The China Governess

by Margery Allingham

  The tribute was very big, nearly four feet across, a great cushion of white hothouse flowers, diapered with gold, and made all the more extravagant by the shining plastic wrappings which made it look as if it was under glass. It lay on the oak table which flanked the staircase and at the moment Toberman was bending over it, fiddling with a card half hidden among the blossom. Mrs. Broome was hovering beside him in a flurry of protest.

  ‘Oh don’t,’ she was objecting. ‘Mr. Basil, don’t. It isn’t as though it’s yours. Don’t be so inquisitive, don’t!’

  ‘Shut up,’ he said without turning round. ‘I’m only having a look. The order must have come from South Africa through one of the flower services, I suppose. That’s the flaw in these things. There’s no way of telling what you’re getting for your money.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded. ‘It’s beautiful. It must have cost I don’t know what!’

  ‘I know. That’s what I’m saying. Out there – wherever it is – flowers are probably dear at this time of year. Over here in late spring they cost nothing. I don’t suppose anyone, however stinking rich, intended to send to a servant’s funeral the sort of wreath which one expects to see the Monarch parking on a War Memorial.’

  Nanny Broom sniffed. ‘No wonder no one could do anything with you,’ she observed without animosity. ‘Your naughtiness is right in you. Miss Saxon wasn’t a servant, and if she had been all the more reason that she should have a nice wreath, even if it did come so late it missed the hearse. I wish I’d had you as a little boy. I’d have scared some of the commoness out of you, my lad. Miss Saxon was a governess and a very intelligent woman with a great sense of humour.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Mrs. Broome silenced him. ‘Well, she used to laugh at me,’ she said and seemed so pleased about it that there was nothing to say.

  Toberman swung round on his heel and saw Timothy standing in the doorway. He stood for an instant contemplating the scarred face, his eyes wonderfully shrewd and amused, but he made no direct comment.

  Instead he returned to the flowers: ‘Wonderfully wealthy guests we have,’ he remarked. ‘This is how the staff is seen off. How does this appeal to the young master?’

  It was a casual sneer, obviously one of a long line. There was hatred behind it but of a quiet, chronic type, nothing new or unduly virulent, and he was taken aback by the flicker of amazed incredulity which passed over the younger man’s ravaged face. Toberman was disconcerted. ‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded truculently.

  ‘Nothing.’ Timothy’s eyes wavered and met Mrs. Broome’s. She was watching him like a mother cat, noting the signs of shock without altogether understanding them. She opened her mouth to speak but he shook his head at her warningly and she closed it again without a sound.

  ‘You look like a lost soul,’ Toberman said. ‘Where have you been?’

  Tim turned away. ‘I walked home,’ he said briefly. ‘I’m tired.’

  Nanny Broome could bear it no longer.

  ‘Come down to the kitchen, Mr. Tim,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you,’ and as her glance met his own she formed the word “Julia” with her lips, giving him a clue as she used to do long ago when there was a secret to be told in company and he was a little boy.

  Despair passed over the young face and he turned away abruptly.

  ‘Not now, Nan,’ he said, looking at Toberman who had found the card he had been seeking amid the lilies and was now transcribing its details into a notebook. He was doing it with that off-hand effrontery which so often passes unnoticed because people cannot bring themselves to credit their own eyes. When a step on the landing above surprised, him, he slid the book into his pocket and patted the covering back into place.

  ‘We were saying how beautiful it is,’ he remarked blandly as he glanced up the stairwell. Mrs. Geraldine Telpher, the Kinnit’s visiting niece, was coming down, moving quietly and smoothly as she did everything else. She was a distinguished-looking woman in the late thirties, pleasantly pale with faded old-gold hair and light blue eyes, who radiated authority and that particular brand of faint austerity which is so often associated with money. She was wearing a grey jersey suit with considerable elegance, and the way her jacket sat on her shoulders and the trick she had of settling her cuff straight confirmed her kinship with Eustace and Alison so vividly that the others were made a little uncomfortable. Her method of handling Toberman was also startingly familiar. She laughed at his antics with a mixture of ruefulness and tolerance as if he were a slightly offensive household pet.

