Death of a Delft Blue mb-37

by Gladys Mitchell

  They were taken to his room shortly after the meal was over. The old man’s breathing was a matter for concern and he seemed to find it difficult to speak. Fortunately there was very little he wanted to say. It was evident he had been told that Dame Beatrice had been asked to look for Florian.

  ‘Find him,’ he said, ‘and tell him that he is still a grandnephew of mine. He has done wrong, but please find him, if you can. I must punish him, but I love him very dearly.’

  ‘The Lord loveth whom He chasteneth,’ said Dame Beatrice absently. She took her leave, as she added, ‘We shall do our best, and will let you have news.’

  She and Laura left North Norfolk immediately after breakfast on the following morning, lunched in Boston and dined and spent the night in Durham. Binnie’s parents not only owned but were the resident managers of a large hotel just north of Peebles on the road to Penicuik. It was their latest and most ambitious venture. Rooms for Laura and Dame Beatrice had been booked by telephone from Norfolk and Binnie herself was at the reception desk when they arrived. She greeted them effusively and begged them to stay ‘a good long time.’

  ‘But we’ve only booked for one night,’ said Laura, signing the book after Dame Beatrice had had it.

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter. We’re not full. It would be so nice to have you for a bit. I could take you out and show you the countryside, you know. We could go in to Peebles sometimes. There’s a big hydro. there where there’s dancing and all kinds of entertainment. I know the manager. He’s an awfully nice person. I’m only looking after the office here because I get so bored doing nothing. Look here, let me show you your rooms and so forth, and then you must join me for a cocktail and tell me all that’s been happening since I saw you last. Mac, dear,’ she added to the porter, who had been hovering over the travellers’ luggage, ‘numbers seven and eight.’ The porter went off and Dame Beatrice followed. Laura would have done the same, but Binnie detained her. ‘I say,’ she muttered, ‘why have you come?’

  ‘You’d better ask Dame B.,’ returned Laura.

  ‘So there is something behind your visit! I guessed as much when we got Uncle Derde’s telephone message booking the rooms for you. Is it — well, you might as well tell me — is it anything to do with Bernardo?’

  ‘No,’ said Laura, ‘it is not.’

  ‘I haven’t heard from him since we broke it off, you know. I do wish he’d write. Of course, he’s proud and obstinate and he expects me to be the one to give in, and I always have, but this time I don’t see why I should. After all, he did hit poor Florian. I think he ought to climb down and offer me back the ring. I’d take it soon enough, if only he’d make the first move. It’s rotten here, with none of my friends, and Mummy and Daddy always so busy and, anyway, almost strangers to me.’

  ‘Hard luck,’ said Laura automatically. She got away and mounted the stairs. The porter was waiting to point out her room. Laura tipped him and walked over to the window. There was a fine view of the hills surrounding Peebles and Laura felt, with Binnie, that it was a pity to be making merely an overnight stay. She bathed and changed and then tapped on the door of number seven. Dame Beatrice was ready to go downstairs.

  ‘Binnie seems under the weather about her broken engagement,’ remarked Laura. ‘Which of them do you suppose ought to make the first move? Dashed if I would, if Gavin and I had a row of that sort, but perhaps she was a bit precipitate, chucking the ring at Bernardo like that. Of course, nobody wants to see a brother get manhandled, I suppose. All the same, she herself went for him later and blamed him for the broken engagement.’

  ‘Do you and our dear Robert ever quarrel?’ asked Dame Beatrice, interested because she had never thought of this before.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course we do. It isn’t healthy not to. We fight like fiends — literally — and then it always strikes us as funny and we begin to laugh. It’s ever such a good scrap while it lasts and we both enjoy it lots, but once you’ve laughed you’ve had it. Such a pity! I do love a really splendid maul.’

  Dame Beatrice clucked sympathetically. Then she said,

  ‘I take it that Binnie knows nothing of Florian’s disappearance?’

  ‘I hardly think she does. She’s such a prattling, ingenuous little headache that she’d have babbled it out at once.’

  Dame Beatrice agreed with this judgment and they went down to join Binnie in the cocktail lounge. She ordered, insisting that the drinks were on the house and therefore she would not have to pay for them, and then, when the drinks had been brought, she said:

  ‘Now, Dame Beatrice, do please tell me why you have come. Laura says it’s nothing to do with Bernardo, so I suppose it’s about Florian.’

