Symposium (17 page)

Annabel
and Hurley met for a lunch-time sandwich and a drink in the hotel bar across
the way. To Annabel’s satisfaction Hurley was amazed at the story. ‘I myself’,
he said, ‘felt there was something odd about the girl. Chris doesn’t believe
for a minute she met William Damien by accident. Of course, one doesn’t want to
interfere, it’s nothing to do with us, basically. It’s only that I hope Hilda
Damien’s all right.’ He said this with a little laugh.

‘Oh,
after all, the girl herself was never accused of anything,’ Annabel said. ‘Of
course, when there’s madness in the family …’ Her act of gossip had actually
made her feel better. She went on to talk to Hurley about her proposed
television documentary of his life and work. ‘I hope’, she said, ‘we could
include Charterhouse.’

‘As you
know, I think a butler’s out of place when you’re dealing with art,’ Hurley
said.

‘Maybe
so,’ said Annabel. ‘From the psychological point of view, though, there is
always the appeal of devotion. If you are shown with a devoted servant or a
devoted friend, that somehow appeals; it shows that you inspire devotion.’

‘Oh,
Charterhouse hasn’t been with us for long. I don’t know about devotion. Chris
is devoted to me, she must be or she wouldn’t put up with me as she does. And
I’m devoted to her.’ But his thoughts were not on any television programme.

He said
he had to go, and kissed Annabel; ‘See you Thursday night.’

Hilda was on her way to
London from Australia. She intended to settle the flat in Hampstead, her
wedding present to William and Margaret, and install their surprise bonus of
the newly acquired painting by Claude Monet of which all Hilda knew as yet was
that it was a joyful view of the Thames painted in 1870.

She
enjoyed these long flights to England. One could forget business, read, sleep,
relax and dream. With only six first-class passengers on this flight one could
have plenty of attention. Almost too much.

Across
the aisle was a white-haired healthy-looking man, not essentially unlike herself,
but in a decidedly masculine cast, so that the likeness would not have been
apparent to a casual observer, although their suitability as companions on the
voyage was somehow evident. He came from the same type of highly financed and
good-natured people as Hilda.

They
gave each other a polite small smile when the steward came round offering
drinks.

‘Do you
like flying?’ said the man. His voice was American or Canadian.

‘I do,
in fact. It’s a relaxation,’ said Hilda. ‘I used to be afraid of flying but I
got over it.’

‘One
does. Best not to think about it. Destiny is destiny, after all. Just relax, as
you say. At least, there’s nothing we can do, so we might as well enjoy it.’

‘I
believe in destiny,’ said Hilda.

On the
phone to Chris when she was settled into her rooms at the Ritz, she said:

‘I met
a charming man on the plane, a widower. Guess who he is, he’s Andrew J. Barnet
of the construction and engineering people. Really so nice. It made my journey.
He’s in London a few days and we’re having dinner on Friday.’

‘But
we’ll see you Thursday, Hilda. You’ll look in after dinner, won’t you?’

‘After
dinner. With Margaret and William out of the way at your house I want to take
advantage of their absence to take in the Monet. What a surprise! I hope they
appreciate it.’

‘What’s
it like?’

‘I
haven’t seen it myself, yet.’

‘Are
you busy tonight?’ said Chris.

‘No,
are you? Come here and dine with me.’

‘Have a
rest,’ said Chris.

‘I’m
not tired.’

‘I’ll
look in after dinner. Perhaps Hurley will come. We want to talk to you.’

‘Me,
too.’

When
Chris and Hurley arrived at the Ritz to see Hilda they found her admiring an
enormous bunch of flowers of every conceivable kind, in season and out of
season.

‘How
lovely,’ said Chris. ‘Compliments of the management?’

‘No, my
travelling companion.’ Hilda seemed very amused, almost laughing at herself.

‘Do
William and Margaret know you’re in London?’ Chris said.

‘Not
yet.’

‘What
do you feel about Margaret?’

