LITMIR.BIZ

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was swift in her movements and had the silken air of a girl who is, beyond argument, attractive. Alleyn thought her restless and noticed that though she looked gay and brilliant when she talked her face in repose was watchful. Though, during dinner, she spoke most readily to Douglas Grace, her eyes more often were for Fabian Losse.

      The two men were well contrasted. Everything about Fabian Losse, his hollow temples and his nervous hands, his lightly waving hair, was drawn delicately with a sharp pencil. But Captain Grace was a magnificent fellow with a fine moustache, a sleek head and large eyes. His accent was slightly antipodean but his manners were formal. He called Alleyn ‘sir’ each time he spoke to him and was inclined to pin a rather meaningless little laugh on the end of his remarks. He seemed to Alleyn to be an extremely conventional young man.

      Mrs Aceworthy, Arthur Rubrick’s elderly cousin who had come to Mount Moon on the death of his wife, was a large sandy woman with an air of uncertain authority and a tendency to bridle. Her manner towards Alleyn was cautious. He thought that she disapproved of his visit and he wondered how much Fabian Losse had told her. She spoke playfully and in inverted commas of ‘my family’, and seemed to show a preference for the two New Zealanders, Douglas Grace and Ursula Harme.

      The vast landscape outside darkened and the candles on the dining-room table showed ghostly in the uncurtained window panes. When dinner was over they all moved into a comfortable, conglomerate sort of room hung with faded photographs of past cadets and lit cosily by a kerosene lamp. Mrs Aceworthy, with a vague murmur about ‘having to see to things’ left them with their coffee.

      Above the fireplace hung the full-dress portrait of a woman.

      It was a formal painting. The bare arms executed with machine-like precision, flowed wirily from shoulders to clasped hands. The dress was of mustard-coloured satin, very décolleté, and this hue was repeated in the brassy highlights of Mrs Rubrick’s incredibly golden coiffure. The painter had dealt remorselessly with a formidable display of jewellery. It was an Academy portrait by an experienced painter but his habit of flattery had met its Waterloo in Florence Rubrick’s face. No trick of understatement could soften that large mouth, closed with difficulty over protuberant teeth, or modify the acquisitive glare of the pale goitrous eyes which evidently had been fixed on the artist’s and therefore appeared, as laymen will say, to ‘follow one about the room’. Upon each of the five persons seated in Arthur Rubrick’s study did his wife Florence seem to fix her arrogant and merciless stare.

      There was no other picture in the room. Alleyn looked round for a photograph of Arthur Rubrick but could find none that seemed likely.

      The flow of talk, which had run continuously if not quite easily throughout dinner, was now checked. The pauses grew longer and their interruptions more forced. Fabian Losse began to stare expectantly at Alleyn. Douglas Grace sang discordantly under his breath. The two girls fidgeted, caught each other’s eyes, and looked away again.

      Alleyn, sitting in shadow, a little removed from the fireside group, said, ‘That’s a portrait of Mrs Rubrick, isn’t it?’

      It was as if he had gathered up the reins of a team of nervously expectant horses. He saw by their startled glances at the portrait that custom had made it invisible to them, a mere piece of furniture of which, for all its ghastly associations, they were normally unaware. They stared at it now rather stupidly, gaping a little.

      Fabian said, ‘Yes. It was painted ten years ago. I don’t need to tell you it’s by a determined Academician. Rather a pity, really. John would have made something terrific out of Flossie. Or, better still, Agatha Troy.’

      Alleyn, who was married to Agatha Troy, said, ‘I only saw Mrs Rubrick for a few minutes. Is it a good likeness?’

      Fabian and Ursula Harme said, ‘No.’ Douglas Grace and Terence Lynne said, ‘Yes.’

      ‘Hallo!’ said Alleyn. ‘A divergence of opinion?’

      ‘It doesn’t give you any idea of how tiny she was,’ said Douglas Grace, ‘but I’d call it a speaking likeness.’

      ‘Oh, it’s a conscientious map of her face,’ said Fabian.

      ‘It’s a caricature,’ cried Ursula Harme. Her eyes were fixed indignantly on the portrait.

      ‘I should have called it an unblushing understatement,’ said Fabian. He was standing before the fire, his hands on the mantelpiece. Ursula Harme turned to look at him, knitting her brows. Alleyn heard her sigh as if Fabian had wakened some old controversy between them.

      ‘And there’s no vitality in it, Fabian,’ she said anxiously. ‘You must admit that. I mean she was a much more splendid person than that. So marvellously alive.’ She caught her breath at the unhappy phrase. ‘She made you feel like that about her,’ she added. ‘The portrait gives you nothing of it.’

      ‘I don’t pretend to know anything about painting,’ said Douglas Grace, ‘but I do know what I like.’

      ‘Would you believe it?’ Fabian murmured under his breath. He said aloud, ‘Is it so great a merit, Ursy, to be marvellously alive? I find unbounded vitality very unnerving.’

      ‘Not if it’s directed into suitable channels,’ pronounced Grace.

      ‘But hers was. Look what she did!’ said Ursula.

      ‘She was extraordinarily public-spirited, you know,’ Grace agreed. ‘I must say I took my hat off to her for that. She had a man’s grasp of things.’ He squared his shoulders and took a cigar case out of his pocket. ‘Not that I admire managing women,’ he said, sitting down by Miss Lynne. ‘But Auntie Floss was a bit of a marvel. You’ve got to hand it to her, you know.’

      ‘Apart from her work as an MP?’ Alleyn suggested.

      ‘Yes, of course,’ said Ursula, still watching Fabian Losse. ‘I don’t know why we’re talking about her, Fabian, unless it’s for Mr Alleyn’s information.’

      ‘You may say it is,’ said Fabian.

      ‘Then I think he ought to know what a splendid sort of person she was.’

      Fabian did an unexpected thing. He reached out his long arm and touched her lightly on the cheek. ‘Go ahead, Ursy,’ he said gently. ‘I’m all for it.’

      ‘Yes,’ she cried out, ‘but you don’t believe.’

      ‘Never mind. Tell Mr Alleyn.’

      ‘I thought,’ said Douglas Grace, ‘that Mr Alleyn was here to make an expert investigation. I shouldn’t think our ideas of Aunt Florence are likely to be of much help. He wants facts.’

      ‘But you’ll all talk to him about her,’ said Ursula, ‘and you won’t be fair.’

      Alleyn stirred a little in his chair in the shadows. ‘I should be very glad if you’d tell me about her, Miss Harme,’ he said. ‘Please do.’

      ‘Yes, Ursy,’ said Fabian. ‘We want you to. Please do.’

      She looked brilliantly from one to another of her companions. ‘But – it seems so queer. It’s months since we spoke of her. I’m not at all good at expressing myself. Are you serious, Fabian? Is it important?’

      ‘I think so.’

      ‘Mr Alleyn?’

      ‘I think so, too, I want to start with the right idea of your guardian. Mrs Rubrick was your guardian, wasn’t she?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘So you must have known her very well.’

      ‘I think I did. Though we didn’t meet until I was thirteen.’

      ‘I should like to hear how that came about.’

      Ursula leant forward, resting her bare arms on her knees and clasping her hands. She moved into the region of firelight.

      ‘You see –’ she began.

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