  ‘What makes you think so?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Well, it couldn’t be about anybody else, unless Grand-uncle has gone and died, and I should have heard about that from Grandma Binnen or Uncle Derde, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘It is about Florian,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Your uncles would have come themselves, but it is imperative that they go up to their Universities quite soon, and so they felt that they could not spare the time for extensive travel.’

  ‘That’s a stock excuse of theirs if there’s any family hoo-ha on hand,’ said Binnie. ‘They’re typical dons. They simply loathe getting mixed up in anything except their own work. Uncle Sweyn is worse than Uncle Derde. Uncle D. does at least have some conscience about the family, but Uncle Sweyn is too utterly self-centred and unreliable.’

  ‘It is true that Professor Sweyn did not seem as concerned as Professor Derde,’ admitted Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Concerned? About Florian?’

  ‘Your brother appears to have given the family the slip. They would like to know where he is.’

  ‘Oh, but I know where he is. He’s in Holland, staying with Grandma Binnen and the awful aunts.’

  ‘He called on them, certainly, but left them for an unknown destination,’ said Laura.

  ‘And, in any case, they are now in England,’ added Dame Beatrice.

  ‘But he went over there to give a last sitting for that silly bust and that idiotic flower,’ exclaimed Binnie. ‘If he isn’t over here with the family, where is he? He hasn’t any friends over there and he hasn’t any money for lodgings. What does Granduncle van Zestien think about it?’

  Laura glanced at Dame Beatrice, who replied:

  ‘He is ill and has taken your brother’s defection very badly.’

  ‘You mean he’s disinherited him,’ said Binnie, with another flash of the acumen she occasionally and unexpectedly displayed. ‘That’s the nub of it, isn’t it? Oh, well, that means Bernardo will be reinstated, so that the sooner I reinstate myself with Bernardo the better it will be for all concerned. I only wish I knew how to do it without actually climbing down.’

  ‘Well! The little gold-digger!’ exclaimed Laura, as she and her employer took their seats at a table for two at dinner. ‘Makes you wonder whether she chucked poor old Bernardo with an eye to settling down to housekeep for Florian, who hated the engagement anyway.’

  Dame Beatrice did not play to this gambit. She appeared to be studying the menu. Neither did she return to the subject during dinner. They retired early and Laura was up at seven on the following morning and out of the hotel by half-past. It was her custom to take an early walk if the countryside seemed to justify this exercise. Upon her return she ran into Binnie, who was taking the air on the tennis courts which fronted her parents’ hotel.

  ‘Oh, hullo,’ said the daughter of the house. ‘Good-morning! Have you been for a walk? If you had let me know, I’d have come with you. I expect you’re ready for breakfast. Dame Beatrice had hers half-an-hour ago, and now she’s writing some letters or something. I’ve had my breakfast, too, but I can come and gossip to you while you have yours, if you like.’

  ‘I never talk at breakfast,’ said Laura, alarmed. ‘That’s why Dame B. and I always breakfast separately.’

  Both these statements were divorced from the
truth, but, to Laura’s relief, they were instrumental in fobbing off Binnie, who looked disappointed, and said moodily,

  ‘Oh, well, if you don’t want me, I’ll go into the office and type out the menu for lunch. You’re staying for lunch, I suppose?’

  Truthfully, (this time), Laura replied that she had not the faintest idea. Thankfully she went in to breakfast, at which, famishingly hungry, she consumed fruit juice, porridge, poached egg on finnan haddie, bacon and fried potatoes, bannocks, butter, Dundee marmalade and three cups of coffee. Greatly restored, she joined Dame Beatrice, whom she discovered in the lounge, and asked when they were proposing to leave.

  ‘Not today, at any rate,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I have sent to Mr Bernardo Rose to join us here. Until I receive a reply from him, I am afraid that we are obliged to stay.’

  ‘Good-o,’ said Laura. ‘I like it here. I do wish we weren’t quite so supersaturated with Binnie, though. She gets on my nerves. All the same, there’s more in the wretched kid than meets the eye. Wish I could stand her, but I can’t.’

  ‘Not only punctuality, but also patience, is the politeness of princes, child.’

