Ngaio Marsh - Death And The Dancing Footman

In the days that followed that week-end Mandrake was to trace interminably the sequence of events that in retrospect seemed to point so unmistakably towards the terrible conclusion. He was to decide that not the least extraordinary of these events had been his own attitude towards Chloris Wynne. Chloris was not Mandrake’s type. If, in the midst of threats, mysteries, and mounting terrors, he had to embark upon some form of dalliance, it should surely have been with Madame Lisse. Madame was the sort of woman to whom Aubrey Mandrake almost automatically paid attention. She was dark, sophisticated, and — his own expression— immeasurably soignée . She was exactly Aubrey Mandrake’s cup of tea. Chloris was not. Aubrey Mandrake was invariably bored by pert blonds. But — and here lay the reason for his curious behaviour — Stanley Footling adored them. At the sight of Chloris’ shining honey-coloured loops of hair and impertinent blue eyes, the old Footling was roused in Mandrake. Bloomsbury died in him and Dulwich stirred ingenuously. He was only too well aware that in himself was being enacted a threadbare theme, a kind of burlesque, hopelessly out of date, on Jekyll and Hyde. It had happened before but never with such violence, and he told himself that there must be something extra special in Chloris so to rouse the offending Footling that Mandrake scarcely resented the experience.

He followed her into the smoking-room and tuned in the wireless to the war news which, in those now almost forgotten days, largely consisted of a series of French assurances that there was nothing to report. Chloris and Mandrake listened for a little while and then he switched off the radio, leant forward, and kissed her.

“Ah!” said Chloris. “The indoor sport idea, I see.”

“Are you in love with Nicholas Compline?”

“I might say: ‘What the hell’s that got to do with you?’ ”

“Abstract curiosity.”

“With rather un-abstract accompaniments.”.

“When I first saw you I thought you were a little nit-wit.”

Chloris knelt on the hearthrug and poked the fire. “So I am,” she said, “when it comes to your sort of language. I’m quite smartish but I’m not at all clever. I put up a bluff but you’d despise me no end if you knew me better.”

She smiled at him. He felt his mouth go dry and with a sensation of blank panic he heard his own voice, distorted by embarrassment, utter the terrible phrase.

“My real name,” said Mandrake, “is Stanley Footling.”

“Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry,” said Chloris. He knew that for a moment, when she recovered from her astonishment, she had nearly laughed.

“STAN-LEY FOOT-LING,” he repeated, separating the destestable syllables as if each was an offence against decency.

“Sickening for you. But after all you’ve changed it, haven’t you?”

“I’ve never told anyone else. In a squalid sort of way it’s a compliment.”

“Thank you. But lots of people must know, all the same.”

“No. All my friendships occurred after I changed it. I got a hideous fright last night at dinner.”

Chloris looked up quickly. “Why, I remember! I noticed. You went all sort of haywire for a moment. It was something Nicholas said, something about—”

“My having given up footling.”

“Oh Lord!” said Chloris.

“Go on — laugh. It’s screamingly funny, isn’t it?”

“Well, it is rather funny,” Chloris agreed. “But it’s easily seen that you don’t get much of a laugh out of it. I can’t quite understand why. There are plenty of names just as funny as Footling.”

“I’ll tell you why. I can’t brazen it out because it’s got no background. If we were the Footlings of Fifeshire, or even the Footlings of Furniture Polish, I might stomach it. I’m a miserable snob. Even as I speak to you I’m horrified to hear how I give myself away by the very content of what I’m saying. I’m committing the only really unforgivable offence. I’m being embarrassing.”

“It seems to me you’ve merely gone Edwardian. You’re all out of focus. You say you’re a snob. All right. So are we all in our degree, they say.”

“But don’t you see it’s the degree I’m so ashamed of. Intellectual snob I may be; I don’t care if I am. But to develop a really bad social inferiority complex — it’s so degrading.”

“It seems a bit silly, certainly. And anyway I don’t see, accepting your snobbery, what you’ve got to worry about. If it’s smartness you’re after, isn’t it smart to be obscure nowadays? Look at the prizefighters. Everybody’s bosoms with them.”

“That’s from your point of view. De haut en bas . I want to be the haut , not the bas ,” Mandrake mumbled.

“Well, intellectually you are.” Chloris shifted her position and faced him squarely, looking up, her pale hair taking a richness from the fire. “I say,” she said, “Mr. Royal knows all about it, doesn’t he? About your name?”

“No. Why ?”

“Well, I thought last night…I mean after Nicholas dropped that brick, I sort of felt there was something funny and I noticed that he and Lady Hersey and Mr. Royal looked at each other.”

“By God, he put them up to it! I wondered at the time. By God, if he did that I’ll pay him for it!”

“For the love of Heaven, why did I go and say that? I thought you and I were going to remain moderately normal. Nobody else is. Do snap out of being all Freudian over Footling. Who cares if you’re called Footling? And anyway I must say I think ‘Aubrey Mandrake’ is a bit thick. Let’s talk about something else.”

The invitation was not immediately accepted, and in the silence that followed they heard Hersey Amblington come downstairs into the hall and call Mrs. Compline —

“Sandra! Where are you? Sandra!” They heard an answering voice and in a moment or two the front doors slammed.

Mandrake limped about the room inwardly cursing Jonathan Royal, Chloris Wynne, and himself. Most of all, himself. Why had he given himself away to this girl who did not even trouble to simulate sympathy, who did not find even so much as a pleasing tang of irony in his absurd story, who felt merely a vague and passing interest, a faint insensitive amusement? He realized abruptly that it was because she made so little of it that he wanted to tell her. An attitude of sympathetic understanding would have aggravated his own morbid speculations. She had made little of his ridiculous obsession, and for the first time in his life, quite suddenly, he saw it as a needless emotional extravaganza.

“You’re perfectly right, of course,” he said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“You needn’t think I’ll shrink from you on account of your name, and I won’t tell anyone else.”

“Not even Nicholas Compline?”

“Certainly not Nicholas Compline. At the moment I never want to see a Compline again. You needn’t think you’re the only one to feel sick at yourself. What about me and the Complines? Getting engaged to William on the rebound from Nicholas.”

“And continuing to fall for Nicholas’ line of stuff?”

“Yes. All right! I’ll admit it. Up to an hour ago I knew Nicholas was faithless, horrid-idle, a philanderer, a he-flirt— all those things, and not many brains into the bargain. But as you say, I fell for his line of stuff. Why? I don’t know. Haven’t you ever fallen for a little bit of stuff? Of course you have. But when we do it, you hold up your hands and marvel.”

Through Mandrake’s mind floated the thought that not so long ago he had considered himself in much the same light in relation to Chloris. He began to feel ashamed of himself.

“What does attract one to somebody like Nicholas?” Chloris continued. “I don’t know. He’s got ‘It,’ as they say. Something in his physical make-up. And yet I’ve often gone all prickly and irritated over his physical tricks. He does silly things with his hands and he’s got a tiresome laugh. His idea of what’s funny is too drearily all on one subject. He’s a bit of a cat, too, and bone from the eyes up if you try to talk about anything that’s not quite in his language. And yet one more or less went through one’s paces for him; played up to his barn-door antics. Why?”