Читать книгу Grave Mistake - Ngaio Marsh - Страница 10

Twenty-five years to be exact, Verity thought. It was ludicrous – grotesque almost – after twenty-five years, to be put out by his reappearance.

‘Somebody should say “What a small world”,’ said Dr Schramm.

He had always made remarks like that. And laughed like that and touched his moustache.

He didn’t know me at first, she thought. That’ll learn me.

He had moved on towards the fire with Mr Markos and been given, in quick succession, two cocktails. Verity heard him explain how he’d missed the turn-off to Upper Quintern.

But why ‘Schramm’? she wondered. He could have hyphenated himself if ‘Smythe’ wasn’t good enough. And ‘Doctor’? So he qualified after all.

‘Very difficult country,’ Mrs Field-Innis said. She had been speaking for some time.

‘Very,’ Verity agreed fervently and was stared at.

Dinner was announced.

She was afraid they might find themselves together at the table but after, or so she fancied, a moment’s hesitation, Mr Markos put Schramm between Sybil and Dr Field-Innis who was on Verity’s right, with the vicar on her left. Mr Markos himself was on Sybil’s right. It was a round table.

She managed quite well at dinner. The vicar was at all times prolific in discourse and, being of necessity as well as by choice, of an abstemious habit, he was a little flown with unaccustomed wine. Dr Field-Innis was also in talkative form. He coruscated with anecdotes concerning high jinks in his student days.

On his far side, Dr Schramm, whose glass had been twice replenished, was much engaged with Sybil Foster, which meant that he was turned away from Dr Field-Innis and Verity. He bent towards Sybil, laughed a great deal at everything she said and established an atmosphere of flirtatious understanding. This stabbed Verity with the remembrance of long-healed injuries. It had been his technique when he wished to show her how much another woman pleased him. He had used it at the theatre in the second row of the stalls, prolonging his laughter beyond the rest of the audience so that she, as well as the actress concerned, might become aware of him. She realized that even now, idiotically after twenty-five years, he aimed his performance at her.

Sybil, she knew, although she had not looked at them, was bringing out her armoury of delighted giggles and upward glances.

‘And then,’ said the vicar, who had returned to Rome, ‘there was the Villa Giulia. I can’t describe to you –’

In turning to him, Verity found herself under observation from her host. Perhaps because the vicar had now arrived at the Etruscans, it occurred to Verity that there was something knowing about Mr Markos’s smile. You wouldn’t diddle that one in a hurry, she thought.

Evidently he had asked Mrs Field-Innis to act as hostess.

When the port had gone round once she surveyed the ladies and barked out orders to retire.

Back in the drawing-room it became evident that Dr Schramm had made an impression. Sybil lost no time in tackling Verity. Why, she asked, had she never been told about him? Had Verity known him well? Was he married?

‘I’ve no idea. It was a thousand years ago,’ Verity said. ‘He was one of my father’s students, I think. I ran up against him at some training-hospital party as far as I can remember.’

Remember? He had watched her for half the evening and then, when an ‘Excuse me’ dance came along, had relieved her of an unwieldy first-year student and monopolized her for the rest of the evening.

She turned to the young Prunella, whose godmother she was, and asked what she was up to these days, and made what she could of a reply that for all she heard of it might have been in mime.

‘Did you catch any of that?’ asked Prunella’s mother wearily.

Prunella giggled.

‘I think I may be getting deaf,’ Verity said.

Prunella shook her head vigorously and became audible. ‘Not you, Godmama V,’ she said. ‘Tell us about your super friend. What a dish!’

‘Prue,’ expostulated Sybil, punctual as clockwork.

‘Well, Mum, he is,’ said her daughter, relapsing into her whisper. ‘And you can’t talk, darling,’ she added. ‘You gobbled him up like a turkey.’

Mrs Field-Innis said, ‘Really!’ and spoilt the effect by bursting into a gruff laugh.

To Verity’s relief this passage had the effect of putting a stop to further enquiries about Dr Schramm. The ladies discussed local topics until they were joined by the gentlemen.

Verity had wondered whether anybody – their host or the vicar or Dr Field-Innis – had questioned Schramm as she had been questioned about their former acquaintanceship, and if so, how he had answered and whether he would think it advisable to come and speak to her. After all, it would look strange if he did not.

He did come. Nikolas Markos, keeping up the deployment of his guests, so arranged it. Schramm sat beside her and the first thought that crossed her mind was that there was something unbecoming about not seeming, at first glance, to have grown old. If he had appeared to her, as she undoubtedly did to him, as a greatly changed person, she would have been able to get their confrontation into perspective. As it was he sat there like a hangover. His face at first glance was scarcely changed, although when he turned it into a stronger light, a system of lines seemed to flicker under the skin. His eyes were more protuberant, now, and slightly bloodshot. A man, she thought, of whom people would say he could hold his liquor. He used the stuff she remembered, on hair that was only vestigially thinner at the temples.

As always he was, as people used to say twenty-five years ago, extremely well turned out. He carried himself like a soldier.

