Death of a Beauty Queen Read online

  ‘You looked lovely. They did clap, didn’t they?’ Caroline’s glance flashed over the other girl and recognized a dangerous rival. There was, it had to be acknowledged, something attractive, something in an odd contradictory way both appealing and compelling, about her. Feature by feature, item by item, Caroline was confident of her own superiority – with the possible exception of those lustrous teeth silly little Lilian had luckily no idea how to use to advantage. Not that Caroline was dissatisfied with her own, polished and shining and large and strong, real ‘ivory castles’ of the advertisement that could crack a nut with ease but, if hers were ‘ivory castles,’ Lilian’s were like two rows of well-matched pearls, and added their share to that rather inexplicable attractiveness the child certainly possessed. People were such fools, too – Lilian’s smile might win them to give her an applause to rival that just now awarded to Caroline. Like summer lightning across the sea all this flashed through her mind – though intensely felt rather than clearly thought – and showed her dream of Hollywood endangered. She said:

  ‘Disqualified – isn’t it awful?’

  Lilian looked bewildered.

  ‘Disqualified,’ Caroline repeated, in a rapid whisper. ‘1 stopped too long on the stage – against the rules. You’ve got to run away just as soon as the clapping starts, or they disqualify you. Mind you’re careful.’

  ‘Oh, I will – oh, I am sorry,’ Lilian exclaimed, in consternation at such a catastrophe. ‘Oh, they won’t really–’

  ‘Now then, Miss Ellis, stage waiting,’ Martin bawled. ‘Come along there – got to finish some time to-night,’ he protested, thinking longingly of fish and chips – so much more to a practical, middle-aged man than all the lovely ladies that are or ever were.

  Lilian found herself on the stage. This surprised her, for she had no idea how she had got there. The one clear thought in her mind was that she must be careful not to get disqualified. If that happened she would lose her chance of getting the job as permanent mannequin at the Brush Hill Bon Marche she had applied for, and had been as good as promised if she met with any success to-night. Mr Ginn, the staff manager, was in front to-night, she knew, though of course it was quite impossible to distinguish him in that sea of white faces, all intimidatingly staring. She could only hope he thought she was satisfactory, for a job at the Brush Hill Bon Marche meant a lot to a girl with a fretful, invalid mother to support as well as two small brothers of inconceivable appetites and an absolutely bewildering habit of growing out of their clothes almost as soon as they put them on. At any rate, the one thing she had to be careful of was not to risk poor Carrie’s fate and get herself disqualified.

  No one was clapping as yet as they had clapped the unlucky Caroline. In point of fact, as she had only just stepped into their view, the spectators had as yet hardly had time, but to her it seemed that she had been standing there a hundred years or so. But, if they were not clapping, they were all, as she perceived to her extreme astonishment, staring their very hardest. It was rather awful. It needed courage to stand there and endure that. And she had never had much courage, only temper – as her mother had found out once or twice when she had pushed complaining a little bit too far, or those two boys of whom a shameful legend of her youth proclaimed that she had chased them with a dinner-knife all down the street merely because they had been having some fun with a lame kitten. Indeed in the school she had been attending at the time the shocking story was still repeated of how, when a horrified mistress asked her what she had been intending to do with the dinner-knife, she responded firmly:

  ‘I was going to chop them up.’

  But, in an emergency like this, temper and fierce display of dinner-knives were no use, only firm courage was required, and, above all, care to run no risk of sharing Caroline’s unhappy fate of disqualification.

  The clapping started, a little hesitatingly, for no one was quite so sure about this thin and nervous-looking girl as they had been about the flamboyant, self-confident Caroline. But the clapping continued – it even grew in volume. Bewildered, Lilian listened. It seemed to her to have gone on for long, and vividly she remembered Caroline’s warning. If she were not careful she would share the same unhappy fate. To avoid it, one had to run, it seemed, when the clapping started. And now it had started.

  She ran.

