Читать книгу Scales of Justice - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 18

Lady Lacklander consulted the diamond-encrusted watch which was pinned to her tremendous bosom and discovered that it was now seven o’clock. She had been painting for half an hour and an all-too-familiar phenomenon had emerged from her efforts.

‘It’s a curious thing,’ she meditated, ‘that a woman of my character and determination should produce such a puny affair. However, it’s got me in better trim for Maurice Cartarette and that’s a damn’ good thing. An hour to go if he’s punctual and he’s sure to be that.’

She tilted her sketch and ran a faint green wash over the foreground. When it was partly dry she rose from her stool, tramped some distance away to the crest of a hillock, seated herself on her shooting-stick and contemplated her work through a lorgnette tricked out with diamonds. The shooting-stick sank beneath her in the soft meadowland so that the disc which was designed to check its descent was itself imbedded to the depth of several inches. When Lady Lacklander returned to her easel she merely abandoned her shooting-stick which remained in a vertical position and from a distance looked a little like a giant fungoid growth. Sticking up above intervening hillocks and rushes it was observed over the top of his glasses by the long-sighted Mr Phinn when, accompanied by Thomasina Twitchett, he came nearer to Bottom Bridge. Keeping on the right bank, he began to cast his fly in a somewhat mannered but adroit fashion over the waters most often frequented by the Old ’Un. Lady Lacklander, whose ears were as sharp as his, heard the whirr of his reel and, remaining invisible, was perfectly able to deduce the identity and movements of the angler. At the same time, far above them on Watt’s Hill, Colonel Cartarette, finding nobody but seven cats at home at Jacob’s Cottage, walked round the house and looking down into the little valley, at once spotted both Lady Lacklander and Mr Phinn, like figures in Nurse Kettle’s imaginary map, the one squatting on her camp stool, the other in slow motion near Bottom Bridge.

‘I’ve time to speak to him before I see her,’ thought the Colonel. ‘But I’ll leave it here in case we don’t meet.’ He posted his long envelope in Mr Phinn’s front door and then greatly troubled in spirit he made for the River Path and went down into the valley, the old spaniel, Skip, walking at his heels.

Nurse Kettle, looking through the drawing-room window at Uplands, caught sight of the Colonel before he disappeared beyond Commander Syce’s spinney. She administered a final tattoo with the edges of her muscular hands on Commander Syce’s lumbar muscles, and said: ‘There goes the Colonel for the evening rise. You wouldn’t have stood that amount of punishment two days ago, would you?’

‘No,’ a submerged voice said, ‘I suppose not.’

‘Well! So that’s all I get for my trouble.’

‘No, no! Look here, look here!’ he gabbled, twisting his head in an attempt to see her. ‘Good heavens! What are you saying?’

‘All right. I know. I was only pulling your leg. There!’ she said. ‘That’s all for today and I fancy it won’t be long now before I wash my hands of you altogether.’

‘Of course I can’t expect to impose on your kindness any longer.’

Nurse Kettle was clearing up. She appeared not to hear this remark and presently bustled away to wash her hands. When she returned Syce was sitting on the edge of his improvised bed. He wore slacks, a shirt, a scarf and a dressing-gown.

‘Jolly D.,’ said Nurse Kettle. ‘Done it all yourself.’

‘I hope you will give me the pleasure of joining me for a drink before you go.’

‘On duty?’

‘Isn’t it off duty, now?’

‘Well,’ said Nurse Kettle, ‘I’ll have a drink with you but I hope it won’t mean that when I’ve gone on me way rejoicing you’re going to have half a dozen more with yourself.’

Commander Syce turned red and muttered something about a fellah having nothing better to do.

‘Get along,’ said Nurse Kettle, ‘find something better. The idea!’

They had their drinks, looking at each other with an air of comradeship. Commander Syce, using a walking-stick and holding himself at an unusual angle, got out an album of photographs taken when he was on the active list in the navy. Nurse Kettle adored photographs and was genuinely interested in a long sequence of naval vessels, odd groups of officers and views of seaports. Presently she turned a page and discovered quite a dashing watercolour of a corvette and then an illustrated menu with lively little caricatures in the margin. These she greatly admired and observing a terrified and defiant expression on the face of her host, ejaculated: ‘You never did these yourself! You did! Well, aren’t you the clever one!’

Without answering he produced a small portfolio which he silently thrust at her. It contained many more sketches. Although Nurse Kettle knew nothing about pictures, she did, she maintained, know what she liked. And she liked these very much indeed. They were direct statements of facts and she awarded them direct statements of approval and was about to shut the portfolio when a sketch that had faced the wrong way round caught her attention. She turned it over. It was of a woman lying on a chaise-longue smoking a cigarette in a jade holder. A bougainvillaea flowered in the background.

‘Why,’ Nurse Kettle ejaculated. ‘Why, that’s Mrs Cartarette!’

If Syce had made some kind of movement to snatch the sketch from her he checked himself before it was completed. He said very rapidly: ‘Party. Met her Far East. Shore leave. Forgotten all about it.’

‘That would be before they were married, wouldn’t it?’ Nurse Kettle remarked with perfect simplicity. She shut the portfolio, said: ‘You know, I believe you could make my picture-map of Swevenings.’ And told him of her great desire for one. When she got up and collected her belongings he, too, rose, but with an ejaculation of distress.

‘I see I haven’t made a job of you yet,’ she remarked. ‘Same time tomorrow suit you?’

‘Admirably,’ he said. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ He gave her one of his rare painful smiles and watched her as she walked down the path towards his spinney. It was now a quarter to nine.