False Scent

Chapter one Pardoner’s Place. 9:00 A.M

When she died it was as if all the love she had inspired in so many people suddenly blossomed. She had never, of course, realized how greatly she was loved, never known that she was to be carried by six young men who would ask to perform this last courtesy: to bear her on their strong shoulders, so gently and with such dedication.

Quite insignificant people were there; her old Ninn, the family nurse, with a face like a boot, grimly crying. And Florence, her dresser, with a bunch of primroses, because of all flowers they were the ones she had best loved to see on her make-up table. And George, the stage doorkeeper at the Unicorn, sober as sober and telling anyone who would listen to him that there, if you liked, had been a great lady. Pinky Cavendish in floods and Maurice, very Guardee, with a stiff upper lip. Crowds of people whom she herself would have scarcely remembered but upon whom, at some time, she had bestowed the gift of her charm.

All the Knights and Dames, of course, and the Management, and Timon Gantry, the great producer, who had so often directed her. Bertie Saracen, who had created her dresses since the days when she was a bit-part actress and who had, indeed, risen to his present eminence in the wake of her mounting fame. But it was not for her fame that they had come to say goodbye to her. It was because, quite simply, they had loved her.

And Richard? Richard was there, white and withdrawn. And — this was an afterthought — and, of course, Charles.

Miss Bellamy paused, bogged down in her own fantasy. Enjoyable tears started from her eyes. She often indulged herself with plans for her funeral and she never failed to be moved by them. The only catch was the indisputable fact that she wouldn’t live to enjoy it. She would be, as it were, cheated of her own obsequies and she felt there was some injustice in this.

But perhaps, after all, she would know. Perhaps, she would hover ambiguously over the whole show, employing her famous gift for making a party go without seeming to do anything about it. Perhaps—? Feeling slightly uncomfortable, she reminded herself of her magnificent constitution and decided to think about something else.

There was plenty to think about. The new play. Her role: a fat part if ever she saw one. The long speech about keeping the old chin up and facing the future with a wry smile. Richard hadn’t put it quite like that and she did sometimes wish he would write more simply. Perhaps she would choose her moments and suggest to him that a few homely phrases would do the trick much more effectively than those rather involved, rather arid sentences that were so bloody difficult to memorize. What was wanted — the disreputable word “gimmick” rose to the surface and was instantly slapped down — what was wanted, when all was said and done, was the cosy human touch: a vehicle for her particular genius. She believed in humanity. Perhaps this morning would be the right occasion to talk to Richard. He would, of course, be coming to wish her many happy returns. Her birthday! That had to be thought of selectively and with a certain amount of care. She must at all costs exclude that too easy little sum whose answer would provide her age. She had, quite literally but by dint of a yogi-like discipline, succeeded in forgetting it. Nobody else that mattered knew, except Florence, who was utterly discreet and Old Ninn, who, one must face it, was getting a bit garrulous, especially when she’d taken her glass or two of port. Please God she wouldn’t forget herself this afternoon.

After all it was how you felt and how you looked that mattered. She lifted her head from the pillows and turned it. There, across the room, she was, reflected in the tall glass above her dressing-table. Not bad, she thought, not half bad, even at that hour and with no make-up. She touched her face here and there, manipulating the skin above the temples and at the top of the jawline. To lift or not to lift? Pinky Cavendish was all for it and said that nowadays there was no need for the stretched look. But what about her famous triangular smile? Maintaining the lift, she smiled. The effect was still triangular.

She rang her bell. It was rather touching to think of her little household, oriented to her signal. Florence, Cooky, Gracefield, the parlourmaid, the housemaid and the odd woman: all ready in the kitchen and full of plans for the Great Day. Old Ninn, revelling in her annual holiday, sitting up in bed with her News of the World or perhaps putting the final touch to the bedjacket she had undoubtedly knitted and which would have to be publicly worn for her gratification. And, of course, Charles. It was curious how Miss Bellamy tended to leave her husband out of her meditations, because, after all, she was extremely fond of him. She hurriedly inserted him. He would be waiting for Gracefield to tell him she was awake and had rung. Presently he would appear, wearing a pink scrubbed look and that plum-coloured dressing-gown that did so little to help.

She heard a faint chink and a subdued rumble. The door opened and Florence came in with her tray.

“Top of the morning, dear,” said Florence. “What’s it feel like to be eighteen again?”

“You old fool,” Miss Bellamy said and grinned at her. “It feels fine.”

Florence built pillows up behind her and set the tray across her knees. She then drew back the curtains and lit the fire. She was a pale, small woman with black dyed hair and sardonic eyes. She had been Miss Bellamy’s dresser for twenty-five years and her personal maid for fifteen. “Three rousing cheers,” she said, “it’s a handsome-looking morning.”

Miss Bellamy examined her tray. The basket-ends were full of telegrams, a spray of orchids lay across the plate and beside it a parcel in silver wrapping tied with pink ribbon.

“What’s all this?” she asked, as she had asked for her last fifteen birthdays, and took up the parcel.

“The flowers are from the Colonel. He’ll be bringing his present later on, as per usual, I suppose.”

“I wasn’t talking about the flowers,” Miss Bellamy said and opened the parcel. “Florrie! Florrie, darling!”