  Bernardo arrived three days later, having made the journey (in one hop from his London home, as he expressed it) as soon as he could make arrangements about his work.

  ‘Work?’ said Laura. Binnie, who had openly flouted the young man when he arrived by pointedly handing over the register to the official receptionist, replied:

  ‘Oh, yes, he works for his father, my uncle Sigismund Rose. You met him and Auntie Maarte in Norfolk. They’re diamond merchants, same as Granduncle. That’s why I know Bernardo got my ring on the cheap, and that’s one of the reasons why I threw it back at him. I think people ought to pay for diamonds. Don’t you?’ she added, turning to Dame Beatrice.

  Dame Beatrice replied that she had never looked at the matter in that light, but that she could see there was something in what Binnie said.

  ‘It’s not as though he couldn’t afford it,’ Binnie went on. ‘He’s got plenty of money. Of course, I’d be glad to marry into Granduncle’s fortune. I’m not saying I wouldn’t. And I would like…’ At this point she burst into tears.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Of course you would, and I think it will come about. Mr Bernardo is a reasonable young man.’

  ‘Although whether he’s picked the right girl,’ said Laura, ‘is anybody’s guess, and mine would probably be wrong. I hope so, anyway, for both their sakes.’

  ‘You do not think they would make a happy couple?’ Dame Beatrice enquired.

  ‘I should think he’d murder Binnie long before the first baby came,’ said Laura. Bernardo joined them for cocktails. Binnie chose that evening to act as barmaid.

  ‘One sherry, (dry), one whisky undiluted, one lemon shandy because I never drink wine or spirits, and thank you miss,’ said Bernardo, smiling into the eyes of his erstwhile beloved.

  ‘Oh, Bernie darling!’ wailed Binnie, drooping towards him over the bar counter.

  ‘Now, now, come, come! You can’t do that there here,’ said Bernardo reasonably. ‘People will think I’ve refused to make an honest woman of you, or something.’

  True to form, Binnie turned a hiccupping sob into a sudden giggle and handed him a small tray on which to place the drinks he had ordered. She poured them out, dried her eyes on the cloth which was used to wipe the bar counter and then drew some beer for herself and emptied the rest of the bottle of lemonade into it. She picked up the glass.

  ‘Morgen,’ she said.

  ‘Vanvond,’ contradicted Bernardo. Binnie gave a little shriek.

  ‘Zestien,’ she said. Bernardo looked pained.

  ‘Is that the hour or the room number?’ he enquired. ‘I ask because, as neither of us happens to be surnamed Zestien, (unlike our near relatives), I can only imagine that you mean Sixteen. Or is that, by any chance, your age? You certainly don’t look any more than that. And as for your behaviour…’ He smiled at her again, and took the glass out of her hand.

  ‘Oh, Bernie, is it really all on again?’ asked Binnie. For answer Bernardo felt in a pocket, drew out the engagement ring, took her left hand and slipped the sign and token of his intentions on to the required finger.

  ‘He’s a long time getting those drinks,’ said Laura.

  ‘I do not think it is time wasted, though,’ said Dame Beatrice, who, from her seat in the alcove they had chosen, could see the bar counter, whereas Laura could not. ‘An affecting little scene of reconciliation is taking place. Ah, here comes our cavalier now.’

  ‘With nods and becks and wreathéd smiles, too,’ said Laura, when he came within her orbit, ‘so I feel you must be right.’

  ‘So now?’ said Bernardo, when he had set down the drinks and seated himself. ‘Cheers! And on two counts. More important, the drinks themselves. Less important, (but I shall hope for your felicitations), my engagement appears to be on again. But let’s not worry about that. May I be allowed to know what lies behind your request that I should join you here?’

  ‘Well, you do know,’ replied Laura, grinning. ‘Dame B’s alter alias is The Marriage Mender.’

  ‘It does not fit with the general situation for you and Binnie to be estranged any longer,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘She may need you badly in the foreseeable future. Her brother has disappeared, as, of course, you know.’

  ‘Disappeared? Oh, I wouldn’t let that worry you. I’lorian always was a melodramatic young ass. It’s just a stunt of his to attract attention to himself.’

  ‘Professor Derde van Zestien does not seem to think so. He is sufficiently worried to have asked us to look for him.’

  ‘Uncle Derde’s a spinsterish nit-wit. What does Uncle Sweyn think?’

