To Fear a Painted Devil (8 page)

Then Marvell rescued them and took them into the dining room.

B
y the time Greenleaf and Bernice got to Hallows everyone had arrived. He had been called out to a man with renal colic and it was eight before he got back. Fortunately Bernice never nagged but waited for him patiently, smoking and playing patience in the morning room.

‘I shall wear my alpaca jacket,’ Greenleaf said. ‘So
it makes me look like a bowls player? What do I care? I’m not a teenager.’

‘No, darling,’ said Bernice. ‘You’re a very handsome mature man. Who wants to be a teenager?’

‘Not me, unless you can be one too.’

Well-contented with each other, they set off in a happy frame of mind. They took the short cut across the Green and paused to watch the swans. Greenleaf held his wife’s hand.

‘At last,’ Denholm Smith-King said as they appeared in the patio. ‘I was just saying to Joan, is there a doctor in the house?’

‘Ha, ha,’ said Greenleaf mechanically. ‘I hope no-one’s going to need one. I’ve come to enjoy myself.’ He waved to Tamsin who came from the record-player to greet him. ‘Happy birthday. Nice of you to ask us.’ He pointed to the now loaded table. ‘What’s all this?’

‘My lovely presents. Look, chocs from Oliver and Nancy, this marvellous bag thing from Edith.’ Tamsin held the gifts up in turn, pointing at the bag as she raised it. ‘Sweet delicious
marrons glacés
from Joan, and Crispin brought me—what d’you think? Wine and roses. Wasn’t that lovely?’

Marvell smiled from behind her, looking boyish. ‘Thy shadow, Cynara,’ he said. ‘The night is thine.…’

‘So kind! And Bernice …’ She unwrapped the tiny phial of scent Bernice had put into her hand. ‘Nuit de Beltane! How gorgeous. And I’ve just been telling Nancy how lovely she smells. Imagine, she’s wearing it herself. You’re all so good to me.’ She waved a long brown hand as if their munificence exhausted her, making her more languid than usual.

Greenleaf crammed himself into a small wicker
armchair. From within the dining room the music had begun the Beguine.

‘Your daughter not coming?’ he said to Edith Gaveston.

She sniffed. ‘Much too square for Linda.’

‘I suppose so.’

Tamsin had gone, swept away in the arms of Oliver Gage.

‘If you’ve a minute,’ said Denholm Smith-King, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you for ages. It’s about a lump I’ve got under my arm.…’

Greenleaf, preparing for a busman’s holiday, took the drink Patrick held out to him, but Smith-King was temporarily diverted. He looked quickly about him as if to make sure that most of the others were dancing, and he touched Patrick’s arm nervously.

‘Oh, Pat, old man.…’

‘Not now, Denholm.’ Patrick’s smile was brief, mechanical, gone in a flash. ‘I don’t care to mix business with pleasure.’

‘Later then?’

Patrick glanced at the ashtray Smith-King was filling with stubs, opened the cigarette box insolently and let the lid fall almost instantly.

‘I’m not surprised you’ve got a lump,’ he said, ‘but don’t bore my guests, will you?’

‘Funny chap,’ Smith-King said and an uneasy flush seeped across his face. ‘Doesn’t care what he says.’ The red faded as Patrick strolled away. ‘Now about this said lump.…’

Greenleaf turned towards him and tried to look as if he was listening while keeping his thoughts and half an eye on the other guests.

Most of them were his patients except the Selbys
and the Gavestons who were on Dr. Howard’s private list, but he sized them up now from a psychological rather than a medical standpoint. As he sometimes said to Bernice, he had to know about human nature, it was part of his job.

The Carnabys now, they weren’t enjoying themselves. They sat apart from the rest in a couple of deck chairs on the lawn and they weren’t talking to each other. Freda had hidden her empty shandy glass under the seat; Carnaby, like a parent clutching his rejected child, sat dourly, holding what looked like a tin in one of Waller’s paper wrappings.

Beyond them among the currant bushes Marvell was showing Joan and Nancy the ancient glories of the Manor kitchen gardens. Greenleaf knew little about women’s fashions but Nancy’s dress looked out of place to him, ill-fitting (she’ll have to watch her weight, said the medical part of him, or her blood pressure will go soaring up in ten years’ time). It contrasted badly with the expensive scent she wore, whiffs of which he had caught while they were standing together by Tamsin’s birthday table. Why, incidentally, had Gage looked as black thunder when Bernice handed over their own phial of perfume?

He was dancing with Tamsin now and of the three couples on the floor they were the best matched. Clare and Walter Miller lumbered past him, resolutely foxtrotting out of time. Rather against her will Bernice had been coaxed into the arms of Old Paul Gaveston who, too conscious of the proprieties to hold her close, stared poker-faced over her shoulder, his embracing hand a good two inches from her back. Greenleaf smiled to himself. Gage was without such inhibitions. His smooth dusky cheek was pressed
close to Tamsin’s, his body fused with hers. They hardly moved but swayed slowly, almost indecently, on a square yard of floor. Well, well, thought Greenleaf. The music died away and broke suddenly into a mambo.

‘The thing is,’ Smith-King was saying, ‘it’s getting bigger. No getting away from it.’

‘I’d better take a look at it.’ Greenleaf said.

A fourth couple had joined the dancers. Greenleaf felt relieved. Patrick was a difficult fellow at the best of times but he could rise to an occasion. It was nice to see him rescuing the Carnaby girl and dancing with her as if he really wanted to.

‘You will?’ Smith-King half-rose. His movement seemed to sketch the shedding of garments.

‘Not now,’ Greenleaf said, alarmed. ‘Come down to the surgery.’

