by Ngaio Marsh
“Expectant and luxurious.”
“Good. Excellent. You have finished? Let us make a little tour of the rooms, shall we? Dear me, it’s a long time since I looked forward so much to a party.”
They made their tour. In the great drawing-room, seldom used by Jonathan, cedar-wood fires blazed at each end. Mrs. Pouting and two maids put glazed French covers on the armchairs and the bergère sofas.
“Summer-time uniforms,” said Jonathan, “but they chime with the flowers and are gay. Admire my flowers, Aubrey. Don’t they look pleasant against the linen-fold walls? Quite a tone-poem, I consider.”
“And when seven furious faces are added,” said Mandrake, “the harmony will be complete.”
“You can’t frighten me. The faces will be all smiles in less than no time, you may depend on it. And, after all, even if they are not to be reconciled, I shall not complain. My play will be less pretty but more exciting.”
“Aren’t you afraid that they will simply refuse to stay under the same roof with each other?”
“They will at least stay tonight; and tomorrow, I hope, will be so inclement that the weather alone will turn the balance.”
“Your courage is amazing. Suppose they all sulk in separate rooms?”
“They won’t. I won’t let ’em. Confess now, Aubrey, aren’t you a little amused, a little stimulated?”
Mandrake grinned. “I feel all the more disagreeable sensations of first-night nerves, but — all right, I’ll admit to a violent interest.”
Jonathan laughed delightedly and took his arm. “You must see the bedrooms and the ‘boudoir’ and the little smoking-room. I’ve allowed myself some rather childish touches but they may amuse you. Elementary symbolism. Character as expressed by vegetation. As the florists’ advertisements would have it, I have ‘said it with flowers.’ ”
“Said what?”
“What I think of everyone.”
They crossed the hall to the left of the front door and entered the room that Jonathan liked to call the “boudoir”— an Adam sitting-room painted a light green and hung with French brocades, whose pert garlands were repeated in nosegays which Jonathan had set in the window, and upon a spinet and a writing-desk.
“Here,” said Jonathan, “I hope the ladies will foregather to write, gossip and knit. Miss Chloris, I should explain, is a W.R.E.N., not yet called up, but filling the interim with an endless succession of indomitable socks. My distant cousin Hersey is also a vigorous knitter. I feel sure poor Sandra is hard at work on some repellent comfort.”
“And Madame Lisse?”
“The picture of Madame in close co-operation with strands of khaki wool is one which could be envisaged only by a surrealist. No doubt you will find yourself able to encompass it. Come along.”
The “boudoir” opened into the small smoking-room, where Jonathan permitted a telephone and a radio set, but which, he explained, had in other respects remained unaltered since his father died. Here were leather chairs, a collection of sporting prints flanked by a collection of weapons and by fading groups of Jonathan and his Cambridge friends in the curious photographic postures of the nineties. Above the mantelpiece hung a trout-rod, complete with cast and fly.
“Sweet-scented tobacco plants, you see,” said Jonathan, “in pots. A trifle obvious, but I couldn’t resist them. Now the library.”
The library opened out of the smoking-room. It had an air of being the most used room in the house, and indeed it was here that Jonathan could generally be found amid a company of books that bore witness to generations of rather freakish taste and to the money by which such taste could be gratified. Jonathan had added lavishly to the collection. His books ranged oddly from translations of Turkish and Persian verse to the works of the most inscrutable of the moderns and text-books on criminology and police detection. He had a magpie taste in reading, but it was steadied by a constancy of devotion to the Elizabethans.
“Here,” he said, “I was troubled by an embarrassment of riches. A Shakespearian nosegay seemed a little vieux jeu, but on the other hand it had the advantage of being easily recognized. I was tempted by Leigh Hunt’s conceit of ‘saying all one feels and thinks in clever daffodils and pinks; in puns of tulips and in phrases, charming for their truth, of daisies.’ Unfortunately the glass-houses were not equal to Leigh Hunt in midwinter, but here, you see, is the great Doctor’s ensign of supreme command, the myrtle; and here, after all, is most of poor Ophelia’s rather dreary little collection. The sombre note predominates. But upstairs I have let myself go again. A riot of snowdrops for Chloris (you take the allusion to William Stone’s charming conceit?), tuberoses and even some orchids for Madame Lisse, and so on.”
