by Ngaio Marsh
Well, the figure was completed. There were some further places she must attend to—a careful balancing stroke here and here. She was filled with a great desire that her husband should see it. It was satisfactory, Troy thought, that of the few people to whom she wished to show her work her husband came first. Perhaps this was because he said so little yet was not embarrassed by his own silence.
As the end of her work drew near her restlessness increased and her fears for their reunion. She remembered phrases spoken by other women: ‘The first relationship is never repeated.’ ‘We were strangers again when we met.’ ‘It wasn’t the same.’ ‘It feels extraordinary. We were shy and had nothing to say to each other.’ Would her reunion also be inarticulate? ‘I’ve no technique,’ Troy thought, ‘to see me through. I’ve no marital technique at all. Any native adroitness I possess has gone into my painting. But perhaps Roderick will know what to say. Shall I tell him at once about the Ancreds?’
She was cleaning her palette when Fenella ran in to say a call had come through for her from London.
It was the Assistant Commissioner at the Yard. Troy listened to him with a hammer knocking at her throat. He thought, he said with arch obscurity, that she might enjoy a run up to London on Monday. If she stayed the night, the Yard might have something of interest to show her on Tuesday morning. A police car would be coming in by way of Ancreton Halt early on Monday and would be delighted to give her a lift. ‘Thank you,’ said Troy in an unrecognizable voice. ‘Yes, I see. Yes, of course. Yes, very exciting. Thank you.’
She fled to her room, realizing as she sat breathless on her bed that she had run like a madwoman up three flights of stairs. ‘It’s as well,’ she thought, ‘that the portrait’s finished. In this frame of mind I’d be lucky if I reached Panty’s form.’
She began distractedly to imagine their meeting. ‘But I can’t see his face,’ she thought in a panic. ‘I can’t remember his voice. I’ve forgotten my husband.’
She felt by turns an unreasonable urge for activity and a sense of helpless inertia. Ridiculous incidents from the Ancred repertoire flashed up in her mind. ‘I must remember to tell him that,’ she would think, and then wonder if, after all, the Ancreds in retrospect would sound funny. She remembered with a jolt that she must let Katti Bostock know about Tuesday. They had arranged for Alleyn’s old servant to go to London and open the flat.
‘I should have done it at once,’ she cried, and returned downstairs. While she waited, fuming, in a little telephone-room near the front doors, for her call to go through, she heard wheels on the drive, the sound of voices, and finally the unmistakable rumpus of arrival in the hall. A charming voice called gaily: ‘Milly, where are you? Come down. It’s Dessy and Thomas and me. Dessy found a Colonel, and the Colonel had a car, and we’ve all arrived together.’
‘Jenetta!’ Millamant’s disembodied voice floated down from the gallery. Still more distantly Pauline’s echoed her: ‘Jenetta!’
Was there an overtone of disapproval, not quite of dismay, in this greeting, Troy wondered, as she quietly shut the door?
Jenetta, the Hon Mrs Claude Ancred, unlike Millamant, had caught none of the overtones of her relations-in-law. She was a nice-looking woman, with a gay voice, good clothes, an intelligent face, and an air of quietly enjoying herself. Her conversation was unstressed and crisp. If she sensed internecine warfare she gave no hint of doing so, and seemed to be equally pleased with, and equally remote from, each member of that unlikely clan.
Desdemona, on the other hand, was, of all the Ancreds after Sir Henry, most obviously of the theatre. She was startlingly good looking, of voluptuous build, and had a warm ringing voice that seemed to be perpetually uttering important lines of climax from a West-End success. She ought really, Troy thought, to be surrounded by attendant figures: a secretary, an author, an agent, perhaps a doting producer. She had an aura of richness and warmth, and a knack of causing everybody else to subscribe to the larger-than-life atmosphere in which she herself moved so easily. Her Colonel, after a drink, drove away to his lawful destination, with Dessy’s magnificent thanks no doubt ringing in his ears. Troy, emerging from the telephone-room, found herself confronted by the new arrivals. She was glad to see Thomas: already she thought of him as ‘old Thomas’, with his crest of faded hair and his bland smile. ‘Oh, hallo,’ he said, blinking at her, ‘so here you are! I hope your carbuncle is better.’
‘It’s gone,’ said Troy.
