Uneasy Terms

by Peter Cheyney

Genres: Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Three dazzling sisters are suspects in the killing of their own mother. If only Viola could have predicted the potential for danger when she drafted the will that prevents any of her daughters from being married strictly for her fortune. But no case of murder and intrigue is too knotty for shrewd detective Slim Callaghan, who stirs up the calm waters of the tiny village of Alfriston, leaving chaos in his wake and a stunningly solved puzzle at this adventure's thrilling close.

Release date: January 21, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 288

Sample

The wind came in from the sea, driving the rain before it. It descended in sheets beating down on the rolling Sussex Downs, forming little rivulets that ran swiftly down the
gutters of the winding roads about Alfriston. The wind howled dismally through the woods that topped the long rise of downland behind the village.

Dark Spinney, the old rambling Alardyse house, stood on the hillside above the village of High and Over, commonly called Hangover. The high red lichen and moss-covered wall that surrounded the
house showed dimly through the darkness; reflected fitfully the gleam of the lights of a car that came over the downs and wended its lonely way towards Alfriston. Inside, in the old oak-panelled
wall, a wheezy grandfather’s clock struck eight.

Viola Alardyse came down the winding stairway that led to the hall. She presented a superb picture as the light at the turn of the stairs from the shaded wall lamp fell upon her. She was tall,
willowy; moved with a superb grace that caught and held the eye. Her hair was the colour of corn and the light picked out its russet tints softly.

She reached the bottom of the stairs, moved across the hallway, stood at the top of the small further flight of three open stairs which led to its continuation. Before her were the main
double-doors forming the entrance to the hall. On her left the small oak wainscotted corridor leading to the garden path that led to the green door set in the wall surrounding the house, the door
that looked out on to the dirt road running towards Alfriston.

She stood motionless, one hand resting on the bottom of the balustrade, the other hanging by her side. She wore a long black velvet skirt with a white georgette blouse. The ruffles about her
neck and the full sleeves at her wrists were caught with black velvet ribbons. One small crêpe-de-Chine shod foot tapped impatiently on the floor. There were dark circles about her blue eyes.
Her mouth – beautiful like that of all the Alardyse women – was set in a straight line, hiding the small pearly teeth.

She looked at the wrist-watch on her left wrist as if the process would stop something she desired not to happen. Then, after a moment, she turned, moved towards the corridor at the top of the
hall that led to the drawing and dining-rooms. She was halfway there when she heard the door open at the end of the passage leading to the garden path. She spun round, came back. She was at the
bottom of the stairs when her sister emerged from the passageway.

She said: ‘Good evening, Corinne.’

Corinne Alardyse put her hands in the pockets of her wet raincoat. She stood for a moment looking at her sister through half-closed lids. Her expression might have been good-humoured or
contemptuous – you never knew with Corinne. She was an inch or so shorter that Viola; dark, beautiful in an Italian way. Her grey-green eyes sparkled as if she was turning a good joke over in
her mind. She began to take off her raincoat.

She said: ‘It’s raining damned hard outside. I almost got drowned walking from the garage. How are you, my sweet?’ Her mouth twisted sarcastically.

Viola said: ‘Are you being funny at my expense, Corinne? I don’t think that I feel inclined for humour.’

Corinne hung up her coat. She took a cigarette case out of the pocket of her tweed jacket and a lighter. She lit a cigarette. She stood leaning up against the oak wall immediately opposite her
sister. A suit of armour, worn in ancient days by one of the Alardyse ancestors, standing close beside her, added an almost grotesque touch to the picture. She drew a breath of cigarette smoke into
her lungs, exuded it slowly through pursed lips.

She said: ‘I don’t suppose you feel particularly humorous at the moment, my sweet. But whose fault is that? Isn’t there a bit somewhere about the wrongdoer always desiring
sympathy?’

Viola moved a little. She said: ‘I’ve never asked you for sympathy, Corinne.’

Her sister said: ‘No? That’s probably because you knew you wouldn’t get any. Anyway, why the hell should I sympathize with you?’

Viola said wearily: ‘I don’t know. In any event I’m not asking you to sympathize with me. But I think you might at least tell me what’s happened.’

Corinne moved away from the wall. She came closer to Viola. She stood at the bottom of the little flight of three stairs, looking up at her sister. Viola stood motionless above her like a
statue.

Corinne said cynically: ‘Of course, my dear, you want to know exactly what’s happened. I bet you do.’ She sank her voice. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. The
boyfriend,’ she went on regarding the glowing tip of her cigarette with equanimity, ‘is just as tough as ever. In fact I would go so far as to say it looks as if he might be even more
tough.’

