by Ngaio Marsh
‘It feels, to be frank, like death warmed up. Not that I don’t say you could do something with that Jack’s-come-home up there. You know. Weekend parties, with the old bunch coming down and all the fun and games. And no Ancreds. Well, I wouldn’t mind Ceddie. He’s one-of-those, of course, but I always think they’re good mixers in their own way. I’ve got it all worked out. Something to do, isn’t it, making plans? It may come up in the lift one of these days; you never know. But no Ancreds when I throw a party in the Baronial Hall. You bet, no Ancreds.’
‘Sir Henry?’ Troy ventured.
‘Well,’ said Miss Orrincourt, ‘I was thinking of later on, if you know what I mean.’
‘Good Lord!’ Troy ejaculated involuntarily.
‘Mind, as I say, I’m fond of Noddy. But it’s a funny old world, and there you have it. I must say it’s nice having someone to talk to. Someone who isn’t an Ancred. I can’t exactly confide in Ceddie, because he’s the heir, and he mightn’t quite see things my way.’
‘Possibly not.’
‘No. Although he’s quite nice to me.’ The thin voice hardened. ‘And, don’t you worry, I know why,’ Miss Orrincourt added. ‘He’s stuck for cash, silly kid, and he wants me to use my influence. He’d got the burns on his doorstep when the jitterbugs cleaned up his place, and then he went to the Jews and now he doesn’t know where to go. He’s scared to turn up at the flat. He’ll have to wait till I’m fixed up myself. Then we’ll see. I don’t mind much,’ she said, moving restlessly, ‘which way it goes, so long as I’m fixed up.’
They faced each other across the bucket-cart. Troy looked at her companion’s beautifully painted face. Behind it stood wraithlike trees, motionless, threaded with mist. It might have been a sharp mask, by a surrealist, hung on that darkling background, thought Troy.
A tiny rhythmic sound grew out of the freezing air. ‘I can hear a cat mewing somewhere,’ said Troy, pulling Rosinante up.
‘That’s a good one!’ said Miss Orrincourt, laughing and coughing. ‘A cat mewing! It’s my chest, dear. This damn night air’s catching me. Can you hurry that brute up?’
Troy stirred him up, and presently they clopped sedately down the one street of Ancreton village and pulled up outside a small chemist’s shop, that seemed also to be a sort of general store.
‘Shall I get whatever it is?’ Troy offered.
‘All right. I don’t suppose there’s anything worth looking at in the shop. No perfume. Thanks, dear. It’s the stuff for the kid’s ringworm. The doctor’s ordered it. It’s meant to be ready.’
The elderly rubicund chemist handed Troy two bottles tied together. One had an envelope attached. ‘For the children up at the Manor?’ he said. ‘Quite so. And the small bottle is for Sir Henry.’ When she had climbed back into the governess-cart, she found that he had followed her and stood blinking on the pavement. ‘They’re labelled,’ he said fussily. ‘If you’d be good enough to point out the enclosed instructions. The dosage varies, you know. It’s determined by the patient’s weight. Dr Withers particularly asked me to draw Miss Able’s attention. Quite an unusual prescription, actually. Thallium acetate. Yes. Both labelled. Thank you. One should exercise care…So sorry we’re out of wrapping paper. Good evening.’ He gave a little whooping chuckle and darted back into his shop. Troy was about to turn Rosinante when Miss Orrincourt, asking her to wait, scrambled out and went into the shop, returning in a few minutes with a bulge in her pocket.
‘Just something that caught my eye,’ she said. ‘Righty ho, dear! Home John and don’t spare the horses.’ On their return journey she exclaimed repeatedly on the subject of the children’s ringworm. She held the collar of her fur coat across her mouth and her voice sounded unreal behind it. ‘Is it tough, or is it tough? That poor kid Panty. All over her head, and her hair’s her one beauty, you might say.’
‘You and Panty are rather by way of being friends, aren’t you?’ said Troy.
‘She’s a terrible kiddy, really. You know. The things she does! Well! Scribbling across Noddy’s mirror with a lake-liner and such a common way to put it, whatever she thought. A few more little cracks like that and she’ll cook her goose if she only knew it. The mother’s wild about it, naturally. Did you know the kid’s favourite in the Will? She won’t hold that role down much longer if she lets her sense of comedy run away with her. And then the way she put that paint on your bannister! I call it the limit.’
Troy stared at her. ‘How did you know about that?’