Florence clattered the firearms. “Might as well get in early,” she muttered, “or it’d never be noticed.”

It was a chemise, gossamer fine and exquisitely embroidered.

“Come here!” Miss Bellamy said, fondly bullying.

Florence walked over to the bed and suffered herself to be kissed. Her face became crimson. For a moment she looked at her employer with a devotion that was painful in its intensity and then turned aside, her eyes filmed with unwilling tears.

“But it’s out of this world!” Miss Bellamy marvelled, referring to the chemise. “That’s all! It’s just made my day for me.” She shook her head slowly from side to side, lost in wonderment. “I can’t wait,” she said and, indeed, she was very pleased with it.

“There’s the usual mail,” Florence grunted. “More, if anything.”

“Truly?”

“Outside on the trolley. Will I fetch it in here?”

“After my bath, darling, may we?”

Florence opened drawers and doors, and began to lay out the clothes her mistress had chosen to wear. Miss Bellamy, who was on a strict diet, drank her tea, ate her toast, and opened her telegrams, awarding each of them some pleased ejaculation. “Darling, Bertie! Such a sweet muddled little message. And a cable, Florrie, from the Bantings in New York. Heaven of them!”

“That show’s folding, I’m told,” Florence said, “and small wonder. Dirty and dull, by all accounts. You mustn’t be both.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Miss Bellamy absentmindedly observed. She was staring in bewilderment at the next telegram. “This,” she said, “isn’t true. It’s just not true. My dear Florrie, will you listen.” Modulating her lovely voice, Miss Bellamy read it aloud, “ ‘Her birth was of the womb of morning dew and her conception of the joyous prime.’ ”

“Disgusting,” said Florence.

“I call it rather touching. But who in the wide world is Octavius Browne?”

“Search me, love.” Florence helped Miss Bellamy into a negligée designed by Bertie Saracen, and herself went into the bathroom. Miss Bellamy settled down to some preliminary work on her face.

There was a tap on the door connecting her room with her husband’s and he came in. Charles Templeton was sixty years old, big and fair with a heavy belly. His eyeglass dangled over his dark red dressing-gown; his hair, thin and babyishly fine, was carefully brushed; and his face, which had the florid colouring associated with heart disease, was freshly shaved. He kissed his wife’s hand and forehead and laid a small parcel before her. “A very happy birthday to you, Mary, my dear,” he said. Twenty years ago, when she married him, she had told him that his voice was charming. If it was so still, she no longer noticed it or, indeed, listened very attentively to much that he said.

But she let her birthday gaiety play about him and was enchanted with her present, a diamond and emerald bracelet. It was, even for Charles, quite exceptionally magnificent, and for a fleeting moment she remembered that he, as well as Florence and Old Ninn, knew her age. She wondered if there was any intention of underlining this particular anniversary. There were some numerals that by their very appearance — stodgy and rotund — wore an air of horrid maturity. Five, for instance. She pulled her thoughts up short and showed him the telegram. “I should like to know what in the world you make of that,” she said and went into the bathroom, leaving the door open. Florence came back and began to make the bed with an air of standing none of its nonsense.

“Good morning, Florence,” Charles Templeton said. He put up his eyeglass and walked over to the bow window with the telegram.

“Good morning, sir,” Florence woodenly rejoined. Only when she was alone with her mistress did she allow herself the freedom of the dressing-room.

“Did you,” Miss Bellamy shouted from her bath, “ever see anything quite like it?”

“But it’s delightful,” he said, “and how very nice of Octavius.”

“You don’t mean to say you know who he is?”

“Octavius Browne? Of course I do. He’s the old boy down below in the Pegasus Bookshop. Up at the House, but a bit before my time. Delightful fellow.”

“Blow me down flat!” Miss Bellamy ejaculated, splashing luxuriously. “You mean that dim little place with a fat cat in the window.”

“That’s it. He specializes in pre-Jacobean literature.”

“Does that account for the allusion to wombs and conceptions? Of what can he be thinking, poor Mr. Browne?”

“It’s a quotation,” Charles said, letting his eyeglass drop. “From Spenser. I bought a very nice Spenser from him last week. No doubt he supposes you’ve read it.”

“Then, of course, I must pretend I have. I shall call on him and thank him. Kind Mr. Browne!”

“They’re great friends of Richard’s.”

Miss Bellamy’s voice sharpened a little. “Who? They?”

“Octavius Browne and his niece. A good-looking girl.” Charles glanced at Florence and after a moment’s hesitation added, “She’s called Anelida Lee.”

Florence cleared her throat.

“Not true!” The voice in the bathroom gave a little laugh. “A-nelly-da! It sounds like a face cream.”

“It’s Chaucerian.”

“I suppose the cat’s called Piers Plowman.”

“No. He’s out of the prevailing period. He’s called Hodge.”

“I’ve never heard Richard utter her name.”

Charles said: “She’s on the stage, it appears.”

“Oh, God!”

“In the new club theatre behind Walton Street. The Bonaventure.”

“You need say no more, my poor Charles. One knows the form.” Charles was silent and the voice asked impatiently, “Are you still there?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“How do you know Richard’s so thick with them?”

