Death of a Delft Blue mb-37

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘It was kind of you to side-track our friends,’ she said, putting her work together. ‘I shall leave this now, and go on with it this afternoon while you are out. I gather that you do not propose to avail yourself of Mr Florian’s invitation to take you to visit the grotto.’

  ‘I can’t stand the beautiful boy!’ said Laura. ‘Unless he smiles, he reminds me of a Harold Copping drawing in a religious book for kids… charming to look at, but remote from life as it has to be lived, and from boys as one knows they really are — thugs and criminals, for the most part — criminals, anyway.’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘I hope we do not need to include Hamish!’

  ‘He’s a thug,’ declared his mother, ‘and will be a criminal as soon as he is old enough to know right from wrong.’

  Immediately after lunch, during which she perceived that Florian had rejoined his relatives, Laura set off to visit the Knight’s Castle. She did not find the restored edifice particularly interesting, but she enjoyed the view and decided to mount the Wilhelmina Tower in order to obtain an even wider impression of the undoubtedly beautiful countryside.

  She took the chair-lift to the top of the tower and was astonished, and not at all delighted, to find Binnie, among other visitors, in possession of the view. Binnie came to the subject which, apparently, was exercising her mind to the exclusion of much else.

  ‘I say!’ she exclaimed. ‘I did hope you’d be here! I’m so glad you’re not with your little old lady. She absolutely terrifies me! I say, you do think I’m doing the right thing in marrying Bernardo, don’t you? You see, it’s such a sensible arrangement. I do wish Florian wouldn’t be so sticky about it. After all, I can’t remain a spinster all my life, can I?’

  ‘How do I know?’ asked Laura. ‘By the way, I thought you were in Amsterdam to hold your brother’s hand at his sitting.’

  ‘Oh, Gran and the aunts wanted me to, but I got bored as soon as they left, so I hired a car and had lunch in Maastricht and then came on here to pick up and go back with them, but so far I haven’t set eyes on them. I suppose I’ll run into them later. What are you going to do next? I bet you’re thinking of the grotto. Let’s do it together. I shall probably scream when we get inside. I suffer from claustrophobia, you see.’

  ‘I suffer from schizophrenia,’ said Laura. ‘It makes me violent. If you screamed I should probably knife you.’

  Binnie giggled.

  ‘I do so awfully admire you, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ she observed in ardent tones. ‘So we’ll do the grotto together, shall we? Have you really got a knife on you? I knew a man who threatened his wife with one. It was called a lethal weapon, and he was fined something quite appalling for possessing it. That was in England, of course. We live in England. I think I must have told you. Now that I’m engaged to Bernardo, though, Florian says he’s going to live over here with Grandma Binnen. I only hope he likes it. If you ask me, Aunt Ruby is a man-eater.’ She giggled again. ‘Come to think of it,’ she added, ‘she looks as though she could do with a square meal or so, doesn’t she?’

  Laura declined to comment on Aunt Ruby’s undoubtedly cadaverous appearance, and found herself committed to accompanying Binnie to the grotto. The guide counted heads at the beginning of the expedition, and at times repeated this procedure. It would have been easy enough, Laura realised, to lose a tourist or so on the journey if this had not been done. To her satisfaction, Binnie remained almost entirely silent during the tour, breaking into loquacity only once or twice to remark that the effigy of the dragon and that of the crocodile reminded her of Laura’s formidable employer, saying which she giggled violently.

  ‘I wonder,’ she said, when they emerged, ‘what it would be like to get lost down there? I should try to make for the chapel, and pray and pray and pray until somebody found me. They’d have to find you, wouldn’t they?’

  Laura replied, rather shortly, that some tourists were utterly irresponsible and deserved to get lost if they refused to obey the rules. She added that she had enjoyed the trip and that she agreed with the guide that ‘nature and art had combined to make one of the wonders of the modern world.’ Binnie assented wholeheartedly to this tongue-in-cheek paraphrase, and added that they had been walking on the bed of a prehistoric ocean. She particularised.

  ‘That underground lake!’ she exclaimed. ‘I suppose that was just the ultimate remains of the sea!’

  ‘Fresh water, and drinkable, according to the guide,’ said Laura. ‘Doesn’t sound much like the sea.’