Viola said: ‘Oh, my God!’

‘I don’t see what good it’s going to do you – calling on the Deity, I mean,’ said Corinne amiably. ‘Although I expect you feel like it. But there it is.
There’s the position in a nutshell. He says it’s got to be like it was before. In other words, there’s to be no reduction in the payment; otherwise –’ she spread her
hands. After a moment she went on: ‘In any event I don’t see what you’ve got to grumble about.’ She looked sideways at her sister. ‘I ought to be the one to
grumble,’ she said.

Viola said softly: ‘Sometimes I think I’m going to end it all. It’s wearing me out. Anything would be better than this. I don’t see why you should object to that. It
would be to your advantage, Corinne.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Corinne. ‘But I’m not particularly keen on it being to my advantage. I’m quite satisfied with the situation as it is now. In any event, I
don’t see what you’ve got to grumble at. You’re a damn sight better off than if the truth were to come out.’

Viola said: ‘But he’s always asking for more.’

Corinne shrugged her shoulders. She said glibly: ‘Men always ask for more. They’re like that. Anyway, you’re a rich woman.’ She looked up towards the stairway. She said:
‘Oh, my God! Do you see what I see?’

Coming round the turn of the stairway was a figure. It descended the stairs slowly with mincing steps. The steps were all the shorter because the figure was wearing red-satin court shoes which
were in the first place too large, and the heels thereon were at least three and a half inches high. The figure wore an extremely tight-fitting scarlet frock which was cut much too low, showing a
too ample expanse of bosom. Its straw-coloured hair was hanging à la Veronica Lake about its shoulders. Its face was made up dead white, the eyes being encircled with middle blue and the
lashes plentifully adorned with mascara. An almost perfect mouth had been painted in a bright shade of scarlet in a cupid’s bow exaggerated to the point of burlesque.

The figure was that of Miss Patricia Alardyse, aged seventeen.

Corinne said: ‘You little bitch! Go back to your room and take that frock off. So you’ve been going through my wardrobe again. And for God’s sake go and wash that stuff off
your face. You look like a tart.’

Patricia leant theatrically over the balustrade. She said in a dramatic voice: ‘Corinne, haven’t I read somewhere or other that in every woman there is something of the
tart?’

Corinne said: ‘At the present moment it looks as if there is a lot of it in you. Go and wash your face and take my frock off and put those shoes back where you found them.’

Patricia, leaning against the banisters in an attitude which she considered to be expressive of Miss Lake at her best, said: ‘I’ll be damned if I will.’

Corinne said angrily: ‘You’ll be damned if you don’t. What do you think will happen to you if Gervase sees you like that. We shall have a lecture lasting for
hours.’

Patricia said: ‘I don’t care. Strevens, the butcher’s boy in the village, told me the other day that I was the very image of Greta Garbo.’

‘Quite,’ said Corinne, ‘and two or three days before that the boy who delivers the newspapers told you you were like Lana Turner. Silly little fool! I’m sick of having my
wardrobe raided by you.’

Patricia continued to descend the stairs with what she considered to be an air of dignity.

She said: ‘Corinne, what you say leaves me quite cold. Your remarks pass off me like water from a duck’s back. I know what the trouble is. You’re jealous of
course.’

She swept across the hall into the passage leading to the drawing-room.

Corinne said to Viola: ‘That Patricia is a fearful little jerk. I don’t know what’s coming over her. She spends the whole of her life acting.’

Viola said: ‘Well, she’s young. It doesn’t mean anything. She’ll get over it.’ She laughed a little bitterly. ‘I think most of us spend the greater part of
our lives acting.’

‘You speak for yourself,’ said Corinne. ‘I don’t act. Sometimes I think I’m the only natural person in the family.’ She looked wickedly at Viola.
‘At least I have nothing to hide,’ she said.

A gong sounded from the direction of the dining-room.

Viola said: ‘Hurry, Corinne, and change. You know Gervase gets fearfully angry if you’re not changed for dinner. We don’t want any more scenes. It’s been so unpleasant
lately.’

Corinne said: ‘Yes. Actually, I’m getting rather bored with stepfather and his likes and dislikes. He thinks people have nothing else to do but change their clothes all
day.’

She began to walk up the stairs. Almost at the top, where the meeting of four passageways formed a well looking down into the hall, she turned.

She said over her shoulder: ‘Keep your pecker up, Viola. You’re all right, my dear, you know, so long’ – she dropped her voice – ‘as you go on paying.
I’ll be seeing you.’ She tripped up the stairs.

