False Scent

by Ngaio Marsh

  Wearing a cerise shawl and a bold floral print, for she adored bright colours, Old Ninn trudged across the room with the corners of her mouth turned down and laid a tissue paper parcel on the dressing-table.

  ‘Happy birthday, m’,’ she said. For so small a person she had an alarmingly deep voice.

  A great fuss was made over her. Bertie Saracen attempted Mercutian badinage and called her Nurse Plumtree. She ignored him and addressed herself exclusively to Richard.

  ‘We don’t see much of you these days,’ she said and, by the sour look she gave him, proclaimed her affection.

  ‘I’ve been busy, Ninn.’

  ‘Still making up your plays, by all accounts.’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘You always were a fanciful boy. Easy to see you’ve never grown out of it.’

  Mary Bellamy had unwrapped the parcel and disclosed a knitted bed-jacket of sensible design. Her thanks were effusive, but Old Ninn cut them short.

  ‘Four-ply,’ she said. ‘You require warmth when you’re getting on in years and the sooner you face the fact the more comfortable you’ll find yourself. Good morning, sir,’ Ninn added, catching sight of Warrender. ‘I dare say you’ll bear me out. Well, I won’t keep you.’

  With perfect composure she trudged away, leaving a complete silence behind her.

  ‘Out of this world!’ Bertie said, with a shrillish laugh. ‘Darling Mary, here I am sizzling with decorative fervour. When are we to tuck up our sleeves and lay all our plots and plans?’

  ‘Now, darling, if you’re ready. Dicky, treasure, will you and Maurice be able to amuse yourselves? We’ll scream if we want any help. Come along, Bertie.’

  She linked her arm in his. He sniffed ecstatically. ‘You smell,’ he said, ‘like all, but all, of King Solomon’s wives and concubines. In spring. En avant!’

  They went downstairs. Warrender and Richard were left together in a room that still retained the flavour of her personality, as inescapably potent as the all-pervasive after-math of her scent.

  It was an old-established custom that she and Bertie arranged the house for her birthday party. Her drawing-room was the first on the left on the ground floor. It was a long Georgian saloon with a door into the hall and with folding doors leading into the dining-room. This, in its turn opened both into the hall and into the conservatory, which was her especial pride. Beyond the conservatory lay a small formal garden. When all the doors were open an impressive vista was obtained. Bertie himself had ‘done’ the decor and had used a wealth of old French brocades. He had painted bunches of misty cabbage roses in the recesses above the doors and in the wall panels and had found some really distinguished chandeliers. This year the flowers were to be all white and yellow. He settled down with the greatest efficiency and determination to his task, borrowing one of Gracefield’s, the butler’s, aprons for the purpose. Miss Bellamy tied herself into a modish confection with a flounced bib, put on wash-leather gloves, and wandered happily about her conservatory, snipping off deadheads and rearranging groups of flowerpots. She was an enthusiastic gardener. They shouted at each other from room to room, exchanging theatre shop, and breaking every now and then into stage cockney: ‘Whatseye, dear?’ and ‘Coo! You wouldn’t credit it!’ this mode of communication being sacred to the occasion. They enjoyed themselves enormously while from under Bertie’s clever fingers emerged bouquets of white and gold and wonderful garlands for the table. In this setting, Miss Bellamy was at her best.

  They had been at it for perhaps half an hour and Bertie had retired to the flower-room when Gracefield ushered in Miss Kate Cavendish, known to her intimates as Pinky.

  Pinky was younger than her famous contemporary and less distinguished. She had played supporting roles in many Bellamy successes and their personal relationship, not altogether to her satisfaction, resembled their professional one. She had an amusing face, dressed plainly and well and possessed the gifts of honesty and direct thinking. She was, in fact, a charming woman.

  ‘I’m in a tizzy,’ she said. ‘High as a rocket, darling, and in a minute I’ll tell you why. Forty thousand happy returns, Mary, and may your silhouette never grow greater. Here’s my offering.’