  Binnie giggled.

  ‘There shall be no more sea,’ she quoted. ‘A funny idea, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t care about it at all,’ Laura replied. ‘Patmos may have been one thing, but the British Isles are quite another.’

  ‘You are too utterly with it,’ said Binnie earnestly. ‘I think I should agree with every word you ever uttered. Your voice is sheer magic in my ears.’

  ‘Oh, go and boil your head,’ retorted Laura. ‘You bore me stiff, you little chump!’

  Binnie giggled again. Suddenly she spotted her relatives.

  ‘Now to confess to Gran that I hadn’t the money to pay for the car, so the garage are chalking it up to her account,’ she said. ‘They’re the people she always hires from, so I knew it would be all right. Do her good to sub. up for once. She’s terribly mean, you know. Well, well, so long! Be seeing you!’

  ‘I sincerely hope not,’ said Laura.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Dinner in North Norfolk

  ‘My food was plain, but always varied and wholesome, and the good red wine was admirable.’

  Samuel Butler

  « ^ »

  A considerable amount of work awaited Dame Beatrice and Laura on their return to England, and for two or three weeks they lived and were kept busy at the Kensington house and at Dame Beatrice’s London clinic. The arrears of secretarial work were cleared up eventually by Laura and then she learned that the tiresome case on which her husband had been engaged for some months had been resolved and that he was due for leave. Upon being apprised of this fact, Dame Beatrice opted for Laura’s immediate return to the Stone House in Hampshire, where Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin could join her while they planned how most enjoyably to spend the free time offered to him.

  ‘And leave you here on your own?’ demanded Laura.

  ‘Although, like Katisha, I may well be sufficiently decayed,’ retorted Dame Beatrice, ‘I am not physically inert, mentally deranged or spiritually stagnant. I shall manage very well for a week or two. Moreover, as your son’s school holidays are imminent, you may direct him to proceed hither, and I will do what I can to entertain him and keep him out of your way for a week or two.’

  ‘You spoil him.’

  ‘No, I do not. I feel that Hamish benefits from my tutelage. Besides, Carey will invite him to stay on his pig-farm. Hamish loves pigs and is very good with them. Denis will be there, and so will Jonathan, Deborah and their twins, besides Jenny’s own couple of children. There will be plenty for Hamish to do, and that, as you well know, is the agreed formula for a child’s health and happiness. Nothing distresses me more than to hear a whining little boy (girls are not so prone to this particular malady or maladjustment) begging his parents to tell him whether there is not anything he can do. It is a serious malaise, and I do feel most strongly…’

  ‘All right, you win,’ said Laura. ‘And thanks,’ she added. ‘It will be rather nice to have Gavin to myself for a bit. Besides, I expect he’s tired. It’s been the brute of a case, I believe.’

  So Laura betook herself to Hampshire. After a hectic week in London (during which he visited London Airport, spent a day in the Science Museum, went to two plays, two films, two restaurant lunches, one restaurant dinner, was given a tape recorder and chose a dozen ‘pop’ records) her son was driven to the village of Stanton St John in Oxfordshire, there to spend a blissful couple of weeks on Carey Lestrange’s pig-farm.

  ‘Pigs,�
� he wrote to his mother, ‘are quite heaven.’

  ‘So I suppose they do have wings, after all,’ said his father, when Laura passed him their son’s letter. ‘Lewis Carroll seems to have been uncertain about it, but Hamish has clinched the matter.’

  They spent an idyllic holiday, riding, walking and driving in the New Forest, and in Dorset, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire. They also spent one unforgettable day with their son.

  ‘It’s not that I want you,’ said Hamish, ‘but you may as well see me in action.’ He released a year-old Landrace boar and gave it a playful slap on the hindquarters before he ran away. The boar galloped after him, tried to run between his legs and screamed with delight as it sent him sprawling. Hamish got up and chased the animal. When it turned on him, he tore away again. Carey came up and joined Laura and Gavin.

  ‘I don’t worry at all about Hamish, but is it all right for the boar?’ asked Laura. ‘He seems rather excited, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, yes, but Kelvedon King Arthur likes a game. I’m keeping him off service for a bit. He damaged himself a little at the last one, and fooling about like this with Hamish keeps him interested and lively. That boy is a born pigman.’

