She knew at once that he had already seen it. She knew he had come into the room while she cleaned her face and had crept out again, shutting the door behind him.
‘The tin was on the top of the door,’ Troy said. ‘It fell on my head. A booby-trap.’
‘Not a very nice thing,’ he whispered.
‘No. A booby-trap.’
‘I never!’ Mervyn burst out. ‘My God, I never. My God, I swear I never.’
‘I can’t think – really – why you should.’
‘That’s right,’ he agreed feverishly. ‘That’s dead right. Christ, why should I! Me!’
Troy began to wipe the trickle from the door. It came away cleanly, leaving hardly a trace.
Mervyn dragged a handkerchief from his pocket, dropped on his knees and violently attacked the stain on the string-coloured carpet.
‘I think plain turpentine might do it,’ Troy said.
He looked round wildly. She fetched him a bottle of turpentine from the bench.
‘Ta,’ he said and set to work again. The nape of his neck shone with sweat. He mumbled.
‘What?’ Troy asked. ‘What did you say?’
‘He’ll see. He notices everything. They’ll say I done it.’
‘Who?’
‘Everybody. That lot. Them.’
Troy heard herself saying: ‘Finish it off with soap and water and put down more mats.’ The carpet round her easel had, at her request, been protected by upside-down mats from the kitchen quarters.
He gazed up at her. He looked terrified and crafty like a sly child.
‘You won’t do me?’ he asked. ‘Madam? Honest? You won’t grass? Not that I done it, mind. I never. I’d be barmy, woon’t I? I never.’
‘All right, all right,’ Troy almost shouted. ‘Don’t let’s have all that again. You say you didn’t and I – as a matter of fact, I believe you.’
‘Gor’ bless you, lady.’
‘Yes, well, never mind all that. But if you didn’t,’ Troy said sombrely, ‘who on earth did?’
‘Ah! That’s different, ainnit? What say I know?’
‘You know!’
‘I got me own idea, ain’ I? Trying to put one acrost me. Got it in for all of us, that sod, excuse me for mentioning it.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. It seems to me that I’m the one –’
‘Do me a favour. You! Lady – you’re just the mug, see? It’s me it was set up for. Use your loaf, lady.’
Mervyn sat back on his heels and stared wildly at Troy. His face which had reminded her of Kittiwee’s pastry now changed colour: he was blushing.
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you’ll think of me, madam,’ he said carefully. ‘I forgot myself, I’m that put out.’
‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘But I wish you’d just explain –’
He got to his feet and backed to the door, screwing the rag round his hand. ‘Oh madam, madam, madam,’ he implored. ‘I do wish you’d just use your loaf.’
And with that he left her.
It was not until she reached her room and set about washing the turpentine and oil out of her hair that Troy remembered Mervyn had gone to gaol for murdering someone with a booby-trap.
III
If Cressida had lost any ground at all with her intended over the affair of the cats it seemed to Troy that she made it up again and more during the course of the evening. She was the last to arrive in the main drawing-room where tonight, for the first time, they assembled before dinner.
She wore a metallic trousered garment so adhesive that her body might itself have been gilded like the two Quattrocento victories that trumpeted above the chimney-piece. When she moved, her dress, recalling Herrick, seemed to melt about her as if she were clad in molten gold. She looked immensely valuable and of course tremendously lovely. Troy heard Hilary catch his breath. Even Mrs Forrester gave a slight grunt while Mr Smith, very softly, produced a wolf whistle. The colonel said: ‘My dear, you are quite bewildering,’ which was, Troy thought, as apt a way of putting it as any other. But still, she had no wish to paint Cressida and again she was uneasily aware of Hilary’s questioning looks.
They had champagne cocktails that evening. Mervyn was in attendance under Cuthbert’s supervision and Troy was careful not to look at Mervyn. She was visited by a sense of detachment as if she hovered above the scene rather than moved through it. The beautiful room, the sense of ease, of unforced luxury, of a kind of aesthetic liberation, seemed to lose substance and validity and to become – what? Sterile?
‘I wonder,’ said Hilary at her elbow, ‘what that look means. An impertinent question, by the way, but of course you don’t have to give me an answer.’ And before she could do so he went on. ‘Cressida is lovely, don’t you think?’
‘I do indeed but you mustn’t ask me to paint her.’
‘I thought that was coming.’
‘It would be no good.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘It would give you no pleasure.’
‘Or perhaps too much,’ Hilary said. ‘Of a dangerous kind.’
Troy thought it better not to reply to this.
‘Well,’ Hilary said, ‘it shall be as it must be. Already I feel the breath of Signor Annigoni down the nape of my neck. Another champagne cocktail? Of course you will. Cuthbert!’
He stayed beside her, rather quiet for him, watching his fiancée, but, Troy felt, in some indefinable way, still communicating with her.
At dinner Hilary put Cressida in the chatelaine’s place and Troy thought how wonderfully she shone in it and how when they were married Hilary would like to show her off at much grander parties than this strange little assembly. Like a humanate version of his great possessions, she thought, and was uncomfortable in the notion.
Stimulated perhaps by champagne, Cressida was much more effervescent than usual. She and Hilary had a mock argument with amorous overtones. She began to tease him about the splendour of Halberds and then when he looked huffy added, ‘Not that I don’t devour every last bit of it. It sends the Tottenham blood seething in my veins like …’ She stopped and looked at Mrs Forrester, who over folded arms and with a magisterial frown steadily returned her gaze.
‘Anyway,’ Cressida said, waving a hand at Hilary, ‘I adore it all.’
Colonel Forrester suddenly passed his elderly, veined fingers across his eyes and mouth.
‘Darling!’ Hilary said and raised his glass to Cressida.
Mr Bert Smith also became a little flown with champagne. He talked of his and Hilary’s business affairs and Troy thought he must be quite as shrewd as he gave himself out to be. It was not at all surprising that he had got on in such a spectacular manner. She wondered if, in the firm of ‘Bill-Tasman and Smith Associates’ which was what their company seemed to be called, Mr Smith was perhaps the engine and Hilary the exquisite bodywork and upholstery.
Colonel Forrester listened to the high-powered talk with an air of wonderment. He was beside Troy and had asked to ‘take her in’ on his arm which she had found touching.