A spasm of coughing shook her companion, ‘I was crazy,’ gasped the muffled voice, ‘to came out in this lousy fog. Might have known. Pardon me, like a ducks, if I don’t talk.’
‘Did Panty tell you?’ Troy persisted. ‘I haven’t told anyone. Did she actually tell you she did it?’
A violent paroxysm prevented Miss Orrincourt from speaking, but with her lovely and enormous eyes fixed on Troy and still clasping her fur collar over the lower part of her face, she nodded three times.
‘I’d never have believed it,’ said Troy slowly. ‘Never.’
Miss Orrincourt’s shoulders quivered and shook. ‘For all the world,’ Troy thought suddenly, ‘as if she was laughing.’
CHAPTER SIX
Paint
IT WAS ON THAT SAME NIGHT that there was an open flaring row between Paul and Fenella on the one hand and Sir Henry Ancred on the other. It occurred at the climax of a game of backgammon between Troy and Sir Henry. He had insisted upon teaching her this complicated and maddening game. She would have enjoyed it more if she hadn’t discovered very early in the contest that her opponent disliked losing so intensely that her own run of beginner’s luck had plunged him into the profoundest melancholy. He had attempted to explain to her the chances of the possible combinations of a pair of dice, adding, with some complacency, that he himself had completely mastered this problem. Troy had found his explanation utterly incomprehensible, and began by happily moving her pieces with more regard for the pattern they made on the board than for her chances of winning the game. She met with uncanny success. Sir Henry, who had entered the game with an air of gallantry, finding pretty frequent occasions to pat Troy’s fingers, became thoughtful, then pained, and at last gloomy. The members of his family, aware of his mortification, watched in nervous silence. Troy moved with reckless abandon. Sir Henry savagely rattled his dice. Greatly to her relief the tide turned. She gave herself a ‘blot’ and looked up, to find Fenella and Paul watching her with an extraordinary expression of anxiety. Sir Henry prospered and soon began to ‘bear,’ Paul and Fenella exchanged a glance. Fenella nodded and turned pale.
‘Aha!’ cried Sir Henry in triumph. ‘The winning throw, I think! The winning throw!’
He cast himself back in his chair, gazed about him and laughed delightedly. It was at this juncture that Paul, who was standing on the hearthrug with Fenella, put his arm round her and kissed her with extreme heartiness and unmistakable intention. ‘Fenella and I,’ he said loudly, ‘are going to be married.’
There followed an electrified silence, lasting perhaps for ten seconds.
Sir Henry then picked up the backgammon board and threw it a surprising distance across the drawing-room.
‘And temper,’ Paul added, turning rather pale, ‘never got anybody anywhere.’
Miss Orrincourt gave a long whistle. Millamant dropped on her knees and began to pick up backgammon pieces.
Pauline Kentish, gazing with something like terror at her son, gabbled incoherently: ‘No darling! No, please! No, Paul, don’t be naughty. No! Fenella!’
Cedric, his mouth open, his eyes glistening, rubbed his hands and made his crowing noise. But he, too, looked frightened.
And all the Ancreds, out of the corners of their eyes, watched Sir Henry.
He was the first man Troy had ever seen completely given over to rage. She found the exhibition formidable. If he had not been an old man his passion would have been less disquieting because less pitiable. Old lips, shaking with rage; old e
yes, whose fierceness was glazed by rheum; old hands, that jerked in uncoordinated fury; these were intolerable manifestations of emotion.
Troy got up and attempted an inconspicuous retreat to the door.
‘Come back,’ said her host violently. Troy returned. ‘Hear how these people conspire to humiliate me. Come back, I say.’ Troy sat on the nearest chair.
‘Papa!’ whispered Pauline, weaving her hands together, and ‘Papa!’ Millamant echoed, fumbling with the dice. ‘Please! So bad for you. Upsetting yourself! Please!’
He silenced them with a gesture and struggled to his feet. Paul, holding Fenella by the arm, waited until his grandfather stood before him and then said rapidly: ‘We’re sorry to make a scene. I persuaded Fen that this was the only way to handle the business. We’ve discussed it with you in private, Grandfather, and you’ve told us what you feel about it. We don’t agree. It’s our show, after all, and we’ve made up our minds. We could have gone off and got married without saying anything about it, but neither of us wanted to do that. So we thought—
‘We thought,’ said Fenella rather breathlessly, ‘we’d just make a general announcement.’
