Mr Partridge, who was telling her something about a scandal concerning the adoption of illegitimate children. She went out at nine o’clock. As soon as the door had slammed behind Asta, and the sound of her big, heavy-heeled feet had ceased to ring and snap between the front door and the end of the street, Thea Olivia went to the long, old-fashioned, untidy walnut desk in the room described as ‘the study’, and looked for a black book. She found several. One of them was like a digest of Who’s Who; another resembled the note-book of somebody who has had to study Whitaker’s Almanack. A third contained some queer record of letters that had been sent to a Secretary of State. The fourth was full of addresses and telephone numbers. The numbers were written down, together with the exchanges, tolerably clearly. But the names were represented generally by initial letters, so that Thea Olivia had to apologize to Theodore Oxford, Ted Oliver, Timothy Ogden, Timothy O’Brien, and Tudor Owen, before she got an ‘I’ll see if he’s in’ from a woman who sounded like a landlady. Then she heard feet coming down creaking stairs, and her heart thumped as a gentle voice said:

  “Tobit Osbert speaking. Who is that, please?”

  “This is Miss Thea Olivia Thundersley. I hope you will excuse me for disturbing you so early, but I wanted – if it’s perfectly convenient – to have a word with you. It’s rather urgent. I’d be so g
lad if we could meet fairly soon. Can we?”

  “Why, whenever you like, of course. Where shall we meet? At the – I was going to say at the Savoy, but it’s always so full of a certain sort of… you know what I mean? Shall I come along to your place?”

  “No, I think it might be better if I came to yours. May I?”

  “Why, yes, of course it would. Only I feel I ought to warn you. I live in a bed-sitting-room. It isn’t much of a place.”

  “Can I come along now?”

  “By all means, if you like. But I ought to tell you that I have an appointment in about three-quarters of an hour from now – if that’s all right.”

  “I’m coming now.”

  “Righty-ho.”

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Forty-One

  Osbert lived in a square, not far from Mornington Crescent. His landlady was a thin, scowling woman with ferocious eyebrows and terrified eyes. She told Thea Olivia where to go, and so she found herself in a bed-sitting-room – remarkably neat considering that it was occupied by a man – overlooking a sodden and neglected garden, behind which was visible part of a zinc roof, sooty, striated with rain.

  She said: “Mr Osbert. Last night I washed my hankie.”

  She paused, gulping back her heart, which had crept up into the back of her throat.

  “Could I offer you a cup of tea?”

  “No, I don’t want a cup of tea. I mean, thank you so much. But I really couldn’t. I’ve already had… Mr Osbert. I don’t know if you remember last night. We were all very happy and merry and bright together, and… I don’t know if you remember… You dropped a lighted cigarette. Do you remember? Do tell me, do you remember?”

  Osbert looked at her steadily for a moment, and then said: “Why no, I can’t say that I do.”

  “Mr Osbert,” said Thea Olivia, breathing with a hissing noise, “you were on the point of saying something – I don’t know what – and then you let your cigarette fall, and it fell into the turned-up part of your trousers, and I took it out and brushed the place where it had fallen. Or don’t you remember that?”