  The clapping stopped. Someone laughed. Laughter’s infectious, and this audience was in a happy mood. It spread; it ran like the wind from one to another. A gust of uproarious merriment followed Lilian as she fled, till one might have thought it blew her from the stage. The judging committee in the big stage box shared in the general hilarity to such an extent that most of its members forgot even to mark her card. Mr Sargent said:

  ‘The little fool’s ruined her chance all right.’ He added reflectively: ‘I thought at first she was going to be the high spot of the evening.’

  Martin called:

  ‘Next, please; next number.’ He said to Lilian as, bewildered and breathless, she paused near by, ‘What in blazes made you play the giddy goat like that?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Father and Son

  Now, on the stage, there followed each other a somewhat monotonous procession of pretty girls, for so variable is the mind of man that, strange as it must seem, even pretty girls may come in time to bore. But this profound truth is not one that as yet has come to be recognized by the producers of musical comedies who still believe that true joy lies in endless repetition.

  To each competitor in succession, however, good- natured spectators gave a round of applause that had generally a spear-head of enthusiasm in the one special spot in the auditorium where had assembled the friends and admirers of the girl at the moment apparent. But near where stood the silent, grim, watchful personage the keen eyes of Caroline Mears had picked out, whose presence, too, had been mentioned by Martin to Mr Sargent, such clapping and applause seemed always soon to die away. It was as though his mere presence – upright, immovable, and stern – spread a kind of unease around, acting as a check and a restraint.

  ‘Blooming block of ice,’ Sargent muttered; and if ‘blooming’ is not the most appropriate adjective to apply to a lump of ice, neither is it the one that the proprietor – under the bankers – of the cinema actually employed.

  He had come round to the front of the house, and, having paused only to rebuke an attendant he found flirting in the corridors when she ought to have been selling ices in the auditorium, he was now, from behind a curtain hanging over a door at the back, regarding Councillor Paul Irwin with marked disfavour.

  ‘Even chances he’s going to start another agitation – bring it up at the next council meeting, perhaps, and tell them a beauty contest’s a public scandal,’ he thought ruefully.

  ‘Well, I can tell him his precious boy has got the chuck from Caroline if that’ll smooth him down, but I wish the old blighter would keep his nose out of the place.’ He went through the door to where the councillor was standing. ‘Well, Mr. Irwin, sir,’ he said warmly, ‘it’s an unexpected honour to see you here to-night – a real pleasure.’

  Paul Irwin turned his eyes slowly upon the other. They were strange eyes – deep-sunk and vivid – burning, if the expression may be allowed, with a kind of cold fire, as it is said that in extreme frost uncovered steel and glowing embers will each burn the incautious hand that touches them. His actual age was sixty, but he could easily have passed for a vigorous forty, so apparent were the strength and energy still showing in every gesture he made, every word he spoke. In his hair and trim beard – he was probably the only bearded man in the audience – not a single grey hair showed as yet, and, from each side of his great hooked nose, his deep-set eyes glowed with a kind of restrained and fierce energy that well held the passing years at bay. They gave him, indeed, with their far-off look as if they searched for distant, hidden things, something of the air of a watching, patient eagle waiting upon heights inaccessible to all but itself. The lines of the close-shut mouth were straight,
as though a ruler had drawn them, and were pressed together as by a constant effort of the will. As a young man he must have been unusually handsome; now, in his maturity rather than his age, for of age his vigour gave no hint, he had a daunting and formidable air that came very largely from the impression of concealed tension that he gave, as if the very stillness of his attitude, the marked impassivity of pose and features alike, suggested some coiled spring the merest touch might release into fierce vehemence of action. He was dressed in well-worn clothes that were even a little shabby, but with a shabbiness that seemed of indifference rather than of poverty, and he had on a broad-brimmed hat of black felt – his one little affectation in dress, for no one, summer or winter, wet or fine, had ever seen him wearing any other kind. He said now, speaking very quietly, but still with that manner of force in reserve that seemed natural to the man:

  ‘It is neither honour nor pleasure to be here, either for me or for–’ and a slow, condemnatory movement of his hand indicated all the audience.

