Читать книгу Death and the Dancing Footman - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 14

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 to 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 window.

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 serio-comic 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 discussed 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 quarter 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’s 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.

‘– a long time,’ Jonathan was saying, ‘since I treated myself to one of my own parties, and I don’t mind confessing that I look forward enormously to this one.’

Miss Wynne joined the group round the fire and William followed her.

‘Is this the party?’ she asked, ‘or are we only the beginning?’

‘The most important beginning, Miss Chloris, without which the end would be nothing.’

‘Who else have you got, Jonathan?’ asked Nicholas, with his eyes still on Miss Wynne.

‘Well, now, I don’t know that I shall tell you, Nick. Or shall I? It’s always rather fun, don’t you think,’ Jonathan said, turning his glance towards Mrs Compline, ‘to let people meet without giving them any preconceived ideas about each other? However, you know one of my guests so well that it doesn’t matter if I anticipate her arrival. Hersey Amblington.’

‘Old Hersey’s coming, is she,’ said Nicholas, and he looked a little disconcerted.

‘Don’t be too ruthless with your adjectives, Nick,’ said Jonathan mildly. ‘Hersey is ten years my junior.’

‘You’re ageless, Jonathan.’

‘Charming of you, but I’m afraid people only begin to compliment one on one’s youth when it is gone. But Hersey, to me, really does seem scarcely any older than she was in the days when I danced with her. She still dances, I believe.’

‘It will be nice to see Hersey,’ said Mrs Compline.

‘I don’t think I know a Hersey, do I?’ This was the first time Chloris had spoken directly to Mrs Compline. She was answered by Nicholas.

‘She’s a flame of Jonathan’s,’ Nicholas said. ‘Lady Hersey Amblington.’

‘She’s my third cousin,’ said Jonathan sedately. ‘We are all rather attached to her.’

‘Oh,’ said Nicholas, always to Chloris. ‘She’s a divine creature. I adore her.’

Chloris began to talk to William.

Mandrake thought that if anybody tried to bury any hatchets in the Compline armoury it would not be William. He decided that William was neither as vague nor as amiable as he seemed. Conversation went along briskly under Jonathan’s leadership, with Mandrake himself as an able second, but it had a sort of substratum that was faintly antagonistic. When inevitably, it turned to the war, William, with deceptive simplicity, related a story about an incident on patrol when a private soldier uttered some comic blasphemy on the subject of cushy jobs on the home front. Mrs Compline immediately told Jonathan how few hours sleep Nicholas managed to get, and how hard he was worked. Nicholas himself spoke of pulling strings in order to get a transfer to active service. He had, he said, seen an important personage. ‘Unfortunately, though, I struck a bad moment. The gentleman was very liverish. I understand,’ said Nicholas, with one of his bright stares at Chloris, ‘that he has been crossed in love.’

‘No reason, surely,’ said Chloris, ‘why he shouldn’t behave himself with comparative strangers.’

Nicholas gave her the shadow of an ironical bow.

Jonathan began an account of his own activities as chairman of the local evacuation committee, and made such a droll affair of it that with every phrase his listeners’ guardedness seemed to relax. Mandrake, who had a certain astringent humour of his own, followed with a description of a member of the chorus who found himself in an ultra-modern play. Tea was announced and was carried through on the same cheerful note of comedy. ‘Good Lord,’ Mandrake thought, ‘if he should bring it off after all!’ He caught Jonathan’s eye and detected a glint of triumph.

After tea Jonathan proposed a brisk walk, and Mandrake, knowing his host shared his own loathing for this sort of exercise, grinned to himself. Jonathan was not going to risk another session in the drawing room. With any luck there would be more arrivals while they were out, and the new set of encounters would take place in the propitious atmosphere of sherry and cocktails. When they assembled in the hall Jonathan appeared in a sage-green Tyrolese cape. He looked a quaint enough figure, but Chloris Wynne, who had evidently decided to like her host, cried out in admiration, and Mandrake, who had decided to like Chloris Wynne, echoed her. At the last moment Jonathan remembered an important telephone message, and asked Mandrake to see the walking-party off. He flung his cape over Nicholas’s shoulder. It hung from his shoulder-straps in heavy folds, and turned him into a Ruritanian figure.

‘Magnificent, Nick,’ said Jonathan, and Mandrake saw that Mrs Compline and Chloris agreed with him. The cloak neatly emphasized the touch of bravura that seemed an essential ingredient of Nicholas’s character. They went out of doors into the cold twilight of late afternoon.