Symposium (15 page)

‘Pursue
him. There are infinite ways. But, if you are to have any future, my darling
Margaret, married you must be, and married well.’

A few weeks later Margaret
was shown into one of the well-planned London offices of Warren McDiarmid,
chief executive of the firm McDiarmid & Rice, owners of grocery
supermarkets and television stations throughout the south of England, with
many affiliates in the business of car-radios, video-cassettes, washing
machines, microwave ovens, jacuzzi baths and other commodities that added,
almost weekly, a new company to their list of trade enterprises. Warren
McDiarmid was the only son of Derwent McDiarmid, the senior partner of this
vast commercial empire. Margaret had picked him out with a pin from the list of
possible candidates for marriage provided for her by Uncle Magnus. How he had
got to know who were the rich, young and unattached bachelors available in the
country, was, yes, a mystery; but not so much a mystery when the amount of time
on his hands was considered, and, not least, the demonic will and single-minded
purpose of the mad. Magnus had money and means to buy all the glossy and
gossip-column papers he needed; he could send out for anything he wanted
amongst such harmless items. He had radio programmes to listen to, Stock
Exchange news to follow, television programmes.

But it
had taken him only three weeks to compile, which was certainly an achievement.

When
Margaret picked Warren McDiarmid she obtained a photograph of him from a
publicity agency and, finding his face bearable, rang up his office and asked
to speak to him. She was passed to his secretary.

‘I
would like to interview Mr Warren McDiarmid,’ said Margaret, ‘for the
Independent
Magazine.’
She had chosen this paper because she had decided that if she
was found out they would be nicer about it than the others. ‘I’m participating
in a series of articles about top yuppies, or very successful young
businessmen, and Mr Warren McDiarmid is a must,’ Margaret said.

Warren
McDiarmid agreed to give her half an hour, between twelve forty-five and
one-fifteen. He was just back from Frankfurt.

‘How do
you travel, Mr McDiarmid?’

‘Oh,
private jet,’ he said. ‘One has to, in my field.’

He was
about twenty-eight, very shaven and gleaming with after-shave. The trouble was,
he didn’t once look at Margaret. She might have been a squat, fat woman of
sixty instead of a slender tall girl in her twenties with wonderful long red
hair. He was looking at a place slightly to the left of the wall opposite his
desk, where a classical seascape that had a definite Sotheby’s look had been
hung.

Perhaps
he was wondering if the firm had bid too high.

‘And do
you enjoy being successful, Mr McDiarmid?’

‘Oh
yes, rather, it gives one another dimension, especially if one can have a free
hand as frankly one does in my case.’

‘Have
you personal plans for the future? — I believe you’re unmarried?’ said
Margaret.

He
looked at his watch, round, flat, gold, as it was, while he replied: ‘They
always ask one that. Marriage. There’s no hurry for one to marry of course. On
the other hand, inevitably of course in time one will marry and have children.’

Margaret
scribbled in what she hoped looked like shorthand which, in fact, she had no
knowledge of. ‘And do you enjoy living in London, or do you prefer the
country?’

‘Well,
of course in London one lives on the job. But if one has a place in the
country, especially in the deep country, Devon, Norfolk, Scotland, it’s a damn
good thing for one to get away for the weekend and fish, shoot, whatever.’

‘And
you prefer Devon to Scotland? Or Norfolk? Which would be your choice?’

‘In my
case one has places in all three.’

(Scribble,
scribble …)

‘Do you
like music, Mr McDiarmid?’

‘Oh,
one goes to Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, when time permits. And now Miss
Murchie — ‘(he had got her name right!) — ‘I’m afraid I have to go. One is so
much under pressure. My secretary will pass you to my press and publicity agent
who I’m sure will fill you in with anything else you want to know. Delighted to
have met you.’

Margaret
wondered if perhaps later, he would say to himself, ‘What a fool I was not to
ask that girl to dinner!’ She wondered; and would never know the answer. She
was lodging in a hostel. There, she threw away her notes, took out Magnus’s
sheet of paper, smoothed it on the table in her room, shut her eyes and stuck
in another pin.

MARGARET
was disappointed when the pin fell between two names on the list.
She would have preferred a straightforward message. She went north to visit
Magnus in his hospital and to make a report.

Magnus
was quite horrified to hear that the young magnate Mr Warren McDiarmid had not
responded to Margaret’s charms. He was indignant.

‘You
are so young, so radiant, and with your colouring, and you’re, so how shall I
say? — moist and dewy. How could he resist?’

‘You
know, Uncle Magnus, you are really somewhat cut off from the way things go.
With men like McDiarmid there’s no such thing as irresistible as business
deals. He said he left the house at five every morning to be at his desk at
five-thirty to do three hours before eight-thirty. That means he gets up out of
his bed at four-thirty, or does he never take a shower and a cup of coffee in
the morning?’

‘He’ll
blow his brains out,’ predicted Magnus. ‘One day when things get too hot for
him he’ll take a gun and blow out his brains, rest assured, my dear. He is no
man for you. How old is he exactly?’

‘Twenty-eight,
twenty-nine.’

‘To
think that I was just over forty when I was reprimanded for streaking over
Chelsea Bridge. Believe me, I wasn’t too old even at forty. We used to take off
our clothes and we used to streak, that’s what we used to do. And now this
imbecilic young magnate sits there looking at his watch, you are eating up his
precious time, and time is money. Talk to my press agent, he says. No,
Margaret, no, I’m sorry. He’ll blow his brains out. Probably he’s embezzled a
fortune.’