Viola stood in the hallway, looking at the great oak doors in front of her. She stood there for two or three minutes; undecided, unhappy.

She thought that life was an odd and peculiar thing. It came back and hit you and it went on hitting you. Actually your motives for doing things didn’t matter a great deal. Nothing
mattered to life. If your motives were good or bad it was all the same.

She felt very near to tears. Then, with the sudden, illogical decision that comes to women who are in the process of feeling deeply rather than thinking calmly, she moved towards the passage
that led away from the drawing-room towards the east side of the house. She moved quickly as if she were afraid that delay would alter her decision.

She stopped before the door at the end of the passageway. She knocked softly on it.

Her stepfather’s voice said irascibly: ‘Well . . . what is it? Can’t I get a moment’s peace? Who is it, and what do you want?’

Viola shrugged her shoulders, helplessly. She said: ‘I’m sorry . . . it doesn’t matter. I’m so sorry I disturbed you.’

She went back to the hall; began to ascend the stairs. Her eyes were filled with tears. She moved quickly up the stairs to her room on the first floor.

Inside, she threw herself face downwards on the bed. She began to sob bitterly.

Presenting Colonel Gervase Stenhurst (once – a long time ago – of the Indian Army; now, by courtesy, squire of Dark Spinney; also, by courtesy, titular head of the
Clan Alardyse and the remains of the Clan Wymering – and when I say titular, I mean titular) who sits at the head of the long – too long for its few occupants – oak
dining-table, and regards his family connections with an eye inclined to be yellow, bad-tempered and gloomy.

The Colonel is a member of the ‘old school’. His manners are very good – when someone is looking. He is a great respecter of the ladies; he likes whisky and a good cigar; soft
living appeals to him. Above all, he likes peace and quiet so that he may enjoy the concomitants of peace and quiet.

Underneath – and when no one is looking – he is bad-tempered to a degree entirely damnable. He still has an eye for a well-turned ankle, especially when he has imbibed more than four
double whiskies and sodas. He has too an eye on the main chance and knows on which side his bread is buttered, but is disinclined to let anyone else realize the fact. That is, if they haven’t
already guessed it.

The Colonel is so obvious that he creaks. But he has a capacity for self-delusion without comparison. He is unique in the fact that he is conceited and sixty-two, and when a man is conceited at
sixty-two it isn’t so good for somebody – even if the somebody is himself.

Miss Honoria Wymering, sister of the late Mrs Stenhurst, who was mother – by her first husband Ferdinand Alardyse – of Viola, Corinne and Patricia, sits at the foot of the table and
casts about her glances inclined to be apprehensive. She looks warily round the table from time to time with blue eyes – eyes that, in spite of her years, are still bright and attractive. She
realizes that the air is thick with ‘atmosphere’ and that, on the slightest provocation, there may be one of those quarrels that have become far too numerous during the last few
weeks.

Miss Wymering is plump and still beautiful. Her bleached hair is attractively dressed. Looking at her, you realize that the Wymerings are lovely women – lovely and alluring. You realize
that the amazing beauty of Viola, Corinne and Patricia is a carrying on of the Wymering tradition of stateliness and beauty – so far as Viola is concerned; of beauty without stateliness where
Corinne is concerned; and of beauty mixed with impishness, dramatics and what-have-you-got-today so far as Patricia is concerned.

And here a few words might adequately be devoted to Patricia, who is nobody’s fool; who, in spite of her predeliction for dramatics; her ability to be somebody else – somebody drawn
from her wide cinema screen acquaintance – has, most of the time, her bright and observant eye on the main chance. Patricia, whose ears are attuned to whispers in case the whispers might be
interesting; whose eyes can (almost) see round corners; who has contempt for her stepfather, indulgence for her Aunt; a well-concealed fear of Corinne – who, in spite of anything that
Patricia might say to the contrary, possesses the ability to scare the pants off that young lady – and an almost as well-concealed love for Viola who is, let it be admitted, about the only
person that Patricia admires and doesn’t try to imitate.

Miss Wymering eats her soup and still manages to endow the movement of arm and finger with grace. Her eyes wander from the Colonel to Viola, from Viola to Corinne, from Corinne to Patricia.
Something is wrong, she thinks, and wishes she knew what it was. Almost immediately she is glad that she doesn’t. Sometimes, she considers, ignorance is really and truly bliss.

But she wonders.

She looks at Viola. She thinks that Viola is a most lovely person. She wishes that she looked less tired; that the dark circles beneath her eyes were less pronounced. She believes that something
is worrying Viola. She wonders what? She remembers some of the things that used to worry her when she was nearly thirty. . . .

