To Fear a Painted Devil (9 page)

‘But just look at the awful way she’s staring at that ghastly head,’ Nancy cried, clutching Oliver’s hand. ‘I think I ought to understand what it means, but I don’t.’

‘Perhaps it’s just as well,’ her husband said crisply.

‘What is it, Tamsin? What’s it supposed to be?’

Tamsin had drawn her fingers across the thick painted surface, letting a nail rest at the pool of blood.

‘Salome and John the Baptist,’ Marvell said. He was quickly bored by displays of naiveté and he had gone to the window. Now he turned round, smiling. ‘Of course she wouldn’t have been dressed like that. The artist put her in contemporary clothes. Who painted it, Tamsin?’

‘I just wouldn’t know,’ Tamsin shrugged. ‘It was my grandmother’s. I lived with her, you see, and I grew up with it, so it doesn’t affect me all that much any more. I used to love it when I was a little girl. Too dreadful of me!’

‘You’re never going to hang it on the wall?’ Clare Miller asked.

‘I might. I don’t know yet. When my grandmother died two years ago she left all her furniture to a friend, a Mrs. Prynne. I happened to be visiting her a couple of months ago and of course I absolutely drooled over this thing. So she said she’d send it to me for my birthday and here it is.’

‘Rather you than I.’

‘I might put it on the dining-room wall. D’you think it would go well with a grilled steak?’

They had all looked at the picture. Everyone had said something if only to exclaim with thrilled horror. Only Patrick had kept silent and Greenleaf, puzzled, turned now to look at him. Patrick’s face was deathly
white under the cloud of freckles. Somehow the freckles made him look worse, the pallor of his skin blotched with what looked like bruises. When at last he spoke his voice was loud and unsteady and the icy poise quite gone.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘the joke’s over. Excuse me.’ He pushed at Edward Carnaby, shoving him aside with his shoulder and stripping the counterpane from one of the beds, flung it across the picture. But instead of catching on the topmost beading of the frame it slipped and fell to the floor. The effect of its falling, like the sweeping away of a curtain, exposed the picture with a sudden vividness. The gloating eyes, the parted lips and the plump bosom of Herod’s niece arose before them in the gloom. She seemed to be watching with a dreadful satisfaction the slithering silk as it unveiled the trophy in the dish.

‘You bitch!’ Patrick said.

There was a shocked silence. Then Tamsin stepped forward and looped the counterpane up. Salome was veiled.

‘Oh, really!’ she said. ‘It was just a joke, darling. You
are
rude.’

Smith-King moved uneasily.

‘Getting late, Joanie,’ he said. ‘Beddy-byes.’

‘It’s not ten yet.’ Tamsin caught Patrick’s hand and leaning towards him, kissed him lightly on the cheek. He remained quite still, the colour returning to his face, but he didn’t look at her. ‘We haven’t eaten yet. All that lovely food!’

‘Ah, food.’ Smith-King rubbed his hands together. It would be another story if a scene could be avoided and Patrick perhaps yet made amenable. ‘Must keep body and soul together.’

‘The wolf from the door?’ Marvell said softly.

‘That’s the ticket.’ He slapped Marvell on the back.

Patrick seemed to realise that his hand was still resting in Tamsin’s. He snatched it away, marched out of the room and down the stairs, his dignity returning. With a defiant glance at Tamsin, Freda followed him.

‘It’s a lovely night,’ Tamsin cried. ‘Let’s go into the garden and take the food with us.’ Her eyes were very bright. She linked her arm into Oliver’s and as an afterthought clasped Nancy’s hand and swung it. ‘Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die!’

They went downstairs and Tamsin danced into the dining-room. Greenleaf thought they had seen the last of Patrick for that night, but he was on the patio, subdued, his face expressionless, arranging plates on the wicker tables. Freda Carnaby stood by him, sycophantic, adoring.

‘W
ell!’ said Nancy Gage. She pulled her chair up alongside Greenleaf’s. ‘I thought Patrick made an exhibition of himself, didn’t you? Immature I call it, making all that fuss about a picture.’

‘It is the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.’ Marvell passed her a plate of smoked salmon rolled up in brown bread.

‘Juvenile,’ Nancy said. ‘I mean, it’s not as if it was a film. I don’t mind admitting I’ve seen some horror films that have absolutely terrified me. I’ve wakened in the night bathed in perspiration, haven’t I, Oliver?’ Oliver was too far away to hear. He sat on the stone wall in gloomy conference with Tamsin.

Nancy, beckoning to him, raised the salmon roll blindly to her mouth.