‘How are you, Verity?’ he said. ‘You look blooming.’

‘I’m very well, thank you.’

‘Writing plays, I hear.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Absolutely splendid. I must go and see one. There is one, isn’t there? In London?’

‘At the Dolphin.’

‘Good houses?’

‘Full,’ said Verity.

‘Really! So they wouldn’t let me in. Unless you told them to. Would you tell them to? Please?’

He bent his head towards her in the old way. Why on earth, she thought, does he bother?

‘I’m afraid they wouldn’t pay much attention,’ she said.

‘Were you surprised to see me?’

‘I was, rather.’

‘Why?’

‘Well –’

‘Well?’

‘The name for one thing.’

‘Oh, that!’ he said, waving his hand. ‘That’s an old story. It’s my mother’s maiden name. Swiss. She always wanted me to use it. Put it in her Will, if you’ll believe it. She suggested that I made myself “Smythe-Schramm” but that turned out to be such a wet mouthful I decided to get rid of Smythe.’

‘I see.’

‘So I qualified after all, Verity.’

‘Yes.’

‘From Lausanne, actually. My mother had settled there and I joined her. I got quite involved with that side of the family and decided to finish my course in Switzerland.’

‘I see.’

‘I practised there for some time – until she died to be exact. Since then I’ve wandered about the world. One can always find something to do as a medico.’ He talked away, fluently. It seemed to Verity that he spoke in phrases that followed each other with the ease of frequent usage. He went on for some time, making, she thought, little sorties against her self-possession. She was surprised to find how ineffectual they proved to be. Come, she thought, I’m over the initial hurdle at least, and began to wonder what all the fuss was about.

‘And now you’re settling in Kent,’ she said politely.

‘Looks like it. A sort of hotel-cum-convalescent home. I’ve made rather a thing of dietetics – specialized actually – and this place offers the right sort of scene. Greengages, it’s called. Do you know it at all?’

‘Sybil – Mrs Foster – goes there quite often.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So she tells me.’

He looked at Sybil who sat, discontentedly, beside the vicar. Verity had realized that Sybil was observant of them. She now flashed a meaning smile at Schramm as if she and he shared some exquisite joke.

Gideon Markos said, ‘Pop, may I show Prue your latest extravagance?’

‘Do,’ said his father. ‘By all means.’

When they had gone he said, ‘Schramm, I can’t have you monopolizing Miss Preston like this. You’ve had a lovely session and must restrain your remembrance of things past. I’m going to move you on.’

He moved him on to Mrs Field-Innis and took his place by Verity.

‘Gideon tells me,’ he said, ‘that when I have company to dine I’m bossy, old hat and a stuffed shirt or whatever the “in” phrase is. But what should I do? Invite my guests to wriggle and jerk to one of his deafening records?’

‘It might be fun to see the vicar and Florence Field-Innis having a go.’

‘Yes,’ he said, with a sidelong glance at her, ‘it might indeed. Would you like to hear about my “latest extravagance”? You would? It’s a picture. A Troy.’

‘From her show at the Arlington?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How lovely for you. Which one? Not by any chance “Several Pleasures”?’

‘But you’re brilliant!’

‘It is?’

‘Come and look.’

He took her into the library where there was no sign of the young people: a large library it was, and still under renovation. Open cases of books stood about the floors. The walls, including the backs of shelves, had been redone in a lacquer-red Chinese paper. The Troy painting stood on the chimney-piece – a glowing flourish of exuberance, all swings and roundabouts.

‘You do collect lovely pictures,’ she said.

‘Oh, I’m a dedicated magpie. I even collect stamps.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Passionately,’ he said. He half-closed his eyes and contemplated his picture.

Verity said, ‘You’re going to hang it where it is, are you?’

‘I think so. But whatever I do with it in this silly house is bound to be a compromise,’ he said.

‘Does that matter very much?’

‘Yes, it does. I lust,’ said Mr Markos, ‘after Quintern Place.’

He said this with such passion that Verity stared at him.

‘Do you?’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely house, of course. But just seeing it from the outside –’

‘Ah, but I’ve seen it from inside too.’

Verity thought what a slyboots old Syb was not to have divulged this visit but he went on to say that on a househunting drive through Kent he saw Quintern Place from afar and had been so struck that he had himself driven up to it there and then.

‘Mrs Foster,’ he said, ‘was away but a domestic was persuaded to let me catch a glimpse of the ground floor. It was enough. I visited the nearest land agency only to be told that Quintern was not on their or anybody else’s books and that former enquiries had led to the flattest of refusals. Mine suffered a like fate; there was no intention to sell. So, you may say that in a fit of pique, I bought this monster where I can sit down before my citadel in a state of fruitless siege.’

‘Does Sybil know about all this?’

‘Not she. The approach has been discreet. Be a dear,’ said Mr Markos, ‘and don’t tell her.’

‘All right.’

‘How nice you are.’

‘But I’m afraid you haven’t a hope.’

‘One can but try,’ he said and Verity thought if ever she saw fixity of purpose in a human face, she saw it now, in Mr Markos’s.