Miss Wymering sighs. Sometimes she wishes that she had sufficient courage to ask Viola about many things. But she hasn’t sufficient courage. She is all for a quiet life. And if Viola
wanted her to know she’d tell her. Wouldn’t she . . .?’

And then Corinne. Miss Wymering thinks about Corinne, who is eating soup with an expression of supreme self-satisfaction tempered with disgust when her eyes fall on Patricia (who, by the way, is
still wearing Corinne’s red dinner frock; still wearing the terrible make-up; the film-star hair-do; an expression which she considers to be one of supreme disdain and an idea that Corinne is
going to be very rude in a minute and that she – Patricia – is looking forward to the process. In fact she is, at the moment, busy rehearsing, in her mind, the ‘act’ with
which she intends to rebut any attack from the Corinne front). Corinne, who, for some reason which Miss Wymering cannot fail to notice, looks self-complacent and satisfied like, Honoria thinks,
‘the cat that swallowed the canary.’ She wonders just which canary Corinne is contemplating swallowing at the moment.

And Patricia . . .! Under her breath, Miss Wymering makes a little clucking noise indicative of disapproval. Patricia is really very naughty. But definitely naughty. Miss
Wymering realizes perfectly well that Patricia is wearing one of Corinne’s frocks – without permission; that her hair is copied, probably, from the hair-do of the film star at the
moment occupying prime place in Patricia’s emotional being; that the make-up which the child – anyone under twenty is a child to Miss Wymering – wears is too terrible for
words. She hopes unutterably that Gervase is not going to notice; that if he does he won’t be too unpleasant.

Sallins, the butler, an aged retainer of Ferdinand Alardyse, who has been with the family, man and boy, for longer than he cares to think, white-haired, almost aristocratic in appearance, hovers
about the end of the table waiting to clear the soup course. Sallins is not particularly happy. He too realizes that something is ‘up’; that there is going to be a spot of bother about
something.

He wonders if they are going to wait until coffee, or if they are going to start in at any moment. He doesn’t know which process will give him most satisfaction – whether it is
better to be present at a family schemozzle and pretend that you aren’t there, or not be present and wonder what the hell it was all about.

Sallins has arrived at a state of mind and years when he is beginning to wonder what the hell everything is about.

Nothing seems to make sense to him – from the atom bomb to Colonel Stenhurst’s liver attacks. He is old, and life resembles a chronic gumboil. Something that is prolonged and painful
and with which no one ever sympathizes.

He moves slowly round the table, collecting soup plates, limping a little, the result of a kick from Miss Viola’s pony when she was about five years of age. Those were the days, thinks
Sallins . . . when Mr Alardyse was master at Dark Spinney, before Mrs Alardyse was foolish enough to marry again. Those were the days . . .

The storm broke suddenly. Sallins had served the cutlets and departed to see how the sweet was progressing. Corinne masticated a piece of mutton slowly. She put down her knife and fork.

She said coldly to Patricia: ‘I thought I told you to take that frock off. Why don’t you do what you’re told, you fearful little thing!’

Patricia stopped eating; looked at Corinne. She said in an icy voice: ‘I don’t wish to talk to you, sourpuss! Before dinner you called me a bitch . . . but a
bitch!’

The Colonel said testily: ‘What the devil’s all this about? What’s that – called you what?’

Patricia said primly: ‘A bitch, step-papa – a woman dog!’

The Colonel made a horrible noise in his throat.

Corinne said: ‘Don’t suffocate, Gervase. We should none of us like that.’ She turned again to Patricia. She said: ‘Immediately after dinner, go to your room and take that
frock off, or I’ll tear it off you. I suggest also that you wash your face and do your hair decently. I’ve already told you that you look like a tart.’

Patricia said icily: ‘I’m afraid I haven’t made a close study of tarts. As types they interest me only in the abstract.’ She smiled wickedly at Corinne.
‘You’re in a pretty bad temper tonight, aren’t you, darling?’ she asked brightly. ‘You know, step-papa, when Corinne loses her temper she can be a fair
basket.’

The Colonel said acidly: ‘I’m sick and tired of all these squabbles at the dinner table. I’m sick and tired of this shocking slang too. Young women didn’t behave like you
do in my days. What the devil do you mean by calling Corinne a basket? What’s a basket?’

Patricia said: ‘A basket is a polite expression denoting a bastard – or love-child.’

The Colonel looked at his sister-in-law. He said: ‘My God, Honoria, what you do with your time I don’t know. Listen to the way this child talks to me – her stepfather. Her
behaviour is appalling. Everybody’s behaviour is app. . .