“I meet him there occasionally,” Charles said, and added lightly, “I’m thick with them too, Mary.”

There was further silence and then the voice, delightful and gay, shouted, “Florrie! Bring me you know what.”

Florence picked up her own offering and went into the bathroom.

Charles Templeton stared through the window at a small London square, brightly receptive of April sunshine. He could just see the flower-woman at the corner of Pardoner’s Row, sitting in a galaxy of tulips. There were tulips everywhere. His wife had turned the bow window into an indoor garden and had filled it with them and with a great mass of early-flowering azaleas, brought up in the conservatory and still in bud. He examined these absent-mindedly and discovered among them a tin with a spray-gun mechanism. The tin was labelled “Slaypest” and bore alarming captions about the lethal nature of its contents. Charles peered at them through his eyeglass.

“Florence,” he said, “I don’t think this stuff ought to be left lying about.”

“Just what I tell her,” Florence said, returning.

“There are all sorts of warnings. It shouldn’t be used in enclosed places. Is it used like that?”

“It won’t be for want of my telling her if it is.”

“Really, I don’t like it. Could you lose it?”

“I’d get the full treatment meself if I did,” Florence grunted.

“Nevertheless,” Charles said, “I think you should do so.”

Florence shot a resentful look at him and muttered under her breath.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I said it wasn’t so easy. She knows. She can read. I’ve told her.” She glowered at him and then said, “I take my orders from her. Always have and always will.”

He waited for a moment. “Quite so,” he said. “But all the same—” and hearing his wife’s voice, put the spray-gun down, gave a half-sigh and turned to confront the familiar room.

Miss Bellamy came into it wearing Florence’s gift. There was a patch of sunshine in the room and she posed in it, expectant, unaware of its disobliging candour.

“Look at my smashing shift!” she cried. “Florrie’s present! A new birthday suit.”

She had “made an entrance,” comic-provocative, skilfully French-farcical. She had no notion at all of the disservice she had done herself.

The voice that she had once called charming said, “Marvellous. How kind of Florence.”

He was careful to wait a little longer before he said, “Well, darling, I shall leave you to your mysteries,” and went down to his solitary breakfast.

There was no particular reason why Richard Dakers should feel uplifted that morning; indeed, there were many formidable reasons why he should not. Nevertheless, as he made his way by bus and on foot to Pardoner’s Place, he did experience, very strongly, that upward kick of the spirit which lies in London’s power of bestowal. He sat in the front seat at the prow of the bus and felt like a figurehead, cleaving the tide of the King’s Road, masterfully above it, yet gloriously of it. The Chelsea shops were full of tulips and when, leaving the bus, he walked to the corner of Pardoner’s Row, there was his friend the flower-woman with buckets of them, still pouted up in buds.

“Morning, dear,” said the flower-woman. “Duck of a day, innit?”

“It’s a day for the gods,” Richard agreed, “and your hat fits you like a halo, Mrs. Tinker.”

“It’s me straw,” Mrs. Tinker said. “I usually seem to change to me straw on the second Sat in April.”

“Aphrodite on her cockleshell couldn’t say fairer. I’ll take two dozen of the yellows.”

She wrapped them up in green paper. “Ten bob to you,” said Mrs. Tinker.

“Ruin!” Richard ejaculated, giving her eleven shillings. “Destitution! But what the hell!”

“That’s right, dear, we don’ care, do we? Tulips, lady? Lovely tulips.”

Carrying his tulips and with his dispatch case tucked under his arm, Richard entered Pardoner’s Place and turned right. Three doors along he came to the Pegasus, a bow-fronted Georgian house that had been converted by Octavius Browne into a bookshop. In the window, tilted and open, lay a first edition of Beijer and Duchartre’s Premieres Comedies Italiennes. A little further back, half in shadow, hung a Negro marionette, very grand in striped silks. And in the watery depths of the interior Richard could just make out the shapes of the three beautifully polished old chairs, the lovely table and the vertical strata of rows and rows of books. He could see, too, the figure of Anelida Lee moving about among her uncle’s treasures, attended by Hodge, their cat. In the mornings Anelida, when not rehearsing at her club theatre, helped her uncle. She hoped that she was learning to be an actress. Richard, who knew a good deal about it, was convinced that already she was one.

He opened the door and went in.

Anelida had been dusting and wore her black smock, an uncompromising garment. Her hair was tied up in a white scarf. He had time to reflect that there was a particular beauty that most pleased when it was least adorned and that Anelida was possessed of it.

“Hullo,” he said. “I’ve brought you some tulips. Good morning, Hodge.” Hodge stared at him briefly, jerked his tail, and walked away.

“How lovely! But it’s not my birthday.”

“Never mind. It’s because it’s a nice morning and Mrs. Tinker was wearing her straw.”

“I couldn’t be better pleased,” said Anelida. “Will you wait while I get a pot for them? There’s a green jug.”

She went into a room at the back. He heard a familiar tapping noise on the stairs. Her uncle Octavius came down, leaning on his black stick. He was a tall man of about sixty-three with a shock of grey hair and a mischievous face. He had a trick of looking at people out of the corners of his eyes as if inviting them to notice what a bad boy he was. He was rather touchy, immensely learned and thin almost to transparency.

