Deck With Flowers Read online

  “Ahem, yes.” Claudius gave a nervous cough. “But there’s just one point I would mention in that connection. The description contained some, er, some inaccuracies.”

  The two younger men stared at him in astonishment.

  “I don’t quite understand,” Oliver said. “Do you mean that her account doesn’t tie up with what the newspapers said at the time?”

  “Oh, no, no, no. I am speaking from my, so to speak, inside knowledge, which I got from a letter which was written to me at the time, by a person who travelled on the ship with Madame Landini.”

  “On the Atlantis?” Rodney asked.

  “Yes. On the Atlantis.”

  There was a pause.

  “You haven’t mentioned this before,” Oliver said.

  “No. That is ... no. You see, it was like this: Before mentioning the ... we can perhaps call it the coincidence, I felt I would like to wait and see exactly how Madame Landini would write about it—or indeed, if she would write about it at all, that’s to say about it in any great detail. It was, as we all know after reading the memoirs, and as Rodney has just pointed out, a very difficult time for her. Very difficult indeed. It struck me that what she wrote about it might offer a guide to the general frankness, the general accuracy of the book. Perhaps you don’t quite follow me. I’m trying to say that it is impossible for any of us to know, to guess, to gauge the exact amount of truth, of unclouded truth there is in any personal account of this kind. The question has been in my mind before, when we’ve published memoirs—none, of course, to be compared with Madame Landini’s. In those other cases, I had no means of placing what I knew against what was written. This time, I had. Knowing what I knew about the circumstances of Madame’s first husband’s death, I allowed myself... Do I make myself clear?”

  “What did she have to hide?” Oliver asked. “There were no failures to be recorded or conveniently forgotten, no humiliations she’d want to gloss over. Why did you think she wouldn’t be frank about Anton Veitch’s death?”

  “Because it was the only incident in her entire career that held any element of mystery. You two are young men; you have no idea of the sensation the event made when it happened. I have. What is more, I knew exactly what had happened. I wanted to wait and see what Madame Landini’s version was. I have now read it, and I find that it contradicts certain facts which I happen to know are true facts.”

  Rodney pulled his chair closer to the desk.

  “Begin at the beginning,” he requested. “Did you sail on the Atlantis on that voyage?”

  “No. I must explain first that my sister and I had at that time succeeded in selling my grandfather’s collection of medieval suits of armour to an American named Mr. Harding. I went down to Southampton to say goodbye to him and check that all the crates had been put safely on board. There was a little time left before the ship sailed, so while Mrs. Harding was taken by an official to see Madame Landini’s—that’s to say, Princess Anna’s—private suite, Mr. Harding and I sat in a kind of glassed-in bar on the deck and ordered a drink.”

  He paused, took off his glasses and placed them on the desk; he needed no glasses to see into the past. He sat staring at his large, unblemished leather blotter, and at last Rodney prompted him.

  “You ordered a drink…”

  “Yes. And as we sat there, we saw the Princess come aboard —the Princess and her entourage. She was more beautiful than I can say. I had seen her on the concert platform, but never as close as I was seeing her then. You can have no idea, or very little, as you look at her today, what a glorious creature she was. She…” Claudius cleared his throat. “Well, she went to stand at the rail, to wave to the crowd that had gathered on the dock to see her. Her husband was beside her, and they made a well-matched pair; he was as striking, in his way, as she was in hers. She was standing in a sea of flowers—sheaves in her arms, baskets surrounding her. At the moment that Mr. Harding decided that it was time he went to look for his wife, the signal was given for non-travellers to leave the ship. The Princess’s husband, Anton Veitch, leaned towards her and spoke a few words—as you know from her memoirs, it was his invariable habit, when they travelled, to make certain that all arrangements had been made for her comfort, and he was going down to their stateroom to make his usual check. He picked up as many of the floral tributes as he could hold, to take with him, and he passed close to me. As he went by, our glances met for a moment, and we both smiled at the rather absurd picture he made. I always think it so extraordinary that I must have been almost the last person who saw him alive; certainly nobody else ever claimed to have seen him after he left the deck. You’ve read the rest of it. When the Princess eventually went down to her suite, the flowers were there. Their luggage had been unpacked. The ship was moving down the Solent. When her husband failed to join her, she gave the matter no thought; even when the ship was out in the Channel and the dinner menu was brought to her state-room, she felt no anxiety; he might be with the other members of her party, he might be in the bar, he might be anywhere.”

  Once again he paused, once again Rodney prompted.

  “So we come to the letter you mentioned,” he said.

  “Yes. The letter. What Madame Landini wrote in the manuscript is that when her husband failed to appear, she was distraught. Her own word: distraught. She writes, and writes superbly, of the growing uneasiness, the mounting tension, the search from one end of the ship to the other, the word going round: Anton Veitch was overboard. The ship stopped, a lifeboat lowered, a crowd of passengers gathered outside the Princess’s suite. Among them were Mr. and Mrs. Harding. They were all asked to move away, but the Hardings’ stateroom was next to the Princess’s suite, and they heard much of what went on. Mr. Harding wrote to me as soon as he reached New York—so that events were still fresh in his mind, and what he wrote was that the Princess was not so much distraught as enraged. He said she sounded like an animal deprived of its prey. He used the word baulked. He went on to say, to write, that he thought it was the first time the Princess had ever found herself in a situation in which her feelings weren’t the primary consideration. In her memoirs, she says that she paced the deck all night. Mr. Harding wrote, and I believe him, that she was given a strong sedative which kept her quiet until the ship reached New York; then she was carried ashore, as she states, and her concerts were cancelled and so on. I am merely trying to point out that in Mr. Harding’s view, her rage against Fate was stronger than her grief. That being so, I cannot agree that writing about the event would result in her having this breakdown, or whatever you choose to call it.”

