The Satan Sampler

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The Satan Sampler Page 7

by Victor Canning


  Grandison’s voice at the other end said pleasantly, “I had a bet with myself that you would be doing one of three things. Either listening to Bach and drinking whisky, or warm in bed with one of your Knightsbridge matrons, or with feet up, nodding gently over one of Milton’s sonnets . . . ‘Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints’.”

  “None of them. I was tying a fly.”

  “Ah, yes. April cometh. And——” the tone of voice changed on the last word “——I want to know when this damned girl Collet cometh. Is she in the field yet?”

  “She moved into a bungalow up there yesterday, sir.”

  “You can forget the sir. I want her to get off her undoubtedly neat little bottom and get operating.”

  “You would like it expressed to her in those terms?” Only late at night—and not then at the Birdcage Walk offices—would he have been so mildly flippant, but with Grandison he had long established that after midnight he was his own man and could choose his own moods and, if he wished, show them openly.

  “I do not at this time of night propose to instruct you as to the exact style in which your directive to her should be set. Tell her to get up off her arse and start working—that is the content. The phrasing can be elegant or menacing . . . whichever you wish. Also . . .” the voice at the other end of the telephone broke off and in the silence that followed Warboys idly speculated whether Grandison was taking a long and refreshing pull at the whisky which would be undoubtedly to his hand or was merely pausing undecided of the wisdom of opening some line which had suddenly struck him as perhaps likely to be fruitful.

  Enjoying himself, Warboys broke the silence by saying, “I think you said ‘Also’? Or was it perhaps just a long sigh?”

  “It was ‘Also’ underlined by a sigh because—unusual for me—I am not relishing crossing swords with our Herefordshire squire. However, it must be if I read him right. So, get someone to investigate his meteoric—as the papers would say—rise to eminence in the business world. Dig for dirt? Yes. Has he crossed the line which so hazily divides right from wrong at any time? Bribery. Currency regulations. Somewhere it could have happened. High success allied to purity of thought, word and deed is as mythical as the unicorn.”

  “I will do what I can while at the same time correctly schooling my own curiosity about all this.”

  “And so you bloody better had!” Grandison gave a great bellow of laughter and rang off.

  Warboys shrugged his shoulders and went back to his fly-tying. He had no intention now of disturbing any duty officer or of hauling from bed or dalliance those of his people now in their homes who had earned the right to an honest night’s respite from professional concern; a sentiment, he knew, which sprung from his own frustration at not knowing what the hell all this was about.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SHE HAD FOUND a solidly built and comfortable bungalow some way to the west of Leominster, standing on a small bluff which overlooked the river Arrow, and not more than a half an hour’s drive to Seyton Hall. Sliding doors at the end of the lounge opened to a semi-circular sun room which would serve quite well as a small studio. Not far away was a woman who kept an eye on things for the owners when they let the place and, additionally, was happy to come in and cook and clean when required and also prepared to do a certain amount of shopping for her. The bungalow was called Arrowbank. It had a small garden and a thin strip of neglected orchard which ran down to the river. On the morning of her second day there the telephone rang as she was breakfasting. Answering it she had no difficulty in at once recognizing the voice.

  “Good morning, Miss Collet.”

  “Good morning to you, Mr Kerslake.”

  “Settled in?”

  “More or less.” He was being brisk, just as he had been when she had telephoned his number the previous day to give him her address. She matched his mood, for ever since her first meeting with him she had slightly regretted her attack on him, knowing that, no matter what comfort it had given her, she had been unfair to him. Personal feelings and private emotions were from now on to be banished in their exchanges.

  “Good . . .” He let the word hang for a moment or two longer than he need, and then went on flatly, “There seems to be a certain amount of urgency about all this which has only just been made clear to me. I was under the impression that you could choose your own style of approach and with such timing as you felt wise. But now it seems not so.”

  “You want me to get cracking.”

  “Those above me do.”

  “Like knocking him down with my car and then carrying him back here to put his bloody broken leg in splints and gain his confidence, love and adoration, while playing Florence Nightingale?” She paused, waiting at least for a chuckle or a cross clearing of his throat. “Is that it?”