“Good morning, my dear Dakers,” he said, and seeing the tulips, touched one of them with the tip of a bluish finger. “Ah,” he said, “ ‘Art could not feign more simple grace, Nor Nature take a line away.’ How very lovely and so pleasantly uncomplicated by any smell. We have found something for you, by the way. Quite nice and I hope in character, but it may be a little too expensive. You must tell us what you think.”

He opened a parcel on his desk and stood aside for Richard to look at the contents.

“A tinsel picture, as you see,” he said, “of Madame Vestris en travesti in jockey’s costume.” He looked sideways at Richard. “Beguiling little breeches, don’t you think? Do you suppose it would appeal to Miss Bellamy?”

“I don’t see how it could fail.”

“It’s rare-ish. The frame’s contemporary. I’m afraid it’s twelve guineas.”

“It’s mine,” Richard said. “Or rather, it’s Mary’s.”

“You’re sure? Then, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll get Nell to make a birthday parcel of it. There’s a sheet of Victorian tinsel somewhere. Nell, my dear! Would you—?”

He tapped away and presently Anelida returned with the green jug and his parcel, beautifully wrapped.

Richard put his hand on his dispatch case. “What do you suppose is in there?” he asked.

“Not — not the play? Not Husbandry in Heaven?”

“Hot from the typist.” He watched her thin hands arrange the tulips. “Anelida, I’m going to show it to Mary.”

“You couldn’t choose a better day,” she said warmly, and when he didn’t answer, “What’s the matter?”

“There isn’t a part for her in it,” he blurted out.

After a moment she said, “Well, no. But does that matter?”

“It might. If, of course, it ever comes to production. And, by the way, Timmy Gantry’s seen it and makes agreeable noises. All the same, it’s tricky about Mary.”

“But why? I don’t see—”

“It’s not all that easy to explain,” he mumbled.

“You’ve already written a new play for her and she’s delighted with it, isn’t she? This is something quite different.”

“And better? You’ve read it.”

“Immeasurably better. In another world. Everybody must see it.”

“Timmy Gantry likes it.”

“Well, there you are! It’s special. Won’t she see that?”

He said: “Anelida, dear, you don’t really know the theatre yet, do you? Or the way actors tick over?”

“Well, perhaps I don’t. But I know how close you are to each other and how wonderfully she understands you. You’ve told me.”

“That’s just it,” Richard said and there followed a long silence.

“I don’t believe,” he said at last, “that I’ve ever told you exactly what she and Charles did?”

“No,” she agreed. “Not exactly. But—”

“My parents, who were Australians, were friends of Mary’s. They were killed in a car smash on the Grande Corniche when I was rising two. They were staying with Mary at the time. There was no money to speak of. She had me looked after by her own old nanny, the celebrated Ninn, and then, after she had married Charles, they took me over completely. I owe everything to her. I like to think that, in a way, the plays have done something to repay. And now — you see what I go and do.”

Anelida finished her tulips and looked directly at him. “I’m sure it’ll work out,” she said gently. “All very fine, I daresay, for me to say so, but you see, you’ve talked so much about her, I almost feel I know her.”

“I very much want you to know her. Indeed, this brings me to the main object of my pompous visit. Will you let me call for you at six and take you to see her? There’s a party of sorts at half-past which I hope may amuse you, but I’d like you to meet her first. Will you, Anelida?”

She waited too long before she said, “I don’t think I can. I’m — I’ve booked myself up.”

“I don’t believe you. Why won’t you come?”

“But I can’t. It’s her birthday and it’s special to her and her friends. You can’t go hauling in an unknown female. And an unknown actress, to boot.”

“Of course I can.”

“It wouldn’t be comely.”

“What a fantastic word! And why the hell do you suppose it wouldn’t be comely for the two people I like best in the world to meet each other?”

Anelida said, “I didn’t know—”

“Yes, you did,” he said crossly. “You must have.”

“We scarcely know each other.”

“I’m sorry you feel like that about it.”

“I only meant — well, in point of time—”

“Don’t hedge.”

“Now, look here—”

“I’m sorry. Evidently I’ve taken too much for granted.”

While they stared aghast at the quarrel that between them they had somehow concocted, Octavius came tapping back. “By the way,” he said happily, “I yielded this morning to a romantic impulse, Dakers. I sent your patroness a birthday greeting: one among hundreds, no doubt. The allusion was from Spenser. I hope she won’t take it amiss.”

“How very nice of you, sir,” Richard said loudly. “She’ll be enchanted. She loves people to be friendly. Thank you for finding the picture.”

And forgetting to pay for it, he left hurriedly in a miserable frame of mind.

Mary Bellamy’s house was next door to the Pegasus Bookshop, but Richard was too rattled to go in. He walked round Pardoner’s Place trying to sort out his thoughts. He suffered one of those horrid experiences, fortunately rare, in which the victim confronts himself as a stranger in an abrupt perspective. The process resembles that of pseudo-scientific films in which the growth of a plant, by mechanical skulduggery, is reduced from seven weeks to as many minutes and the subject is seen wavering, extending, elongating itself in response to some irresistible force until it breaks into its pre-ordained fluorescence.

