Ngaio Marsh: False Scent

Wave after wave of fury chased each other like electrical frequencies through Miss Bellamy’s nerves and brain. She had time to think: “I’m going to throw a temperament and it’s bad for me,” and then she arrived at the point of climax.

The explosion was touched off by Bertie himself, who came tripping back with a garland of tuberoses twined round his person. When he saw Pinky he stopped short, looked from her to Miss Bellamy and turned rather white.

“Bertie,” Pinky said. “I’ve split on you.”

“How could you!” he said. “Oh Pinky, how could you!”

Pinky burst into tears.

“I don’t know!” she stammered. “I didn’t mean to, Bertie darling. Forgive me. I was high.”

“Stay me with flagons!” he said in a small voice. Miss Bellamy, employing a kind of enlargement of herself that was technically one of her most telling achievements, crossed to him and advanced her face to within four inches of his own.

“You rat, Bertie,” she said quietly. “You little, two-timing, double-crossing, dirty rat.”

And she wound her hands in his garland, tore it off him and threw it in his face.

Mary Bellamy’s temperaments were of rare occurrence but formidable in the extreme and frightening to behold. They were not those regulation theatre tantrums that seem to afford pleasure both to observer and performer; on the contrary they devoured her like some kind of migraine and left her exhausted. Their onset was sudden, their duration prolonged and their sequel incalculable.

Bertie and Pinky, both familiar with them, exchanged looks of despair. Miss Bellamy had not raised her voice, but a kind of stillness seemed to have fallen on the house. They themselves spoke in whispers. They also, out of some impulse of helpless unanimity, said the same thing at the same time.

“Mary!” they said. “Listen! Don’t!”

They knew very well that they had better have held their tongues. Their effort, feeble though it was, served only to inflame her. With an assumption of calmness that was infinitely more alarming than raging hysteria she set about them, concentrating at first on Bertie.

“I wonder,” she said, “what it feels like to be you. I wonder if you enjoy your own cunning. I expect you do, Bertie. I expect you rather pride yourself on your talent for cashing in on other people’s generosity. On mine, for instance.”

“Mary, darling ! Please!”

“Let us,” she continued, trembling slightly, “look at this thing quite calmly and objectively, shall we? I’m afraid it will not be a delicious experience, but it has to be faced.”

Gracefield came in, took one look at his mistress and went out again. He had been with the family for some time.

“I am the last woman in the world,” Miss Bellamy explained, “to remind people of their obligations. The last. However—”

She began to remind Bertie of his obligations. Of the circumstances under which she had discovered him — she did not, to his evident relief, say how many years ago — of how she had given him his first chance; of how, since then, he had never looked back; of how there had been agreement — “gentlemen’s,” she added bitterly — that he would never design for another leading lady in the Management without first consulting her. He opened his mouth, but was obliged without utterance to shut it again. Had he not, she asked, risen to his present position entirely on the wings of her patronage? Besieged as she was by the importunities of the great fashion houses, had she not stuck resolutely to him through thick and thin? And now—

She executed a gesture, Siddons-like in its tragic implications, and began to pace to and fro while Pinky and Bertie hastily made room for her to do so. Her glance lighting for a moment on Pinky she began obliquely to attack her.

“I imagine,” she said, still to Bertie, “that I shall not be accused of lack of generosity. I am generally said, I think, to be a good friend. Faithful and just,” she added, perhaps with some obscure recollection of Mark Antony. “Over and over again, for friendship’s sake, I’ve persuaded the Management to cast actresses who were unable to give me adequate support.”

“Now, look here…!” Pinky began warmly.

“—Over and over again. Timmy said, only the other day: ‘Darling, you’re sacrificing yourself on the altar of your personal loyalties!’ He’s said, over and over again, that he wouldn’t for anybody else under the sun accept the casting as it stood. Only for me…”

“What casting?” Pinky demanded. Miss Bellamy continued to address herself exclusively to Bertie.

“Only for me,” Timmy said, “would he dream of taking into any production of his an artist whose spiritual home was weekly rep. in the ham-counties.”

“Timmy,” Pinky said dangerously, “is producing my play. It’s entirely due to him and the author that I’ve got the part. They told the Management they wanted me.”

Bertie said, “I happen to know that’s perfectly true.”

“Conspiracy!” Miss Bellamy shouted so loudly and suddenly that the others jumped in unison. She was ravaged by a terrible vision of Bertie, Pinky and Timmy all closeted with the Management and agreeing to say nothing to her of their plots and plans. In a Delphic fury she outlined this scene. Bertie, who had been moodily disengaging himself from the remnants of his garland, showed signs of fight. He waited his chance to cut in.

“Speaking,” he began, “as a two-timing, double-crossing rat, which God knows I am not , I take leave to assure you, darling Mary, that you’re wrecking yourself for nothing. I’m doing Pinky’s gowns out of friendliness and my name isn’t going to appear and I must say I’d have thought…”

He was allowed to get no further.

“It’s not,” Miss Bellamy said, “what you’ve done, both of you, but the revolting way you’ve done it. If you’d come to me in the first instance and said…” Then followed an exposition of what they should have said and of the generous response they would have enjoyed if they’d said it. For a moment it looked as if the row was going to degenerate into an aimless and repetitive wrangle. It would probably have done so if Pinky had not said abruptly:

“Now, look here, Mary! It’s about time you faced up to yourself. You know jolly well that anything you’ve done for either of us has been paid back with interest. I know you’ve had a lot to do with my getting on the Management’s short list and I’m grateful, but I also know that it’s suited you very well to have me there. I’m a good foil to you. I know all your gimmicks. How you like to be fed lines. And when you dry, as nowadays you very often do, I can fill in like nobody’s business. In the gentle art of letting myself be upstaged, cheated out of points and fiddled into nonentity, I’ve done you proud and you’ll find I’m damn hard to replace.”

“My God ! My God ! that I should have to listen to this!”

“As for Bertie…”

“Never mind, Pinky,” he said quickly.

“I do mind. It’s true you gave Bertie his start, but what hasn’t he done for you? Your decor! Your clothes! Face it, Mary, without the Saracen Concealed Curve you’d be the Grand Old Lady of the Hip Parade.”

Bertie gave a hysterical hoot of laughter and looked terrified.

“The truth is,” Pinky said, “you want it both ways, Mary. You want to boss everybody and use everybody for your own ends and at the same time you want us all to wallow in your wake saying how noble and generous and wonderful you are. You’re a cannibal, Mary, and it’s high time somebody had the guts to tell you so.”