  ‘The smell of the lilies is rather powerful,’ she said. ‘The house is full of it upstairs. Is there somewhere where the wreath could go, Mrs. Broome? It’s a pity it came so late. Perhaps it could be sent to the grave in the morning?’

  ‘I was going to take it myself, first thing,’ In her determination to keep in the limelight Mrs. Broome spoke on the spur of the moment and it was evident to everybody that the idea had never entered her head before that instant. ‘In a taxi,’ she added after the briefest possible pause.

  ‘Perhaps so,’ Mrs. Telpher agreed gravely. ‘They might not let you take it on a bus but you could try. Anyway it’s very good of you and I’m sure she would have appreciated it. She had taken a great fancy to you, hadn’t she?’

  ‘Well I should think so, she talked enough to me!’ Nanny Broome was “giving back as good as she had got” in an instinctive self-preservative fashion which had nothing to do with reason. The Kinnit trick of making people feel slightly inferior without intending to or noticing that it had been done had never been more clearly demonstrated.

  Toberman went on chatting in a determined yet deferential way.

  ‘We were thinking that the flowers must have been ordered from abroad by wire,’ he was saying with a little inquisitive laugh. ‘The whole wreath is very lush – very grand. The card only says “Love dear from Elsa” but there’s a box number which suggests either a P.O. box address, as in South Africa, or a florist’s reference.

  Geraldine Telpher favoured him with a wide-eyed stare which might have been one of Alison Kinnit’s own and shook her head, smiling.

  ‘I imagine it must have come from the family she was with before she came to me,’ he said, making it clear that she was humouring him. ‘I notified her home and they must have told them. It was the Van der Graffs, I remember. How nice of them. They’re good people. You find its size a little ostentatious, do you Basil?’

  ‘Don’t make fun of me,’ he protested. ‘I’m just impressed, that’s all. I like lavishness. It’s rare. By the way that name – Van der Graff – are they anything to do with the Ivory people?’

  ‘I’m afraid I just wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Ah!’ he held up a warning hand to her. ‘No wicked snobbery. Trade is in fashion. As a matter of fact I was coming to talk to you about that.’ He turned to Mrs. Broome and lifted the wreath into her arms, all but hiding her.

  ‘Run along with that to the scullery, Broomie. I shan’t stay here tonight, by the way, because I’ve got to get the late plane to Nice, but I’ll be back tomorrow rather late and I’d like to stay then. The room is ready I expect, so you won’t have to worry about me.’ It was a plain dismissal and Mrs. Broome went, but not defeated.

  ‘Me worry about you?’ she said from the doorway. ‘That’ll be the day!’

  Toberman laughed and returned to Mrs. Telpher. ‘They used to sack them for that sort of remark,’ he said. ‘I suppose you do now. How wonderful. Now look, Geraldine my dear, I don’t know if this is of any interest to you at all but I thought I’d mention it. I’m going to Nice tonight to see a little fourth century bronze which Lagusse says is genuine. I’ve seen a photograph and it’s more than promising. I shall just take one look and come home, because if it’s real the only man who has both the taste and the money to buy it is in your country and I’ve got Philip Zwole flying there on other business and I want to brief him. He’ll be overseas for the best part of a
month and he’ll spend quite a week in Johannesburg, so if there’s anything you’d like him to take or any message you’d like to send by him, well, there he is.’

  It was a request for introductions and Timothy, who had moved away, turned back irritably.

  ‘I imagine Geraldine can keep in touch, Basil,’ he said.

  It was a protest and sounded like one and Toberman received it with a stare of reproachful amazement while Mrs. Telpher looked at Timothy and laughed a polite rejection of the whole subject.

  ‘It’s very kind of him,’ she said. ‘If I do think of anything I shall certainly remember the offer.’

  Toberman snorted. His dark face was swarthy with blood and his round black eyes were furious.

  ‘Don’t be damn silly,’ he exploded, turning on the other man.

  ‘Geraldine has just had her Miss Saxon die in a strange country. Presumably the woman had some things which ought to be taken to her home. I was merely offering a service. What other reason could I possibly have?’