  It was a flask of a new scent by a celebrated maker and was called ‘Unguarded.’ ‘I got it smuggled over from Paris,’ she said. ‘It’s not here yet. A lick on either lobe, I’m told, and the satellites reel in their courses.’

  Miss Bellamy insisted on opening it. She dabbed the stopper on her wrists and sniffed. ‘Pinky,’ she said solemnly, ‘it’s too much! Darling, it opens the floodgates! Honestly!’

  ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Florrie shall put it into my spray. At once. Before Bertie can get at it. You know what he is.’

  ‘Is Bertie here?’ Pinky asked quickly.

  ‘He’s in the flower-room.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Why? Have you fallen out with him?’

  ‘Far from it,’ Pinky said. ‘Only – well, it’s just that I’m not really meant to let my cat out of its bag as yet and Bertie’s involved. But I really am, I fear, more than a little tiddly.’

  ‘You! I thought you never touched a thing in the morning.’

  ‘Nor I do. But this is an occasion, Mary. I’ve been drinking with The Management. Only two small ones, but on an empty turn: Bingo!’

  Miss Bellamy said sharply: ‘With The Management?’

  ‘That gives you pause, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And Bertie’s involved?’

  Pinky laughed rather wildly and said: ‘If I don’t tell somebody I’ll spontaneously combust, so I’m going to tell you. Bertie can lump it, bless him, because why after all shouldn’t I be audibly grateful.’

  Mary Bellamy looked fixedly at her friend for a moment and then said: ‘Grateful?’

  ‘All right. I know I’m incoherent. Here it comes. Darling: I’m to have the lead in Bongo Dillon’s new play. At the Unicorn. Opening in September. Swear you won’t breathe it but it’s true and it’s settled and the contract’s mine for the signing. My first lead, Mary. Oh, God, I’m so happy.’

  A hateful and all too-familiar jolt under the diaphragm warned Miss Bellamy that she had been upset. Simultaneously she knew that somehow or another she must run up a flag of welcome, must show a responsive warmth, must override the awful, menaced, slipping feeling, the nausea of the emotions that Pinky’s announcement had churned up.

  ‘Sweetie-pie!’ she said. ‘How wonderful!’ It wasn’t, she reflected, much cop as an expression of delighted congratulation from an old chum, but Pinky was too excited to pay any attention. She went prancing on about the merits of her contract, the glories of the role, the nice behaviour of The Management (Miss Bellamy’s Management, as she sickeningly noted), and the feeling that at last this was going to be It. All this gave Miss Bellamy a breather. She began to make fairly appropriate responses. Presently when Pinky drew breath, she was able to say with the right touch of down-to-earth honesty:

  ‘Pinky, this is going to be your Great Thing.’

  ‘I know it! I feel it myself,’ Pinky said soberly and added: ‘Please God, I’ll have what it takes. Please God, I will.’

  ‘My dear, you will,’ she rejoined and for the life of her couldn’t help adding, ‘Of course, I haven’t read the play.’

  ‘The purest Bongo! Comedy with a twist. You know? Though I says it as shouldn’t, it’s right up my cul-de-sac. Bongo says he had me in mind all the time he was writing it.’

  Miss Bellamy laughed. ‘Darling! We do know our Bongo, don’t we? The number of plays he’s said he’d written for me and when one looked at them – !’

  With one of her infuriating moments of penetration, Pinky said, ‘Mary! Be pleased for me.’

  ‘But, sweetie, naturally I’m pleased. It sounds like a wonderful bit of luck and I hope with all my heart it works out.’

  ‘Of course, I know it means giving up my part in Richard’s new one for you. But, face it, there wasn’t much
in it for me, was there? And nothing was really settled so I’m not letting the side down, am I?’

  Miss Bellamy couldn’t help it. ‘My dear!’ she said, with a kindly laugh, ‘we’ll lose no sleep over that little problem: the part’ll cast itself in two seconds.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Pinky cried happily and Miss Bellamy felt one of her rare onsets of rage begin to stir. She said:

  ‘But you were talking about Bertie, darling. Where does he come in?’

  ‘Aha!’ Pinky said maddeningly and shook her finger.

