The Shortest Way to Hades (4 page)

They reached the flight of steps leading to the main door of 62 New Square. Obeying, it seemed, some instruction from the man, the plain girl remained at the foot. The others, ascending, were briefly hidden from my view; but a few moments later the door of the waiting-room opened, and they were within a few yards of me. Sitting, as I have said, on the floor between the window and the bookcase, I was perhaps in a rather inconspicuous position—at any rate, none of them appeared to notice me; and I, absorbed in my researches, did nothing to draw my presence to their attention.

“There seems as yet to be no one in the Clerks’ Room,” said the man in a tone of apology, as he ushered in his companions. “It is rather an early hour by the standards of Lincoln’s Inn, I’m afraid. If you would be kind enough to wait here for me, while I conduct Miss Robinson to Miss Larwood’s Chambers—”

“In view of what occurred yesterday,” said the older woman, in a voice like the crack of a glacier, “one can hardly regard with enthusiasm any further interview between Deirdre and this Larwood person. But I suppose it’s unavoidable.”

“I can only say again,” said the man, sounding harassed, “how sorry I am, Mrs. Fiske-Purefoy—”

“And I can only say, Mr. Tancred, that when one sends one’s niece to an interview with one’s family solicitor one does not expect her to return in the small hours of the morning in an advanced state of intoxication and demanding a hundred thousand pounds. At least, one would not have done in my day—no doubt I am very old-fashioned.”

“I can only say again, Mrs. Fiske-Purefoy, how much I regret—”

“Nonsense, Mr. Tancred,” said the girl, interrupting with vigorous firmness. She had a pleasant voice, though with echoes of the hockey-field. “There’s nothing for you to be in the least sorry about. I quite understand and it’s not your fault at all. And it was very kind of Miss Larwood, of course, to take Deirdre out to dinner.” She sighed. “Pity it wasn’t some nice young man, but there you are—just her luck, poor old Dreary.”

“Camilla, my dear,” said the solicitor gratefully, “you’re most kind. I was sure I could count on you to understand the position. Now, may I leave you to take care of your grandmother, while I see to Miss Robinson—I know Lincoln’s Inn holds no terrors for you.” A little fulsome, I thought, from an established solicitor to a second-year law student—but she was, after all, an heiress. “And then, I think, I had better look in at my own office again, to inquire if there is any news of your father or of Mrs. Demetriou.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Tancred, I’ll take care of everything. If anyone arrives in the Clerks’ Room I’ll explain who we are and why we’re here.”

The solicitor made good his escape, and the two women sat down on the sofa of imitation leather at the far end of the room.

“Grans darling,” said the girl, “I know you’re cross, but don’t take it out on poor old Tanks. He’s a bit of a duffer, but he’s doing his best, honestly.”

“Millie dear, Ronald Tancred’s best is costing you a hundred and sixty thousand pounds. Would his worst be more or less expensive?”

“But Grans, I couldn’t have left poor old Dreary without a bean, could I? I’d have had to do something for her when the time came. After all—” she sighed again. “Well, one can’t see her making a marvelous marriage or having a fantastic career, can one? So I don’t lose anything by having it in the Court Order—it’s probably quite sensible, actually. I don’t mind that in the least—all I mind about is getting this wretched application over and done with.” Her voice was sharpened by a nervousness which surprised me, given the formal nature of the proceedings; but I remembered that some three million pounds were at stake.

Glancing again through the window, I saw that Tancred had fallen in with another tall man, wearing a camelhair overcoat, approaching from the direction of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. After a brief exchange, the solicitor pointed towards 62 New Square, and the other proceeded obediently in the direction indicated. His bearing and mode of dress were those of a man who believed himself good-looking: I was too far away to know if the belief was justified.

“Daddy, you’re here, how marvelous,” cried Camilla, springing up as he entered the waiting-room.

“Of course I’m here, Millie darling. I’m one of your trustees, you know. Besides, you didn’t think I’d leave my little girl to go through this all by herself, did you?” One might have supposed, from the sentimental quaver in his voice, that his daughter was on trial for her life.

“Rupert dear, what a relief to see you,” said the older woman. “I haven’t known where to turn—Tancred’s useless, quite useless.”

