Thrones, Dominations Read online

  Thrones, Dominations

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Copyright © 1998 by The Trustees of Anthony Fleming (deceased)

  and Jill Paton Walsh

  The right of Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh to be

  identified as the Authors of the Work has been asserted in

  accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 1998 by

  Hodder and Stoughton

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by

  any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher,

  nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other

  than that in which it is published and without a similar condition

  being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious

  and any resemblance to real persons, living or

  dead is purely coincidental.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Sayers, Dorothy L. (Dorothy Leigh), 1893–1957

  Thrones, dominations

  I. Title II. Paton Walsh, Jill, 1937–

  823.9’14 [F]

  Epub ISBN 9781848943827

  Book ISBN 9780340684566

  Hodder and Stoughton

  A division of Hodder Headline PLC

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  I was delighted and deeply honoured when Lord Peter Wimsey’s associates asked me to write up a case which he worked on early in his marriage, a period of adjustment in his life and that of his wife, and of upheaval on the public stage. I have loved and admired Lord Peter since first I met him in my schooldays. As one might expect of a person born in 1890 he has some old-fashioned mannerisms; but his undying charm arises from a characteristic which he shares with Ralph Touchett (in Portrait of a Lady); Benedick (in Much Ado About Nothing) and even somewhat with Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre, but with none too many others in literature or in life: that is, that he requires as his consort a spirited woman who is his intellectual equal.

  Such an unusual alliance as Lord Peter’s with Harriet Vane has naturally aroused widespread curiosity; a curiosity which, within the limits dictated by the literary form of a detective story, and respect for his earlier chronicler, I have tried to satisfy.

  Jill Paton Walsh

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Mr Bruce Hunter and the trustees of Anthony Fleming for entrusting to me the completion of Thrones, Dominations.

  I gratefully acknowledge the indispensable help of Dr Barbara Reynolds; the friendly assistance of Mr Christopher Dean, chairman, and Bunty Parkinson, archivist, of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society; help given by Marjorie Lamp Mead and the staff of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Illinois; Cambridge University Library; Mr Richard Walduck for the loan of The Lost Rivers of London; Ms Carolyn Caughey and Ms Hope Dellon for their capable editorial advice, and help received as always and in everything from John Rowe Townsend.

  Thrones, and imperial powers, off-spring of heaven,

  Ethereal virtues; or these Titles now

  Must we renounce, and changing stile be call’d

  Princes of hell?

  Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers . . .

  John Milton

  1

  They order, said I, this matter better in France.

  LAURENCE STERNE

  ‘I do not,’ said Monsieur Théophile Daumier, ‘understand the English.’

  ‘Nor does anybody,’ replied Mr Paul Delagardie, ‘themselves least of all.’

  ‘I see them pass to and fro, I observe them, I talk to them – for I find it is not true that they are silent and unfriendly – but I remain ignorant of their interior life. They are occupied without ceasing, but I do not know the motives for the things they so energetically do. It is not their reserve which defeats me, for often they are surprisingly communicative; it is that I do not know where their communicativeness ends and their reserve begins. They are said to be rigidly conventional, yet they can behave with an insouciance without parallel; and when you question them, they appear to possess no definable theory of life.’

  ‘You are quite right,’ said Mr Delagardie. ‘The English are averse to theories. Yet we are, for that reason, comparatively easy to live with. Our conventions are external, and easily acquired; but our philosophies are all individual, and we do not concern ourselves to correct those of others. That is why we permit in our public parks the open expression of every variety of seditious opinion – with the sole proviso that nobody shall so far forget himself as to tear up the railings or trample on the flowers.’

  ‘I beg your pardon; I had for the moment forgotten that you also were English. You have so much the outlook, as well as the accent of a Frenchman.’

  ‘Thank you,’ replied Mr Delagardie. ‘I am actually only one-eighth French by blood. The other seven-eighths is English, and the proof is that I take what you have said as a compliment. Unlike the Jews, the Irish and the Germans, the English are pleased to be thought even more mongrel and exotic than they are. It appeals to the streak of romantic sensibility in the English temperament. Tell an Englishman that he is pure-bred Anglo-Saxon or a hundred per cent Aryan, and he will laugh in your face; tell him that his remote ancestry contains a blend of French, Russian, Chinese or even Arab or Hindu, and he will listen with polite gratification. The remoter, of course, the better; it is more picturesque, and less socially ambiguous.’

  ‘Socially ambiguous? Ah! you admit, then, that the Englishman in fact despises all other races but his own.’

  ‘Until he has had time to assimilate them. What he despises is not other races but other civilisations. He does not wish to be called a dago; but if he is born with dark eyes and an olive complexion, he is pleased to trace those features back to a Spanish hidalgo, cast away upon the English coast in the wreck of the Great Armada. Everything with us is a matter of sentiment and association.’