  ‘Oh, come, Mr Irwin,’ protested Sargent uncomfortably.

  ‘I know you and your friends call me a killjoy,’ Irwin went on. ‘It is not true. For one thing, no one can kill true joy, and, besides, joy is always good. But where’s the joy or the good, or the fun either, of watching a lot of empty-headed girls preen themselves one after the other like a lot of peacocks on a terrace in a park?’

  ‘Oh, well, now then, Mr Irwin,’ protested Sargent feebly. ‘Besides, as far as that goes, aren’t peacocks good to look at?’

  ‘Yes, and good for nothing else,’ retorted Irwin, in the same level, controlled tones in which nevertheless one could feel his passion beating against the bars of his self-restraint like an angered tiger at the bars of its cage. ‘Foolish girls showing themselves off like toasted cheese in a trap for silly mice,’ he pronounced.

  Mr Sargent turned so as to bestow an unseen wink on the vacancy behind him. He thought:

  ‘I know what’s biting the old man, and making him talk like the day of judgment.’

  Aloud, he said:

  ‘Oh, that’s a bit hard on ’em – on us all. What’s the good of being pretty if no one ever sees you? It’s a talent and gift like any other, and it oughtn’t to be hid.’

  ‘Hid?’ repeated Irwin, with a terrific emphasis, as he flashed his eyes at the stage where a girl had just entered in what she fondly believed to be a real mannequin glide; and he was going on to say something more when Sargent interposed quickly:

  ‘I see your boy Leslie is behind to-night.’

  The old man always held himself so stiff, so rigid and upright, he could not well grow more so. But all the same there was an almost visible increase of tension in his voice and attitude as he said slowly:

  ‘I thought you always told us you never allowed anyone behind who was not there on business? Is Leslie there on business?’

  Sargent shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘That’s all right in the ordinary way,’ he declared. ‘Speaking generally, we never do. It’s the sack for any of the staff who lets in anybody not on business. But a night like this is different. There’s dozens of competitors, and they’ve all brought their fathers and their mothers and their uncles and their aunts, and they’re all rushing in and out because they’ve forgotten their nail-polish or they’ve just thought of some new gadget for their frocks or their hair or their noses, and then there’s telegrams and bouquets and chocolates being fetched along without stopping – why, it’s all more like the first day of the winter sales in the West End than a well-managed, self-respecting cinema. How can we sort out the chap who’s bringing a competitor the lipstick her life depends on – and she’ll throw a fit of hysterics if she doesn’t get it good and quick – from the chap who only wants to kiss one of ’em good luck?’

  Mr Irwin looked grimmer than ever.

  ‘Promiscuous kissing,’ he commented. ‘That, at least, I think could be controlled. And you tell me Leslie is taking part in all this?’

  In spite of himself his voice softened as he pronounced his son’s name – for the moment a kind of radiance showed through the austerity of his tone and attitude and then was gone again. At his side, Sargent was indulging in a little bad language, though only thought, not uttered. ‘Promiscuous kissing, indeed!’ A nice twist the sour old puritan had given his words. Who could tell what that phrase might not have grown to in a day or two? But he judged it prudent to control his wrath. Irwin had a large and influential following in Brush Hill, and altogether was a personage with whom a quarrel was best avoided. So Sargent permitted himself only the mildest of protests.

  ‘I don’t think I said anything about promiscuous kissing,’ he remarked; ‘and I’ll tell you one thing, Mr Irwin. This is the last Beauty Contest that’ll ever be held here – never again. Handling that crowd of girls, all of ’em all worked up, all of ’em making eyes at you because then they think you’ll give ’em the best chance, and all of ’em dead sure you’re favouring the other one – handling a horde of hungry lions is nothing to it: nothing at all,’ declared Mr Sargent, pausing to wipe a forehead that had begun to perspire gently at the mere memory of all he had been through that night.

