False Scent

‘Top of the morning, dear,’ said Florence. ‘What’s it feel like to be eighteen again?’

‘You old fool,’ Miss Bellamy said, and grinned at her. ‘It feels fine.’

Florence built pillows up behind her and set the tray across her knees. She then drew back the curtains and lit the fire. She was a pale, small woman with black dyed hair and sardonic eyes. She had been Miss Bellamy’s dresser for twenty-five years and her personal maid for fifteen. ‘Three rousing cheers,’ she said, ‘it’s a handsome-looking morning.’

Miss Bellamy examined her tray. The basket-ends were full of telegrams, a spray of orchids lay across the plate and beside it a parcel in silver wrapping tied with pink ribbon.

‘What’s all this?’ she asked, as she had asked for her last fifteen birthdays, and took up the parcel.

‘The flowers are from the colonel. He’ll be bringing his present later on as per usual, I suppose.’

‘I wasn’t talking about the flowers,’ Miss Bellamy said and opened the parcel. ‘Florrie! Florrie, darling!’

Florence clattered the firearms. ‘Might as well get in early,’ she muttered, ‘or it’d never be noticed.’

It was a chemise, gossamer fine and exquisitely embroidered.

‘Come here!’ Miss Bellamy said, fondly bullying.

Florence walked over to the bed and suffered herself to be kissed. Her face became crimson. For a moment she looked at her employer with a devotion that was painful in its intensity and then turned aside, her eyes filmed with unwilling tears.

‘But it’s out of this world!’ Miss Bellamy marvelled, referring to the chemise. ‘That’s all! It’s just made my day for me.’ She shook her head slowly from side to side, lost in wonderment. ‘I can’t wait,’ she said and, indeed, she was very pleased with it.

‘There’s the usual mail,’ Florence grunted. ‘More, if anything.’

‘Truly?’

‘Outside on the trolley. Will I fetch it in here?’

‘After my bath, darling, may we?’

Florence opened drawers and doors, and began to lay out the clothes her mistress had chosen to wear. Miss Bellamy, who was on a strict diet, drank her tea, ate her toast, and opened her telegrams, awarding each of them some pleased ejaculation. ‘Darling, Bertie! Such a sweet muddled little message. And a cable, Florrie, from the Bantings in New York. Heaven of them!’

‘That show’s folding, I’m told,’ Florence said, ‘and small wonder. Dirty and dull, by all accounts. You mustn’t be both.’

‘You don’t know anything about it,’ Miss Bellamy absentmindedly observed. She was staring in bewilderment at the next telegram. ‘This,’ she said, ‘isn’t true. It’s just not true. My dear Florrie, will you listen.’ Modulating her lovely voice, Miss Bellamy read it aloud. ‘“Her birth was of the womb of morning dew and her conception of the joyous prime.”’

‘Disgusting,’ said Florence.

‘I call it rather touching. But who in the wide world is Octavius Browne?’

‘Search me, love.’ Florence helped Miss Bellamy into a negligee designed by Bertie Saracen, and herself went into the bathroom. Miss Bellamy settled down to some preliminary work on her face.

There was a tap on the door connecting her room with her husband’s and he came in. Charles Templeton was sixty years old, big and fair with a heavy belly. His eyeglass dangled over his dark-red dressing-gown, his hair, thin and babyishly fine, was carefully brushed and his face, which had the florid colouring associated with heart disease, was freshly shaved. He kissed his wife’s hand and forehead and laid a small parcel before her. ‘A very happy birthday to you, Mary, my dear,’ he said. Twenty years ago, when she married him, she had told him that his voice was charming. If it was so, still, she no longer noticed it or, indeed, listened very attentively to much that he said.

But she let her birthday gaiety play about him and was enchanted with her present, a diamond and emerald bracelet. It was, even for Charles, quite exceptionally magnificent and for a fleeting moment she remembered that he, as well as Florence and Old Ninn, knew her age. She wondered if there was any intention of underlining this particular anniversary. There were some numerals that by their very appearance – stodgy and rotund – wore an air of horrid maturity. Five, for instance. She pulled her thoughts up short, and showed him the telegram. ‘I should like to know what in the world you make of that,’ she said and went into the bathroom, leaving the door open. Florence came back and began to make the bed with an air of standing none of its nonsense.

‘Good morning, Florence,’ Charles Templeton said. He put up his eyeglass and walked over to the bow window with the telegram.

‘Good morning, sir,’ Florence woodenly rejoined. Only when she was alone with her mistress did she allow herself the freedom of the dressing-room.

‘Did you,’ Miss Bellamy shouted from her bath, ‘ever see anything quite like it?’

‘But it’s delightful,’ he said, ‘and how very nice of Octavius.’

‘You don’t mean to say you know who he is?’

‘Octavius Browne? Of course I do. He’s the old boy down below in the Pegasus bookshop. Up at the House, but a bit before my time. Delightful fellow.’

‘Blow me down flat!’ Miss Bellamy ejaculated, splashing luxuriously. ‘You mean that dim little place with a fat cat in the window.’

‘That’s it. He specializes in pre-Jacobean literature.’

‘Does that account for the allusion to wombs and conceptions? Of what can he be thinking, poor Mr Browne?’

‘It’s a quotation,’ Charles said, letting his eyeglass drop. ‘From Spenser. I bought a very nice Spenser from him last week. No doubt he supposes you’ve read it.’

‘Then, of course, I must pretend I have. I shall call on him and thank him. Kind Mr Browne!’

‘They’re great friends of Richard’s.’

Miss Bellamy’s voice sharpened a little. ‘Who? They?’

‘Octavius Browne and his niece. A good-looking girl.’ Charles glanced at Florence and after a moment’s hesitation added: ‘She’s called Anelida Lee.’

Florence cleared her throat.

‘Not true!’ The voice in the bathroom gave a little laugh. ‘A-nelly-da! It sounds like a face cream.’

‘It’s Chaucerian.’

‘I suppose the cat’s called Piers Plowman.’

‘No. He’s out of the prevailing period. He’s called Hodge.’

‘I’ve never heard Richard utter her name.’

Charles said: ‘She’s on the stage, it appears.’

‘Oh, God!’

‘In that new club theatre behind Walton Street. The Bonaventure.’

‘You need say no more, my poor Charles. One knows the form.’ Charles was silent and the voice asked impatiently: ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, my dear.’

‘How do you know Richard’s so thick with them?’