The Shortest Way to Hades (7 page)

“This last,” said Ragwort, “was not among your professional duties.”

“Not in the narrow sense—but these little gestures of gratitude on the part of the lay client do not occur so commonly that one ought to discourage them. It was unfair, of course, that Selena should have done all the work and I should have the lunch; but it seemed better that Rupert should buy lunch for me than that he should not buy it for anyone. And it is fair to say that it was a very good lunch at a rather attractive little French restaurant in Putney.”

While giving him credit, however, for the excellence of the meal, she had thought him unduly complacent about his success, which he seemed to attribute rather to the merits of his case than to the brilliance of his Counsel. He confessed to having felt some anxiety when his solicitors entrusted the case to a young lady, but he had to admit, he said, that Miss Jardine had done it very nicely—

Julia, recounting this, choked on her Niersteiner.

—very nicely, he said, though of course it was a very simple and straightforward case, and the landlords had had no chance of winning: when one looked properly at the evidence, as Miss Jardine herself had pointed out to the judge, they really had no case at all. Still, she had done it very nicely. Recalling the care of Selena’s preparation and Rupert’s own unhelpfulness towards success, Julia had thought it right to make clear to him that but for his good fortune in being represented by one of the most persuasive advocates in Lincoln’s Inn he would even then have been seeking accommodation on the Thames Embankment; and had added that that, in Julia’s opinion, would have been a just reward for his ingratitude.

“It was kind of you to say that,” said Selena, turning her glass thoughtfully between her fingers. “I shouldn’t like you to think that I don’t appreciate it. Although as things turned out—”

Startled by the vehemence of her indignation, Rupert had remarked that she seemed to be a great admirer of Selena’s; to which Julia answered that indeed she was, for to know Selena and not to admire her was a thing impossible.

“Julia,” said Ragwort, “have you no sense at all?” A foolish question, since he knows she has not.

“Julia was not to know,” said Selena, “that Rupert is a rather—unsophisticated sort of person.”

The lunch had thereafter proceeded amiably. At its conclusion Rupert had invited Julia to bring Selena to a little party he was holding at the end of the following week; it would be the sort of thing, he said, that he thought they might find amusing.

She had attached, at the time, no particular significance to these words or the manner in which they were said.

“I believe we have reached a part of the narrative,” said Timothy, “which may not be suitable hearing for the Revenue silks whom I see gathered at the next table. Shall we adjourn to Guido’s?”

No more was said, as we walked along Kingsway in the warm May evening, of the affair of the Grateful Client. Not until we were comfortably installed in Guido’s and all necessary choices had been made between asparagus and tagliatelli, grilled sole and scampi Nizzarda, Valpolicella and Frascati, did Selena resume her narrative.

“Thinking,” said Selena, “that if Rupert wished further to express his gratitude in the form of food and drink it would be unkind of us to discourage him, we made our way on the appointed evening to his penthouse in Mortlake. It is on the fifth floor of a rather elegant block of flats close to Barnes Bridge, with a view across the river to Duke’s Meadows. The door was opened by a red-haired girl, quite substantially built, wearing a black dress and black stockings and a little white pinafore.”

“In brief,” I said, “an old-fashioned parlormaid.”

“Your ‘in brief’ is appropriate, your ‘old-fashioned’ less so. When I say she was wearing stockings rather than tights, I do not speak from surmise. I am able to add, again without surmise, that they were secured by a black lace suspender belt. You may conclude that the dress was very brief indeed.”

“Quite disgraceful,” said Ragwort.

“We hung up our coats and she led us into the drawing-room. It was a nice spacious drawing-room, the result, I imagine, of knocking two rooms into one, with a balcony and French windows on the side looking on to the river. The furnishing was of the sort designed to be recognized as opulent—Wilton carpets and leather sofas and so forth.”

“If I may say so,” said Julia, “it was not the quality of the furniture which most immediately engaged one’s attention. It was the presence in the room of a number of people with no clothes on.”

“Yes,” said Selena a little reproachfully. “Yes, Julia, I was coming to that. Ah good, here’s the asparagus.”

“You should have left forthwith,” said Ragwort, “pausing, if at all, only to utter a brief denunciation.”