  ‘A strange people!’ said Monsieur Daumier. ‘And yet, the national type is unmistakable. You see a man – you know at once that he is English, and that is all you ever know about him. Take, for example, the couple at the table opposite. He is, undoubtedly, an Englishman of the leisured and wealthy class. He has a slightly military air and is very much bronzed – but that may be due only to the habit of le sport. One would say, looking at him, that he had no interest in life beyond fox-hunting – except indeed that he is clearly very much enamoured of his extremely beautiful companion. Yet for all I know, he may be a member of parliament, a financier, or a writer of very successful novels. His face tells nothing.’

  Mr Delagardie darted a glance at the diners in question.

  ‘Ah, yes!’ he said. ‘Tell me what you make of him and the woman with him. You are right; she is an exquisite creature. I have always had a faiblesse for the true red-blonde. They have the capacity for passion.’

  ‘It is, I think, passion that is in question at the moment,’ replied Monsieur Daumier. ‘She is, I imagine, mistress and not wife – or rather, for she is married, not his wife. If any generalisation is possible about Englishmen, it is that they take their wives for granted. They do not carefully cultivate the flower of passion with the pruning-scissors. They permit it to seed away into a settled affection, fruitful and natural, but not decorative. Observe them in conversation. Either they do not listen to what their wives say at all, or they attend with the intelligent courtesy one a
ccords to a talkative stranger. Ce monsieur là-bas is inattentive, but for another reason: he is absorbed in the lady’s personal charms and his mind is concentrated on favours to come. He is, as you say, over head and ears – and I have noticed that in an Englishman that condition betrays itself. He does not, like ourselves, display assiduity to every woman in right of her sex. If he exhibits himself in attitudes of devotion, it is for good reason. I hazard the guess that this is an elopement, or at any rate an adventure; one, perhaps, which he cannot well carry on openly in London. Here, in our wicked Paris, he may let himself go without embarrassment.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ said Mr Delagardie, ‘that that is certainly not the typical English married couple. And it is true that the Englishman on the Continent tends to cast off the English convention of reserve – in fact it is part of his convention to do so. You say nothing of the lady.’

  ‘She also is in love, but she is aware at the same time of the sacrifice she has made. She asks nothing better than to surrender; nevertheless she knows how to make herself courted; after all, it is the one who risks most who confers the obligation. But when she gives herself, it will be with abandonment. The bronzed gentleman is on the whole to be envied.’

  ‘Your observations are of the greatest interest,’ said Mr Delagardie. ‘The more so that they are to a large extent erroneous, as I happen to know. The English, as you say, are baffling. What, for example, do you think of the very different pair in the opposite corner?’

  ‘The fair-haired diplomat with the eye-glass and the decided-looking brunette in orange taffeta?’

  ‘He is not precisely a diplomat, but that is the man I mean.’

  ‘There,’ said Monsieur Daumier, in a more assured tone, ‘I perceive exactly the English married couple par excellence. They are very well bred, the man especially, and they offer a lesson in table manners to the whole room. He consults her about the menu, is particular that she has what she requires, and orders his own dinner to suit himself. If she drops her napkin, he picks it up. When she speaks, he attends and replies politely, but with imperturbable phlegm and almost without looking at her. He is perfectly courteous, and perfectly indifferent, and to this heart-breaking self-possession she opposes a coldness equal to his own. They are no doubt good friends and even agreeable companions by force of custom, since they converse smoothly and with no pauses. The English, when they dislike one another, seldom shout; they withdraw into taciturnity. These two do not, I feel sure, quarrel either in public or in private. They have been married so long that any passionate feeling they ever had for one another has long since died; but perhaps it was never very much, for she is not exceptionally good-looking and he has the air of a man to whom beauty is of some importance. Possibly she was rich and he married her for her money. At any rate he probably conducts his private affairs as he chooses and she accepts the situation, so long as there is no parade of infidelity, for the sake of the children.’

  Mr Delagardie poured a little more Burgundy into both glasses before replying.

  ‘You called the man a diplomat,’ he said at length. ‘And you have succeeded in proving that at least he does not carry all his private history written in his features. As it happens, I know both couples fairly well, and can set you right on the material facts.

  ‘Take the first pair. The man is Laurence Harwell, and he is the son of a very distinguished and very rich KC who died a few years ago leaving him exceedingly well off. Though brought up in the usual country-house and public-school surroundings, he is not particularly addicted to sport in the English sense of the word. He spends most of his time in town, and dabbles a little in the financing of theatrical ventures. He is bronzed at present because he has just returned from Chamonix; but I think he went there rather to please the lady than himself. She, so far from being his mistress, is actually his own wife, and they have been married just over two years. You are correct in thinking that they are deeply in love with one another, for the match was a highly romantic one. The sacrifices were, however, on his side and not hers; in so far, that is, as there can be any sacrifice in acquiring a supremely beautiful woman. Her father was involved in certain fraudulent transactions which reduced him from considerable wealth to poverty and a short term of imprisonment. Rosamund, his daughter, had been forced to take a post as mannequin in a fashionable dressmaker’s establishment when Harwell arrived to rescue her. They are frequently cited as the most idyllic – some go as far as to say, the only – married lovers in London. It is true that they have as yet no children; and this perhaps accounts for the fact that the passion-flower has not yet lost its bloom. They are never happy out of each other’s sight – and that is just as well, since both, I fancy, are of a jealous temperament. Needless to say, she has many admirers, but they do not get very much satisfaction, since hers is the kind of amorous temperament that is cold to all but one.’

