by Muriel Zagha
‘Miss Peppy-on,’ she said in a voice like a bark, but otherwise behaving in the manner of an excitable twelve-year-old schoolgirl. ‘Or may I call you Isabelle?’ She pronounced it in the English way, so that it sounded almost like one syllable – Izbl. ‘So glad you could make it. Nice to have a young face about the place for a change. And a French gel, too. Ha. Makes me feel quite cosmopolitan. Leave your things anywhere. Oh, so you have. Have a seat. Now, then. Oh yes, I know. You do eat normal food, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Isabelle said, a little disconcerted, and noticing her hostess’s unorthodox outfit: baggy leggings, a rather startling jumper featuring a picture of a dog (with brown beads for the eyes and nose), legwarmers and what looked like tap-dancing shoes.
‘I always check with foreigners. More prudent, don’t you agree? Never know what might happen otherwise. Ha. Now, then, where were we? Ah yes, drinks. We’re all on Wendy’s elderflower cordial. Makes it herself, you know. Rather strong stuff. Will it do for you?’
As Isabelle, sipping her elderflower cordial was finally allowed to get her bearings and settle in, Maud said curtly, ‘Well, Lucy, shall we unwrap it? We’re all dying to see it.’
Sheeplike Wendy turned to Isabelle. ‘You see, we’ve had the most marvellous stroke of luck, Miss Peppy-on.’ At which point, perhaps not being a very confident person, Wendy turned bright red and stopped speaking.
Her friend Maud took over. ‘This is a portrait of Meredith Quince, a gift to the Society from the author’s family.’
‘Oh, that’s great!’ Isabelle said excitedly. ‘I would love to know what she looked like.’
‘Herbert, you’re nearest. Would you be so kind?’ Lucy said, handing the elderly squirrel a pair of scissors. Overcome with the momentousness of this task, Herbert began attacking the string with small timid nips, while the others looked on encouragingly. It took about half a minute of this for Maud to become exasperated.
‘Give those to me, Herbert, or we’ll be here all day.’
A few swift gestures and the painting lay unwrapped. Maud and Wendy propped it up on the sofa and they all gazed at it.
‘Painted when she was in her thirties, chap said,’ said Lucy.
The picture showed an extremely angular woman with elongated limbs and dark-blond hair worn in fat curls held back with combs. She had on a blue square-necked dress patterned with small sprigs and sat in a green armchair in front of half-open French windows. All around her were walls lined with books. On a writing desk set behind her stood a couple of volumes and an old-fashioned inkpot. On the other side, next to Meredith’s unnaturally long legs, which were crossed at the ankle, there was a small round table. On it, a pair of white gloves lay next to a teacup and saucer.
Selina clasped her hands enthusiastically. ‘Oh, how lovely! It’s Minton! I knew it. We have a very similar service in our collection, don’t we, Bobbie?’
‘The perspective isn’t very good, is it?’ Wendy said cautiously. ‘It’s all a bit skew-whiff.’
‘Oh, Wendy, don’t be so silly. It was all the rage in those days. They were all Cubists and what have you.’
‘Oh, I see. Of course you’re right.’
‘She does look distinguished, doesn’t she?’ Maud went on.
‘Yes, a very intriguing lady,’ said Peter. ‘Is she smiling?’
‘A little, I think,’ said Wendy. ‘Anyway, she looks very nice.’
‘The colours are rather good. I wonder when it was painted exactly. Is it dated?’
Peter peered into the corners of the painting, then looked at the back of the frame. ‘No, Lucy. I don’t see a thing.’
Isabelle could contain herself no longer. ‘I think it was painted around 1947 to 1948,’ she declared in her flutelike tones.
‘Do you, Izbl? And why?’
‘That hairstyle of hers does remind me of the war years,’ Emily, the female squirrel, said timidly.
Isabelle stood up. She felt like Hercule Poirot, having gathered all possible suspects and about to launch into a dramatic reconstruction of the whole case.
‘I think you are right about the hair. But I see other indices, er … clues in the painting.’
‘Do you? And what are they?’ Maud asked a little testily.