The irresistible force in Richard’s case had undoubtedly been Mary Bellamy. The end-product, after twenty-seven years of the treatment, was two successful West End comedies, a third in the bag, and (his hand tightened on his dispatch case) a serious play.

He owed it all, as he had so repeatedly told her, to Mary. Well, perhaps not quite all. Not the serious play.

He had almost completed his round of the little Place and, not wanting to pass the shop window, turned back. Why in the world had he gone grand and huffy when Anelida refused to meet Mary? And why did she refuse? Any other girl in Anelida’s boots, he thought uneasily, would have jumped at that sort of invitation: the great Mary Bellamy’s birthday party. A tiny, handpicked group from the topmost drawer in the London theatre. The Management. The producer. Any other girl — he fetched up short, not liking himself very much, conscious that if he followed his thoughts to their logical conclusion he would arrive at an uncomfortable position. What sort of man, he would have to ask himself, was Richard Dakers? Reality would disintegrate and he would find himself face-to-face with a stranger. It was a familar experience and one he didn’t enjoy. He shook himself free of it, made a sudden decision, walked quickly to the house and rang the bell.

Charles Templeton breakfasted in his study on the ground floor. The door was open and Richard saw him there, reading his Times, at home among his six so judiciously chosen pieces of chinoiserie, his three admirable pictures, his few distinguished chairs and lovely desk. Charles was fastidious about his surroundings and extremely knowledgeable. He could wait, sometimes for years, for the acquisition of a single treasure.

Richard went in. “Charles!” he said. “How are you?’

“Hullo, old boy. Come to make your devotions?”

“Am I the first?”

“The first in person. There are the usual massive offerings in kind. Mary’ll be delighted to see you.”

“I’ll go up,” Richard said, but still hovered. Charles lowered his newspaper. How often, Richard wondered, had he seen him make that gesture, dropping his eyeglass and vaguely smiling. Richard, still involved in the aftermath of his moment of truth, if that was its real nature, asked himself what he knew of Charles. How used he was to that even courtesy, that disengagement! What of Charles in other places? What of the reputedly implacable man of affairs who had built his own fortune? Or of the lover Charles must have been five and twenty years ago? Impossible to imagine, Richard thought, looking vaguely at an empty niche in the wall.

He said, “Hullo! Where’s the T’ang musician?”

“Gone,” Charles said.

“Gone! Where! Not broken?”

“Chipped. The peg of her lute. Gracefield did it, I think. I’ve given her to Maurice Warrender.”

“But — even so — I mean, so often they’re not absolutely perfect and you — it was your treasure.”

“Not now,” Charles said. “I’m a perfectionist, you know.”

“That’s what you say!” Richard exclaimed warmly. “But I bet it was because Maurice always coveted her. You’re so absurdly generous.”

“Oh nonsense,” Charles said and looked at his paper. Richard hesitated. He heard himself say,

“Charles, do I ever say thank you? To you and Mary?”

“My dear fellow, what for?”

“For everything.” He took refuge in irony. “For befriending the poor orphan boy, you know, among other things.”

“I sincerely hope you’re not making a vicarious birthday resolution.”

“It just struck me.”

Charles waited for a moment and then said, “You’ve given us a trememdous interest and very much pleasure.” He again hesitated as if assembling his next sentence. “Mary and I,” he said at last, “look upon you as an achievement. And now, do go and make your pretty speeches to her.”

“Yes,” Richard said. “I’d better, hadn’t I? See you later.”

Charles raised his newspaper and Richard went slowly upstairs, wishing, consciously, for perhaps the first time in his life, that he was not going to visit Miss Bellamy.

She was in her room, dressed and enthroned among her presents. He slipped into another gear as he took her to his heart in a birthday embrace and then held her at arm’s length to tell her how lovely she looked.

“Darling, darling, darling!” she cried joyously. “How perfect of you to come. I’ve been hoping and hoping!”

It occurred to him that it would have been strange indeed if he hadn’t performed this time-honoured observance, but he kissed her again and gave her his present.

It was early in the day and her reservoir of enthusiasm scarcely tapped. She was able to pour a freshet of praise over his tinsel picture and did so with many cries of gratitude and wonder. Where, she asked, where, where had he discovered the one, the perfect present.

It was an opening Richard had hoped for, but he found himself a little apprehensive nevertheless.

“I found it,” he said, “at the Pegasus — or rather Octavius Browne found it for me. He says it’s rare-ish.”

Her triangular smile didn’t fade. Her eyes continued to beam into his, her hands to press his hands.

“Ay, yes!” she cried gaily. “The old man in the bookshop! Believe it or not, darling, he sent me a telegram about my conception. Too sweet, but a little difficult to acknowledge.”

“He’s very donnish,” Richard said. She made a comic face at him. “He was, in fact, a don, but he found himself out of sympathy with angry young men and set up a bookshop instead.”

She propped up her tinsel picture on the dressing-table and gazed at it through half-closed eyes. “Isn’t there a daughter or something? I seem to have heard—”

“A niece,” Richard said. Maddeningly, his mouth had gone dry.

“Ought I,” she asked, “to nip downstairs and thank him? One never quite knows with that sort of person.”

