“That is encouraging news.” The glacially serene smile returned. “And to what would you attribute your good health, Mrs Pargeter?” (The ‘what’ was heavily aspirated. Miss Naismith always gave full value to any ‘h’ following a ‘w’.)
The new resident sighed. “Well, I suppose while Mr Pargeter was alive I would have said, ‘Regular servicing’, but I can’t really use that joke now, can I?” She smiled sweetly at her landlady. “Just go and freshen up upstairs.”
And she marched determinedly up the main staircase in the wake of Newth, who was carrying two more suitcases. Miss Naismith’s smile remained frozen in position.
♦
By five to four all of the other residents of the Devereux were gathered in the Seaview Lounge. The tables were laid with crisp white linen; they awaited only the arrival of the chambermaid-cum-waitress-cum-skivvy, Loxton, with her trolley, bearing its load of silver-plate tea services, each pot carefully prepared according to the unchanging specifications of its destined drinker.
There was a considerable degree of interior speculation about the new arrival, but the residents of the Devereux were all far too genteel to voice any of it.
In the bay window, Colonel Wicksteed peered out to sea through his binoculars. He stood resolutely upright, daring age to curve the line of his spine. By the Colonel’s side, stacked into an armchair under a tartan rug, Mr Dawlish vaguely followed his companion’s gaze.
“Tanker, is she?” asked Mr Dawlish.
“No question.” There never was any question in Colonel Wicksteed’s mind. When he pronounced a vessel to be a tanker, it was a tanker – even if subsequent evidence proved this not to be the case. Fortunately, in Mr Dawlish he was blessed with the mildest of associates, into the cobwebs of whose mind the thought of disagreement never entered.
“One of the big jobs,” the Colonel continued. “Liberian.”
“Oh. Now where is Liberia?”
“East Africa.”
Mr Dawlish let out an inane chuckle. “Funny, isn’t it, to think of that boat out there, not so far away, full of people speaking Liberian.”
“No, no, Dawlish. Wouldn’t come from Liberia. Just a flag of convenience, you know.”
“Ah. Yes.” Mr Dawlish nodded sagely, as if he did indeed know.
“Not even sure if Liberia does have its own language. No doubt a lot of tribal dialects. There are any number of them. Came across a good few while I was in Africa.”
“Did you learn any?”
“Few words. Smattering.”
“I mean, could you write a letter in them?”
“Hardly. Many of them don’t have a written tradition, anyway. Just oral.”
“Carried in the mouth, you mean?”
“Yes, Dawlish.”
“Like teeth, eh?”
Colonel Wicksteed pursed his lips and once again raised the binoculars to his eyes.
At the other side of the lounge, Lady Ridgleigh, tall and bony, perched on a tall and bony chair like a vulture over her tea table. Strings of undoubtedly genuine pearls hung from the tendons of her neck; below them was a classic grey silk dress, here and there over-shiny from careless or excessive ironing.
She condescended a smile across to Mrs Selsby, an even thinner old lady, who was propped up on a sofa in the posture of a folded garden chair and half-heartedly fingering a copy of Country Life.
“You’ll find there’s a very stimulating article in there, Mrs Selsby, about the hare.”
“The animal, you mean?”
“Yes, Mrs Selsby. Most stimulating.”
Lady Ridgleigh, feeling she had discharged a social duty, relapsed into silence, and Mrs Selsby obediently turned to the magazine’s contents page and, peering through thick glasses, attempted to track down the recommended article.
On another sofa, near the bar, Eulalie Vance sighed audibly over a pile of yellowing letters. Though she believed she still looked as sylph-like and alluring as she had in the last publicity photographs taken of her some fifteen years earlier, an outside observer would have seen a thickened face and neck, framed in coils of greying hair, which was gathered at the back into an elaborate system of combs. The outsider would also have observed a spreading body, ill-camouflaged by an Indian print dress and a confusion of shawls and scarves.
And, if the outsider were so reckless as to enquire the cause of the heavy sighs that racked Eulalie’s frame, he would receive a long monologue on the subject of her past love affairs. The other residents, who had all, at one time or another, been incautious enough to make the enquiry, now kept their mouths resolutely shut. Miss Wardstone, a beady tortoise of a woman who sat nearby, did not disguise her contempt but greeted each deep sigh with a sniff of disapproval.
Sigh, sniff, sigh, sniff. The rhythm was as regular as the ticking of the grandfather clock over by the door.
On her own, looking as if she might at any moment sink under and be overwhelmed by the cushions of her armchair, slumped Mrs Mendlingham. Her eyes were unfocused; she had increasing difficulty these days in bringing them to bear on the reality that surrounded her. And focusing her mind was an even greater problem.
Her cardigan was buttoned wrong, and she wore odd slippers.
Only the regular shallow rise and fall of her chest showed her to be alive.
As the grandfather clock whirred a deep breath prior to striking the hour, the door of the room was opened by Newth, who ushered in the tea trolley, propelled by Loxton.
“Ah,” said Colonel Wicksteed, waggishly turning to focus his binoculars on the trolley (as he did every afternoon). “Tea.”
“Tea,” Mr Dawlish agreed.
“‘Tea, although he’s an Oriental’,” the Colonel continued, misquoting Chesterton (which he also did most afternoons), “‘is at least a gentleman’.”
He let out his customary bark of laughter, and Lady Ridgleigh (as she usually did) vouchsafed the witticism a smile of acceptability.
Loxton moved the trolley round its unchanging circuit, delivering the correct trays to the residents. Earl Grey for Lady Ridgleigh, served first by unquestioned precedent; Lapsang for Miss Wardstone and Mrs Selsby; peppermint tea for Eulalie Vance; weak Indian for Mrs Mendlingham, who would have drunk anything put in front of her without noticing; strong Indian for Colonel Wicksteed; and the same for Mr Dawlish, who was, as ever, happy to agree with the Colonel.
Loxton felt mildly disconcerted that Mrs Pargeter had not come when she was meant to. Loxton liked to have everything prepared well in advance, and the uncertainty over the sort of tea that the newcomer might require was unsettling. She bent down to retrieve plates of scones and cakes from the lower deck of the trolley.
As she did so, she was unaware of Mr Dawlish’s admiring eyes watching the outline of her buttocks strain against the black material of her uniform. His eyes appeared habitually hooded, half-asleep, but they took in a great deal more than the other residents of the Devereux realised.
∨ A Nice Class of Corpse ∧
3
The door opened with a flourish, as Miss Naismith ushered in Mrs Pargeter. Though direct staring at the newcomer would of course offend the canons of good behaviour, the other residents did show considerable covert interest in her arrival.
“Good afternoon. Let me introduce the latest addition to our little family.” Miss Naismith was prone, in her public utterances, to a rather cloying whimsicality. Turning first, as was correct, to the gentlemen in the bay window, she began the round. “Colonel Wicksteed – Mrs Pargeter.”