‘We’re all talking about Papa’s engagement,’ said Thomas. ‘This is my sister-in-law, Mrs Claude Ancred, and this is my sister, Desdemona. Milly and Pauline are seeing about rooms. Have you painted a nice picture?’
‘Not bad. Are you producing a nice play?’
‘It’s quite good, thank you,’ said Thomas primly.
‘Darling Tommy,’ said Desdemona, ‘how can it be quite good with that woman? What were you thinking about when you cast it!’
‘Well, Dessy, I told the management you wanted the part.’
‘I didn’t want it. I could play it, but I didn’t want it, thank you.’
‘Then everybody ought to be pleased,’ said Thomas mildly. ‘I suppose, Jenetta,’ he continued, ‘you are anxious to see Fenella and Paul. Papa’s engagement has rather swamped theirs, you may feel. Are you as angry as he is about them?’
‘I’m not a bit angry,’ she said, catching Troy’s eye and smiling at her. ‘I’m fond of Paul and want to talk to him.’
‘That’s all very nice,’ said Dessy restlessly, ‘but Milly says it was Paul and Fenella who exploded the bomb.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Thomas comfortably, ‘I expect it would have gone off anyway. Did you know Mr Rattisbon has been sent for to make a new Will? I suppose Papa’ll tell us all about it at the Birthday Dinner tomorrow. Do you expect to be cut out this time, Dessy?’
‘My dear,’ cried his sister, sinking magnificently into the sofa and laying her arms along the back of it, ‘I’ve said so often exactly what I think of the Orrincourt that he can’t possibly do anything else. I don’t give a damn, Tommy. If Papa expects me to purr round congratulating them, he’s never been more mistaken. I can’t do it. It’s been a hideous shock to me. It hurts me, here,’ she added, beating a white fist on her striking bosom. ‘All my respect, my love, my ideal—shattered.’ She flashed her eyes at her sister-in-law. ‘You think I exaggerate, Jen. You’re lucky. You’re not easily upset.’
‘Well,’ said Jenetta lightly, ‘I’ve yet to meet Miss Orrincourt.’
‘He’s not your father,’ Dessy pointed out with emotion.
‘No more he is,’ she agreed.
‘T’uh!’ said Dessy bitterly.
This conversation was interrupted by Fenella, who ran downstairs, flew across the hall, and, with an inarticulate cry, flung herself into her mother’s arms.
‘Now, then,’ said Jenetta softly, holding her daughter for a moment, ‘no high strikes.’
‘Mummy, you’re not furious? Say you’re not furious!’
‘Do I look furious, you goat? Where’s Paul?’
‘In the library. Will you come? Mummy, you’re Heaven. You’re an angel.’
‘Do pipe down, darling. And what about Aunt Dessy and Uncle Thomas?’
Fenella turned to greet them. Thomas kissed her carefully. ‘I hope you’ll be happy,’ he said. ‘It ought to be all right, really. I looked up genetics in a medical encyclopedia after I read the announcement. The chap said the issue of first cousins was generally quite normal, unless there was any marked insanity in the family which was common to both.’
‘Tommy!’ said his sister. ‘Honestly, you are!’
‘Well,’ said Jenetta Ancred, ‘with that assurance to fortify us, Fen, suppose you take me to see Paul.’
They went off together. Millamant and Pauline came downstairs. ‘Such a nuisance,’ Millamant was saying, ‘I really don’t quite know how to arrange it.’
‘If you’re talking about rooms, Milly,’ said Desdemona, ‘I tel
l you flatly that unless something has been done about the rats I won’t go into Bracegirdle.’
‘Well, but Dessy—’ Pauline began.
‘Has something been done about the rats?’
‘Barker,’ said Millamant unhappily, ‘has lost the arsenic. I think he did Miss Orrincourt’s rooms some time ago, and after that the tin disappeared.’
‘Good God!’ said Thomas quietly.
‘Pity he didn’t put some in her tooth-glass,’ said Desdemona vindictively.
‘What about Ellen Terry?’
‘I was putting Jenetta into Terry.’
‘Come into Bernhardt with me, Dess,’ Pauline suggested richly. ‘I’d love to have you. We can talk. Let’s.’
‘The only thing against that,’ said Millamant, knitting her brows, ‘is that since Papa had all those large Jacobean pieces put in Bernhardt, there really isn’t anywhere for a second bed. I can put one in my room, Desdemona. I wondered if you’d mind… Lady Bancroft, you know. Quite spacious and plenty of hanging room.’
