Josephine Tey - The Collected Works

“Pope!” Jammy stood arrested halfway to the lift door. “You don’t mean Keats, do you?”

“Is it Keats?” Musker looked at a card again. “Yes, so it is. I knew it was a poet. Hey, what’s the matter?” as Jammy caught him by the arm and dragged him back into the hall.

“Matter is you’re not going to any astrology lecture,” said Jammy, propelling him into the lift.

“Well!” said the astonished Musker. “For this relief much thanks, but why? You got a ‘thing’ about astrology?”

Jammy dragged him into an office and assaulted with his rapid speech the placid pink man behind the desk.

“But, Jammy,” said the placid one when he could get a word in edgeways, “it was Blake’s assignment. He was the obvious person for it: Doesn’t he tell the world every week on Page 6 what is going to happen to it for the next seven days? It’s his subject: astrology. What he didn’t foresee was that his wife would have a baby this week instead of next. So I let him off and sent Musker instead.”

“Musker!” said Jammy. “Say, don’t you know that this is the woman who foretold Clay’s death? The woman the Courier is running to give horoscopes at a shilling a time?”

“What of it?”

“What of it! Man, she’s news!”

“She’s the Courier’s news. And about dead at that. I killed a story about her yesterday.”

“All right, then, she’s dead. But a lot of ‘interesting’ people must be interested in her at this moment. And the most interested of the lot is going to be the man who made her prophecy come true! For all we know she may have been responsible for giving him the idea; her and her prophecies. Keats may be dead, but her vicinity isn’t. Not by a long chalk.” He leaned forward and took the card that the Musker boy was still holding. “Find something for this nice boy to do this afternoon. He doesn’t like astrology. See you later.”

“But what about that story for—”

“All right, you’ll have your story. And perhaps another one into the bargain!”

As Jammy was shot downwards in the lift he flicked the card in his hand with a reflective thumb. The Elwes Hall! Lydia was coming on!

“Know the best way to success, Pete?” he said to the liftman.

“All right, I’ll buy,” said Pete.

“Choose a good brand of hooey.”

“You should know!” grinned Pete, and Jammy made a pass at him as he stepped through the doors. Pete had known him since—well, if not since his short-pant days, at least since his wrong-kind-of-collar days.

The Elwes Hall was in Wigmore Street: a nice neighbourhood; which had been responsible in no small measure for its success. Chamber music was much more attractive when one could combine it with tea at one’s club and seeing about that frock at Debenham’s. And the plump sopranos who were flattered at the hush that attended their Lieder never guessed at the crepe-versus-satin that filled their listeners’ minds. It was a pleasant little place: small enough to be intimate, large enough not to be huddled. As Jammy made his way to a seat, he observed that it was filled with the most fashionable audience that he had seen at any gathering since the Beaushire-Curzon wedding. Not only was “smart” society present in bulk, but there was a blue-blooded leaven of what Jammy usually called “duchesses-up-for-the-day”: of those long-shoed, long-nosed, long-pedigreed people who lived on their places and not on their wits. And sprinkled over the gathering, of course, were the cranks.

The cranks came not for the thrill, nor because Lydia’s mother had been the third daughter of an impoverished marquis, but because the Lion, the Bull, and the Crab were household pets of theirs, the houses of the Zodiac their spiritual home. There was no mistaking them: their pale eyes rested on the middle distance, their clothes looked like a bargain basement after a stay-in strike, and it seemed that they all wore the same string of sixpenny beads round their thin necks.

Jammy refused the seat which had been reserved for the Clarion representative, and insisted on having one among the palms on the far side of the hall below the platform. This had been refused, with varying degrees of indignation, by both those who had come to see Lydia and those who had come to be seen. But Jammy belonged to neither of these. What Jammy had come to see was the audience. And the seat half buried in Messrs. Willoughby’s decorations provided as good a view of the audience as anything but the platform itself could afford.

Next him was a shabby little man of thirty-five or so, who eyed Jammy as he sat down and presently leaned over until his rabbit-mouth was an inch from Jammy’s ear, and breathed:

“Wonderful woman!”

This Jammy took to refer to Lydia.

“Wonderful,” he agreed. “You know her?”

The shabby man (“Crank,” said Jammy’s mind, placing him) hesitated, and then said: “No. But I knew Christine Clay.” And further converse was prevented by the arrival of Lydia and her chairman on the platform.

Lydia was at the best of times a poor speaker. She had a high thin voice, and when she became enthusiastic or excited her delivery was painfully like a very old gramophone record played on a very cheap gramophone. Jammy’s attention soon wandered. He had heard Lydia on her favourite subject too often. His eyes began to quarter the crowded little hall. If he had bumped off Clay, and was still, thanks to the inadequacy of the police, both unsuspected and at large, would he or would he not come to see the woman who had prophesied for Clay the end he had brought about?

Jammy decided that, on the whole, he would. The Clay murderer was clever. That was admitted. And he must now be hugging himself over his cleverness. Thinking how superior a man of his calibre was to the ordinary rules that hedged common mortals. That was a common frame of mind in persons who achieved a planned murder. They had planned something forbidden, and had brought it off. It went to their heads like wine. They looked round for more “dares” to bring off, as children play “last across the road.” This, this orthodox gathering of orthodox people in one of the most orthodox districts in London, was a perfect “dare.” In every mind in that hall the thought of Christine’s death was uppermost. It was not mentioned from the platform, of course; the dignities must be observed. The lecture was a simple lecture on astrology; its history and its meaning. But all these people—or nearly all—had come to the gathering because nearly a year ago Lydia had had that lucky brain wave about the manner of Christine Clay’s death. Christine was almost as much part of the gathering as Lydia herself; the hall was full of her. Yes, it would give Jammy, hypothetical murderer, a great kick to be one of that audience.

He looked at the audience now, pluming himself on the imagination that had got him where he was; the imagination that Grant, poor dear idiot, could never aspire to. He wished he had brought Bartholomew along. Bart was much better informed where the society racket was concerned than he was. It was Bart’s business to be descriptive: and at whatever was “descriptive”—weddings, motor racing, launches, or what not—the same faces from the racket turned up. Bart would have been useful.

But Jammy knew enough of those faces to keep him interested.

“On the other hand,” said Lydia, “Capricorn people are often melancholic, doubtful of themselves, and perverse. On a lower plane still, they are gloomy, miserly and deceptive.” But Jammy was not listening. In any case he did not know which of the signs had had the honour of assisting at his birth, and did not care. Lydia had several times told him that he was “typically, oh, but typically, Aries” but he never remembered. All hooey.