  Laura expressed delight. Her husband guffawed. Carey collected the boar and shut him up again. Hamish dusted himself down and joined them. He wore a self-satisfied smile.

  ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘How did I do?’

  ‘Trot up to the house, old man,’ said Gavin. ‘The postman was in the lane as I came along.’

  ‘A postal order from Mrs Dame,’ said Hamish. ‘I was expecting it. She said she thought she could sell my golden hamsters for me, and I expect she’s done it. She’s awfully gifted, isn’t she?’

  His elders declined to reply, so he trotted off, fully aware of his own grace, beauty and strength.

  ‘I don’t know!’ said Laura, with a groan. ‘He gets more and more dreadful every day!’

  ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Gavin.

  ‘Very much all right,’ said Carey. ‘If you don’t like him, why didn’t you have a girl?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how to bring up a girl,’ said Laura.

  ‘Well, you don’t bring Hamish up. He brings himself up,’ said her husband. ‘And not making at all a bad job of it, either,’ he added, watching his son’s progress towards the house. ‘Hope he gets his postal order all right. If not, we’ll have to give him one.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Croc. spoils him,’ said Laura, crossly, ‘and so do you!’

  ‘With the result that when, in the years to come, he gets into all the scrapes a young man is heir to, Aunt Adela will haul him out of them by the scruff of his neck and a few words that will inevitably blister his ears,’ said Carey, ‘and I’m all for it. She has a wonderfully good influence on him.’

  Hamish capered up to them, an envelope in each hand. He gave one to Laura and then, flourishing the other, performed a silent war-dance.

  ‘May I open it?’ he said politely to Laura, when she had read her own letter and was scowling thoughtfully at it.

  ‘Eh?’ she said, coming to. ‘Yes, of course. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I saw yours was from Mrs Dame, too, so I thought perhaps you’d rather discuss yours first.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve a few manners after all!’

  ‘You shock me, Mamma,’ replied Hamish, seriously. ‘Did you suppose you had begotten a monster? That’s the sort of thing old Caveat says to us in R.E. at school. He’s always talking about begottings and reading them to us out of the O.T.’

  ‘Begettings.’ said Gavin, taking the letter which Laura handed to him.

  ‘Actually, begattings,’ said his son. ‘You know…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Gavin, hastily cutting short the genealogical tables of the patriarchs. ‘Read your letter and then trot along to the village post-office and cash your postal-order. What do you intend to do about this?’ he added to his wife as he handed back the letter she had passed to him. Laura drew her brows together.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘We’re both invited and it would make a couple of days out. What do you think?’

  ‘So long as Grandmother Rebekah is going to be there, I can’t wait to get started,’ replied Gavin. ‘On the other hand… well, we don’t get very much time to ourselves, and now that we’ve paid this duty visit to Hamish, I wondered whether, perhaps, a bit of peace and quiet, far from the madding crowd, and all that…’

  ‘Say no more,’ said Laura. ‘About dining out I’m like P. G. Wodehouse’s vicar on the subject of orphreys — I can take dinner parties or I can leave them alone. Let’s ditch this one. I’d much rather we did.’

  Dame Beatrice, therefore, with a mental commendation of their good sense, and driven by her impeccable chauffeur George, went to Norfolk without Laura and Gavin, and arrived at Bernard van Zestien’s square-built seventeenth-century mansion at six o’clock on the evening of the proposed festivity. This, she had been informed, was to be held in celebration of the engagement of Binnie to Bernardo, an arrangement with which (so Binnie informed Dame Beatrice when she had conducted her to her room) Granduncle Bernard was exceptionally well pleased.

  ‘Such a relief,’ prattled Binnie, before leaving Dame Beatrice to dress for dinner, ‘because one never knows exactly how the old darling is going to take anything! I could give you dozens of instances. He’s quite, quite unpredictable. Oh, well, I suppose Bernardo is certain now to get most of the money. I shall have to insist on a marriage settlement, or whatever it is, shan’t I? After all, I am a relation, too, and actually a bit nearer the throne than Bernardo. But, of course, Granduncle would never leave any money to a girl.’