‘Look out!’ Greenleaf said quickly. He knocked the roll out of her hand. ‘A wasp,’ he explained as she jumped. ‘You were going to eat it.’

‘Oh, no!’ Nancy leapt to her feet and shook her skirt. ‘I hate them, I’m terrified of them.’

‘It’s all right. It’s gone.’

‘No, it hasn’t Look, there’s another one.’ Nancy flapped her arms as a wasp winged past her face, circled her head and alighted on a fruit flan. ‘Oliver, there’s one in my hair!’

‘What on earth’s the matter?’ Tamsin got up reluctantly and came between the tables. ‘Oh, wasps. Too maddening.’ She was taller than Nancy and she blew lightly on the fair curls. ‘It’s gone, anyway.’

‘You shouldn’t have brought the food out,’ Patrick said. ‘You would do it.’ Since he had been the first to do so, this, Greenleaf thought, was hardly fair. ‘I hate this damned inefficiency. Look, dozens of them!’

Everyone had pushed back their chairs, leaving their food half-eaten. The striped insects descended upon the tables making first for fruit and cream. They seemed to drop from the skies and they came quite slowly, wheeling first above the food with a sluggish yet purposeful concentration like enemy aircraft engaged in a reconnaissance. Then, one by one, they dropped upon pastry and jelly, greedy for the sweet things. Their wings vibrated.

‘Well, that’s that,’ Tamsin said. Her hand dived for a plate of petit fours but she withdrew it quickly with a little scream. ‘Get off me, hateful wasp! Patrick, do something.’ He was standing beside her but further removed perhaps than he had ever been. Exasperated
and bored, his hands in his pockets, he stared at the feasting insects. ‘Get the food in!’

‘It’s a bit late for that,’ Marvell said. ‘They’re all over the dining-room.’ He looked roofwards. ‘You’ve got a nest, you know.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me at all,’ said Walter Miller who lived next door. ‘I said to Clare only yesterday, you mark my words, I said, the Selbys have got a wasp nest in their roof.’

‘What are we going to do about it?’

‘Kill them.’ Edward Carnaby had opened his mouth to no one except his sister since, on their arrival, Tamsin had snubbed him. Now his hour had come. ‘Exterminate them,’ he said. He pulled the tin of Vesprid from its bag and dumped it in the middle of the table where Nancy, Marvell and Greenleaf had been sitting.

‘You should have let me do it before,’ he said to Tamsin.

‘Do it? Do what?’ Tamsin looked at the Vesprid. ‘What do you do, spray it on them?’

Edward seemed to be about to embark on a long technical explanation. He took a deep breath.

Walter Miller said quickly: ‘You’ll want a ladder. There’s one in my garage.’

‘Right,’ said Edward. ‘The first thing is to locate the nest. I’ll need someone to give me a hand.’ Marvell got up.

‘No, Crispin, Patrick will go.’ Tamsin touched her husband’s arm. ‘Come on, darling. You can’t let your guests do all the work.’

For a moment he looked as if he could. He glanced mulishly from Marvell to his wife. Then, without
speaking to or even looking at Edward, he started to walk towards the gate.

‘Blood sports, Tamsin,’ Marvell said. ‘Your parties are unique.’

When Patrick and Edward came back carrying Miller’s ladder the others had moved out on to the lawn. By now the patio was clouded with wasps. Droves of them gathered on the tables. The less fortunate late-comers zoomed enviously a yard above their fellows, fire-flies in the radiance from the fairy lights.

Edward propped the ladder against the house wall. Making sure his heroics were witnessed, he thrust a hand among the cakes and grabbed one swiftly. Then he unscrewed the cap on the Vesprid tin and poured a little liquid on to the pastry.

‘You’d better nip up to the spare bedroom,’ he said to Patrick importantly. ‘I reckon the nest’s just above the bathroom window.’

‘What for?’ Patrick had paled and Greenleaf thought he knew why.

‘I shall want some more light, shan’t I?’ Edward was enjoying himself. ‘And someone’ll have to hand this to me.’ He made as if to thrust the poisoned cake into his host’s hand.

‘I am going up the ladder,’ Patrick said icily.

Edward began to argue. He was the expert, wasn’t he? Hadn’t he just dealt efficiently with a nest of his own?

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Tamsin said. ‘This is supposed to be my birthday party.’

In the end Edward went rebelliously indoors carrying his bait. Marvell stood at the bottom of the ladder, steadying it, and when a light appeared at the bathroom window, Patrick began to climb. From the
lawn they watched him peer along the eaves, his face white and tense in the patch of light. Then he called out with the only flash of humour he had permitted himself that evening:

‘I’ve found it. Apparently there’s no one at home.’