“Mama-in-law, wonderful to see you. And looking magnificent as always.” Though the matrimonial link between Rupert Galloway and Jocasta Fiske-Purefoy had been severed by the death of Petronella some seventeen years before, they were still, it appeared, on terms of mutual affection. “Now then, what’s all the fuss about? I’ve had all sorts of messages from Tancred, and then I met the man himself on the way here, but I still don’t know what’s happening. He said you’d explain it, Millie. So what’s it all about? I gather Deirdre’s been making a nuisance of herself somehow, the little beast—I’m sorry, Mama-in-law, I know she’s your niece and a sort of cousin of Millie’s and I shouldn’t say it, but she can be the absolute limit.”

“I should be the last to deny,” said Jocasta Fiske-Purefoy, “that Deirdre has always been a most difficult child. So different from Millie, in spite of having the same upbringing. One is obliged, I fear, to speak of heredity.” Whether it was some remembered characteristic of her deceased sister Lalage which imposed on her this distasteful obligation, or of Lalage’s equally deceased husband, it was impossible to tell.

“There’s absolutely no crisis,” said her granddaughter firmly, “and nothing to get cross with poor old Dreary about. If you’ll just let me explain—”

Looking once more from the window, I had for a moment a sense of
déjà vu,
for again the substantial figure of Tancred was leading a little group of people towards 62 New Square, and as before two of them were tall, the third by comparison diminutive. On this occasion, however, the smallest of the group did not by any means trail unregarded behind the rest, but seemed on the contrary to be the center of affection and interest. She had little obvious claim to be the focus of admiration: a bundle of mist-colored tweed and jersey, her hair a wispy cloud of blond and gray—middle-aged, there could be no gainsaying it; but her step was as quick and light as a young girl’s, and she still had very pretty legs. The solicitor, half turning from time to time to look benignly down at her, had none of his former harried look: she had restored him, it seemed, to that confidence in his own superior judgment which is so necessary to the professional adviser. Between the two other members of the little party, who walked protectively on either side of her, there was as perfect a similarity as is possible between a muscular young man and a voluptuously built young woman; their copper-colored hair and creamy white complexions would have enchanted a pre-Raphaelite artist; their look of robust health and exuberant spirits would have been his despair.

This then was Dorothea Demetriou, the youngest daughter of Sir James Remington-Fiske: difficult as it was to believe that she and Jocasta were sisters—it hardly seemed possible in nature that the bundle and the battle-ax should be offspring of the same union—I could have no doubt of her identity. The copper-haired twins, by the same token, must be Lucinda and Lucian Fairfax, the children of her first marriage. Their entry into the waiting-room was the occasion for much embracing and enthusiastic welcome.

“We’re not terribly late, are we?” said Dorothea, a little breathless, her words tumbling over one another. “We’ve been rushing about all over the place, trying to find some clothes to look respectable in. We had to break all sorts of speed limits coming down from Hampstead—well, Lucian did, Cindy and I just kept our eyes shut and prayed.”

“You’re not a bit late, darling,” said Camilla. “It’s simply sweet of you all to bother.”

“Oh Millie, we couldn’t let them make you pay all that horrible tax, of course we couldn’t. But isn’t it lucky we’re in London? We meant to stay in Corfu until next month, because Costas can’t leave until then, but we decided to come over early and have an export drive. I make Greek pots, you know, Mr. Tancred—plates and bowls and ashtrays and things, just like the ones the archaeologists dig up, but not so cracked. They’re rather nice—you must come up to Hampstead and see them.”

“That would be delightful,” said the solicitor gallantly.

“So we’ve come to London to tell Harrods and people how nice they are and get lots of orders. The only thing is, I don’t know if Leon can get here. I rang his headmaster and said it was frightfully important—family fortunes hanging in the balance and everything—and he said he’d send Leon up to London if he possibly could, but he was out on some sort of binge—Leon, I mean, not the headmaster—and the headmaster didn’t know when he’d be back. But Mr. Tancred says it doesn’t matter, because of him being under age—Leon, I mean, not you, Mr. Tancred.”

“Quite so, Mrs. Demetriou,” said the solicitor with rotund benevolence. “Since Leonidas is only seventeen, his consent is legally valueless.”

“But if it doesn’t matter what Leon says, why’s it different with Deirdre? She’s not twenty-one for ages.”

