A Surfeit of Lampreys. Ngaio Marsh
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recovery from this second and formidable shock. Charlot met her brother and sister-in-law halfway across the room. Her manner held a miraculous balance between the over-cordial and the too-casual. Her children and her husband supported her admirably. Lady Katherine for the moment, was too rattled by the Lampreys’ news of impending disaster to make any disturbance. She sat quietly in her chair.
Roberta found herself shaking hands with an extremely old couple. The Marquis of Wutherwood and Rune was sixty years of age but these years sat heavily upon him and he looked like an old man. His narrow head, sunken between high shoulders, poked forward with an air that was at once mean and aggressive. His face was colourless. The bridge of his nose was so narrow that his eyes appeared to be impossibly close set. His mouth drooped querulously and the length of his chin, though prodigious, was singularly unexpressive of anything but obstinacy. His upper teeth projected over his under lip and hinted at a high and narrow palate. These teeth gave him an unpleasingly feminine appearance increased by his chilly old-maidish manner, which suggested that he lived in a state of perpetual offence. Roberta found herself wondering if he could possibly be as disagreeable as he looked.
His wife was about fifty years of age. She was dark, extremely sallow, and fat. There was a musty falseness about the dank hair which she wore over her ears in sibylline coils. She painted her face, but with such inattention to detail that Roberta was reminded of a cheap print in which the colours had slipped to one side, showing the original structure of the drawing underneath. She had curious eyes, very pale, with tiny pupils, and muddy whites. They were so abnormally sunken that they seemed to reflect no light and this gave them a veiled appearance which Roberta found disconcerting, and oddly repellent. Her face had once been round but like her make-up it had slipped and now hung in folds and pockets about her lips which were dragged down at the corners. Roberta saw that Lady Wutherwood had a trick of parting and closing her lips. It was a very slight movement but she did it continually with a faint click of sound. And in the corners of her lips there was a kind of whiteness that moved when they moved. ‘Henry is right,’ thought Roberta, ‘she is disgusting.’
Lord Wutherwood greeted the Lampreys without much show of cordiality. When he saw Lady Katherine Lobe his attitude stiffened still further. He turned to his brother and in a muffled voice said: ‘We’re in a hurry, Charles.’
‘Oh,’ said Lord Charles. ‘Are you? Oh – well –’
‘Are you?’ Charlot repeated. ‘Not too much of a hurry, I hope, Gabriel. We never see anything of you.’
‘You never come to Deepacres when we ask you, Imogen.’
‘I know. We’d adore to come, especially the children, but you know it’s so frightfully expensive to travel, even in England. You see we can’t all get into one car –’
‘The fare, third class return, is within the reach of most people.’
‘Miles beyond us, I’m afraid,’ said Charlot with a charming air of ruefulness. ‘We’re cutting down everything. We never budge from where we are.’
Lord Wutherwood turned to Henry.
‘Enjoy your trip to the Côte d’Azur?’ he asked. ‘Saw your photograph in one of these papers. In my day we didn’t strip ourselves naked and wallow in front of press photographers but I suppose you like that sort of thing.’
‘Enormously, sir,’ said Henry coldly.
There was a slight pause. Roberta felt uncomfortably that Charlot’s plan should be amended and that they should leave the field to Lord Charles. She wondered if she herself should slip out of the room. Her thoughts must have appeared in her face for Henry caught her eye, smiled, and shook his head. The Wutherwoods were now seated side by side on the sofa. Baskett came in with the sherry.
‘Ah, sherry,’ said Lord Charles. Henry began to pour it out. Charlot made desperate efforts with her brother-in-law. Lady Katherine leant forward in her chair and addressed Lady Wutherwood.
‘Well, Violet,’ she said, ‘I hear you have taken up conjuring.’
‘You couldn’t be more mistaken,’ said Lady Wutherwood in a deep voice. She spoke with a very slight accent, slurring her words together. After each phrase she rearranged her mouth with those clicking movements and stealthily touched away the white discs at the corners. But in a little while they re-formed.
‘Aunty Kit,’ cried Frid, ‘will you have some sherry? Aunt Violet?’
‘No thank you, my dear,’ said Lady Katherine.
‘Yes,’ said Lady Wutherwood.
‘You’d better not, V.,’ said Lord Wutherwood. ‘You know what’ll happen.’
Mike walked to the end of the sofa and stared fixedly at his aunt. Lord Charles turned to his brother with an air of cordiality. ‘It’s a sherry that I think you rather like, Gabriel, don’t you?’ he said, ‘Corregio del Martez, ’79.’
‘If you can afford a sherry like that –’ began Lord Wutherwood. Henry hurriedly placed a glass at his elbow.
‘Aunt Violet,’ asked Mike suddenly, ‘can you do the rope trick? I bet you can’t. I bet you can’t do that and I bet you can’t saw a lady in half.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Mike,’ said Patch.
‘Mikey,’ said his mother, ‘run and find Baskett, darling, and ask him to take care of Uncle Gabriel’s chauffeur. I suppose he’s there, isn’t he, Gabriel?’
‘He’ll do very well in the car. Your aunt’s maid is there, too. Your aunt insists on cartin’ her about with us. I strongly object of course, but that makes no difference. She’s a nasty type.’
Lady Wutherwood laughed rather madly. Her husband turned on her. ‘You know what I mean, V.,’ he said. ‘Tinkerton’s a bad lot. Put it bluntly, she’s damn well debauched my chauffeur. It’s been goin’ on under your nose for years.’
Charlot evidently decided that it would be better not to have heard this embarrassing parenthesis. ‘Of course they must come up,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Nanny will adore to see Tinkerton. Mikey, ask Baskett to bring Tinkerton and Giggle up to the servants’ sitting-room and give them a drink of tea or something. Ask politely, won’t you?’
‘Okay,’ said Mike. He hopped on one foot and turned to look at Lady Wutherwood.
‘Isn’t it pretty funny?’ he asked. ‘Your chauffeur’s called Giggle and there’s a man in the kitchen called Grumble. He’s a –’
‘Michael!’ said Lord Charles, ‘do as you’re told at once.’
Mike went out, followed unostentatiously by Stephen who shut the door behind him. Stephen returned in a few moments.
‘I wish you’d tell me, Violet,’ said Lady Katherine, ‘what it is you have taken up. One hears such extraordinary reports.’
‘She’s dabblin’ in some damn-fool kind of occultism,’ said Lord Wutherwood, turning pale with annoyance.
Roberta noticed that when he stopped speaking his upper teeth closed firmly on his under lip causing his whole mouth to settle down at the corners in an expression of maddening complacency.
‘Gabriel,’ said his wife, ‘believes in what he sees. Nothing else. He thinks himself fortunate in that. He is not so fortunate as he supposes.’
‘What the devil d’you mean?’ demanded Lord Wutherwood. ‘Don’t look at me like that, V., I don’t like it. These friends of yours are makin’ a damned unpleasant woman of you. Of all the miserable footlin’ crew! What d’you think you’re doin’ huntin’ up a parcel of spooks? A lot of trickery. I’ve told you before, I’ve a damn good mind to speak to the police about the whole affair. If it wasn’t for draggin’ my name into it –’
‘You had