‘Well,
now,’ said Margaret. ‘I closed my eyes and jabbed with the pin. The damn thing
fell on a space between two names: William Damien and Werther Stanhope.’

‘In my
opinion Stanhope would be the better match. He trades with Japan.’

‘What
does he trade?’ said Margaret.

‘Know-how,’
said Magnus. ‘Know-how is a prime commodity. The trouble with Stanhope, he’s
rather tiny. Of course, small men can have power. Terrific power. Personally,
I’m afraid of small men, and for a Murchie, that’s saying something. But on the
other hand they do seem to like tall brides.’

Margaret
enquired about William Damien. ‘Now he,’ said Magnus, ‘now he …’ Magnus
opened the door to a small cupboard underneath the television in his
sitting-room. From it he extracted a bottle labelled
‘The Tonic: three
tablespoons a day with water’.
He poured himself a drink of the liquid,
good malt whisky as it was, and continued his discourse. ‘Damien is a
scientist. Nice and tall for you, my dear. He is not rich himself, but his
mother is an Australian business-woman of fabulous means. Mrs Hilda Damien
owns newspapers, department stores, and all that goes with them. William has no
head for business. He lives modestly, but he is the heir. Now you fix your eye
on little Stanhope, he is a clear case of an eligible bachelor, something of a
playboy by reputation, but obviously ripe to settle down. He’s thirty-two,
never been married before. Obviously, you would have to strike quickly with
Stanhope before he’s snapped up. But William Damien — well, he has some sort of
a liaison going, but according to gossip it will break up before long. They are
not suited, always having wild rows. If you could catch him, then of course
later you could take care of the mother. Now it’s time for my snooze.’

His
eyes were shut before Margaret had left the room. She took out a comb from her
bag, combed her long hair in front of the mirror, and went to the door. Just as
she was leaving Magnus opened his eyes and said, sleepily, ‘At school I was
good as Lady Macbeth. It could be in the family.’

When
she had left the Jeffrey King nursing home she drove to turreted Blackie House.
‘I’m exhausted,’ she told her mother. ‘Flying around the country like this. I
have to be back at the office nine-thirty Monday morning. Eunice and Flora
never think of visiting Uncle Magnus. No sense of
les autres.
And now
look how they’ve turned on me. First they blamed me for being mixed up in
Granny’s death; next they were sorry for me; now I’m to blame for Sister Rose’s
death. I wasn’t anywhere near those deaths, those murders.’

‘It’s
just unfortunate,’ Greta said. ‘Why don’t you give up your job and have a
holiday?’

‘I’ve
got rather a good job at the moment,’ Margaret said. ‘And I like London.’

‘But
you might meet a nice young man. I’m sure you could invite some young people
here. Sooner or later you’ll meet Mr Right.’

‘You mean,
get a husband like Flora’s, a husband like Eunice’s?’ said Margaret in her
melodious voice. ‘Let me tell you I find both Bert and Peter infinitely boring.
If they were my husbands I’d tip prussic acid into their tea.’.

‘I wish
you wouldn’t talk like that,’ said Greta, busying her hands with plumping up
the cushions. ‘Even for a joke.’

Margaret’s job in the
publicity office of the petrol company in Park Lane was mainly to do with
research into the history of sales and auctions of the famous paintings which
the company purchased from time to time. It was not very complicated. Mainly
she obtained, or consulted in libraries, the catalogues of sales and ownerships
as far back as could be ascertained. Her colleagues were friendly. The married
ones asked her to dinner. There was one unmarried man who took her to a
discothèque from time to time; one married man who wanted to touch her, to
sleep with her, all the time. It was when Margaret said something soulful about
les autres
that one of the girls in the office said, ‘I’ve heard that
before.’

‘Oh,
it’s a French movement.’

‘No,
but I’ve heard it on the television. Someone awfully like you was talking about
the philosophy of
Les Autres.
I’ve always thought that it was right to
think of others, be considerate and that.’

‘Was it
a religious programme?’ said Margaret.

‘Yes, I
think it was. Some nuns.’

‘Oh, I
remember that show,’ said Margaret.

Her
time was mostly occupied in following William Damien’s movements from a safe
distance. ‘Safe’ meant that she left her car at certain hours in the nearest
car-park and walked around the block where he lived in a four-storey modern
building. She calculated the position of his windows from the names on the
street intercom. The very fact that she was in no way a professional sleuth,
only a beginner, was very much in her favour. Any blunders she might make —
and, indeed, did make — precluded any probability that she was in fact checking
William’s movements.

He
never even noticed her. As it happened, and it was not so strange that it did
happen, since the name Damien spoke for itself whereas William was fairly
obscure, someone in Margaret’s office was related to a couple who not only knew
William but knew ‘who he was’. That is to say they knew that William was heir
to a vast fortune.

It had
come about that a minor French painter of the turn of the century called
François Rose, whom nobody had heard of, had been promoted by the auction rooms
some months ago. The petroleum company for whom Margaret worked had it in mind
to buy a François Rose depicting several bunches of luscious grapes piled on
the bulbous belly of a reclining nude woman. Margaret was given the task of
investigating its sales history. She found that it was the property of an
Australian collector, Hilda Damien, who was putting the painting up to auction
as she couldn’t stand it any more. Margaret’s assistant piped up: ‘My sister
May and her husband are great friends with her son William. You know, he has a
job and maintains himself on his own pay.’