  “That’s exactly it in essence.”

  “Well then, you’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve already been down to the Hall and seen him. I drove down yesterday afternoon to check the times the Hall was open to the public and he came riding by—not on a coal black stallion snorting flames through its nostrils, but on a nice chestnut mare—and, since I’d slowed for him to pass, he courteously tipped his cap to me. I wrote him down as a very nice chap. The kind which, if I’ve got at some time to go to bed with, I’d not necessarily find turning my stomach.” As she spoke she felt the edge of resentment rising in her and already her vow of no emotion slipping.

  To her surprise he said, without any change of tone, “The nurse-patient relationship is a very effective one—but we would prefer him on his feet and active.”

  “I’m going there today. Out of the tourist season this is the one day in the week when the Hall is open to the public. Afterwards I shall call on him at the Dower House.”

  “On what pretext?”

  “I don’t have to tell you, but I will. Reversing a very old gambit, I propose to show him my etchings. I’ll let you know how I get on. Goodbye, Mr Kershaw.” She put down the receiver.

  She was at Seyton Hall just after eleven o’clock when it opened to visitors until three-thirty and joined a party of six other visitors. The Hall itself outside she had seen the previous day and had not been over impressed by it, though she did not discount the inevitable feeling of affection—leading to the assumption that it was beautiful—a family would feel for the place if they had owned it and enlarged and embellished it ever since the fourteenth century, though the earliest structure had now almost disappeared to give way to later additions. The oldest part was an abbreviated wing roofed with stone tiles and faced with an intricate patterning of black timbering to form white plastered quatrefoil panels. The main facade was red-bricked Tudor, holding the great entrance doorway, and was broken along its front and on the west corner with high round towers rising from ground level. The east wing was late Restoration, built of stone, with tall, elegant windows, and seemed to be turning its back politely but firmly on the rest of the house, content to overlook the yew-hedged rose garden and a distant view of the river Wye.

  They were taken around by an official guide, neatly dressed in a dark green uniform, with brass buttons on his jacket carrying the monogram FF of the Felbeck Foundation. One day, she thought as she trailed around with the party, if things progressed as Birdcage clearly wanted them to progress, she would like to make the tour by herself and at her own pace and with freedom to linger. The Ballroom—originally the Great Chamber of the Tudor part of the house—had a fine Jacobean ceiling with a richly carved frieze of country pursuits and crafts, the walls hung with a collection of Seyton family portraits. In glass cases arranged down the sides and middle of the room were religious books and bibles with mediaeval bindings, eucharist veils, copes, chasubles, altar fronts and choir banners and—standing alone—a fine set of sixteenth-century Rood screen paintings and triptychs. In the Long Gallery on the first floor of the main building were hung paintings of famous English divines from the fifteenth century onwards and an impressively arranged exhibition of early English s
anctuary knockers, and silver chalices, crucifixes, and processional crosses. In a saloon of the late Restoration wing, French brocade curtains drawn up in thick flounces at its windows, the walls ivory coloured and these, with the doors and windows, spangled in dull gold with straying tendrils of gilded wood, a Grinling Gibbons carved choir stall had been set up, together with a display of ecclesiastical needlework and needle-point lace, old and modern, all of it featuring the temptation of Adam and Eve.

  It was twelve o’clock before Georgina—as she put it to herself—escaped. Going round even in a small party was inhibiting, the rhythm of one’s own natural pace broken, for the guide had allowed no lingering, shepherding his sheep firmly but politely. She went into the car park and sat in her car and smoked a quiet cigarette before tackling Richard Seyton, and wishing she had brought a flask of whisky or sherry with her for purely reviving purposes.

  Eventually she drove down the main exit road and pulled up outside the Dower House. Carrying a small portfolio of her work under her arm she walked up the terraced steps to the front door where she rang the bell. Notice, she said to herself, echoing the mood of the late guide, the very fine vine and cable carving round the framework. This was purely domestic work well within the scope of local craftsmen in those——

  Mrs Shipley opened the door to her. Georgina gave her good morning and handed a private card to her saying, “I wonder—if Mr Seyton is in—whether he would kindly spare me a few minutes?” She smiled and added, “I am in no way selling or canvassing anything.”