“And for Mrs. Compline?”
“A delightful arrangement of immortelles.”
“Aren’t you rather cruel?”
“Dear me, I don’t think so,” said Jonathan, with a curious glance at his guest. “I hope you admire the really superb cactus on your window-sill, Aubrey. John Nash might pause before it, I believe, and begin to plan some wonderful arrangement of greys and elusive greens. And now I must telephone to Sandra Compline and after that to Dr. Hart. I am making the bold move of suggesting he drive Madame Lisse. Hersey has her own car. Will you excuse me?”
“One moment. What flowers have you put in your own room?”
“Honesty,” said Jonathan.
Mrs. Compline, her son William, and his fiancée Chloris Wynne, arrived by car at four o’clock. Mandrake discovered himself to be in almost as high a state of excitement as his host. He was unable to decide whether Jonathan’s party would prove to be disastrous, amusing, or merely a bore, but the anticipation, at least, was enthralling. He had formed a very precise mental picture of each of the guests. William Compline, he decided, would present the most interesting subject-matter. The exaggerated filial devotion, hinted at by Jonathan, brought him into the sphere of Mandrake’s literary interest. And muttering “mother-fixation” to himself, he wondered if indeed he should find in William the starting point for a new dramatic poem. Poetically, Mrs. Compline’s disfigurement might best be conveyed by a terrible mask, seen in the background of William’s spoken thoughts. “Perhaps in the final scene,” thought Mandrake, “I should let them turn into the semblance of animals. Or would that be a little banal?” For not the least of a modern poetic dramatist’s problems lies in the distressing truth that where all is strange nothing escapes the imputation of banality. But in William Compline with his dullish appearance, his devotion to his mother, his dubious triumph over his brother, Mandrake hoped to find matter for his art. He was actually picturing an opening scene in which William, standing between his mother and his fiancée, appeared against a sky composed of cubes of greenish light, when the drawing-room door opened and Caper announced them.
They were, of course, less striking than the images that had grown so rapidly in Mandrake’s imagination. He had seen Mrs. Compline as a figure in a sombre robe, and here she was in Harris tweeds. He had envisaged a black cowl, and he saw a countrified hat with a trout-fly in the band. But her face, less fantastic than his image, was perhaps more distressing. It looked as if its maker had given it two or three vicious tweaks. Her eyes, large and lack-lustre, retained something of their original beauty, her nose was short and straight, but the left corner of her mouth dropped and her left cheek fell into a sort of pocket, so that she looked as though she had hurriedly stowed a large mouthful into one side of her face. She had the exaggeratedly dolorous expression of a clown. As Jonathan had told him, there was a cruelly comic look. When Jonathan introduced them, Mandrake was illogically surprised at her composure. She had a cold, dry voice.
Miss Chloris Wynne was about twenty-three, and very, very pretty. Her light gold hair was pulled back from her forehead and moulded into cusps, so rigidly placed that they might have been made of any material rather than hair. Her eyes were wide apart and beautifully made-up, her mouth was large and scarlet, and her skin flawless. She was rathe
r tall, and moved in a leisurely fashion, looking gravely about her. She was followed by William Compline.
In William, Mandrake saw what he had hoped to see — the commonplace faintly touched by a hint of something that was disturbing. He was in uniform and looked perfectly tidy but not quite smart. He was fair and should have been good-looking, but the lines of his features were blunted and missed distinction, He was like an unsuccessful drawing of a fine subject. There was an air of uneasiness about him and he had not been long in the room before Mandrake saw that whenever he turned to look at his fiancée, which was very often, he first darted a glance at his mother, who never returned it. Mrs. Compline talked easily and with the air of an old friend to Jonathan, who continually drew the others into their conversation. Jonathan was in grand form. “A nice start,” thought Mandrake, “with plenty in reserve.” And he turned to Miss Wynne with the uneasy feeling that she had said something directly to him.
“… I didn’t in the least understand it, of course,” Miss Wynne was saying, “but it completely unnerved me and that’s always rather fun.”