Richard kissed her hand. “Octavius,” he said, “is not that sort of person, darling. Do nip down. He’ll be enchanted. And Mary—”

“What, my treasure?”

“I thought perhaps you might be terribly kind and ask them for a drink. If you find them pleasant, that is.”

She sat at her dressing-table and examined her face in the glass. “I wonder,” she said, “if I really like that new eyeshade.” She took up a heavy Venetian glass scent-spray and used it lavishly. “I hope someone gives me some really superlative scent,” she said. “This is almost gone.” She put it down. “For a drink?” she said. “When? Not today, of course.”

“Not today, you think?”

She opened her eyes very wide. “My dear, we’d only embarrass them.”

“Well,” he murmured, “see how you feel about it.”

She turned back to the glass and said nothing. He opened his dispatch case and took out his typescript.

“I’ve brought something,” he said, “for you to read. It’s a surprise, Mary.” He laid it on the dressing-table. “There.”

She looked at the cover page. “Husbandry in Heaven. A play by Richard Dakers.”

“Dicky? Dicky, darling, what is all this?”

“Something I’ve kept for today,” he said and knew at once that he’d made a mistake. She gave him that special luminous gaze that meant she was deeply moved. “O Dicky!” she whispered. “For me? My dear!”

He was panic-stricken.

“But when?” she asked him, slowly shaking her head in bewilderment. “When did you do it? With all the other work? I don’t understand. I’m flabbergasted, Dicky!”

“I’ve been working on it for some time. It’s — it’s quite a different thing. Not a comedy. You may hate it.”

“Is it the great one — at last?” she whispered. “The one that we always knew would happen? And all by yourself, Dicky? Not even with poor stupid, old, loving me to listen?”

She was saying all the things he would least have chosen for her to say. It was appalling.

“For all I know,” he said, “it may be frighteningly bad. I’ve got to that state where one just can’t tell. Anyway, don’t let’s burden the great day with it.”

“You couldn’t have given me anything else that would make me half so happy.” She stroked the typescript with both eloquent, not very young hands. “I’ll shut myself away for an hour before lunch and wolf it up.”

“Mary,” he said desperately. “Don’t be so sanguine about it. It’s not your sort of play.”

“I won’t hear a word against it. You’ve written it for me, darling.”

He was hunting desperately for some way of telling her he had done nothing of the sort when she said gaily, “All right! We’ll see. I won’t tease you. What were we talking about? Your funnies in the bookshop? I’ll pop in this morning and see what I think of them, shall I? Will that do?”

Before he could answer two voices, one elderly and uncertain and the other a fluting alto, were raised outside in the passage:

The door opened to admit Colonel Warrender and Mr. Bertie Saracen.

Colonel Warrender was sixty years old, a bachelor and a cousin of Charles Templeton, whom, in a leaner, better-looking way, he slightly resembled. He kept himself fit, was well dressed and wore a moustache so neatly managed that it looked as if it had been ironed on his face. His manner was pleasant and his bearing soldierly.

Mr. Bertie Saracen was also immaculate, but more adventurously so. The sleeves of his jacket were narrower and displayed a great deal of pinkish cuff. He had a Berlin-china complexion, wavy hair, blue eyes and wonderfully small hands. His air was gay and insouciant. He too was a bachelor and most understandably so.

They made a comic entrance together: Warrender good-naturedly self-conscious, Bertie Saracen revelling in his act of prima ballerina. He chasséd to right and left, holding aloft his votive offering and finally laid it at Miss Bellamy’s feet.

“God, what a fool I must look!” he exclaimed. “Take it, darling, quickly or we’ll kill the laugh.”

A spate of greetings broke out and an examination of gifts: from Warrender, who had been abroad, gloves of Grenoble, and from Bertie a miniature group of five bathing beauties and a photographer all made of balsa wood and scraps of cotton. “It’s easily the nicest present you’ll get,” he said. “And now I must enjoy a good jeer at all the others.”

He flitted about the room, making little darts at them. Warrender, a rather silent man, generally believed to entertain a long-standing and blameless adoration of Mary Bellamy, had a word with Richard, who liked him.

“Rehearsals started yet?” he asked. “Mary tells me she’s delighted with her new part.”

“Not yet. It’s the mixture as before,” Richard rejoined.

Warrender gave him a brief look, “Early days to settle into a routine, isn’t it?” he said surprisingly. “Leave that to the old hands, isn’t it?” He had a trick of ending his remarks with this colloquialism.

“I’m trying, on the side, to break out in a rash of serious writing.”

“Are you? Good. Afford to take risks, I’d have thought.”

“How pleasant,” Richard exclaimed, “to hear somebody say that!”

Warrender looked at his shoes. “Never does,” he said, “to let yourself be talked into things. Not that I know anything about it.”

Richard thought with gratitude: “That’s exactly the kind of thing I wanted to be told,” but was prevented from saying so by the entrance of Old Ninn.