  ‘I repeat,’ said Monsieur Daumier, ‘that Mr Harwell is to be envied. The story is certainly romantic, and different from what I had supposed.’

  ‘Yet in essentials,’ said Mr Delagardie, ‘you were not very far wrong. The relation between the two is, to all intents and purposes, that of lover and mistress and not of husband and wife. The other pair are more enigmatical, and perhaps even more romantic.

  ‘The man is certainly well bred, for he is the second son of the late Duke of Denver and, incidentally, my own nephew. He has dabbled a little in diplomacy as in most things, but that is not his profession; if he has any profession at all, it is criminology. He is a lover of beauty in old wine and old books, and has from time to time shown himself a considerable connoisseur of beautiful women. His wife, who is with him now, is a novelist who had hitherto earned her own living; rather over six years ago, she was acquitted, largely by his intervention, of the charge of murdering her lover. My nephew fell in love with her at sight; his pursuit of her was conducted with patience and determination for over five years; they were married last October, and have only just returned from a prolonged honeymoon. I do not precisely know what their present relations are, for it is some weeks since I heard from them; and the honeymoon was complicated by some unfortunate occurrences. A murder was committed in their house and the emotional currents set up while bringing the assassin to justice introduced, I believe, a disturbing factor. My nephew is nervous, fastidious and inhibited; my niece by marriage, obstinate, energetic and independent. They are both possessed of a truly diabolical pride. Mayfair is awaiting with interest the result of this curious matrimonial experiment.’

  ‘Do all Englishmen,’ enquired Monsieur Daumier, ‘present themselves to their brides in the role of Perseus?’

  ‘All of them would like to do so; but all, perhaps fortunately, have not the opportunity. It is a role difficult to sustain without egotism.’

  At this moment the man with the monocle got up in response to a summons by the waiter and came down the long hotel dining-room, as though making for the telephone. He signalled a greeting to Mr Delagardie and passed on, walking very upright, with the swift, light step of a good dancer. As he went, his wife’s dark and rather handsome eyes followed him with a peculiarly concentrated expression – not quite puzzled or anxious or apprehensive, though all three adjectives passed through Monsieur Daumier’s mind, only to be dismissed.

  He said, ‘I was wrong about your nephew’s wife. She is not indifferent. But I think she is not altogether sure of him.’

  ‘That,’ replied Mr Delagardie, ‘is quite likely. Nobody is ever sure of my nephew Peter. But I imagine that he is not altogether indifferent, either. If he speaks to her without looking at her, it is probably that he has something to conceal – either love or hatred; I have known both the one and the other to be developed at the end of a honeymoon.’

  ‘Evidemment,’ acquiesced Monsieur Daumier. ‘It appears to me, from what you say, that the relations between those two must be of a most delicate nature; the more so as neither of them is in the first youth.’

  ‘My nephew is
rising forty-six, and his wife is in her early thirties. Ah! The Harwells have seen us; I think they are coming over. I know them just a little. The old Harwell was a friend of Sir Impey Biggs, who is a family connection of the Wimseys, and I have met the son and his wife from time to time at social functions.’

  Monsieur Théophile Daumier was pleased to have the opportunity of viewing Rosamund Harwell more closely. She was a type of which he thoroughly approved. It was not merely the smooth red-gold of the hair, or the liquid amber of the eyes, set a little slanting under the widely springing and delicately pencilled brows; nor was it solely the full red curve of the mouth, or the whiteness of the skin; though all these had a good deal to do with it. The face was heart-shaped; the body, which let itself be rather more than divined beneath the close-fitting gown, suggested to him the unveiled charms of a Botticelli Venus. Such features Monsieur Daumier could appraise at their worth with the controlled appreciation of the connoisseur. What stirred him was the pervasive exhalation of femininity, which went to his head like the ethers of a vintage wine. He was sensitive to such emanations, and was astonished to find them in an Englishwoman; since in the English he was accustomed to encounter either an aggressive sexlessness or a suffocating maternal amiability, almost equally devoid of allurement. The voice, too, in which Mrs Harwell uttered the commonplace greeting: ‘How do you do?’ – it was warm, vibrant, musical, like a chime of golden bells, a voice with promise in it.

  Mr Delagardie enquired whether the Harwells were making a long stay in Paris.

  ‘We are here for a fortnight,’ said Rosamund Harwell, ‘to do some shopping. And, of course, to amuse ourselves.’

  ‘Did you enjoy the sports at Chamonix?’