  At this juncture Gracefield arrived with a drinks-tray.

  Miss Bellamy controlled herself. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I’m going to break my rule, too. We must have a drink on this, darling.’

  ‘No, no, no!’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. A teeny one. Pink for Pinky?’

  She stood between Pinky and the drinks and poured out one stiff and one negligible gin-and-bitters. She gave the stiff one to Pinky.

  ‘To your wonderful future, darling,’ she said. ‘Bottoms up!’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ Pinky said. ‘I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Never mind.’

  They drank.

  ‘And Bertie?’ Miss Bellamy asked presently. ‘Come on. You know I’m as silent as the grave.’

  The blush that long ago had earned Pinky her nickname appeared in her cheeks. ‘This really is a secret,’ she said. ‘Deep and deadly. But I’m sure he won’t mind my telling you. You see, it’s a part that has to be dressed up to the hilt – five changes and all of them grand as grand. Utterly beyond me and my little woman in Bayswater. Well! Bertie, being so much mixed up with The Management has heard all about it, and do you know, darling, he’s offered, entirely of his own accord, to do my clothes. Designs, materials, making – everything from Saracen. And all completely free-ers. Isn’t that kind?’

  Wave after wave of fury chased each other like electrical frequencies through Miss Bellamy’s nerves and brain. She had time to think: ‘I’m going to throw a temperament and it’s bad for me,’ and then she arrived at the point of climax.

  The explosion was touched off by Bertie himself who came tripping back with a garland of tuberoses twined round his person. When he saw Pinky he stopped short, looked from her to Miss Bellamy and turned rather white.

  ‘Bertie,’ Pinky said. ‘I’ve split on you.’

  ‘How could you!’ he said. ‘Oh, Pinky, how could you!’

  Pinky burst into tears.

  ‘I don’t know!’ she stammered. ‘I didn’t mean to, Bertie darling. Forgive me. I was high.’

  ‘Stay me with flagons!’ he said in a small voice. Miss Bellamy, employing a kind of enlargement of herself that was technically one of her most telling achievements, crossed to him and advanced her face to within four inches of his own.

  ‘You rat, Bertie,’ she said quietly. ‘You little, two-timing, double-crossing, dirty rat.’

  And she wound her hands in his garland, tore it off him and threw it in his face.

  CHAPTER 2

  Preparation for a Party

  Mary Bellamy’s temperaments were of rare occurrence but formidable in the extreme and frightening to behold. They were not those regulation theatre tantrums that seem to afford pleasure both to observer and performer; on the contrary they devoured her like some kind of migraine and left her exhausted. Their onset was sudden, their duration prolonged and their sequel incalculable.

  Bertie and Pinky, both familiar with them, exchanged looks of despair. Miss Bellamy had not raised her voice, but a kind of stillness seemed to have fallen on the house. They themselves spoke in whispers. They also, out of some impulse of helpless unanimity, said the same thing at the same time.

  ‘Mary!’ they said. ‘Listen! Don’t!’

  They knew very well that they had better have held their tongues. Their effort, feeble though it was, served only to inflame her. With an assumption of calmness that was infinitely more alarming than raging hysteria she set about them, concentrating at first on Bertie.

  ‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘what it feels like to be you. I wonder if you enjoy your own cunning. I expect you do, Bertie. I expect you rather pride yourself on your talent for cashing in on other people’s generosity. On mine, for instance.’

  ‘Mary, darling! Please!’

  ‘Let us,’ she continued, trembling slightly, ‘look at this thing quite calmly and objectively, shall we? I’m afraid it will not be a delicious experience but it has to be faced.’

  Gracefield came in, took one look at his mistress and went out again. He had been with the family for some time.