‘Well, Milly, if it isn’t turning you upside down.’
‘Not at all,’ said Millamant coldly.
‘And you can still talk to me,’ said Pauline. ‘I’ll be next door.’
On Friday night the weather broke and a deluge of rain beat down on the tortuous roofs of Ancreton. On Saturday morning Troy was awakened by a regular sequence of sharp percussionlike notes: Ping, ping, ping.
On going to her bath she nearly fell into a basin that had been placed on the landing. Into it fell a continuous progression of water-drops from a spreading patch in the roof. All day it rained. At three o’clock it had grown too dark to paint in the little theatre, but she had worked through the morning, and, having laid her last touch against the canvas, walked away from it and sat down. She felt that curious blankness which follows the completion of a painting. It was over. Her house was untenanted. It did not long remain so, for now, unchecked by the discipline of her work, Troy’s thoughts were filled with the anticipation of reunion. ‘The day after tomorrow I shall be saying: “Tomorrow.” ’ The Ancreds and their machinations now seemed unreal. They were two-dimensional figures gesticulating on a ridiculously magnificent stage. This reaction was to colour all memories of her last two days at Ancreton, blurring their edges, lending a tinge of fantasy to commonplace events, and causing her to doubt the integrity of her recollections when, in a little while, it would be imperative for her to recount them accurately.
She was to remember that Sir Henry was invisible all day, resting in preparation for his Birthday Dinner; that there was an air of anticipation in his enormous house, that his presents were set out in the library, a dark no-man’s-land in the east wing, and that the members of his family visited this Mecca frequently, eyeing each other’s gifts with intense partiality. Troy herself, in readiness for The Birthday, had made a lively and diverting sketch of Panty, which she had mounted and placed among the other gifts, wondering if, in view of Panty’s fall from grace, it was too preposterously inept. The sketch was viewed with wholehearted favour by Panty herself and her mother, and by nobody else except Cedric, who chose to regard it as an acid comment on the child’s character, which it was not.
Troy remembered afterwards how she had looked at the long dresses she had brought with her and decided that they were nothing like grand enough for the occasion. She remembered how the air of festivity had deepened as evening came, and how Barker and his retinue of elderly maids were in a continuous state of controlled bustle. Most often, though still with a feeling of incredulity, would it seem to her that there had been a sense of impending climax in the house, an impression of something drawing to its close. At the time Troy said to herself: ‘It’s because Rory’s coming. It’s because I’ve finished an intensive bit of work done at concert pitch.’ But in retrospect these answers sounded unconvincing, and she wondered if the thoughts of one malevolent creature could have sent out a thin mist of apprehension.
Troy had cleaned her palette, shut her paint-box on ranks of depleted tubes, and washed her brushes for the last time at Ancreton. The portrait had been set up on the stage and framed in crimson velvet curtains that did their best to kill it. ‘If it was springtime,’ Troy thought, ‘I believe they’d have festooned it in garlands.’ The act-drop had been lowered in front of the portrait and there it waited on a dark stage for the evening’s ceremony. She couldn’t glower at it. She couldn’t walk in that deluge. She was unendurably restless. The dinner itself was at nine; she had three hours to fill in. Taking a book with her, she wandered uncertainly from one vast room to another, and wherever she went there seemed to be two Ancreds in private conversation. Having disclosed Paul and Fenella tightly embraced in the study, disturbed Desdemona and Pauline hissing together in the drawing-room, and interrupted Millamant in what appeared to be angry parley with Barker under the stairs, she made her way to a room next the library, known as the Great Boudoir (the Little Boudoir was upstairs). Unnerved by her previous encounters, Troy paused outside the door and listened. All was still. She pushed open the door, and was confronted by Cedric and Miss Orrincourt side by side on a sofa, doubled up in an ecstasy of silent laughter.
She was well into the room before they saw her. Their behaviour was extraordinary. They stared at her with their mouths open, the laughter drying out on their faces as if she had scorched it. Cedric turned an ugly red, Miss Orrincourt’s eyes were as hard as blue glass marbles. She was the first to speak.
‘Well, for crying out loud,’ she said in a flat voice, ‘look who’s here.’
