Читать книгу Death and the Dancing Footman - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 20

‘Hersey. I want to speak to you.’

From inside the voluminous folds of the dress she was hauling over her head Hersey said: ‘Sandra, darling, come in. I’m longing for a gossip with you. Wait a jiffy. Sit down.’ She tugged at the dress and her head, firmly tied up in a strong net, came out at the top. For a moment she stood and stared at her friend. That face, so painfully suggestive of an image in some distorting mirror, was the colour of parchment. The lips held their enforced travesty of a smile, but they trembled and the large eyes were blurred by tears.

‘Sandra, my dear, what is it?’ cried Hersey.

‘I can’t stay here. I want you to help me. I’ve got to get away from this house.’

‘Sandra! But why?’ Hersey knelt by Mrs Compline. ‘You’re not thinking of the gossip about Nick and The Pirate? blast her eyes.’

‘What gossip? I don’t know what you mean? What about Nicholas?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing. Tell me what’s happened.’ Hersey took Mrs Compline’s hands between her own, and, feeling them writhe together in her grasp, was visited by an idea that the distress which Mrs Compline’s face was incapable of expressing had flowed into these struggling hands. ‘What’s happened?’ Hersey repeated.

‘Hersey, that man, Jonathan’s new friend. I can’t meet him again.’

‘Aubrey Mandrake?’

‘No, no. The other.’

‘Dr Hart?’

‘I can’t meet him.’

‘But why?’

‘Don’t look at me. I know it’s foolish of me, Hersey, but I can’t tell you if you look at me. Please go on dressing and let me tell you.’

Hersey returned to the dressing-table, and presently Mrs Compline began to speak. The thin, exhausted voice, now well controlled, lent no colour to the story of despoiled beauty. It trailed dispassionately through her husband’s infidelities, her own despair, her journey to Vienna, and her return. And Hersey, while she listened, absently made up her own face, took off her net, and arranged her hair. When it was over she turned towards Mrs Compline, but came no nearer to her.

‘But can you be sure?’ she said.

‘It was his voice. When I heard of him first, practising in Great Chipping, I wondered. I said so to Deacon, my maid. She was with me that time in Vienna.’

‘It was over twenty years ago, Sandra. And his name –’

‘He must have changed it when he became naturalized.’

‘Does he look at all as he did then?’

‘No. He has changed very much.’

‘Then –’

‘I am not positive, but I am almost positive. I can’t face it, Hersey, can I?’

‘I think you can,’ said Hersey, ‘and I think you will.’