‘I think there are visual allusions to the novels Meredith Quince had already published at the time she had this portrait painted. They are like her … attributes. This, for example,’ she said, pointing to a small branch hanging from the (oddly distorted) ceiling above the subject’s head. ‘It is a piece of mistletoe, is it not? And yet, the garden we see through the window is in summer.’
‘Death Under the Mistletoe!’ Selina exclaimed.
‘Yes, I think so. It was the first novel with Lady Violet as the heroine, published in 1936 …’
‘Good heavens, those gloves on the table!’ Wendy murmured. ‘Do you think …’
‘Yes,’ said Isabelle, nodding, ‘they might represent Murder in Kid Gloves. The piece of lemon zest in the china teacup …’
‘Stands for The Lemon Peel Mystery!’ Herbert had also got up to look at the portrait.
‘That’s my absolute favourite. So cleverly put together. Do you know, I always forget whodunnit, every time,’ Roberta said without looking up from her knitting.
‘Murder in Kid Gloves was published in 1945,’ Peter said. ‘So that’s probably when this was painted.’
Isabelle shook her head. ‘I think there’s something else. This, here.’ She indicated an object near Meredith’s foot, almost indistinguishable from the pattern of the green-and-red Persian rug.
‘Eh, what? Where?’ Lucy said, peering irritably. ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘Oh! I see! It’s a cut stone. How clever!’ Wendy was doing an excited little dance.
‘The Renegade Emerald, 1947,’ Peter confirmed, stroking his beard thoughtfully.
‘What fun!’ Fern cried. ‘Just like cryptic clues. Do you think it was all her own idea?’
At that moment the telephone rang. Lucy, who wanted to look at the portrait, dispatched Wendy to take the call.
‘Yes, I think you’re right about the date, Mademoiselle,’ Peter said courteously. ‘It does put the painting somewhere in the late forties.’
‘I remember our mother had a dress just like that when we were children,’ Selina said. ‘Didn’t she, Bobbie?’
‘Where shall we hang it, Lucy?’ asked Maud.
The Society members began to discuss the best possible spot for the painting. The debate became rather heated. When Wendy came back in, she had to make several attempts before she eventually got Lucy’s attention. She said something about the telephone call being another lovely surprise. Isabelle did not follow any of this very closely: she was looking avidly at the portrait. Meredith had never courted publicity, and there were no portrait photographs of her that Isabelle knew of. All she had ever come across was a fuzzy group shot of a literary luncheon in the early 1960s. In it Meredith wore a turban and looked away from the camera, so that all you saw of her was what is known in French as a profil perdu. As a result, Isabelle had made up her own image of her subject – as a sort of Miss Marple figure. It was exciting and a little bewildering to come face to face with her like this.
‘Wendy, are you sure you didn’t get the wrong end of the stick?’ Lucy was saying. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time. Just a moment ago, the chap kept saying no when I asked him. Doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Oh, but it’s such wonderful news, isn’t it, Lucy?’ Roberta trilled.
‘I assure you there was no mistake, Lucy,’ Wendy said tremulously. ‘I hope I know how to take a message. He said that he’d just realised he’d been quite wrong and had to ring right away on his mobile. He was very clear about it.’
‘I wonder what made him change his mind?’ said Peter, joining in.
‘Ha! Who knows? Woolly-headed, I thought him.’
‘But that was when he said no to you,’ Maud replied shrewdly. ‘Now he’s say
ing yes we all think he’s quite clever, don’t we?’
‘Yes, I expect you’re right,’ Lucy barked. ‘Ha. Well, well. First the portrait and now this. What a day! Huzzah!’
‘He was extremely polite,’ Wendy resumed more calmly. ‘He said you could call him any time to set a date. Now, who would like another elderflower cordial?’
Herbert sidled up to Isabelle, who was still standing before the portrait. She was looking absent-mindedly at the label on the frame peeping out of the brown wrapping. It read ‘Portrait of the writer Meredith Quince. Kindly donated by Thomas Quince, Esq.’
