Читать книгу Scales of Justice - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 10

The second Mrs Cartarette did not match her Edwardian name. She did not look like a Kitty. She was so fair that without her make-up she would have seemed bleached. Her figure was well-disciplined and her face had been skilfully drawn up into a beautifully cared-for mask. Her greatest asset was her acquired inscrutability. This, of itself, made a femme fatale of Kitty Cartarette. She had, as it were, been manipulated into a menace. She was dressed with some elaboration and, presumably because she was in the garden, she wore gloves.

‘How nice to see you, Mark,’ she said. ‘I thought I heard your voices. Is this a professional call?’

Mark said: ‘Partly so at least. I ran down with a message for Colonel Cartarette, and I had a look at your gardener’s small girl.’

‘How too kind,’ she said, glancing from Mark to her stepdaughter. She moved up to him and with her gloved hand took a dark rose from the basket and held it against her mouth.

‘What a smell!’ she said. ‘Almost improper, it’s so strong. Maurice is not in, but he won’t be long. Shall we go up?’

She led the way to the house. Exotic wafts of something that was not roses drifted in her wake. She kept her torso rigid as she walked and slightly swayed her hips. ‘Very expensive,’ Mark Lacklander thought; ‘but not entirely exclusive. Why on earth did he marry her?’

Mrs Cartarette’s pin heels tapped along the flagstone path to a group of garden furniture heaped with cushions. A tray with a decanter and brandy glasses was set out on a white iron table. She let herself down on a swinging seat, put up her feet, and arranged herself for Mark to look at.

‘Poorest Rose,’ she said, glancing at her stepdaughter, ‘you’re wearing such suitable gloves. Do cope with your scratchy namesakes for Mark. A box perhaps.’

‘Please don’t bother,’ Mark said. ‘I’ll take them as they are.’

‘We can’t allow that,’ Mrs Cartarette murmured. ‘You doctors mustn’t scratch your lovely hands, you know.’

Rose took the basket from him. He watched her go into the house and turned abruptly at the sound of Mrs Cartarette’s voice.

‘Let’s have a little drink, shall we?’ she said. ‘That’s Maurice’s pet brandy and meant to be too wonderful. Give me an infinitesimal drop and yourself a nice big one. I really prefer crème de menthe, but Maurice and Rose think it a common taste so I have to restrain my carnal appetite.’

Mark gave her the brandy. ‘I won’t, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I’m by way of being on duty.’

‘Really? Who are you going to hover over, apart from the gardener’s child?’

‘My grandfather,’ Mark said.

‘How awful of me not to realize,’ she rejoined with the utmost composure. ‘How is Sir Harold?’

‘Not so well this evening, I’m afraid. In fact, I must get back. If I go by the river path perhaps I’ll meet the Colonel.’

‘Almost sure to, I should think,’ she agreed indifferently, ‘unless he’s poaching for that fabled fish on Mr Phinn’s preserves which, of course, he’s much too county to think of doing, whatever the old boy may say to the contrary.’

Mark said formally: ‘I’ll go that way, then, and hope to see him.’

She waved her rose at him in dismissal and held out her left hand in a gesture that he found distressingly second rate. He took it with his own left and shook it crisply.

‘Will you give your father a message from me?’ she said. ‘I know how worried he must be about your grandfather. Do tell him I wish so much one could help.’

The hand inside the glove gave his a sharp little squeeze and was withdrawn. ‘Don’t forget,’ she said.

Rose came back with the flowers in a box. Mark thought: ‘I can’t leave her like this, half-way through a proposal, damn it.’ He said coolly: ‘Come and meet your father. You don’t take enough exercise.’

‘I live in a state of almost perpetual motion,’ she rejoined, ‘and I’m not suitably shod or dressed for the river path.’

Mrs Cartarette gave a little laugh. ‘Poor Mark!’ she murmured. ‘But in any case, Rose, here comes your father.’

Colonel Cartarette had emerged from a spinney halfway down the hill and was climbing up through the rough grass below the lawn. He was followed by his spaniel, Skip, an old, obedient dog. The evening light had faded to a bleached greyness. Silvered grass, trees, lawns, flowers and the mildly curving thread of the shadowed trout stream joined in an announcement of oncoming night. Through this setting Colonel Cartarette moved as if he were an expression both of its substance and its spirit. It was as if from the remote past, through a quiet progression of dusks, his figure had come up from the valley of the Chyne.

When he saw the group by the lawn he lifted his hand in greeting. Mark went down to meet him. Rose, aware of her stepmother’s heightened curiosity, watched him with profound misgiving.

Colonel Cartarette was a native of Swevenings. His instincts were those of a countryman and he had never quite lost his air of belonging to the soil. His tastes, however, were for the arts and his talents for the conduct of government services in foreign places. This odd assortment of elements had set no particular mark upon their host. It was not until he spoke that something of his personality appeared.

‘Good evening, Mark,’ he called as soon as they were within comfortable earshot of each other. ‘My dear chap, what do you think? I’ve damned near bagged the Old ’Un.’

‘No!’ Mark shouted with appropriate enthusiasm.

‘I assure you! The Old ’Un! Below the bridge in his usual lurk, you know. I could see him …’

And as he panted up the hill the Colonel completed his classic tale of a magnificent strike, a homeric struggle and a broken cast. Mark, in spite of his own preoccupations, listened with interest. The Old ’Un was famous in Swevenings: a trout of magnitude and cunning, the despair and desire of every rod in the district.

‘… so I lost him,’ the Colonel ended, opening his eyes very wide and at the same time grinning for sympathy at Mark. ‘What a thing! By jove, if I’d got him I really believe old Phinn would have murdered me.’

‘Are you still at war, sir?’

‘Afraid so. The chap’s impossible, you know Good God, he’s accused me in so many words of poaching. Mad! How’s your grandfather?’

Mark said: ‘He’s failing pretty rapidly, I’m afraid. There’s nothing we can do. It’s on his account I’m here, sir.’ And he delivered his message.

‘I’ll come at once,’ the Colonel said. ‘Better drive round. Just give me a minute or two to clean up. Come with me, won’t you?’

But Mark felt suddenly that he could not face another encounter with Rose and said he would go home at once by the river path and would prepare his grandfather for the Colonel’s arrival.

He stood for a moment looking back through the dusk towards the house. He saw Rose gather up the full skirt of her housecoat and run across the lawn, and he saw her father set down his creel and rod, take off his hat and wait for her, his bald head gleaming. She joined her hands behind his neck and kissed him. They went on towards the house arm-in-arm. Mrs Cartarette’s hammock had begun to swing to and fro.

Mark turned away and walked quickly down into the valley and across Bottom Bridge.

The Old ’Un, with Colonel Cartarette’s cast in his jaw, lurked tranquilly under the bridge.