Death and the Dancing Footman. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ course,’ Miss Wynne continued, ‘I don’t know if you were thinking when you wrote it, what I was thinking when I saw it, but if you were, I’m surprised you got past the Lord Chamberlain.’

      ‘The Lord Chamberlain,’ said Mandrake, ‘is afraid of me, and for a similar reason. He doesn’t know whether it’s my dirty mind or his, so he says nothing.’

      ‘Ah,’ cried Jonathan, ‘is Miss Wynne a devotee, Aubrey?’

      ‘A devotee of what? asked Mrs Compline in her exhausted voice.

      ‘Of Aubrey’s plays. The Unicorn is to reopen with Aubrey’s new play in March, Sandra, if all goes well. You must come to the first night. It’s called “Bad Blackout” and is enormously exciting.’

      ‘A war play?’ asked Mrs Compline. It was a question that for some reason infuriated Mandrake, but he answered with alarming politeness that it was not a war play but an experiment in two-dimensional formulism. Mrs Compline looked at him blankly and turned to Jonathan.

      ‘What does that mean?’ asked William. He stared at Mandrake with an expression of offended incredulity. ‘Two-dimensional? That means flat, doesn’t it?’

      Mandrake heard Miss Wynne give an impatient sigh, and guessed at a certain persistency in William.

      ‘Does it mean that the characters will be sort of unphotographic?’ she asked.

      ‘Exactly.’

      ‘Yes,’ said William heavily, ‘but two-dimensional. I don’t quite see –’

      Mandrake felt a terrible apprehension of boredom, but Jonathan cut in neatly with an amusing account of his own apprenticeship as an audience to modern drama, and William listened with his mouth not quite closed and an anxious expression in his eyes. When the others laughed at Jonathan’s facetiæ, William looked baffled. Mandrake could see him forming with his lips the offending syllables ‘two-dimensional.’

      ‘I suppose,’ he said suddenly, ‘it’s not what you say but the way you say it that you think matters. Do your plays have plots?’

      ‘They have themes.’

      ‘What’s the difference?’

      ‘My darling old Bill,’ said Miss Wynne, ‘you mustn’t browbeat famous authors.’

      William turned to her and his smile made him almost handsome. ‘Mustn’t you?’ he said. ‘But if you do a thing, you like talking about it. I like talking about the things I do. I mean the things I did before there was a war.’

      It suddenly occurred to Mandrake that he did not know what William’s occupation was. ‘What do you do?’ he asked.

      ‘Well,’ said William, astonishingly, ‘I paint pictures.’

      Mrs Compline marched firmly into the conversation. ‘William,’ she said, ‘has Penfelton to look after in peace time. At present, of course, we have our old bailiff, who manages very well. My younger son, Nicholas, is a soldier. Have you heard, Jonathan, that he did not pass his medical for active service? It was a very bitter blow to him. At the moment he is stationed at Great Chipping, but he longs so much to be with his regiment in France. Of course,’ she added. And Mandrake saw her glance at the built-up shoe on his club foot.

      ‘But you’re on leave from the front, aren’t you?’ he asked William.

      ‘Oh, yes,’ said William.

      ‘My son Nicholas …’ Mrs Compline became quite animated as she spoke of Nicholas. She talked about him at great length, and Mandrake wondered if he only imagined there was a sort of defiance in her insistence on this awkward theme. He saw that Miss Wynne had turned pink and William crimson. Jonathan drew the spate of maternal eulogy upon himself. Mandrake asked Miss Wynne and William if they thought it was going to snow again, and all three walked over to the long windows to look at darkening hills and vale. Naked trees half-lost their form in that fading light and rose from the earth as if they were its breath, already frozen.

      ‘Rather menacing,’ said Mandrake, ‘isn’t it?’

      ‘Menacing?’ William repeated. ‘It’s very beautiful. All black and white and grey. I don’t believe in seeing colour into things. One should paint them the first colour they seem when one looks at them. Yes, I suppose it is what you’d call menacing. Black and grey and white.’

      ‘What is your medium?’ Mandrake asked, and wondered why everybody looked uncomfortable when William spoke of his painting.

      ‘Very thick oil paint,’ said William gravely.

      ‘Do you know Agatha Troy?’

      ‘I know her pictures, of course.’

      ‘She and her husband are staying with the Copelands at Winton St Giles, near Little Chipping. I came on from there. She’s painting the rector.’

      ‘Do you mean Roderick Alleyn?’ asked Miss Wynne. ‘Isn’t he her husband? How exciting to be in a house-party with the handsome Inspector. What’s he like?’

      ‘Oh,’ said Mandrake, ‘quite agreeable.’

      They had turned away from the windows, but a sound from outside drew them back again. Only the last turn of the drive as it came out of the Highfold woods could be seen from the drawing room windows.

      ‘That’s a car,’ said William. ‘It sounds like –’ he stopped short.

      ‘Is any one else coming?’ asked Miss Wynne sharply, and caught her breath.

      She and William stared through the windows. A long and powerful-looking open car, painted white, was streaking up the last rise in the drive.

      ‘But,’ stammered William, very red in the face, ‘that’s – that’s –’

      ‘Ah!’ said Jonathan from behind them. ‘Didn’t you know? A pleasant surprise for you. Nicholas is to be one of our party.’

      III

      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. СКАЧАТЬ