The sun had quite gone now, even the last lingering rays, and dusk was coming to the garden. Tamsin had broken away from Gage and gone to switch on the fairy lights. But for the intervention of his wife who marched on to the patio exclaiming loudly about the gnats, Gage would have followed her.

‘How I hate beastly insects,’ Nancy grumbled. ‘You’d think with all this D.D.T. and everything there just wouldn’t be any more mosquitos.’ She glared at Marvell. ‘I feel itchy all over.’

As if at a signal Walter Miller and Edith Gaveston broke simultaneously into gnat-bite anecdotes. Joan Smith-King gravitated towards Greenleaf as people so often did with minor ailments even on social occasions, and stood in front of him scratching her arms. He got up at once to let her sit next to her husband but as he turned he saw Denholm’s chair was empty.
Then he saw him standing in the now deserted dining room confronting Patrick. The indispensable cigarette was in his mouth. Greenleaf couldn’t hear what he was saying, only Joan’s heavy breathing loud and strained above the buzz of conversation. The cigarette trembled, adhering to Denholm’s lip, and his hands moved in a gesture of hopelessness. Patrick laughed suddenly and turning away, strode into the garden as the lights came on.

Greenleaf, not sensitive to a so-called romantic atmosphere, was unmoved by the strings of coloured globes. But most of the women cried out automatically. Fairy lights were the thing; they indicated affluence, taste, organisation. With little yelps of delight Nancy ran up and down, pointing and exhorting the others to come and have a closer look.

‘So glad you like them,’ Tamsin said. ‘We do.’ Patrick coughed, dissociating himself. He was taking his duties to heart, Greenleaf thought, watching his hand enclose Freda Carnaby’s in a tight grip.

‘Now, have we all got drinks?’ Tamsin reached for Marvell’s empty glass. ‘Crispin, your poor arms!’

‘There are mosquitos at the bottom of your garden,’ Marvell said, laughing. ‘I meant to bring some citronella but I forgot.’

‘Oh, but we’ve got some. I’ll get it.’

‘No, I’ll go. You want to dance.’

Gage had already claimed her, his arm about her waist.

‘I’ll tell you where it is. It’s in the spare bedroom bathroom. Top shelf of the cabinet.’

Joan Smith-King was giggling enviously.

‘Oh, do you have two bathrooms? How grand!’

‘Just through the spare room,’ Tamsin said, ignoring her.

‘You know the way.’

The expression in her eyes shocked Greenleaf. It was as if, he thought, she was playing some dangerous game.

‘I’m being absurd,’ he said to Bernice.

‘Oh, no darling, you’re such a practical man. Why are you being absurd anyway?’

‘Nothing,’ Greenleaf said.

Marvell came back holding a bottle. He had already unstoppered it and was anointing his arms.

‘Thank you so much,’ he said to Tamsin, ‘Madame Tussand.’

Tamsin gabbled at him quickly.

‘You found the stuff? Marvellous. No, sweetie, that isn’t a pun. Come and dance.’

‘I am for other than for dancing measures,’ Marvell laughed. ‘I’ve been in the chamber of horrors and I need a drink.’ He helped himself from the sideboard. ‘You might have warned me.’

‘What
do
you mean, chamber of horrors?’ Nancy was wide-eyed. The party was beginning to flag and she was eager for something to buoy it up and, if possible, prise Oliver away from Tamsin. ‘Have you been seeing ghosts?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Tell, tell!’

Suddenly Tamsin whirled away from Oliver and throwing up her arms, seized Marvell to spin him away past the record player, past the birthday table, across the patio and out on to the lawn.

‘Let’s all go,’ she cried. ‘Come and see the skeleton in the cupboard!’

They began to file out into the hall, the women giggling expectantly. Marvell went first, his drink in his hand. Only Patrick hung back until Freda took his hand and whispered something to him. Even Smith-King, usually obtuse, noticed his unease.

‘Lead on, Macduff!’ he said.

6

I
f it had been earlier in the day or even if the lights had been on it would have looked very different. But as it was—day melting into night, the light half-gone and the air so still that nothing moved, not even the net curtains at the open windows—the effect was instant and, for a single foolish moment, shocking.

Marvell pulled a face. The other men stared, Paul Gaveston making a noise that sounded like a snort. Smith-King whistled, then broke into a hearty laugh.

The women expressed varying kinds of horror, squeals, hands clamped to mouths, but only Freda sounded genuinely distressed. She was standing dose to Greenleaf. He heard her low gasp and felt her shudder.

‘Definitely not my cup of tea,’ Nancy said. ‘Imagine
forgetting it was there and then coming face to face with it in the night on your way to the loo!’

Greenleaf was suddenly sickened. Of all the people in the Selby’s spare room he was the only one who had ever seen an actual head that had been severed from an actual body. The first one he had encountered as a student, the second had been the subject of a post-mortem conducted on a man decapitated in a railway accident Because of this and for other reasons connected with his psychological make-up, he was at the same time more and less affected by the picture than were the other guests.

It was a large picture, an oil painting in a frame of scratched gilt, and it stood propped on the floor against the watered silk wallpaper. Greenleaf knew nothing at all about painting and the view many people take that all life—or all death—is a fit subject for art would have appalled him. Of brushwork, of colour, he was ignorant, but he knew a good deal about anatomy and a fair amount about sexual perversion. Therefore he was able to admire the artist for his accuracy—the hewn neck on the silver platter showed the correct vertebra and the jugular in its proper place—and deplore a mentality which thought sadism a suitable subject for entertainment. Greenleaf hated cruelty; all the suffering of all his ancestors in the ghettos of Eastern Europe was strong within him. He stuck out his thick underlip, took off his glasses and began polishing them on his alpaca jacket.

Thus he was unable to see for a moment the face of the man who stood near him on the other side of Freda Carnaby, the man whose house this was. But he heard the intake of breath and the faint smothered cry.