‘It’s not always this exciting, you know, Miss Peppy-on,’ he said confidentially. ‘You came on a really good day. My favourite Quince novel,’ he went on, ‘is Death of a Lady Ventriloquist. I first read it as a boy and I thought it was a super yarn. I love her evocation of the world of music hall. You can really smell the greasepaint, can’t you? It’s incredible to think that she hadn’t written it when this was painted. But perhaps she was working it out in her mind. How clever she looks!’
‘I think Death of a Lady Ventriloquist is fascinating,’ Isabelle said. This was partly because the novel had been published in 1952, on the unofficial twentieth anniversary of The Splodge. Isabelle had been reading and re-reading it very closely for that reason, paying particular attention to ventriloquising as a possible metaphor for Meredith Quince’s artistic predicament. On the surface the novel might be about the baffling on-stage murder of a blowsy entertainer whose female dummy spoke in a Cockney accent. But wasn’t Quince herself – the thwarted experimentalist turned crime novelist – another lady ventriloquist, who had no choice to survive but to speak in another voice than her own? Isabelle had just emailed a chapter outline about this very point to Professeur Sureau. Herbert was telling her about his favourite scene (the breathless moment when the plucky Lady Violet, posing as a magi-cian’s assistant, unmasks the murderer in the nick of time in front of the audience, just as he is calmly preparing to saw her in half), when they were interrupted by Maud calling everyone next door for supper.
The food turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. In particular, there was a most disconcerting salad, which, among other things, contained raisins, potatoes, peanuts, carrots and peas. It had been made by Wendy, and Maud had ‘jazzed it up’ with cubes of soaplike cheese. Isabelle was reminded of a story that had done the rounds when she was at school. A boy in her class, who had spent a summer in England for linguistic purposes, had returned full of shudder-inducing stories about being made to eat banana and anchovy sandwiches. At the time Isabelle had dis missed this as a tall tale. Now, toying with a portion of minced turkey, tinned pineapple and cottage cheese lasagne made by Fern (who described it gushingly as ‘wonderfully slimming’), she wasn’t so sure.
‘So, Izbl,’ said Lucy from the top of the table, ‘how did you become interested in Meredith Quince?’
Isabelle gratefully put her fork down and explained that she had read her first Quince novel – Pink Gin Six Feet Under or, to give it its French title, Petit cocktail au cimetière – purely by chance, having come across it at a friend’s seaside house. It had struck her as more interesting than other examples of the crime genre. She had then begun reading Quince systematically in the original English and gradually a hobby had turned into the foundation of her academic research. Unwilling to mention The Splodge in front of strangers, Isabelle remained evasive regarding the precise tenor of her thesis, but said enough about her interest in narrative patterns and the sociology of the crime genre to produce a deafening silence around the table.
After a pause, Lucy, her piercing blue eyes somewhat glazed, managed a response: ‘I see. Ha. All good fun, all good fun.’
Fern, who was sitting next to Isabelle, added apologetically, ‘You see, we at the Society are just what you’d call common or garden fans. We just really enjoy the books.’
Emboldened by Lucy’s temporary silence, Wendy joined in: ‘We’ve staged some of the novels as plays, sometimes just the odd scene or two, but it’s tremendous fun. We all take turns to play Lady Violet. Or we go on little expeditions, themed walks, you know.’
‘Last year we went to all the theatres mentioned in Death of a Lady Ventriloquist,’ said Herbert, flushing a little. ‘I organised that outing.’
‘Yes, yes,’ a perkier Lucy interjected. ‘But even greater thrills await us. A visit to the author’s house. Marvellous!’
‘Oh, where is her house?’
‘I’m surprised to hear you don’t know about that, Izbl,’ Maud said, a trifle censoriously.
‘It’s near Kew,’ said Fern. ‘It’s where she lived most of her life after she moved to England. She was born in India, as I’m sure you know.’
‘Lucy,’ Fern said pleadingly, ‘couldn’t you call him now and arrange a date? We’d all love to know when we’re going.’
‘Hear, hear,’ cried several members of the Society.