‘You
know how I feel. I don’t trust her. There’s something odd. I’ll never believe
she met William in Marks & Spencer’s fruit section by chance.’

‘People
meet people by chance. You met your admirer who sent these flowers by chance,’
Hurley said.

‘Let’s
hope it was lucky chance,’ said Chris.

‘I
don’t believe Margaret’s particular story, that they met by chance,’ said
Hilda. A little later when they had settled with their coffee and drinks this
clever woman said, ‘What have you got to tell me?’

‘Nothing,’
said Hurley, the whole scene appearing too absurd to be real. Here he was with
Chris, come to pass on hearsay about Hilda’s new daughter-in-law. It was
altogether too low. Chris kept quiet, too. She followed his feeling. It was the
following morning on the phone that Hilda got the new information. Chris told
her as neatly and briskly as possible.

‘But’,
Chris added, ‘just because she’s been mixed up in all those disasters doesn’t
mean —‘It’s been going on inside me that she’s not right,’ said Hilda. ‘I’ve
been wondering if all mothers-in-law are like that.’

‘I
think, up to a point, most of them are,’ Chris offered, It was apparent she was
very embarrassed when it came to openly deprecating a newly married girl to
her mother-in-law.

However,
before the conversation ended she said, ‘Be careful, Hilda.’

‘I
promised to go to St Andrews on Saturday morning to stay with the Murchies. Do
you think I shouldn’t go? Should I make an excuse?’ said Hilda.

‘I
don’t know. Just be careful, Hilda.’

‘Luke,’ said Ella, ‘you’re
not looking so well, these days. Are you studying too hard? — All those evening
jobs etcetera etcetera etcetera.’

‘I jog
every morning,’ Luke said.

‘My
God, you don’t! How much energy do you have to spend?’

‘Energy
to burn,’ said Luke.

‘But
you don’t look so well,’ said Ella.

Luke
was on his way out with a tote-bag. He had come to collect some things he had
left behind the last time he stayed at the flat. It looked very much as if Luke
was leaving for good.

‘Who
gave you that marvellous watch?’ said Ella.

‘A
gentleman gave it to me.’

‘You
can’t be studying seriously,’ Ella said. ‘It’s not possible. You have a career
ahead of you, a brain. You should give up your gentlemen. You must have dropped
out from your studies.’

‘Must
I?’

‘Almost
certainly,’ she said.

‘Have
you decided on a flat?’ said Luke, as if to remind her that he had not neglected
her recently.

‘Yes,
Luke, I think I’m settled on the second one. Bloomsbury is rather attractive.
I’ll let you know as soon as it’s settled. It was good of you to find it.’

He
lifted his tote-bag and went to the door.

‘See
you on Thursday,’ he said.

‘Thursday?’

‘The
dinner at Mrs Chris Donovan’s,’ he said.

‘Oh
yes, of course. You’re helping out.’

He left
in the haste that denoted other, more important, business.

Luke
was gone. He was away, out of her range of influence, out of Ernst’s orbit.
They had as good as lost Luke, both of them. ‘A gentleman’ had given him the
watch. Why, she wondered, did he waste his time doing odd jobs like serving at
table for dinner parties?

Ernst
arrived at that moment. She recognized the rattle of his key in the lock that was
special to him. ‘I just saw Luke downstairs,’ he said, stroking back his hair.

‘Yes,
he came to collect some things of his. What did he say?’

‘I
didn’t have a chance to speak to him. He just waved and threw his bag into the
car. And he drove off. A Porsche, very expensive and new. I wonder whose it is?’

‘Probably
his own,’ said Ella.

‘The
world is going mad,’ said Ernst. ‘He serves at table and flashes about with
expensive clothes and a Porsche, latest model. Did you see his clothes?’

‘I
didn’t notice the clothes,’ Ella said. ‘But there’s something wrong.’

