by Ngaio Marsh
Commander Syce came up with her. He stood by the open driving window, and even in her flurry, she noticed, that he no longer smelt of stale spirits.
“Ha, ha,” he said, laughing hollowly. Sensing perhaps that this was a strange beginning, he began again. “Look here!” he shouted. “Good Lord! Only just heard. Sickening for you. Are you all right? Not too upset and all that? What a thing!”
Nurse Kettle was greatly comforted. She had feared an entirely different reaction to Kitty Cartarette’s arrest in Commander Syce.
“What about yourself?” she countered. “It must be a bit of a shock to you, after all.”
He made a peculiar dismissive gesture with the white object he carried.
“Never mind me. Or rather,” Commander Syce amended, dragging feverishly at his collar, “if you can bear it for a moment—”
She now saw that the object was a rolled paper. He thrust it at her. “There you are,” he said. “It’s nothing, whatever. Don’t say a word.”
She unrolled it, peering at it in the dusk. “Oh,” she cried in an ecstasy, “how lovely! How lovely! It’s my picture-map! Oh, look! There’s Lady Lacklander, sketching in Bottom Meadow. And the doctor with a stork over his head — aren’t you a trick—and there’s me, only you’ve been much too kind about me.” She leant out of the window, turning her lovely map towards the fading light. This brought her closish to Commander Syce, who made a singular little ejaculation and was motionless. Nurse Kettle traced the lively figures through the map: the landlord, the parson, various rustic celebrities. When she came to Hammer Farm, there was the gardener’s cottage and his asthmatic child, and there was Rose bending gracefully in the garden. Nearer the house, one could see even in that light, Commander Syce had used thicker paint.
As if, Nurse Kettle thought with a jolt, there had been an erasure.
And down in the willow grove, the Colonel’s favourite fishing haunt, there had been made a similar erasure.
“I started it,” he said, “some time ago — after your — after your first visit.”
She looked up, and between this oddly assorted pair a silence fell.
“Give me six months,” Commander Syce said, “to make sure. It’ll be all right. Will you?”
Nurse Kettle assured him that she would.
The End
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Document ID: e942b8a6-9c36-4e7a-b553-242eb3a47f13
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Document creation date: 11 June 2010
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