  ‘None,’ intervened Mrs. Telpher with all the Kinnit tolerance in her quiet voice. ‘I do appreciate it. It really is most kind.’

  Toberman appeared mollified and bounced again. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘when I come in tomorrow evening I’ll collect anything you want to send and give it to Zwole when I see him in the morning. I can understand you being windy about the poor old thing’s family, Tim. You actually knocked her over, didn’t you?’

  Mrs. Telpher intervened.

  ‘Tell me about the bronze,’ she said.

  ‘Why? Are you interested?’ His sudden eagerness made her smile and she bowed her long neck. ‘I might be,’ she conceded.

  Timothy left them and went upstairs to the sitting-room whose lighted windows he had seen from the street. It was a civilized, lived-in room, part panelled and part booklined. A vast Turkey carpet with a faded tomato-soup coloured background hid much of the black oak floor, and the remarkable collection of upholstered furniture which had comfort alone in common was welded into harmony by plain covers in the same yellowish pink.

  Miss Alison Kinnit and her friend Miss Aicheson were sitting where they always did, Alison on one of the angular couches with her feet tucked up beside her and Flavia in a big rounded arm-chair with a back like a sail on the opposite side of the hearth. There was no fire and the wide brick recess housed a collection of cacti, none of them doing very well because of the shade and the draught.

  The likeness between Alison Kinnit and her niece Mrs. Telpher was considerable but the twenty years between their ages was not entirely responsible for the main difference, which was one of delicacy. Mrs. Telpher was a pale, graceful woman but Alison’s pallor and fragility were remarkable. Her skin was almost translucent without being actually unhealthy and her bones were as slender as a bird’s. She had always had an interesting face but had never been beautiful and now there was something a little frightening in the grey-eyed intelligence with which she confronted the world. Miss Flavia on the other hand was a more familiar type. She was one of those heavy ugly women with kind faces and apologetic, old-gentlemanly manners who all look as if they were John Bull’s own daughters taking strongly after their father, poor dears. She was older than Alison, sixty perhaps, and happy in the way that some elderly men who have had great trials and overcome them are happy: quiet-eyed, amused and not utterly intolerant.

  It was obvious that they had been talking about Timothy; not because they seemed guilty when he came in but because they were so interested and so clear about who he was and what was happening to him. In the normal way they were apt to be completely absorbed by their own affairs of the moment and these might be literary, charitable or political – one never knew which. The fact that Miss Flavia had stuck to her romantic name all her life said much for her character. Now she turned slowly in her chair and looked at Tim through her glasses.

  ‘Certainly battle-scarred but I hope not woebegone,’ she said in her fluting, county voice. ‘What does the other fellow look like? Come and sit down and tell us all about it. Shall I get him a drink, Alison?’

  ‘Would you like one, dear?’ Alison nodded at him, screwing up her face with mimic pain at the damage to his face. ‘We won’t. But it’s there in the cupboard if you’d like it. Mrs. Broome told us you’d been in the wars. Where have you been? You look awfully distrait.’ Her own voice was clipped and academic, and friendly without warmth.

  ‘Down to Ebbfield again,’ he said as casually as he could as he seated himself on the edge of the round ottoman which took up a huge amount of space in the fairway between the fireplace and the door. ‘I saw a man called Councillor Cornish: he seemed to think that you or Aich must have sent me.’

  ‘And did we?’ Alison glanced inquiringly at her friend.

  ‘I don’t recall it.’ Miss Aicheson’s nice eyes regarded him innocently. ‘Yet the name is familiar. Is he an Ebbfield councillor?’

  ‘I imagine so. He’s responsible for building a block of flats.’

  ‘Oh, of course. The skyline committee, Alison. He’s the poor wretched man with the dreadful temper. I remember.’ Miss Flavia was delighted. Her charitableness had never been more marked. ‘I can imagine him remembering me but I can’t think why he should suppose I should have sent you to him. People with chips on their shoulders do get wild ideas, of course. Well, did he help you? What did you ask him?’

  Timothy appeared to be wondering and Alison, mistaking his reaction, intervened tactfully.

  ‘Aich is on top of the world. She’s had a letter from the Minister.’