  ‘If Leslie is behind,’ Mr Irwin said unexpectedly, ‘I suppose there can be no objection to his father joining him?’

  Mr Sargent fairly jumped, the suggestion surprised him so. But he accepted it very willingly. The crabbed old Puritan would be able to see for himself that ‘behind’ was no sink of iniquity, that no mysterious ‘orgies’ were going on there, but that it was merely a workshop like any other, where the always serious and often tedious business of entertainment was seriously and often tediously, practised. Besides, the old man would soon discover there was no ‘promiscuous kissing’ – the phrase still rankled – going on, and, if any story founded on those two unlucky words got about, Mr Irwin’s visit would provide an effective reply. Of course, it was hard luck on young Leslie Irwin – a little like throwing him to the wolves. The boy would have the scare of his young life when he saw his formidable old father in die one place where he must have thought he would be safe from meeting him. But then Mr Sargent had his own reason for not objecting to that happening.

  ‘Why, certainly, Mr Irwin,’ he answered. ‘Always pleased for any responsible person like yourself to have, a look round. We’ll go now, shall we?’

  They went along the deserted corridor together, and in the abrupt and direct style he practised – for the injunction to be wise as serpents, harmless as doves, was the one scriptural injunction he never felt had any personal application – Mr Irwin said:

  ‘I suppose you know well enough it’s the Caroline Mears girl has brought Leslie here?’

  ‘Oh, half Brush Hill knows that,’ retorted Sargent, with a note of resentment in his tone that entirely escaped his companion’s attention, absorbed as the old man was with his own thoughts.

  He put out his hand now, and laid it heavily on Sargent’s shoulder.

  ‘It would ruin the boy,’ he said. ‘He shall never marry her – never.’

  ‘Ow-w, my shoulder,’ gasped Sargent, almost doubled up under the weight of that fierce grip.

  I am sorry,’ Mr Irwin said, releasing him. ‘I feel strongly. I mean it. The boy shall have no wife so light-minded, so worldly – a girl with nothing in her head but dancing and running about and all kinds of frivolity.’

  Sargent was rubbing his shoulder – whereon, when he undressed for bed, he found the marks of his companion’s fingers still visible. He said in the same sulky and resentful tones:

  ‘That’s all right. I should feel that way myself. It would never do. Only, how are you going to stop it? They’re both of age.’

  I will find a way. I will not have Leslie ruined – ruined body and soul,’ the other answered, with a slow concentrated force that had about it something almost terrifying. ‘That’s what it would mean,’ he added, more quietly. ‘I’ve seen it happen. I would give my own soul to make sure it does not h
appen to Leslie.’

  As always when he spoke of his son, his voice softened to gentleness, for the moment a sort of radiance surrounding him, though soon it passed, and soon he was his own stern self again.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Sargent muttered, scared a little by the almost demoniacal energy that throbbed in the other’s tones, ‘there’s no need to worry. As a matter of fact, I happen to know Miss Mears has given him the chuck – I mean, she’s breaking off her friendship with him, completely and entirely.’

  ‘With Leslie,’ repeated Mr Irwin, and something that was nearly a smile plucked momentarily at the corner of his mouth. He made a little gesture of incredulity with one hand – such a gesture as a man might make if he heard that another had refused a fortune. ‘She’ll never do that,’ he said slowly. ‘She may pretend, for her own purposes, but that’s all. I doubt he’ll never be safe while she’s alive – never. Only death will make him safe from her.’

  ‘It’s through here,’ Sargent said, opening the door. He turned, and looked up suddenly at Irwin, who was some six or nine inches the taller. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said, ‘and death’s the only cure.’

  He had spoken with some energy. A stage-hand, who was passing, heard, and turned to stare. Sargent saw him, and shouted angrily:

  ‘You, there, get on with your job, can’t you?’

  The man vanished in a scutter, and Sargent said morosely: ‘They spend half their time yarning and gossiping instead of working. Come this way, Mr Irwin.’