‘Because,’ Paul added, ‘I’ve sent one already to the papers and we wanted to tell you before you read it.’
‘But Paul darling—’ his mother faintly began.
‘You damned young puppy,’ Sir Henry roared out, ‘what do you mean by standing up with that god-damned conceited look on your face and talking poppycock to ME?’
‘Aunt Pauline,’ said Fenella, ‘I’m sorry if you’re not pleased, but—’
‘Ssh!’ said Pauline.
‘Mother is pleased,’ said Paul. ‘Aren’t you, Mother?’
‘Ssh!’ Pauline repeated distractedly.
‘Be silent!’ Sir Henry shouted. He was now in the centre of the hearth-rug. It seemed to Troy that his first violence was being rapidly transmuted into something more histrionic and much less disturbing. He rested an elbow on the mantelpiece. He pressed two fingers and a thumb against his eyelids, removed his hand slowly, kept his eyes closed, frowned as if in pain, and finally sighed deeply and opened his eyes very wide indeed.
‘I’m an old fellow,’ he said in a broken voice. ‘An old fellow. It’s easy to hurt me. Very easy. You have dealt me a shrewd blow. Never mind. Let me suffer. Why not? It won’t be for long. Not for long, now.’
‘Papa, dearest,’ cried Pauline, sweeping up to him and clasping her hands. ‘You make us utterly miserable. Don’t speak like that, don’t. Not for the world would my boy cause you a moment’s unhappiness. Let me talk quietly to these children. Papa, I implore you.’
‘This,’ a voice whispered in Troy’s ear, ‘is perfect Pinero.’ She jumped violently. Cedric had slipped round behind his agitated relations and now leant over the back of her chair. ‘She played the name part, you know, in a revival of The Second Mrs Tanqueray.’
‘It’s no use, Pauline. Let them go. They knew my wishes. They have chosen the cruellest way. Let them,’ said Sir Henry with relish, ‘dree their weird.’
‘Thank you, Grandfather,’ said Fenella brightly, but with a shake in her voice. ‘It’s our weird and we shall be delighted to dree it.’
Sir Henry’s face turned an uneven crimson. ‘This is insufferable,’ he shouted, and his teeth, unable to cope with the violence of his diction, leapt precariously from their anchorage and were clamped angrily home. Fenella giggled nervously. ‘You are under age,’ Sir Henry pronounced suddenly. ‘Under age, both of you. Pauline, if you have the smallest regard for your old father’s wishes, you will forbid this lunacy. I shall speak to your mother, miss. I shall cable to your father.’
‘Mother won’t mind,’ said Fenella.
‘You know well, you know perfectly well, why I cannot countenance this nonsense.’
‘You think, don’t you, Grandfather,’ said Fenella, ‘that because we’re cousins we’ll have loopy young. Well, we’ve asked about that and it’s most unlikely. Modern medical opinion—’
‘Be silent! At least let some semblance of decency—’
‘I won’t be silent,’ said Fenella, performing with dexterity the feat known by actors as topping the other man’s lines. ‘And if we’re to talk about decency, Grandfather, I should have thought it was a damn sight more decent for two people who are young and in love to say they’re going to marry each other than for an old man to make an exhibition of himself—’
‘Fenella!’ shouted Pauline and Millamant in unison.
‘—doting on a peroxide blonde fifty years younger than himself, and a brazen gold-digger into the bargain.’
Fenella then burst into tears and ran out of the room, followed rigidly by Paul.
Troy, who had once more determined to make her escape, heard Fenella weeping stormily outside the door and stayed where she was. The remaining Ancreds were all talking at once. Sir Henry beat his fist on the mantelpiece until the ornaments danced again, and roared out: ‘My God, I’ll not have her under my roof another hour! My God—!’ Millamant and Pauline, on either side of him like a distracted chorus, wrung their hands and uttered plaintive cries. Cedric chattered noisily behind the sofa, where Miss Orrincourt still lay. It was she who put a stop to this ensemble by rising and confronting them with her hands on her hips.
‘I am not remaining here,’ said Miss Orrincourt piercingly, ‘to be insulted. Remarks have been passed in this room that no self-respecting girl in my delicate position can be expected to endure. Noddy!’
Sir Henry, who had continued his beating of the mantel-piece during this speech, stopped short and looked at her with a kind of nervousness.
‘Since announcements,’ said Miss Orrincourt, ‘are in the air, Noddy, haven’t we got something to say ourselves in that line? Or,’ she added ominously, ‘have we?’
