The Evil at Monteine. Brian Ball
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and excitement behind him to fill a dozen lives. Unlimited prospects before him—”
“Depending on your reports,” Richard pointed out. “I haven’t officially been offered a job yet, and I’ve yet to consider the offer if and when it comes.”
“Outspoken and crisp,” said Eric Fitch.
It was coming. I sensed it in the slight edge of malice in Fitch’s tone, “And with the finest prospects a man could wish for in this age,” said Jensen, unperturbed by Richard’s interruption. “Everything about Richard says he’s a notable acquisition for the company.”
“Of course!” I burst out.
“Steady on the wine,” said Richard very quietly, for I was on my second glass of the green-white wine by now. I hadn’t noticed that the waiter had refilled my glass.
“You’re both lucky,” said Jensen. “A meeting of the talents. Embodied in the male, strength and courage. And, I if it isn’t too fanciful, in the lady here, all the qualities of creativeness and beauty that best complement the man of action. Ah, the pheasant!”
The little waiter made quite a business of removing the cover of the huge platter. There were six pheasants, neatly arrayed two by two, cock and hen together. I might have felt hungry if I hadn’t been so apprehensive. The carving and the serving took long enough for me to recover my composure, and Richard and I were able to take a little time out to talk about ordinary things. He asked about Tony. I said he wasn’t expecting me till the weekend. I asked if there were any other guests at the Castle; there weren’t. Then I wanted to whisper that I had overheard the bar-steward and the others, but I sensed an alertness as they made jokes about one another’s appetites; without seeming to, they were listening. When Jensen took the carver and flicked it around the steel, I felt he was about to dissect me. I took the recommended portion.
Red wine was poured, dark-red and beautiful in the cut-glass goblets.
Fitch neatly chomped his way through the large plateful of food before him; Jensen guzzled noisily, doing a Falstaff act. Monica Sievel began to draw Richard out in conversation. She asked about simple things, beginning with food at sea. I listened carefully, but they all seemed to have forgotten about me,
Richard explained that the storage space on his latest yacht was enough for a complete range of frozen and dehydrated foods, He was enjoying himself thoroughly; he loves talking about boats.
I began to unwind, thankful that I had been ignored. Richard finished telling quite an amusing story about cooking a Christmas dinner for himself in a Force Seven gale along the coast of South-West Africa, when Monica Sievel turned to me and said:
“You’ll have to get Richard to write it all down for your children, my dear!”
“Children?” I said, and noticed that my glass had been filled again. Fitch was watching me.
“I made a few notes of my voyages,” Richard said. “A sort of extended log, but I wouldn’t know how to make stories of them. Not my line of country at all.”
He didn’t know that the Sievel woman was needling me about my son.
“Richard’s often told my son about his experiences,” I said, very deliberately. “Tony would keep Richard telling stories for hours at bedtimes if I let him, wouldn’t he, Richard?”
Richard was quite unaware of the byplay. “Little beggar,” he said. “As a matter of fact, he made me promise him I’d take him along to Burnham. She’s in the boatyard now,” he explained to the others. “I wanted a couple of modifications to the line of the keel. I don’t suppose Tony told you about it, love?”
“Just before I came away.”
Now I feared they would begin to probe into my early adult life and bring out the fact that I hadn’t been married to Tony’s father.
I realized that I was losing my cool, for my cheeks burned.
But it didn’t happen. Instead, Eric Fitch said, “You haven’t had any of the sauce!”
“No.”
I caught the whiff of perfume again. Estée Lauder. A friend of mine used it.
Richard helped me to the sauce, though I could cheerfully have hurled my plate and its contents at the effeminate little man beside me. Fitch and the Sievel woman would go for me now.
“I can’t think when I’ve had a better meal,” Richard said appreciatively. “What do you say, Anne?”
He knew I was distraught, but I think he had put it down to the hurt ankle.
“Anne’s not feeling too well, are you?” said the Sievel woman. “Stop filling her glass,” she told Eric Fitch, who was pouring more of the heavy red wine into my glass. “She’s a working girl and she’s obviously had a long day.”
“It’s a marvellous meal,” I said. “And I’d enjoy another glass of the burgundy.” I was at the stage where I would do exactly the opposite of what anyone suggested.
“I like to see women eating well. And drinking,” said Fitch. “That’s the charm of primitive communities, you know. I was commissioned to do a study of aboriginal eating customs a couple of years back. One of the big American philanthropic trusts put up the money. Go and research the their food fetishes, they commanded. And I went. Extraordinary people. Odd customs.”
“Don’t be mysterious, Eric,” reproved the Sievel woman. “The aboriginals. Come on, what was odd about them?”
“Nothing to do with the their food—a boring diet. It happened whilst I was at a small town in the interior, a quite horrid experience. The local traders knew I was interested in the aboriginals’ customs, and they knew too that I was some sort of scientist.”
Fitch smiled.
“I saw a dead man speak.”
It should have been shocking or at least have produced a dramatic effect, but it didn’t shock or awe me.
I exploded with laughter into the long silence that followed his announcement. Red wine sprayed over the tablecloth. I gulped and gasped for air, and began to laugh aloud. As I spluttered and howled, I turned to Richard and saw an expression of shock on his face, and I knew that at last I had done what the three interrogators wished. I had offended him.
Richard used his napkin to help me tidy up, and the waiter appeared with fresh table linen. To cover my embarrassment, the other three began a conversation about similar occurrences in their lives.
“All right now?” asked Richard, when I had recovered. “Must have gone down the wrong way,” he said quietly. “Eric, what were you saying?”
“It wasn’t much of a story,” Fitch said. “Nothing more than an apparently supernatural manifestation which could be rationalized by anyone with a minimum of scientific training.”
I felt that I had to say something, in case Richard believed me to be insensitive.
“What was the explanation for your dead aboriginal’s continued speechifying?”
“It was all to do with air pressure,” he replied. “In itself quite a remarkable phenomenon. You see, the dead man was kept perfectly preserved in the desert air. He had been buried, though that isn’t the right term for it—for they used a stilted platform for their dead—in a small depression in the desert where the evening winds coming down from two mountain ranges met at sundown. A small amount of air which had expanded during the heat of the day became cooler and passed through his vocal cords.” He paused. “Yet the whole tribe believes he is one of the living dead.”
The room was very quiet. I couldn’t see a pattern in the way the conversation was leading. There was a disturbing undercurrent of connivance in the glances of the three International psychologists.
“Nonsense, Eric,” said the Sievel woman. She indicated the remains on her plate.