  ‘Excuse me, miss,’ said an elderly maid who had been deputed to look after Dame Beatrice during her stay in the house. ‘Perhaps Madam should get on. I have drawn the bath, madam.’

  ‘Oh, of course! Sorry!’ said Binnie, beating a hasty and undignified retreat. ‘Be seeing you, Dame Beatrice.’

  ‘I have known Miss Binnie since childhood, madam,’ the abigail observed when, a little later, she was arranging Dame Beatrice’s hair. ‘And when you’ve known them as children, you cannot hardly credit they’re grown up. Miss Binnie and Master Florian have lived here for more years than I care to count. Their father and mother own hotels in Scotland and it seem they thought hotel life was no life for children to lead — not permanent, that is — and I must say that, in my opinion, most thinking people would agree with them. Hotel life is unnatural. Everybody behave quite different to what they would in private. I wholly think children would grow up with false ideas, don’t you?’

  ‘You are a Norfolk woman, then,’ said Dame Beatrice, avoiding the question.

  ‘Oh, yes, madam. Born and bred in Holt, where my son go to the school. Gresham’s School that do be called. The main part is out on the Cromer Road. You may have seen it.’

  ‘Your son is studying science, then, among other subjects? I understand that the school obtains excellent examination results, and particularly in science.’

  ‘He’s a clever boy and a good boy. That’s why I go on working. His father’s in a good job, but what my boy need he’s going to have, although I like to keep it dark that I’m in service. His father work in Cromer, so that’s where we fare to live. We leave Holt as soon as we hear he get the scholarship, not to stand in his way.’

  Dame Beatrice had often wondered whether this kind of self-sacrifice by parents on behalf of their children was justifiable, but she supposed that it was their own business. At half-past seven she went downstairs to the dining-room for cocktails, and had a chat with her host before dinner.

  Leyden Hall, in spite of its Dutch name, had been built by an unnamed English architect in the late Jacobean period and had sustained and absorbed some alterations in the year 1670 when it had changed owners. The staircase, broad and handsome, was uncarpeted to display the shallow oak treads. Heraldic devices, borne on shields carried by b
lack, improbable-looking lions, adorned the newels.

  A broad window on the landing provided a fine view of the gardens and lake, and magnificent trees screened an expanse of pasture for cattle. To gain the dining-room Dame Beatrice had passed under an arch in an over-decorated stone screen, and found herself opposite the front door and in a spacious vestibule from which the dining-room and the library opened on her right and the gun-room and an entrance to the housekeeper’s room and the servants’ quarters on her left.

  The door to the gun-room, an apartment no longer used for its original purpose, but as an adjunct to the dining-room, was open, and there was the sound of many voices. As the party was to number sixteen, and since all but herself were, in some degree, related, the noise seemed only natural. Above the general family din, she could distinguish the screaming tones of Grandmother Rebekah Rose and the resonant voice of Bernardo. She supposed that the usual verbal sparring-match was in progress, a supposition which was borne out when she entered the room. Florian, she saw, was among those present. So were his relations from Amsterdam. Florian’s superb head was heavily bandaged and there were bluish shadows under his hyacinth-blue eyes. He was pale.

  Dame Beatrice, the physician uppermost in her at the sight of the injured boy, went over to him.

  ‘The barrel-organ was great fun,’ she said, ‘but what have you been doing to yourself since?’

  Florian touched the bandages on his head.

  ‘This?’ he said. ‘Oh, I had a silly accident about a week ago. I suppose the maids got excited about having so many people in the house. Usually there are only Granduncle, Binnie and myself. Anyway, somebody must have left a great lump of floor-polish on the stairs outside my room, and I was making rather rapidly for the bathroom on the floor below when I took a most terrible toss and hit my head. Luckily it didn’t kill me. Nobody will own up to having left any polish on the stairs, needless to say. As it happened, I’d been trying putting on my face-towel as a turban and I thought it looked rather good. Well, I had my bath-towel over my arm and my sponge-bag in the other hand, so, when I slipped, I was a bit helpless, you see. According to the doctor, my turban probably saved my life. As it was, my head took a pretty good bashing. Everybody was much excited and alarmed.’