“Ah,” thought Mandrake, “one of my plays.”
“Of course,” Miss Wynne continued, “I don’t know if you were thinking, when you wrote it, what I was thinking when I saw it; but if you were, I’m surprised you got past the Lord Chamberlain.”
“The Lord Chamberlain,” said Mandrake, “is afraid of me and for a similar reason. He doesn’t know whether it’s my dirty mind or his, so he says nothing.”
“Ah,” cried Jonathan, “is Miss Wynne a devotee, Aubrey?”
“A devotee of what?” asked Mrs. Compline in her exhausted voice.
“Of Aubrey’s plays. The Unicorn is to reopen with Aubrey’s new play in March, Sandra, if all goes well. You must come to the first night. It’s called ‘Bad Black-out’ and is enormously exciting.”
“A war play?” asked Mrs. Compline. It was a question that for some reason infuriated Mandrake, but he answered with alarming politeness that it was not a war play but an experiment in two-dimensional formulism. Mrs. Compline looked at him blankly and turned to Jonathan.
“What does that mean?” asked William. He stared at Mandrake with an expression of offended incredulity. “Two-dimensional? That means flat, doesn’t it?”
Mandrake heard Miss Wynne give an impatient sigh and guessed at a certain persistency in William.
“Does it mean that the characters will be sort of unphotographic?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
“Yes,” said William heavily, “but two-dimensional. I don’t quite see—”
Mandrake felt a terrible apprehension of boredom but Jonathan cut in neatly with an amusing account of his own apprenticeship as an audience to modern drama, and William listened with his mouth not quite closed and an anxious expression in his eyes. When the others laughed at Jonathan’s facetiæ, William looked baffled. Mandrake could see him forming with his lips the offending syllables “two-dimensional.”
“I suppose,” he said suddenly, “it’s not what you say but the way you say it that you think matters. Do your plays have plots?”
“They have themes.”
“What’s the difference?”
“My darling old Bill,” said Miss Wynne, “you mustn’t browbeat famous authors.”
William turned to her and his smile made him almost handsome. “Mustn’t you?” he said. “But if you do a thing, you like talking about it. I like talking about the things I do. I mean the things I did before there was a war.”
It suddenly occurred to Mandrake that he did not know what William’s occupation was. “What do you do?” he asked.
“Well,” said William, astonishingly, “I paint pictures.”
Mrs. Compline marched firmly into the conversation. “William,” she said, “has Penfelton to look after in peacetime. At present, of course, we have our old bailiff, who manages very well. My younger son, Nicholas, is a soldier. Have you heard, Jonathan, that he did not pass his medical for active service? It was a very bitter blow to him. At the moment he is stationed at Great Chipping but he longs so much to be with his regiment in France. Of course,” she added. And Mandrake saw her glance at the built-up shoe on his club-foot.
“But you’re on leave from the front, aren’t you?” he asked William.
“Oh, yes,” said William.
“My son Nicholas—” Mrs. Compline became quite animated as she spoke of Nicholas. She talked about him at great length, and Mandrake wondered if he only imagined there was a sort of defiance in her insistence on this awkward theme. He saw that Miss Wynne had turned pink and William crimson. Jonathan drew the spate of maternal eulogy upon himself. Mandrake asked Miss Wynne and William if they thought it was going to snow again, and all three walked over to the long windows to look at darkening hills and vale. Naked trees half lost their form in that fading light and rose from the earth as if they were its breath, already frozen.
“Rather menacing,” said Mandrake, “isn’t it?”
“Menacing?” William repeated. “It’s very beautiful. All black and white and grey. I don’t believe in seeing colour into things. One should paint them the first colour they seem when one looks at them. Yes, I suppose it is what you’d call menacing. Black and grey and white.”
“What is your medium?” Mandrake asked, and wondered why everybody looked uncomfortable when William spoke of his painting.
“Very thick oil paint,” said William gravely.
“Do you know Agatha Troy?”
“I know her pictures, of course.”
“She and her husband are staying with the Copelands at Winton St. Giles near Little Chipping. I came on from there. She’s painting the Rector.”
