Читать книгу Death and the Dancing Footman - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 11

‘It seems to me,’ said Mandrake, ‘that you have invited stark murder to your house. Frankly, I can imagine nothing more terrifying than the prospect of this weekend. What do you propose to do with them?’

‘Let them enact their drama.’

‘It will more probably resemble some disastrous vaudeville show.’

‘With myself as compère. Quite possibly.’

‘My dear Jonathan, you will have no performance. The actors will either sulk in their dressing-rooms or leave the theatre.’

‘That is where we come in.’

‘We! I assure you –’

‘It is where I come in, then. May I, without exhibiting too much complacency, claim that if I have a talent it lies in the direction of hospitality?’

‘Certainly. You are a wonderful host.’

‘Thank you,’ said Jonathan, beaming at his guest. ‘It delights me to hear you say so. Now, in this party I have set myself, I freely admit, a stiff task.’

‘I’m glad you realize it,’ said Mandrake. ‘The list of opponents is positively ghastly. I don’t know if I have altogether followed you, but it appears that you hope to reconcile a rejected lover both to his successor and to his late love, a business woman to her detested rival, a ruined beauty to an exponent of the profession that made an effigy of her face, and a mother to a prospective daughter-in-law who has rejected her favourite son for his brother.’

‘There is another permutation that you have not yet heard. Local gossip rings with rumours of some secret understanding between Dr Hart and Madame Lisse. It appears that Madame recommends Dr Hart’s surgery to those of her clients who have passed the stage when Lisse creams and all the rest of it can improve their ageing faces.’

‘A business arrangement?’

‘Something more than that if Hersey, a prejudiced witness, certainly, is to be believed. Hersey’s spies tell her that Dr Hart has been observed leaving Madame Lisse’s flat at a most compromising hour; that he presented to an exciting degree the mien of a clandestine lover, his hat drawn over his brows, his cloak (he wears a cloak) pulled about his face. They say that he has been observed to scowl most formidably at the mention of Nicholas Compline.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Mandrake, ‘it’s really a little too much. I boggle at the cloak.’

‘It’s a Tyrolean cloak with a hood, a most useful garment. Rainproof. He has presented me with one. I wear it frequently. You shall see it tomorrow.’

‘What’s he like, this face-lifter?’

‘A smoothish fellow. I find him amusing. He plays very good bridge.’

‘We are not going to play bridge?’

‘No. No, that, I feel, would be asking for trouble. We are going to play a round game, however.’

‘O God!’

‘You will enjoy it. A stimulating game. I hope that it will go far towards burying our little armoury of hatchets. Imagine what fun, Aubrey, if on Monday morning they all go gaily away, full of the milk of human kindness.’

‘You’re seeing yourself in the detestable rôle of uplifter. I’ve got it! This is not Pirandello, nor is it vaudeville. Far from it. But it is,’ cried Mandrake with an air of intense disgust, ‘it is “The Passing of the Third Floor Back.”’

Jonathan rose and stood warming his hands at the fire. He was a small man, very upright, with a long trunk and short legs. Mandrake, staring at him, wondered if it was some trick of firelight that lent a faintly malicious tinge to Jonathan’s smile; it was merely his thick-lensed glasses that gave him that air of uncanny blankness.

‘Ah, well,’ said Jonathan, ‘A peacemaker. Why not? You would like to see your room, Aubrey. The blue room, as usual, of course. It is no longer raining. I propose to take a look at the night before going up to change. Will you accompany me?’

‘Very well.’

They went out, crossing a wide hall, to the entrance. The wind had fallen, and as Jonathan opened his great outer doors the quiet of an upland county at dusk entered the house, and the smell of earth still only lightly covered with snow. They walked out on the wide platform in front of Highfold. Far beneath them, Cloudyfold village showed dimly through treetops, and beyond it the few scattered houses down in the Vale, four miles away. In the southern skies the stars were out, but northward above Cloudyfold Top there was a well of blackness. And as Jonathan and his guest turned towards the north they received the sensation of an icy hand laid on their faces.

‘That’s a deathly cold, sir,’ said Mandrake.

‘It’s from the north,’ said Jonathan, ‘and still smells of snow. Splendid! Let’s go in.’