LITMIR.BIZ

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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, all swings and roundabouts.

      ‘You do collect lovely pictures,’ she said.

      ‘Oh, I’m a dedicated magpie. I even collect stamps.’

      ‘Seriously?’

      ‘Passionately,’ he said. He half-closed his eyes and contemplated his picture.

      Verity said, ‘You’re going to hang it where it is, are you?’

      ‘I think so. But whatever I do with it in this silly house is bound to be a compromise,’ he said.

      ‘Does that matter very much?’

      ‘Yes, it does. I lust,’ said Mr Markos, ‘after Quintern Place.’

      He said this with such passion that Verity stared at him.

      ‘Do you?’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely house, of course. But just seeing it from the outside –’

      ‘Ah, but I’ve seen it from inside too.’

      Verity thought what a slyboots old Syb was not to have divulged this visit but he went on to say that on a househunting drive through Kent he saw Quintern Place from afar and had been so struck that he had himself driven up to it there and then.

      ‘Mrs Foster,’ he said, ‘was away but a domestic was persuaded to let me catch a glimpse of the ground floor. It was enough. I visited the nearest land agency only to be told that Quintern was not on their or anybody else’s books and that former enquiries had led to the flattest of refusals. Mine suffered a like fate; there was no intention to sell. So, you may say that in a fit of pique, I bought this monster where I can sit down before my citadel in a state of fruitless siege.’

      ‘Does Sybil know about all this?’

      ‘Not she. The approach has been discreet. Be a dear,’ said Mr Markos, ‘and don’t tell her.’

      ‘All right.’

      ‘How nice you are.’

      ‘But I’m afraid you haven’t a hope.’

      ‘One can but try,’ he said and Verity thought if ever she saw fixity of purpose in a human face, she saw it now, in Mr Markos’s.

      V

      As she drove home, Verity tried to sort out the events of the evening but had not got far with them when, at the bottom of the drive, her headlamps picked up a familiar trudging figure. She pulled up alongside.

      ‘Hullo, Mrs Jim,’ she said. ‘Nip in and I’ll take you home.’

      ‘It’s out of your way, Miss Preston.’

      ‘Doesn’t matter. Come on.’

      ‘Very kind, I’m sure. I won’t say no,’ said Mrs Jim.

      She got in neatly and quickly but settled in her seat with a kind of relinquishment of her body that suggested fatigue.

      Verity asked her if she’d had a long day and she said she had, a bit.

      ‘But the money’s good,’ said Mrs Jim, ‘and with Jim on half-time you can’t say no. There’s always something,’ she added and Verity understood that she referred to the cost of living.

      ‘Do they keep a big staff up there?’ she asked.

      ‘Five if you count the housekeeper. Like the old days,’ Mrs Jim said, ‘when I was in regular service. You don’t see much of them ways now, do you? Like I said to Jim, they’re selling the big houses when they can, for institutions and that. Not trying all out to buy them, like Mr Markos.’

      ‘Is Mr Markos doing that?’

      ‘He’d like to have Quintern,’ said Mrs Jim. ‘He come to ask if it was for sale when Mrs Foster was at Greengages a year ago last April. He was that taken with it, you could see. I was helping spring-clean at the time.’

      ‘Did Mrs Foster know?’

      ‘He never left ’is name. I told her a gentleman had called to enquire, of course. It give me quite a turn when I first see him after he come to the Manor.’

      ‘Did you tell Mrs Foster it was he who’d called?’

      ‘I wasn’t going out to Quintern Place at the time,’ said Mrs Jim shortly, and Verity remembered that there had been a rift.

      ‘It come up this evening in conversation. Mr Alfredo, that’s the butler,’ Mrs Jim continued, ‘reckons Mr Markos is still dead set on Quintern. He says he’s never known him not to get his way once he’s made up his mind to it. You’re suited with a gardener, then?’

      Mrs Jim had a habit of skipping, without notice, from one topic to another. Verity thought she detected a derogatory note but could not be sure. ‘He’s beginning on Friday,’ she said. ‘Have you met him, Mrs Jim?’

      ‘Couldn’t miss ’im, could I?’ she said, rubbing her arthritic knee. ‘Annie Black’s been taking him up and down the village like he was Exhibit A in the horse show.’

      ‘He’ll be company for her.’

      ‘He’s all of that,’ she said cryptically.

      Verity turned into the narrow lane where the Jobbins had their cottage. When they arrived no light shone in any of the windows. Jim and the kids all fast alseep, no doubt. Mrs Jim was slower leaving the car than she had been in entering it and Verity sensed her weariness. ‘Have you got an early start?’ she asked.

      ‘Quintern at eight. It was very kind of you to bring me home, Miss Preston. Ta, anyway. I’ll say good night.’

      That’s two of us going home to a dark house, Verity thought as she turned the car.

      But being used to living alone, she didn’t mind letting herself into Keys House and feeling for the light switch.

      When she was in bed she turned over the events of the evening and a wave of exhaustion came upon her together with a nervous condition she thought of as ‘restless legs’. She realized that the encounter with Basil Schramm (as she supposed she should call him) had been more of an ordeal than she had acknowledged at the time. The past rushed upon her, almost with the impact of her initial humiliation. She made herself relax, physically, muscle by muscle, and then tried to think of nothing.

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