“It was possible,” said Julia, “that Rupert meant well and did not intend us to be disconcerted. In which case, we would not have wished to appear so.”

“And even more possible,” said Selena, “that he did not mean well at all and intended us to be very disconcerted. In which case still less would we have wished to appear so. Moreover, we had travelled halfway across London in an inconvenient direction to enjoy his hospitality, and I at least did not intend to leave until I had my money’s worth. We accepted the champagne offered us by the parlormaid person, and sat down on one of the sofas to consider our position. Julia was afraid that we might be committing some kind of solecism by not taking our clothes off; but I thought we could regard the occasion as one at which dress was optional. So we kept them on.”

“Looking round at our fellow guests,” said Julia, “one could not help feeling that they would have done well to do likewise. I refer in particular to those of the male sex. With the exception of our host—who was, I am relieved to say, more formally clad in a pair of black leather bathing trunks—with that exception they were all entirely naked; and they were, alas, well past the age at which a man may carelessly disrobe and be confident of being an object of desire and admiration.” Julia sighed. “To be naked with elegance, even for the most slender and graceful young man, is a severe test of deportment. The scene before us, therefore, despite a well-advised dimness of lighting, was one neither pleasing to the eye nor conducive towards desire.”

“On the other hand,” said Selena, “the champagne was excellent.”

Mindful of his duty as host to ensure their entertainment, Rupert had completed their introduction to the quasi-parlormaid: her name, it appeared, was Rowena, and she was the girl about whom, as Rupert put it, Selena had been so severe with him—that is to say, the girl from the typing agency whose visits had obliged Selena to revise her closing speech. Perhaps prejudiced on this account, Selena had not much cared for her; but she had seemed to Julia to be a pleasant, good-natured sort of girl—a conclusion drawn from the circumstance that she constantly filled their glasses. She also offered them some fudge, which she described as being “something rather special.”

“I thought she meant,” said Julia, “that it was homemade.”

“No doubt it was,” said Selena. “It also had—how shall I put it?—a decidedly North American flavor. I did suggest, Julia, that it would be better not to eat too much of it.”

“As always, I would have done wisely to act on your advice; but it was rather delicious fudge, and I was quite hungry. You will be interested to hear, Hilary, that it had a most remarkable effect—even on Selena after a very modest quantity. She cast off all conventional restraints and devoted herself without shame to the pleasure of the moment.”

I asked for particulars of this uncharacteristic conduct.

“She took from her handbag a paperback edition of
Pride and Prejudice
and sat on the sofa reading it, declining all offers of conversation. I have never known you, Selena, so indifferent to the demands of social obligation. I, on the other hand, talked a good deal, though not as I recall with great lucidity: I was trying, for some reason which now escapes me, to explain to Rowena the effect of Section 478 of the Taxes Act; but I kept forgetting halfway through my sentences how they were meant to end, so I fear that I may have given her an imperfect understanding of these provisions. I also found that the fudge had made me thirsty, and in consequence of this I drank more freely of the champagne than I might otherwise have done.”

“I don’t think,” I said, “that fudge and champagne mix well together, Julia.”

“No,” said Julia sadly, “no, they don’t. A realization of this came suddenly upon me, obliging me to make my way in some haste to the bathroom. The bathroom, however, proved unsatisfactory. It was in many respects an admirable bathroom—marble walls, gold taps, and a bath the size of a paddling pool. It did not, however, afford the privacy which was my objective. The bath, you see, was full of people—I can’t say exactly how many, since they were rather tangled up together.”

“How,” I asked, “did you resolve your difficulty?”

“I said I was terribly sorry and withdrew, not knowing what to do next. But fortunately I found Rowena just outside the bathroom door: she told me that there was another one en suite with Rupert’s bedroom, and offered to conduct me there. I accepted with alacrity, and in due course emerged feeling much better. Rowena had waited for me in the bedroom, intending—or so I supposed—to escort me back to the center of the social whirl. She showed no inclination, however, to leave the bedroom: she said there were some very interesting things in Rupert’s wardrobe and that if I liked she would show them to me. I could hardly say that I wasn’t interested, could I?”

To say so, I perceived, would have seemed to Julia a breach of the rules of polite conduct which had been impressed on her during her schooldays. I inquired the nature of the interesting objects.