Old Ninn’s real name was Miss Ethel Plumtree, but she was given the courtesy title of “Mrs.” She had been Mary Bellamy’s nurse, and from the time of his adoption by Mary and Charles, Richard’s also. Every year she emerged from retirement for a fortnight to stay with her former charge. She was small, scarlet-faced and fantastically opinionated. Her age was believed to be eighty-one. Nannies being universally accepted as character parts rather than people in their own right, Old Ninn was the subject of many of Mary Bellamy’s funniest stories. Richard sometimes wondered if she played up to her own legend. In her old age she had developed a liking for port and under its influence made great mischief among the servants and kept up a sort of guerilla warfare with Florence, with whom, nevertheless, she was on intimate terms. They were united, Miss Bellamy said, in their devotion to herself.

Wearing a cerise shawl and a bold floral print, for she adored bright colours, Old Ninn trudged across the room with the corners of her mouth turned down and laid a tissue paper parcel on the dressing-table.

“Happy birthday, m’.” she said. For so small a person she had an alarmingly deep voice.

A great fuss was made over her. Bertie Saracen attempted Mercutian badinage and called her Nurse Plumtree. She ignored him and addressed herself exclusively to Richard.

“We don’t see much of you these days,” she said, and by the sour look she gave him, proclaimed her affection.

“I’ve been busy, Ninn.”

“Still making up your plays, by all accounts.”

“That’s it.”

“You always were a fanciful boy. Easy to see, you’ve never grown out of it.”

Mary Bellamy had unwrapped the parcel and disclosed a knitted bed-jacket of sensible design. Her thanks were effusive, but Old Ninn cut them short.

“Four-ply,” she said. “You require warmth when you’re getting on in years and the sooner you face the fact the more comfortable you’ll find yourself. Good morning, sir,” Ninn added, catching sight of Warrender. “I dare say you’ll bear me out. Well, I won’t keep you.”

With perfect composure she trudged away, leaving a complete silence behind her.

“Out of this world!” Bertie said with a shrillish laugh. “Darling Mary, here I am sizzling with decorative fervour. When are we to tuck up our sleeves and lay all our plots and plans?”

“Now, darling, if you’re ready. Dicky, treasure, will you and Maurice be able to amuse yourselves? We’ll scream if we want any help. Come along, Bertie.”

She linked her arm in his. He sniffed ecstatically. “You smell,” he said, “like all, but all, of King Solomon’s wives and concubines. In spring. En avant!”

They went downstairs. Warrender and Richard were left together in a room that still retained the flavour of her personality, as inescapably potent as the all-pervasive aftermath of her scent.

It was an old established custom that she and Bertie arranged the house for her birthday party. Her drawing-room was the first on the left on the ground floor. It was a long Georgian saloon with a door into the hall and with folding doors leading into the dining-room. This, in its turn opened both into the hall and into the conservatory, which was her especial pride. Beyond the conservatory lay a small formal garden. When all the doors were open an impressive vista was obtained. Bertie himself had “done” the decor and had used a wealth of old French brocades. He had painted bunches of misty cabbage roses in the recesses above the doors and in the wall panels, and had found some really distinguished chandeliers. This year the flowers were to be all white and yellow. He settled down with great efficiency and determination to his task, borrowing one of Gracefield’s, the butler’s, aprons for the purpose. Miss Bellamy tied herself into a modish confection with a flounced bib, put on washleather gloves, and wandered happily about her conservatory, snipping off deadheads and re-arranging groups of flowerpots. She was an enthusiastic gardener. They shouted at each other from room to room, exchanging theatre shop, and breaking every now and then into stage cockney: “Whatseye, dear?” and “Coo! You wouldn’t credit it!” this mode of communication being sacred to the occasion. They enjoyed themselves enormously while from under Bertie’s clever fingers emerged bouquets of white and gold and wonderful garlands for the table. In this setting, Miss Bellamy was at her best.

They had been at it for perhaps half an hour and Bertie had retired to the flower-room when Gracefield ushered in Miss Kate Cavendish, known to her intimates as Pinky.

Pinky was younger than her famous contemporary and less distinguished. She had played supporting roles in many Bellamy successes and their personal relationship, not altogether to her satisfaction, resembled their professional one. She had an amusing face, dressed plainly and well, and possessed the gifts of honesty and direct thinking. She was, in fact, a charming woman.

“I’m in a tizzy,” she said. “High as a rocket, darling, and in a minute I’ll tell you why. Forty thousand happy returns, Mary, and may your silhouette never grow greater. Here’s my offering.”

It was a flask of a new scent by a celebrated maker and was called Formidable. “I got it smuggled over from Paris,” she said. “It’s not here yet. A lick on either lobe, I’m told, and the satellites reel in their courses.”

Miss Bellamy insisted on opening it. She dabbed the stopper on her wrists and sniffed. “Pinky,” she said solemnly, “it’s too much! Darling, it opens the floodgates! Honestly!”

“It’s good, isn’t it?”

“Florrie shall put it into my spray. At once. Before Bertie can get at it. You know what he is.”

“Is Bertie here?” Pinky asked quickly.

“He’s in the flower-room.”

“Oh.”

“Why? Have you fallen out with him?”

“Far from it,” Pinky said. “Only — well it’s just that I’m not really meant to let my cat out of its bag as yet and Bertie’s involved. But I really am, I fear, more than a little tiddly.”

“You! I thought you never touched a thing in the morning.”

“Nor I do. But this is an occasion, Mary. I’ve been drinking with the Management. Only two small ones, but on an empty turn: Bingo!”