‘The
world is going mad. I’ve just heard from my office in Brussels today about a
simultaneous interpreter who went mad from exhaustion. He interpreted
everything wildly wrong at an international meeting. Then he took a knife and
went round threatening everybody.’

Ella
brought him his drink. ‘Simultaneous interpreters have nervous problems,’ she
said. Perhaps his story referred to Luke. Ernst often said one thing with
reference to another. But Ella couldn’t see any connection in this case, and
didn’t care.

MARGARET
had given up her job with the petrol company when she got married.
She knew nothing about a painting by Monet having been sold at Sotheby’s. In
fact she had lost interest in that type of work; it had served her purpose. She
stared at Hilda when she came to lunch, the day after her arrival in London.

Hilda’s
first thought was that Margaret knew about her purchase of the Monet. It had
been in Margaret’s line of business to know about the sale at Sotheby’s. On the
other hand, the purchaser’s name had been kept secret. Only Hurley and Chris
knew she was now the owner.

Everything
went through Hilda’s head, every suspicion. Hilda chatted while they waited for
William to appear for lunch. In the meantime she was aware of her own great
prosperity and she thought of Margaret and the waste of life in her past, and
she could swear that the way the girl was looking at her meant she was plotting
against her.

She
remembered the night and two days she had spent at the Murchies’.

‘I’m
not sure I’m going to manage to come north at the weekend,’ she said. ‘There
are so many business things to see to.’

‘Don’t
say that, please don’t say that,’ said Margaret in her softest voice. ‘William
will be desperately disappointed. We were counting on a weekend in the country
with you. Mum and Daddy are looking forward to it. They have so little — one
has to think of
les autres.’

Hilda’s
suspicions were a whirling panic. She couldn’t put her finger on it; yes, she
could put her finger on it. The Monet, the new painting, Margaret must know it
was now Hilda’s and had not foreseen that it would be a wedding present for
her, for William. Why Hilda, an even-headed woman, should imagine herself to be
in danger because of the Monet, merely, can only be explained by the panic that
Margaret provoked in her. Destiny, my destiny, thought Hilda. Is she going to
poison me? What is she plotting? She is plotting something. This is a
nightmare.

Hilda
was right. Except that in the destiny of the event Margaret could have saved
herself the trouble, the plotting. It was the random gang, through the
informers Luke and Charterhouse, of which Margaret knew nothing, who were to
kill Hilda Damien for her Monet.

‘I
could fly up on Saturday,’ Hilda offered. ‘I’m very tied up before then.’

‘Fine,’
Margaret said, ‘fine.’

William
arrived less than fifteen minutes after Hilda. He relieved the tension; but he
wondered why his mother looked distracted.

The day of the dinner,
18th October, in the morning, a large van drew up outside Chris Donovan’s
house in Islington. It was a great consignment of furniture for Hurley Reed
that he had told his widowed mother several times not to send. She had just
moved to a smaller house near Boston and she had felt the only thing to do with
the surplus furniture, practically a houseful, was to ship it to Hurley, her
only offspring. Hurley had thought that the last telephone conversation he had
with his mother had settled the matter. ‘I don’t have room for it,’ he had said,
not once but over and over again. And she, equally, repeated that she couldn’t
possibly send such good furniture to be sold, it should be kept ‘in the
family’. ‘What family?’ he had demanded. His mother knew very well he had been
living with Chris all these years, she had even met Chris, it had all been very
amicable. But still she couldn’t get it out of her head that Hurley ‘might get
married one day’ and need that furniture, those bedsteads, tables, sideboards,
hanging cupboards, thick wood and studded-leather chairs, corner cupboards,
made of mahogany, walnut, cherry wood. Not to mention the ornamental lamps and
the bronze horsemen that Hurley knew had been wont to stand on or hover over
these lump-masses of wood. In spite of his pleas, she had shipped them off to
Hurley, transit paid; and here was the van taking up nearly all the road, and
the moving men descending in their overalls, throwing open the back doors of
the van, ready for action.