‘I reckon they’ve all gone to a party,’ Edward called. Delighted because someone on the lawn had laughed, he licked his lips and pushed the cake toward Patrick. ‘Supper,’ he said.

Greenleaf found himself standing close by Oliver Gage and he turned to him to make some comment on the proceedings, but something in the other man’s expression stopped him. He was staring at the figure on the ladder and his narrow red lips were wet. Greenleaf saw that he was clenching and unclenching his hands.

‘Oh, look! What’s happening?’ Suddenly Nancy clutched Greenleaf’s arm and, startled, he looked roofwards.

Patrick had started violently, arching his back away from the ladder. He shouted something. Then they saw him wince, hunch his shoulders and cover his face with his free arm.

‘He’s been stung,’ Greenleaf heard Gage say flatly, ‘and serve him bloody well right.’ He didn’t move but Greenleaf hurried forward to join the others who had gathered at the foot of the ladder. Three wasps were encircling Patrick’s head, wheeling about him and making apparently for his closed eyes. They saw him for a moment, fighting, both arms flailing, his blind face twisted. Then Edward disappeared and the light went out. Now Patrick was just a silhouette against the clear turquoise sky and to Greenleaf he looked like a marionette of crumpled black paper whose convulsively
beating arms seemed jerked by unseen strings.

‘Come down!’ Marvell shouted.

‘Oh God!’ Patrick gave a sort of groan and collapsed against the rungs, swaying precariously.

Someone shouted: ‘He’s going to fall,’ but Patrick didn’t fall. He began to slide down, prone against the ladder, and his shoes caught on each rung as he descended, tap, tap, flap, until he fell into Marvell’s arms.

‘Are you all right?’ Marvell and Greenleaf asked together and Marvell shied at the wasp that came spiraling down towards Patrick’s head. ‘They’ve gone. Are you all right?’

Patrick said nothing but shuddered and put up his hand to cover his cheek. Behind him Greenleaf heard Freda Carnaby whimpering like a puppy, but nobody else made a sound. In the rainbow glimmer they stood silent and peering like a crowd at a bullfight who have seen a hated matador come to grief. The hostility was almost tangible and there was no sound but the steady buzz of the wasps.

‘Come along.’ Greenleaf heard his own voice pealing like a bell. ‘Let’s get him into the house.’ But Patrick shook off his arm and blundered into the dining room.

T
hey gathered round him in the lounge, all except Marvell who had gone to the kitchen to make coffee. Patrick crouched in an armchair holding his handkerchief against his face. He had been stung in several places, under the left eye, on the left wrist and
forearm and on the right arm in what Greenleaf called the cubital fossa.

‘Lucky it wasn’t a good deal worse,’ Edward said peevishly.

Patrick’s eye was already beginning to swell and close. He scowled at Edward and said rudely:

‘Get lost!’

‘Please don’t quarrel.’ No one knew how Freda had insinuated herself into her position on the footstool at Patrick’s knees, nor exactly when she had taken his hand. ‘It’s bad enough as it is.’

‘Oh, really,’ Tamsin said. ‘Such a fuss! Excuse me, will you? It might be a good idea for my husband to get some air.’

For the second time that night Denholm Smith-King looked first at his watch, then at his wife. ‘Well, we’ll be getting along. You won’t want us.’

Marvell had come in with the coffee things but Tamsin didn’t argue. She lifted her cheek impatiently for Joan to kiss.

‘Coffee, Nancy? Oliver?’ She by-passed the Carnabys exactly as if they were pieces of furniture. Oliver rejected the cup coldly, sitting on the edge of his chair.

‘Perhaps we’d better go too.’ Nancy looked hopelessly from angry face to angry face. ‘Have you got any bi-carb? It’s wonderful for wasp stings. I remember when my sister …’

‘Come
along
, Nancy,’ Oliver said. He took Nancy’s arm and pulled her roughly. It looked as if he was going to leave without another word, but he stopped at the door and took Tamsin’s hand. Their eyes met, Tamsin’s wary, his, unless Greenleaf was imagining things, full of pleading disappointment. Then when
Nancy kissed her, he followed suit, touching her cheek with the sexless peck that was common politeness in Linchester.

When they had gone, taking the Gavestons with them, and the Willises and the Millers had departed by the garden gate, Greenleaf went over to Patrick. He examined his eye and asked him how he felt.

‘Lousy.’

Greenleaf poured him a cup of coffee.

‘Had I better send for Dr. Howard, Max?’ Tamsin didn’t look anxious or excited or uneasy any more. She just looked annoyed.