  ‘He does not seem particularly concerned.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then. Are you going over to Holland, or what?’

  ‘We are going first to talk with Mrs Colwyn-Welch from whose house the disappearance took place. It was from her, of course, that the news came.’

  ‘Well, yes, it would be, and I must admit that it’s not like old Great-aunt Binnen to panic. When did you think of going? Look here, perhaps I can save you a journey. I’ve got to see a man in Amsterdam. I was over there a few days ago, but he wasn’t available, so it’s inevitable I go again soon. I could step up the time and be off the day after tomorrow. What do you think?’

  ‘Very kind and thoughtful of you,’ said Dame Beatrice, in her mellowest tones, ‘but I shall enjoy the trip — that is, if it proves necessary to go to Holland at all.’

  Binnie, having found one of the staff who could look after the bar, came over and joined them. She placed both hands on the table so that the engagement ring could be seen without difficulty.

  ‘Do let me stand the next round,’ she said. “We’ve got two things to celebrate. One is the engagement being on again, and the other is that Dame Beatrice and darling Laura are going to find Florian and make him come home.’

  ‘Why should anyone bother?’ asked Bernardo.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Speculation about a Troglodyte

  ‘Ah, wretched and too solitary he

  Who loves not his own company.’

  Abraham Cowley

  « ^ »

  Why Bernardo’s unselfish desire to save us a journey?’ enquired Laura, that evening. ‘It didn’t strike me as being quite in character. What did you think?’

  ‘That it was an unselfish desire to save us a journey, child.’

  Laura glowered at her employer suspiciously and changed the subject — changed it, at any rate, to some extent.

  ‘How do we go about bearding Mrs Colwyn-Welch?’ she asked.

  ‘Face to face, man to man and with what is called brutal frankness,’ Dame Beatrice replied.

  ‘Not the wisdom of the serpent and the venom (or what have you) of the dove? I loathe that awful cooing noise doves make. It makes me think of Early Victorian wives bleating to their husbands for ano
ther farthing.’

  ‘Farthings are no longer legal currency,’ said Dame Beatrice, as though she was thinking of something else. This was, in fact, the case. ‘I wonder how ill old Mr van Zestien really is?’ she added, indicating in what direction her thoughts were moving.

  ‘Got a touch of the spleen because Florian hopped it out of his house to push over to Holland, I thought we were told,’ said Laura. ‘Isn’t that how it strikes you, then?’

  ‘It may well be the right answer. Wealthy old gentlemen often do expect to rule the lives of those who may benefit by their deaths. However, one never knows, and, that being the case, one wishes to refrain from judging.’

  ‘Tell me what you really think,’ urged Laura. ‘You believe that Florian’s dead, don’t you? And that old van Zestien knows it?’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Dame Beatrice, in mild and faintly astonished tones. ‘Accustomed as I am to your West Scottish acumen, sometimes known as second sight, or, in the vernacular, as having the Gift, the extraordinary conclusion to which you have leapt confounds and amazes me.’

  ‘Ah, I thought I knew,’ said Laura, looking modestly down her nose. ‘You can’t fool poor old Auntie Dog the whole of the time, you know. So we go corpse-hunting, do we?’

  ‘Really!’ said Dame Beatrice, with an eldritch screech of laughter which, together with her royal blue and sulphur costume, almost over-emphasized her resemblance to a macaw. ‘Nothing is further from my thoughts, and, from the zestful tone of your question, nobody would think that the unfortunate young man to whom you refer was an acquaintance of yours!’

  ‘I didn’t take to him,’ said Laura soberly. ‘1 didn’t take to him at all.’

  ‘No, he is — or, as you prefer to put it, was — a less than endearing character. Nevertheless…’ She did not attempt to finish the sentence. There was silence until Laura said:

  ‘Well, be all that as it may, having sorted Binnen, where do we go from there?’

  ‘It all depends upon what she is able to tell us. Then, of course, her daughters may know more than she does.. Again, we have the name of the sculptor from whom the bust was commissioned. He may well have been in Florian’s confidence. A curious kind of sympathy often exists between sitter and artist. Indeed, I think it must be so if the work is to be a success. I use the word sympathy in its widest possible sense. I am prepared to believe that the artist could hate the sitter and still produce a work of genius.’