She looked lovely standing there. It was an entirely plastic loveliness, an affair of colour and shape, of line and texture. It was so complete in its kind, Troy thought, that to bring a consideration of character or vulgarity to bear upon it would be to labour at an irrelevant synthesis. In her kind she was perfect. ‘What about it, Noddy?’ she said.
Sir Henry stared at her, pulled down his waistcoat, straightened his back and took her hand. ‘Whenever you wish, my dear,’ he said, ‘whenever you wish.’
Pauline and Millamant fell back from them, Cedric drew in his breath and touched his moustache. Troy saw, with astonishment, that his hand was shaking.
‘I had intended,’ Sir Henry said, ‘to make this announcement at The Birthday. Now, however, when I realize only too bitterly that my family cares little, cares nothing for my happiness’ (‘Papa!’ Pauline wailed), ‘I turn, in my hour of sorrow, to One who does Care.’
‘Uh-huh!’ Miss Orrincourt assented. ‘But keep it sunny-side-up, Petty-pie.’
Sir Henry, less disconcerted than one would have thought possible by this interjection, gathered himself together.
‘This lady,’ he said loudly, ‘has graciously consented to become my wife.’
Considering the intensity of their emotions, Troy felt that the Ancreds really behaved with great aplomb. It was true that Pauline and Millamant were, for a moment, blankly silent, but Cedric almost immediately ran out from cover and seized his grandfather by the hand.
‘Dearest Grandpapa—couldn’t be more delighted—too marvellous. Sonia, darling,’ he babbled, ‘such fun,’ and he kissed her.
‘Well, Papa,’ said Millamant, following her son’s lead but not kissing Miss Orrincourt, ‘we can’t say that it’s altogether a surprise, can we? I’m sure we all hope you’ll be very happy.’
Pauline was more emotional. ‘Dearest,’ she said, taking her father’s hands and gazing with wet eyes into his face, ‘dearest, dearest Papa. Please, please believe my only desire is for your happiness.’
Sir Henry inclined his head. Pauline made an upward pounce at his moustache. ‘Oh, Pauline,’ he said with an air of tragic resignation, ‘I have been wounded, Paulin
e! Deeply wounded!’
‘No,’ cried Pauline. ‘No!’
‘Yes,’ sighed Sir Henry. ‘Yes.’
Pauline turned blindly from him and offered her hand to Miss Orrincourt. ‘Be good to him,’ she said brokenly. ‘It’s all we ask. Be good to him.’
With an eloquent gesture, Sir Henry turned aside, crossed the room, and flung himself into a hitherto unoccupied armchair. It made a loud and extremely vulgar noise.
Sir Henry, scarlet in the face, leapt to his feet and snatched up the loose cushioned seat. He exposed a still partially inflated bladder-like object, across which was printed a legend, ‘The Raspberry. Makes your Party go off with a Bang.’ He seized it, and again, through some concealed orifice, it emitted its dreadful sound. He hurled it accurately into the fire and the stench of burning rubber filled the room.
‘Well, I mean to say,’ said Miss Orrincourt, ‘fun’s fun, but I think that kid’s getting common in her ways.’
Sir Henry walked in silence to the door, where, inevitably, he turned to deliver an exit line. ‘Millamant,’ he said, ‘in the morning you will be good enough to send for my solicitor.’
The door banged. After a minute’s complete silence Troy was at last able to escape from the drawing-room.
Troy was not much surprised in the morning to learn that Sir Henry was too unwell to appear, though he hoped in the afternoon to resume the usual sitting. A note on her early tea-tray informed her that Cedric would be delighted to pose in the costume if this would be of any service. She thought it might. There was the scarlet cloak to be attended to. She had half-expected a disintegration of the family forces, at least the disappearance, possibly in opposite directions, of Fenella and Paul. She had yet to learn of the Ancreds’ resilience in inter-tribal warfare. At breakfast they both appeared—Fenella, white and silent; Paul, red and silent. Pauline arrived a little later. Her attitude to her son suggested that he was ill of some not entirely respectable disease. With Fenella she adopted an air of pained antipathy and would scarcely speak to her. Millamant presided. She was less jolly than usual, but behind her anxiety, if she was indeed anxious, Troy detected a hint of complacency. There was more than a touch of condolence in her manner towards her sister-in-law, and this, Troy felt, Pauline deeply resented.