  “I see.” Mrs Shipley looked at the card and then at her and then during a brief glance again at the card while she was deciding whether to ask her in to wait, decided not and said, “I’ll go and see, miss.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mrs Shipley gone, Georgina turned and looked across the garden to the black-and-white dovecot and watched a cockbird, gorge bubbling with love talk, bully a hen across the roof. Sex, she thought, made the world go round, and then had a bet with herself that her simple ploy would fail. Mr Richard Seyton would be too damned busy or just bloody-mindedly disinclined to see her.

  At that moment in the small sitting room which was used normally only by the family, Richard Seyton, card in hand, was saying, “What’s she like?”

  Mrs Shipley, who could be sometimes surprisingly uncharacteristic, said, “Well, Mr Richard . . . all I would say is if I were a single man just thinking of having a glass of sherry before lunch on his own, and had been brooding around all morning like a moulting cockerel, I’d say she was not the sort to make any mood worse and worth the trouble of pouring a second glass of sherry to find out what she wants.”

  Seyton laughed. “All right. Show her in. But there’s no need to set a second place at table.”

  A little while later Georgina was sitting in a comfortable chair by the fire with a glass of sherry at her side and her portfolio on her lap while Seyton stood at the far end of the fireplace and, because he had been bored and out of mood with himself, said affably, “Well, Miss Collet, what can I do for you?”

  Georgina handed her portfolio to him and said, “I wonder if you would be kind enough to look through these?”

  Seyton sat down, rested the portfolio on his knees, slipped the tape bows free on the portfolio, and began to look through the few pen and colour wash drawings it held.

  “I assure you that I am not here to try and sell any of them.” Seyton made no answer and began to go slowly through the collection. Although he did not show it, he was at once impressed. Music—with a very few exceptions—made little appeal to him, and his kind of literature was chiefly that which beguiled a train journey or the cramped tedium of intercontinental air travel. But art did touch him sharply, just as his eye delighted in its subjects. He knew at once that he was not dealing with any enthusiastic amateur or art teacher come to make some request for a subscription for some worthy society or body eager to promulgate . . . well, whatever it might be. He paused for a while over a drawing of a winter hare being coursed by two greyhounds across bare stubble, and then did the same over another of a nightjar on its ground nest giving a threat display—a thing which he had only seen once in his life. With care he went through the whole portfolio and knew that this girl . . . woman . . . had an eye and a talent given to few.

  He carefully retied the bows of the portfolio and then handed it back to her with a smile. Then he stood up, noticing her sherry glass was almost empty, and carried the decanter to her and refilled it without any protest from her and was impressed by her calm and silence.

  He said, for he could already see them framed and hung in one of the smaller rooms of the Hall when he should get it back, “I’ll buy the lot at your own price, Miss Collet. Though something tells me that you are not here to sell—right?”

  Georgina smiled and shook her head. “No, Mr Seyton, I’m not here to sell. But I like the compliment. As a matter of fact they’ve all been commissioned. But if you would like something similar of mine I’ll gladly do it for you—in return for a small favour.”

  “Name it.”

  “Your permission, Mr Seyton, for a few weeks to walk over your land and estate to make sketches to complete this commission. I need roe deer and water fowl and a few other subjects which I know I shall find here.”

  “I see.” He paused for a while. Not entirely irrationally—but certainly strongly—you see something, you like it, and you must have it: that was an old echo from his mother—he knew that he wanted the portfolio of drawings. He went on, “For whom are these drawings?”

  “A London publisher. It’s a commission.” She smiled apologetically, giving a little shrug of her shoulders. “And I’ve already spent the advance he paid me.”

  “Will they belong to him?”

  Momentarily, though not showing it, she was slightly annoyed at his persistence, no matter what it told her of his character. “Yes, they will.”

  “That’s all right then. You’ve got my permission to go where you want and when you want—in return for his name and address.”

