Ngaio Marsh - False Scent

“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:

“ Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you .

Happy birthday, dear Mary ,

Happy birthday to you .”

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.