Grave Mistake. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ that?’ asked Prunella’s mother wearily.

      Prunella giggled.

      ‘I think I may be getting deaf,’ Verity said.

      Prunella shook her head vigorously and became audible. ‘Not you, Godmama V,’ she said. ‘Tell us about your super friend. What a dish!’

      ‘Prue,’ expostulated Sybil, punctual as clockwork.

      ‘Well, Mum, he is,’ said her daughter, relapsing into her whisper. ‘And you can’t talk, darling,’ she added. ‘You gobbled him up like a turkey.’

      Mrs Field-Innis said, ‘Really!’ and spoilt the effect by bursting into a gruff laugh.

      To Verity’s relief this passage had the effect of putting a stop to further enquiries about Dr Schramm. The ladies discussed local topics until they were joined by the gentlemen.

      Verity had wondered whether anybody – their host or the vicar or Dr Field-Innis – had questioned Schramm as she had been questioned about their former acquaintanceship, and if so, how he had answered and whether he would think it advisable to come and speak to her. After all, it would look strange if he did not.

      He did come. Nikolas Markos, keeping up the deployment of his guests, so arranged it. Schramm sat beside her and the first thought that crossed her mind was that there was something unbecoming about not seeming, at first glance, to have grown old. If he had appeared to her, as she undoubtedly did to him, as a greatly changed person, she would have been able to get their confrontation into perspective. As it was he sat there like a hangover. His face at first glance was scarcely changed, although when he turned it into a stronger light, a system of lines seemed to flicker under the skin. His eyes were more protuberant, now, and slightly bloodshot. A man, she thought, of whom people would say he could hold his liquor. He used the stuff she remembered, on hair that was only vestigially thinner at the temples.

      As always he was, as people used to say twenty-five years ago, extremely well turned out. He carried himself like a soldier.

      ‘How are you, Verity?’ he said. ‘You look blooming.’

      ‘I’m very well, thank you.’

      ‘Writing plays, I hear.’

      ‘That’s it.’

      ‘Absolutely splendid. I must go and see one. There is one, isn’t there? In London?’

      ‘At the Dolphin.’

      ‘Good houses?’

      ‘Full,’ said Verity.

      ‘Really! So they wouldn’t let me in. Unless you told them to. Would you tell them to? Please?’

      He bent his head towards her in the old way. Why on earth, she thought, does he bother?

      ‘I’m afraid they wouldn’t pay much attention,’ she said.

      ‘Were you surprised to see me?’

      ‘I was, rather.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Well –’

      ‘Well?’

      ‘The name for one thing.’

      ‘Oh, that!’ he said, waving his hand. ‘That’s an old story. It’s my mother’s maiden name. Swiss. She always wanted me to use it. Put it in her Will, if you’ll believe it. She suggested that I made myself “Smythe-Schramm” but that turned out to be such a wet mouthful I decided to get rid of Smythe.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘So I qualified after all, Verity.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘From Lausanne, actually. My mother had settled there and I joined her. I got quite involved with that side of the family and decided to finish my course in Switzerland.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘I practised there for some time – until she died to be exact. Since then I’ve wandered about the world. One can always find something to do as a medico.’ He talked away, fluently. It seemed to Verity that he spoke in phrases that followed each other with the ease of frequent usage. He went on for some time, making, she thought, little sorties against her self-possession. She was surprised to find how ineffectual they proved to be. Come, she thought, I’m over the initial hurdle at least, and began to wonder what all the fuss was about.

      ‘And now you’re settling in Kent,’ she said politely.

      ‘Looks like it. A sort of hotel-cum-convalescent home. I’ve made rather a thing of dietetics – specialized actually – and this place offers the right sort of scene. Greengages, it’s called. Do you know it at all?’

      ‘Sybil – Mrs Foster – goes there quite often.’

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So she tells me.’

      He looked at Sybil who sat, discontentedly, beside the vicar. Verity had realized that Sybil was observant of them. She now flashed a meaning smile at Schramm as if she and he shared some exquisite joke.

      Gideon Markos said, ‘Pop, may I show Prue your latest extravagance?’

      ‘Do,’ said his father. ‘By all means.’

      When they had gone he said, ‘Schramm, I can’t have you monopolizing Miss Preston like this. You’ve had a lovely session and must restrain your remembrance of things past. I’m going to move you on.’

      He moved him on to Mrs Field-Innis and took his place by Verity.

      ‘Gideon tells me,’ he said, ‘that when I have company to dine I’m bossy, old hat and a stuffed shirt or whatever the “in” phrase is. But what should I do? Invite my guests to wriggle and jerk to one of his deafening records?’

      ‘It might be fun to see the vicar and Florence Field-Innis having a go.’

      ‘Yes,’ he said, with a sidelong glance at her, ‘it might indeed. Would you like to hear about my “latest extravagance”? You would? It’s a picture. A Troy.’

      ‘From her show at the Arlington?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘How lovely for you. Which one? Not by any chance “Several Pleasures”?’

      ‘But you’re brilliant!’

      ‘It is?’

      ‘Come and look.’

      He took her into the library where there was no sign of the young people: a large library it was, and still under renovation. Open cases of books stood about the floors. The walls, including the backs of shelves, had been redone in a lacquer-red Chinese paper. The Troy painting stood on the chimney-piece – a glowing flourish of exuberance, СКАЧАТЬ