“Dolly darling, people come of age at eighteen now,” said Camilla. “They changed the age of majority in 1969.”

“But Deirdre isn’t eighteen—she was seventeen on her last birthday, wasn’t she?”

“Her eighteenth birthday,” said the solicitor, “occurred three days ago.”

“Oh no, it can’t have done,” said Dorothea with tragic dismay. “We haven’t had a party, or given her a present or anything. Jo, it wasn’t really, was it? You’d have reminded me.”

“My dear Dolly,” said her sister, “had I remembered it myself, I should certainly have reminded you. But I do have other things to think about, you know, especially with Mother so unwell. I’m afraid that Deirdre’s birthday, which is perhaps not one of the most significant events of the decade, escaped my recollection. I really think she’s old enough not to make a fuss about it.”

“I ought to have remembered,” said Camilla. “But I have had a frightfully heavy term—I’ve been simply snowed under with lectures and tutorials. I do feel rotten about it, though—poor old Dreary, no wonder she’s feeling a bit bloody-minded.”

The members of the family now gathered in the waiting-room all seemed to be on terms of mutual affection: Deirdre being absent, harmony prevailed. The only exception that I could detect to this was a certain… absence of sympathy, perhaps no more than that, between Rupert Galloway and the Fairfax twins.

They had not met, apparently, for several years: it was in Corfu, I gathered, that the twins were generally reunited with their cousins—Camilla and Deirdre spent most of their holidays there; but Rupert did not accompany his daughter on these visits. Lucian and Lucinda, when he last saw them, would have been little more than schoolchildren: with the uneasy joviality natural to such an encounter, he remarked on how they had grown and inquired what they were doing these days.

“Lucian writes, I paint,” said Lucinda. “That’s our story anyway—and we usually stick to it.”

“We don’t want Father to think we’re layabouts, you see,” said Lucian. “We’re quite keen on him approving of us.” Remembering that George Fairfax was a successful merchant banker, I supposed that his approval might have a more than sentimental value to his offspring.

“Quite right, my boy, so you should be. Fine man, your father. I run across him from time to time, you know. Yes, he’s a shrewd chap, is old George, I’ve got a lot of time for him.”

“I’m sure he’d be very pleased to hear that,” said Lucian. “We know how much he respects your abilities as a businessman, don’t we, Cindy?”

“Nice of you to say so,” said Rupert, apparently perceiving no ambiguity. “But I’m not in the same league as George, of course. Just a modest flair for investment, that’s all I can claim to have, and not always the money to back it up, unfortunately. Well, we must try to keep in touch a bit more—always glad to see you both, you know, any time you’re in London.”

“We were in London in the autumn,” said Lucinda. “We thought of coming to see you. But we weren’t sure if you’d be pleased.”

“I’d have been delighted, my dear. You should have rung me.”

“We thought you might be tied up with all sorts of high-powered financiers, and so on,” said Lucian. “We don’t really move much in that sort of circle, you know. We thought if we turned up on your doorstep wearing the wrong clothes and talking in the wrong accents you might be frightfully embarrassed.”

A particular tone is used by young men apparently ingenuous to make observations apparently innocent in a manner apparently respectful with the intention of being extremely impertinent: one can hardly hope, in academic life, to be unfamiliar with it. I did not know quite what Lucian meant by these remarks; but I was very sure that it was not what he seemed to mean. From his sister came the sound of laughter imperfectly repressed. I thought that the Fairfax twins did not at all like Rupert Galloway.

It must eventually have occurred to someone in the Nursery that there would be nobody in the Clerks’ Room, at this early hour, to take any notice of the clients’ arrival or to show them where they ought to go. Selena arrived, her apologies silken, and with the assistance of Tancred arranged their distribution among their respective Counsel: Camilla and the Fairfax twins, the consenting adults, to be advised by Cantrip; Dorothea, as guardian
ad litem
of her younger son, by Ragwort; Rupert Galloway and Tancred himself, the trustees of the Will, by Timothy. Selena’s own client was Jocasta Fiske-Purefoy; but Selena was to be led by Basil Ptarmigan QC, and plainly considered the soothing of formidable dowagers to be a task for leading Counsel. These arrangements made, she remained alone in the waiting-room.

“Hilary,” said Selena, “why are you hiding behind the bookcase? I can see your reflection in the window-pane.”