  ‘I am the last woman in the world,’ Miss Bellamy explained, ‘to remind people of their obligations. The last. However –’

  She began to remind Bertie of his obligations. Of the circumstances under which she had discovered him – she did not, to his evident relief, say how many years ago – of how she had given him his first chance; of how, since then, he had never looked back; of how there had been an agreement – ‘gentlemen’s,’ she added bitterly – that he would never design for another leading lady in The Management without first consulting her. He opened his mouth, but was obliged without utterance to shut it again. Had he not, she asked, risen to his present position entirely on the wings of her patronage? Besieged as she was by the importunities of the great fashion houses, had she not stuck resolutely to him through thick and thin? And now –

  She executed a gesture, Siddons-like in its tragic implications, and began to pace to and fro while Pinky and Bertie hastily made room for her to do so. Her glance lighting for a moment on Pinky she began obliquely to attack her.

  ‘I imagine,’ she said, still to Bertie, ‘that I shall not be accused of lack of generosity. I am generally said, I think, to be a good friend. Faithful and just,’ she added, perhaps with some obscure recollection of Mark Antony. ‘Over and over again for friendship’s sake I’ve persuaded The Management to cast actresses who were unable to give me adequate support.’

  ‘Now, look here – !’ Pinky began warmly.

  ‘– over and over again. Timmy said, only the other day: “Darling, you’re sacrificing yourself on the altar of your personal loyalties!” He’s said, over and over again, that he wouldn’t for anybody else under the sun accept the casting as it stood. Only for me …’

  ‘What casting?’ Pinky demanded. Miss Bellamy continued to address herself exclusively to Bertie.

  ‘Only for me, Timmy said, would he dream of taking into any production of his an artist whose spiritual home was weekly rep. in the ham-counties.’

  ‘Timmy,’ Pinky said dangerously, ‘is producing my play. It’s entirely due to him and the author that I’ve got the part. They told The Management they wanted me.’

  Bertie said: ‘I happen to know that’s perfectly true.’

  ‘Conspiracy!’ Miss Bellamy shouted so loudly and suddenly that the others jumped in unison. She was ravaged by a terrible vision of Bertie, Pinky and Timmy all closeted with The Management and agreeing to say nothing to her of their plots and plans. In a Delphic fury she outlined this scene. Bertie, who had been moodily disengaging himself from the remnants of his garland, showed signs of fight. He waited his chance and cut in.

  ‘Speaking,’ he began, ‘as a two-timing, double-crossing rat, which God knows I am not, I take leave to assure you, darling Mary, that you’re wrecking yourself for nothing. I’m doing Pinky’s gowns out of friendliness and my name isn’t going to appear and I must say I’d have thought…’

  He was allowed to get no further.

  ‘It’s not,’ Miss Bellamy said, ‘what you’ve done, both of you, but the revolting way you’ve done it. If you’d come to me in the first instance and said …’ Then followed an exposition of what they should have said and of the generous response they would have enjoyed if they’d said it. For a moment it looked as if the row was going to degenerate into an aimless and repetitive wrangle. It would probably have done so if Pinky had not said abruptly:

&
nbsp; ‘Now, look here, Mary! It’s about time you faced up to yourself. You know jolly well that anything you’ve done for either of us has been paid back with interest. I know you’ve had a lot to do with my getting on The Management’s short list and I’m grateful, but I also know that it’s suited you very well to have me there. I’m a good foil to you. I know all your gimmicks. How you like to be fed lines. And when you dry, as nowadays you very often do, I can fill in like nobody’s business. In the gentle art of letting myself be upstaged, cheated out of points and fiddled into nonentity I’ve done you proud and you’ll find I’m damn’ hard to replace.’

  ‘My God! My God! That I should have to listen to this!’

  ‘As for Bertie …’

  ‘Never mind, Pinky,’ he said quickly.

  ‘I do mind. It’s true you gave Bertie his start, but what hasn’t he done for you? Your decor! Your clothes! Face it, Mary, without the Saracen Concealed Curve you’d be the Grand Old Lady of the Hip Parade.’

  Bertie gave a hysterical hoot of laughter and looked terrified.

  ‘The truth is,’ Pinky said, ‘you want it both ways, Mary. You want to boss everybody and use everybody for your own ends and at the same time you want us all to wallow in your wake saying how noble and generous and wonderful you are. You’re a cannibal, Mary, and it’s high time somebody had the guts to tell you so.’