  “Yes, of course you shall have it. And thank you very much.”

  “It’s a pleasure.” He sipped at his sherry, and then went on, “I saw you yesterday, didn’t I? Up by the Hall. A small Renault. I was riding.”

  “Yes, you did.” Oddly, she felt a sudden twinge of uneasiness. Anyone fooling with this man was not going to find an easy adversary. “You must have a good memory for faces. I drove over to find out when the Hall was open. I’ve been round this morning.”

  “Like it?”

  “To some extent. I don’t get a great deal of pleasure at being shepherded around in a party.”

  “Nor me. If you wished I could arrange for you to go round privately sometime.”

  “That’s very kind of you. I should like that.” Georgina took a pencil from her handbag, reached for her visiting card which he had put on a nearby table and wrote on the back of it the name and address of her London publisher. Handing it to him, she said, “That’s the name and address you need—if you are serious about having them.”

  His tone in no way offensive, he said, “Of course I’m serious.” Then turning the card over, looking at her old address which she had crossed out to substitute her new one, he went on, “Is Arrowbank just a temporary address while you work on this commission?”

  “Yes. The Cotswold one is my permanent address.”

  “It’s a nice part of the country. I’ve hunted over there quite a lot.” He slipped the card into a pocket of his waistcoat and then, politely but clearly dismissive, he said, “Well, there you are, Miss Collet. You’re free to go where you want. If you have any problems—just let me know.”

  “Thank you.”

  He went to the main door with her and saw her out, and as she went back to her car Georgina had a sudden mood of depression. What the hell was she doing? Playing this stupid Birdcage game. This man was his own man, clearly. Not the kind, she felt sure, to fall for a pretty face or to be fooled
by such an age old ploy as Kerslake and his superiors envisaged. There were times when—from the limited confidences of her father and later the more exact instructions of Quint on her first assignment—she had felt that she had walked into an unreal existence, an Alice-in-Wonderland dream world where appearances and meanings were topsy-turvy and all clouded with nightmare shadows. Her father had lived in that nightmare most of his adult life—and reality had only returned when he was sent to prison. Feeling suddenly bloody-minded she drove downriver to Bredwardine and had lunch at the Red Lion, a lunch preceded by two large dry sherries and accompanied by a half bottle of Mersault and rounded off with a brandy to keep her coffee company. She drove back to Arrowbank, feeling murderously bad-tempered, took a Mogadon and went to bed, preferring a few hours oblivion to the harassment of her own thoughts and self-disgust.

  That afternoon Seyton spent mostly at his desk going through Punch’s papers and accounts to get them into shape for handing over to Figgins so that they could be passed to Bellamy in order to get the estate affairs moving. More than once he groaned affectionately to himself at the muddle Punch had left and was relieved when Mrs Shipley came to call him for tea and to announce that the Rector was here to discuss the arrangements for the memorial service for Punch. And after the Rector had gone, Shanklin telephoned from the Hall to say that the meeting of the Governors to vote on the business of the Hall lease had been arranged for the coming Saturday—two days ahead—and would he care to come up and meet them all for drinks before dinner, but—naturally he would understand—not to stay to dinner since that would be when they would be discussing his offer among themselves prior to the taking of the vote after dinner. He said he would be there.

  He then—since it had started to drizzle—put on cap and mackintosh and went for a walk through the fading daylight by the river. Coming back he went into the family chapel which stood isolated in a grove of ancient yews on a hillock in the middle of the park, well away from the Hall and the Dower House. A barn owl ghosted low under the yews as he went up the path to the main door which was never kept locked. Inside he switched on a couple of nave lights and then went and sat in the family pew where as a boy he had wriggled his backside with boredom so often and as a man—though outwardly a conformist—he had often struggled with doubts until he had learned to lock them away in a secure compartment of his mind where they gave him no trouble at all. He said a prayer for Punch and a remembrance for Ruth and then—since Bellamy and Punch’s will had been in his mind so recently he smiled—remembering the ritual of the sealed envelope he returned to the main door and threw its two bolts over so that no one could enter the chapel.

 

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