“Do you mean Roderick Alleyn?” asked Miss Wynne. “Isn’t he her husband? How exciting to be in a house-party with the handsome Inspector. What’s he like?”
“Oh,” said Mandrake, “quite agreeable.”
They had turned away from the windows but a sound from outside drew them back again. Only the last turn of the drive as it came out of the Highfold woods could be seen from the drawing-room windows.
“That’s a car,” said William. “It sounds like—” he stopped short.
“Is anyone else coming?” asked Miss Wynne sharply, and caught her breath.
She and William stared through the windows. A long and powerful-looking open car, painted white, was streaking up the last rise in the drive.
“But,” stammered William, very red in the face, “that’s— that’s—”
“Ah!” said Jonathan from behind them. “Didn’t you know? A pleasant surprise for you. Nicholas is to be one of our party.”
Nicholas Compline was an extremely striking version of his brother. In figure, height, and colouring they were alike. Their features were not dissimilar, but the suggestion of fumbled drawing in William was absent in Nicholas. William was clean-shaven but Nicholas wore a fine blond moustache. Nicholas had a presence. His uniform became him almost too well. He glittered a little. His breeches were superb. His face was not unlike a less dissipated version of the best-known portrait of Charles II, though the lines from nose or mouth were not so dominant, and the pouches under the eyes had only just begun to form.
His entrance into the drawing-room at Highfold must have been a test of his assurance. Undoubtedly it was dramatic. He came in, smiling, missed his brother and Miss Wynne, who were still in the window, shook hands with Jonathan, was introduced to Mandrake, and, on seeing his mother, looked surprised but greeted her charmingly. Jonathan, who had him by the elbow, turned him towards the windows.
There was no difficult silence because Jonathan talked briskly but there was, to a degree, a feeling of tension. For a moment Mandrake wondered if Nicholas Compline would turn on his heel and walk out, but after checking, with Jonathan’s hand still at his elbow, he merely stood stock-still and looked from William to Chloris Wynne. His face was as pale as his brother’s was red and there was a kind of startled sneer
about his lips. It was Miss Wynne who saved the situation. She unclenched her hands and gave Nicholas a coster’s salute, touching her forehead and spreading out her palm towards him. Mandrake guessed that this seriocomic gesture was foreign to her, and applauded her courage.
“Oi,” said Miss Wynne.
“Oi, oi,” said Nicholas, and returned her salute. He looked at William and said in a flat voice, “Quite a family party.”
His mother held out her hand to him. He moved swiftly towards her and sat on the arm of her chair. Mandrake saw adoration in her eyes and mentally rubbed his hands together. “The mother-fixation,” he thought, “is not going to let me down.” And he began to warn himself against the influence of Eugene O’Neill. William and his Chloris remained in the window. Jonathan, after a bird-like glance at them, embarked on a comfortable three-cornered chat with Mrs. Compline and Nicholas. Mandrake, sitting in the shadow, found himself free to watch the lovers, and again he gloated. At first William and Chloris stared out through the windows and spoke in undertones. She pointed to something outside, but Mandrake felt certain the gesture was a bluff and that they were discussing hurriedly the arrival of Nicholas. Presently he observed a small incident that he thought curious and illuminating. It was a sort of dumb show, an interplay of looks subdued to the exigencies of polite behaviour, a quartette of glances. William had turned from the window and was staring at his mother. She had been talking with an air that almost approached gaiety to Nicholas. She looked into his face and a smile, painful in its intensity, lifted the drooping corners of her mouth. Nicholas’ laugh was louder than the conversation seemed to warrant and Mandrake saw that he was looking over his mother’s head full at Chloris Wynne. Mandrake read a certain insolence in this open-eyed direct stare of Nicholas. He turned to see how the lady took it and found that she returned it with interest. They looked steadfastly and inimically into each other’s eyes. Nicholas laughed again and William, as if warned by this sound, turned from his sombre contemplation of his mother and stared first at Nicholas and then at Miss Wynne. Neither of them paid the smallest attention to him but Mandrake thought that Nicholas was very well aware of his brother. He thought Nicholas, in some way that was clearly perceived by the other two, was deliberately baiting William. Jonathan’s voice broke across this little pantomime.