  Miss Aicheson’s red face was suffused with shy pleasure. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Only an acknowledgment, really,’ she said, ‘but it’s from White’s, not the House, and it’s signed, and there’s even a little postscript in his own hand thanking me for my “lucid exposition”. I’m very bucked. I admit it.’

  Timothy frowned. His young body was tense and as he sat with his long legs crossed he tapped on his knee with nervous fingers.

  ‘Is that the Minister of Housing? Is this the Ebbfield business?’

  Alison’s laugh silenced him.

  ‘Oh, no my dear, Ebbfield is very small beer. This is the Plan for Trafalgar Square.’

  Miss Aicheson made a happy succession of little grunting noises. ‘Ra-ther a different caper!’ she announced with satisfaction. ‘I expect the over-earnest little men will get their own way at Ebbfield and it can’t be helped because that part of London is spoiled already. One just does what one can in a case like that and doesn’t break one’s heart if one fails.’

  ‘Cornish didn’t strike me as being a little man.’ Tim appeared astonished at his own vehemence and Alison turned her wide grey eyes upon him, surprised also.

  Flavia Aicheson waved the protest away with a large masculine hand. ‘Very likely not,’ she agreed. ‘I can’t visualize him at all. I only remember how angry he was and how nearly rude, so that all the rest of the conference was on edge with embarrassment. He was over-earnest, though, wasn’t he? These dear chaps remember some picture from their childhood, some little injustice or ugliness, and let it grow into a great emotional boil far, far more painful than the original wound . . . Don’t let them influence you, dear boy.’

  She and Alison exchanged glances and suddenly became utterly embarrassed themselves.

  Miss Aicheson made an effort, her face scarlet and her voice unsteady with nervousness.

  ‘This inquiry into your birth is a very difficult and awkward experience for you, Timothy, and Alison and I both feel (although of course we haven’t been discussing you, don’t think that!) the real danger is of you losing your sense of proportion and swinging violently either one way or the other. Left or Right.’

  She was as uncomfortable as a young girl and, since the problem was emotional, quite as inexperienced. The boy got up.

  ‘That’s all right Aich,’ he said kindly. ‘I shan’t go Red or Fascist.’

  The two ladies sighed with relief. ‘Of course
you won’t,’ Miss Flavia said heartily. ‘You’re far too sensible. Well now, about the investigation: any progress?’ She hesitated and a little wistful smile, as feminine and pathetic as any Nanny Broome could muster, suddenly crept over her homely face. ‘Don’t forget that in one way it could be very romantic and exciting, Timothy,’ she murmured. ‘I mean – one never knows.’

  Alison burst out laughing. Her grey eyes were as hard but also as innocent as pebbles in a stream.

  ‘Dear Aich!’ she said. ‘Isn’t she wonderful, Timothy? She’s thinking: “Even the Minister must have been young in 1939!”’

  Miss Flavia’s colour increased to danger point and she shook her head warningly.

  ‘That’s not funny, Alison,’ she said. ‘Vulgar and not funny at all.’

  At once Alison Kinnit lost her poise and became contrite.

  ‘Sorry, Aich,’ she said, hanging her head like a delicate child. ‘Really truly.’

  Timothy went out of the room without them noticing that he had gone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Stranger

  EUSTACE KINNIT WAS the author of many books and pamphlets on various aspects of the china collector’s art as well as being an enthusiastic correspondent on the subject. The small study where he did his endless writing was at the far end of the gallery which ran round the staircase-well on the same floor as the sitting-room. There was a sliver of light under the door as Timothy approached after leaving Miss Alison and her friend, and he stood outside for a moment, hesitating, with an anxious expression in his eyes which was new there. Any sort of nervousness was foreign to his temperament and he bore it awkwardly. Presently he pushed his hand over his hair, stiffened his shoulders, and walked in more abruptly than he would have done at any other time in his life.

  Eustace was sitting at his desk in a bright circle of light from the shaded lamp, his pen squeaking softly as it ran swiftly over the page. Timothy, who had seen him in exactly the same position so often and who loved him so well that he had, as it were, never seen him at all, observed him objectively for the first time.