“Sundry items of leatherwear, various whips and things, one or two pairs of handcuffs—I found it difficult to know what comment was appropriate: such phrases as ‘Oh, how nice’ didn’t seem entirely suitable. What Rowena, for some reason, expected chiefly to interest me were various items of clothing, apparendy intended for some kind of dressing-up game. There was a nurse’s uniform, I remember, and also a navy blue gymslip. Rowena giggled a good deal about the gymslip, and said that it was the costume that Rupert liked her best in. It featured, evidently, in some kind of fantasy in which he undertook the role of schoolmaster. She seemed very anxious that I should try it on. The idea, to be candid, did not greatly appeal to me—I did not think it at all a becoming garment. She grew so insistent, however, that I could not politely refuse.”

Ragwort, at this point, covered his eyes with his hand in a gesture of elegant despair.

“I had accordingly put on the gymslip, and was trying to persuade Rowena that it really did not at all suit me, when the disturbance occurred. But Selena is in a better position than I am to tell you about that.”

Selena, having concluded her dealings with her sole meunière, accepted the invitation to resume the narrative.

“The party had increased in informality, with the encouragement, I suppose, of the fudge, not to speak of various other substances being smoked or sniffed by our fellow guests. Scenes similar to that noticed by Julia in the bathroom were now occurring in various parts of the drawing-room, and Rupert had begun leaping about with a flashlight camera taking photographs of everyone. He frequently interrupted his artistic activities, however, to urge me to take my clothes off and enjoy myself—this made it very difficult for me to concentrate on
Pride and Prejudice.
Isn’t it curious how intolerant some people are of other people’s pleasures? Was I pestering Rupert to put his clothes on and read Jane Austen? No, I wasn’t. Was he prepared to show me a corresponding indulgence? Not a bit of it. On the contrary, he became quite peevish and aggrieved—‘If you and your girlfriend,’ he said ‘are just going to sit there and not do anything, I think it’s a pretty poor show.’”

“He was evidently under some misapprehension,” I remarked, “as to the nature of your friendship.”

“Evidently—as I say, he’s a rather unsophisticated sort of person. But even if we had been on such terms as he supposed, it would still have been frightful cheek to expect us to make a public demonstration of it. I began to feel, in spite of the champagne, that it was time we were leaving. I was still waiting, however, for Julia to return from the bathroom, when, as she says, there was a disturbance—people banging loudly on the front door and shouting for admittance. Their precise words being ‘Open up there, this is the police.’” Selena paused, and thoughtfully sipped her Frascati.

The words “Open up there, this is the police” tend to have a dampening effect on almost any social gathering. The initial response to them of Rupert’s guests had been a panic-stricken immobility, which held them frozen for several seconds in the attitudes in which the moment found them; then, disengaging with amazing rapidity from their various mutual entwinements, they had scrambled headlong for the doorway giving access to the roof, leaving their host to deal as he thought best with the unwelcome intrusion.

“Rupert,” said Selena, “failed notably to behave like a respectable householder whose home is his castle and who does not suppose himself to be living in a police state. The proper course of action for such a person, when the police demand entry, is to ask politely by what authority they do so and to take steps, before opening the door, to verify their answer. This sensible precaution has the further advantage of enabling the householder, should he happen to be dressed only in a pair of black leather bathing trunks, to change into some more orthodox costume before confronting the forces of law and order. Rupert, however, did not seem to think of this—the last of his guests had hardly disappeared from the drawing-room before he was opening his front door, with apologies for the delay, to admit his more recent visitors: two heavily bearded but quite personable young men, one tall, the other taller, wearing the distinctive uniform of the Metropolitan Police.”

Making vague reference to “information received,” they had proceeded to search the drawing-room. Rupert, green-gilled and glassy-eyed with apprehension, had offered no protest; Selena, not being present in a professional capacity, felt that it would be officious to volunteer any on his behalf. She ventured to suggest, when they took possession of the flashlight camera, that they would wish to give Rupert a receipt for it, and something was rather grudgingly scribbled on a page of one of their notebooks; otherwise her role was that of disinterested spectator. It was not until they gave signs of proposing to search the other rooms in the flat that she began to feel serious disquiet.