Lucy rolled her eyes in mock-exasperation and trotted off to make the call. While she was gone, the others explained, for Isabelle’s benefit, what an exciting development this was. Since its foundation in the early 1970s the Quince Society had been attempting to get into Meredith’s house. That was a period when, shortly after her death, Meredith Quince’s novels had fallen entirely out of fashion. Meredith’s house had passed to her younger brother, and after his death, to his son, Philip. His was not, apparently, an artistic or particularly sympathetic nature and, at any rate, he thought very little of his aunt’s oeuvre. As for letting people he saw as mere cranks and nosey-parkers into his new home, he would have none of it.
‘But now he has changed his mind?’ Isabelle suggested.
‘Not him, no,’ Peter explained. ‘Philip and his wife no longer live in the house. They moved to the country last year, but he didn’t let us know, obviously.’
‘It was purely by chance that dear Lucy found out,’ said Selina. ‘She is very, very persistent, you see. She wrote to Philip Quince again, hoping to convince him, and she got a reply from his son. It appears that he now lives in his great-aunt’s house.’
‘An eccentric bachelor,’ Wendy added. ‘He’s just returned from abroad – Italy!’
‘He also said no,’ said Maud. ‘Didn’t even bother to explain why. Potty, probably, like his father.’
‘Instead,’ Peter added, ‘he gave us the portrait. Perhaps he felt he owed us some kind of debt.’
‘We have been so very loyal!’ Wendy said.
Lucy came back in, bouncing with excitement. ‘We’re all expected for tea next Sunday. Ha! Victory at last.’
Everyone cheered.
‘You must come too, of course, my dear Izbl.’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Isabelle said, nodding absentmindedly. Something had just occurred to her. Luckily, everyone began to mill around with their coffee and she was free to take another look at the portrait. There was the desk and, on it, the inkpot. But surely Meredith would have typed her novels, wouldn’t she? The inkpot cast a dramatic shadow, she noticed, which was odd because the books next to it didn’t. Then it was all she could do to keep her coffee from shooting out of her mouth in shock. The black zone at the base of the pot wasn’t a shadow at all – it was a splodge.
10 Daisy
‘What now?’ Daisy said, looking down into the manhole with some trepidation.
‘We climb down,’ Octave replied airily. ‘It’s completely safe. We do it all the time. It will be worth it, you’ll see.’
A fortnight had gone by since the Paris-Plage clinch, which had ended with Octave and Daisy whizzing back to his flat on his scooter and spending the night there. This was fast work by Daisy’s standards but there was something irrepressible about Octave’s charm and enthusiasm and she had happily given herself over to what felt like a heady holiday romance. Being Octave’s girlfriend was a rather breathless state of affairs: in the course of two weeks they had crashed many parties of all kinds, made love on the floor of various people’s bathro
oms (and once in a cupboard) and drunk a lot of free champagne. They had also been up on the roofs of Paris a number of times because that was another clandestine activity Octave enjoyed. Now Daisy liked going on adventures as much as the next person. And she and Octave had certainly had some pretty thrilling snogs while leaning precariously against gabled attic windows in the moonlight. But all the same she was beginning to long for a boring, uncomplicated date, one on which she could both wear heels and use her own name.
Tonight, though, was not the night for such a date. Daisy was going with the Pique-Assiettes to a literally underground party in the Catacombs, the network of tunnels that had once served as Paris’s cemetery. Apparently, Bertrand had said with puppyish enthusiasm, the tunnels were full of really old skulls and bones. As if that was a good thing. Daisy had been a little underwhelmed, but it was certainly something to tell Jules about. It sounded right up her gothic alley.
Daisy adjusted her speleologist’s helmet, tucked her torch in her belt and began the descent down the rungs of a narrow steel ladder. Octave followed after a minute, pulling the manhole cover closed after him. Bertrand and Stanislas, who had gone first, were lighting the way with their torches. Daisy was glad she’d taken the Pique-Assiettes’ advice and worn stout wellies over her skinny-fit designer jeans. It had not been an easy decision in terms of footwear but she had to admit that Stanislas had been right. Some of the passages they were now going through were half-flooded. Daisy and the boys all splashed merrily onwards in a single file.
‘According to my map the entrance we used is the closest to the room where the party is,’ Stanislas said after a while. ‘Let’s just stop a second and listen.’