Miss Bellamy said sharply, “With the Management?”

“That gives you pause, doesn’t it?”

“And Bertie’s involved?”

Pinky laughed rather wildly and said, “If I don’t tell somebody I’ll spontaneously combust, so I’m going to tell you. Bertie can lump it, bless him, because why, after all, shouldn’t I be audibly grateful.”

Mary Bellamy looked fixedly at her friend for a moment and then said, “Grateful?”

“All right. I know I’m incoherent. Here it comes. Darling: I’m to have the lead in Bongo Dillon’s new play. At the Unicorn. Opening in September. Swear you won’t breathe it, but it’s true and it’s settled and the contract’s mine for the signing. My first lead, Mary. Oh God, I’m so happy.”

A hateful and all too-familiar jolt under the diaphragm warned Miss Bellamy that she had been upset. Simultaneously she knew that somehow or another she must run up a flag of welcome, must show a responsive warmth, must override the awful, menaced, slipping feeling, the nausea of the emotions that Pinky’s announcement had churned up.

“Sweetie-pie!” she said. “How wonderful!” It wasn’t, she reflected, much cop as an expression of delighted congratulation from an old chum, but Pinky was too excited to pay any attention. She went prancing on about the merits of her contract, the glories of the role, the nice behaviour of the Management (Miss Bellamy’s Management, as she sickeningly noted), and the feeling that at last this was going to be It. All this gave Miss Bellamy a breather. She began to make fairly appropriate responses. Presently when Pinky drew breath, she was able to say with the right touch of down-to-earth honesty:

“Pinky, this is going to be your Great Thing.”

“I know it! I feel it myself,” Pinky said soberly and added, “Please God, I’ll have what it takes. Please God, I will.”

“My dear, you will,” she rejoined and for the life of her couldn’t help adding, “Of course, I haven’t read the play.”

“The purest Bongo! Comedy with a twist. You know? Though I says it as shouldn’t, it’s right up my cul-de-sac. Bongo says he had me in mind all the time he was writing it.”

Miss Bellamy laughed. “Darling! We do know our Bongo, don’t we? The number of plays he’s said he’d written for me and when one looked at them—!”

With one of her infuriating moments of penetration, Pinky said, “Mary! Be pleased for me.”

“But, sweetie, naturally I’m pleased. It sounds like a wonderful bit of luck and I hope with all my heart it works out.”

“Of course, I know it means giving up my part in Richard’s new one for you. But, face it, there wasn’t much in it for me, was there? And nothing was really settled, so I’m not letting the side down, am I?”

Miss Bellamy couldn’t help it. “My dear,” she said with a kindly laugh, “we’ll lose no sleep over that little problem: the part’ll cast itself in two seconds.”

“Exactly!” Pinky cried happily and Miss Bellamy felt one of her rare onsets of rage begin to stir. She said:

“But you were talking about Bertie, darling. Where does he come in?”

“Aha!” Pinky said maddeningly and shook her finger.

At this juncture Gracefield, the butler, arrived with a drinks tray.

Miss Bellamy controlled herself. “Come on,” she said, “I’m going to break my rule, too. We must have a drink on this, darling.”

“No, no no!”

“Yes, yes, yes. A teeny one. Pink for Pinky?”

She stood between Pinky and the drinks and poured out one stiff and one negligible gin-and-bitters. She gave the stiff one to Pinky.

“To your wonderful future, darling,” she said. “Bottoms up!”

“Oh dear!” Pinky said. “I shouldn’t.”

“Never mind.”

They drank.

“And Bertie?” Miss Bellamy asked presently. “Come on. You know I’m as silent as the grave.”

The blush that long ago had earned Pinky her nickname appeared in her cheeks. “This really is a secret,” she said. “Deep and deadly. But I’m sure he won’t mind my telling you. You see, it’s a part that has to be dressed up to the hilt — five changes and all of them grand as grand. Utterly beyond me and my little woman in Bayswater. Well! Bertie, being so much mixed up with the Management, has heard all about it, and do you know, darling, he’s offered, entirely of his own accord, to do my clothes. Designs, materials, making—everything from Saracen. And all completely free-ers. Isn’t that kind?”

Wave after wave of fury chased each other like electrical frequencies through Miss Bellamy’s nerves and brain. She had time to think: “I’m going to throw a temperament and it’s bad for me,” and then she arrived at the point of climax.

The explosion was touched off by Bertie himself, who came tripping back with a garland of tuberoses twined round his person. When he saw Pinky he stopped short, looked from her to Miss Bellamy and turned rather white.

“Bertie,” Pinky said. “I’ve split on you.”

“How could you!” he said. “Oh Pinky, how could you!”

Pinky burst into tears.

“I don’t know!” she stammered. “I didn’t mean to, Bertie darling. Forgive me. I was high.”

“Stay me with flagons!” he said in a small voice. Miss Bellamy, employing a kind of enlargement of herself that was technically one of her most telling achievements, crossed to him and advanced her face to within four inches of his own.

“You rat, Bertie,” she said quietly. “You little, two-timing, double-crossing, dirty rat.”

And she wound her hands in his garland, tore it off him and threw it in his face.