‘Dearest Mrs Alleyn,’ said Cedric breathlessly, ‘do come in. We’ve been having a dreadfully naughty giggle over everything. The Birthday, you know, and all the wheels within wheels and so on. Do join us. Or are you too grand and upright? Dear me, that sounds as if you were a piano, doesn’t it?’
‘It’s all right,’ said Troy, ‘I won’t come in, thank you. I’m on my way upstairs.’
She went out, closing the door on their silence.
In the hall she found a completely strange elderly gentleman reading a newspaper before the fire. He wore London clothes, an old-fashioned wing collar and a narrow black tie. His face was thin and his hands blue-veined and knotty. When he saw Troy he dropped his newspaper, snatched off his pince-nez, and ejaculating ‘M-m-m-mah!’ rose nimbly to his feet.
‘Are you waiting to see somebody?’ Troy asked.
‘Thank yer, thank yer, no thank-yer,’ said the elderly gentleman rapidly. ‘Make myself known. Haven’t had the pleasure—Introduce myself. M-mah. Rattisbon.’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Troy. ‘I knew you were coming. How do you do?’ She introduced herself.
Mr Rattisbon vibrated the tip of his tongue between his lips and wrung his hands. ‘How d’do,’ he gabbled. ‘Delighted. Take it, fellow-guests. If I may so designate myself. Professional visit.’
‘So’s mine,’ said Troy, picking the sense out of this collection of phrases. ‘I’ve been doing a job here.’
He glanced at the painting-smock she had not yet removed. ‘Surely,’ he clattered, ‘Mrs Roderick Alleyn? Née Troy?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Pleasure of your husband’s acquaintance,’ Mr Rattisbon explained. ‘Professional association. Twice. Admirable.’
‘Really?’ said Troy, at once delighted. ‘You know Roderick? Do let’s sit down.’
Mr Rattisbon sucked in his breath and made a crowing sound. They sat before the fire. He crossed his knees and joined his gnarled fingers. ‘He’s a drawing by Cruikshank,’ Troy thought. She began to talk to him about Alleyn, and he listened exactly as if she was making a series of statements which he would presently require his clerk to come in and witness. Troy was to remember vividly this quiet encounter, and how in the middle of her recital she broke off apologetically to say: ‘But I don’t know why I should bore you with these stories about Roderick.’
‘Bore?’ he said. ‘On the contrary. Entirely so. May I add, s
trictly in camera, that I—ah—had contemplated this call with some misgivings as—ah—a not altogether propitious necessity. I find myself unexpectedly received, and most charmingly so, by a lady for whose remarkable talents I have long entertained the highest regard. M-m-mah!’ Mr Rattisbon added, dipping like a sparrow towards Troy. ‘Entirely so.’
At this juncture Pauline and Desdemona appeared in the hall and bore down rapidly upon Mr Rattisbon.
‘We are so sorry,’ Pauline began. ‘Leaving you so long. Papa’s only just been told—a little upset. The great day, of course. He will be ready for you in a few minutes, dear Mr Rattisbon. Until then Dessy and I would be so glad if you—we feel we’d like to—’
Troy was already on her way out. They were waiting for her to get out of earshot.
She heard Desdemona’s rich voice: ‘Just a tiny talk, Mr Rattisbon. Just to warn you.’ And Mr Rattisbon suddenly very dry and brittle: ‘If you desire it, certainly.’
‘But,’ thought Troy, plodding along the passage, ‘they won’t get much change out of Mr Rattisbon.’
‘It’s the big scene from a film script,’ thought Troy, looking down the table, ‘and I’m the bit-part lady.’ The analogy was unavoidable. How often had one not seen Sir Aubrey Smith at the head of such a table? Where else but on the screen was such opulence to be found? Where else such a welter of flowers, such sumptuously Edwardian epergnes, or such incredibly appropriate conversation? Never out of a film studio had characters been so well typed. Even the neighbouring squire and the parson, the one lean and monocled, the other rubicund and sleek, who apparently were annual fixtures for the event; even they were carefully selected cameo parts, too like themselves to be credible. And Mr Rattisbon? The absolute in family solicitors. As for the Ancreds themselves, to glance at them or to hear their carefully modulated laughter, their beautifully articulated small-talk, was to realize at once that this was an all-star vehicle. Troy began to make up titles. ‘Homage to Sir Henry.’ ‘The Astonishing Ancreds.’