  “She doesn’t have to reveal all her feelings in her memoirs, does she?” Rodney asked.

  “She may reveal them or she may conceal them,” Claudius said. “What she should not do is fabricate them. I still have the letter from Mr. Harding. It was a business letter and contained a cheque—the balance of what he owed me. You may see it at any time, if you want to.”

  “Was there any speculation, in the press or in rumours at the time, that Veitch had any reason to go overboard?” Oliver asked.

  “My dear Oliver”—Claudius spoke protestingly—“why should he have wanted to give up what most men spend their lives trying to win: beauty, wealth, fame?”

  “Her fame. Not his fame,” Rodney pointed out. “He’d given up his own career to become her accompanist.”

  “If he wanted to get away from her, why embark on the journey?” Claudius asked. “I was merely challenging Madame Landini’s description of her state of mind. I don’t question the fact that his disappearance was pure misadventure. He isn’t the first person who has leaned too far over a ship’s rail, and I’m afraid he won’t be the last. But we’ve strayed rather far from the real point of this meeting; shall we get back to it? Will one of you go and see this girl?”

  “You,” Oliver told Rodney.

  Rodney rose. “All right. What’s her address?”

  “Mr. Armstrong will give it to you,” Claudius said. “No tel
ephone number, unfortunately; he didn’t think of asking.”

  Rodney went to his room to get his coat. In the corridor, he came face to face with Miss Phoebe, who was coming out of her room. Their faces were almost on a level, for she was very tall. She was also gaunt, with a severe aspect that was useful in cowing teenage typists.

  She offered a cheek to Rodney and he kissed it, being careful not to dislodge her hat. Nobody in the office had ever seen her without it—a black felt, unrelieved in winter, in spring decorated with young leaves, in summer beribboned, in autumn hung with bunches of artificial fruit. Her suits were like her hat—plain, black and seasonally enlivened. Her voice, which she tried in vain to lower when discussing confidential matters, boomed down the corridors and echoed through all the rooms.

  “Nice to have you back,” she told him. “We missed you. Before you embark on a travelogue, tell me what’s behind this story that’s buzzing round the office. They’ve only just thought of mentioning it to me. About Madame Landini. What’s going on?”

  He told her, and explained that he was on his way to get the secretary’s address.

  “You needn’t bother Mr. Armstrong,” she said. “I made a note of it in one of your files when we engaged her. I’ll show you.”

  She led the way to his room and produced it, and he took his coat from the peg in a corner of the room.

  “You’ll also see there on your desk,” she told him, “a note you can deal with when you get back. Luncheon engagement. I’ve entered it in your diary too. The fourteenth. I’ll remind you, because if I don’t, you’ll try to get out of it.”

  He glanced at the note.

  “No,” he said firmly.

  “Yes,” Phoebe said with equal firmness. “You had no business to fob her off on to my brother last time. You saw the state she reduced him to. You’re getting very foxy at leaving all the troublesome cases to poor Claudius. Has he told you the story of seeing Mr. Harding off on the Atlantis?”

  “Yes.”

  “It doesn’t prove anything that I can see. If you’re writing about your life, you put in what you like and keep out what you like, as I told him. Why do you have to chase after this girl?”

  “I told you—we want her story of what happened.”

  “Great waste of time. It’s not likely, is it, that a storm like that could have been raised by anything that a recently- installed secretary said or did? It’s far more likely to be a financial crisis of some kind—isn’t that Italian accountant staying with Madame Landini to arrange some deal or other?”

  “She’s selling some property in Italy, to the Maharajah of Hardanipur. The name rings a bell, but I don’t know where I heard it.”

  “You wouldn’t need to have heard it. You may have seen it. He’s often in the news. He lives in Switzerland and throws millions around in a careless fashion. Isn’t that Italian accountant called Piozzi?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Maharajah took him over when Landini died. Piozzi’s function is to look for legal loopholes and slide gracefully through them. I’m not an accountant’s widow for nothing; I had to sit through many a dreary dinner listening to my husband and his friends discussing deals. Piozzi’s never acted for anybody but Landini and this Maharajah. It all came back to me the other day when I read the reference to him in Madame’s memoirs—you remember she went on a trip to India with her first husband, and stayed with the Maharajah in royal state?”

  “She told me he left everything—”

  “So he did. Everything but his millions and his diamonds. But we’re wasting time. What were we talking about before ... Oh, that girl. I don’t see what’s to be gained by your going to see her. Far better to give the thing time to settle. That’s what I would have advised if I’d come in this morning in time to attend that three-cornered meeting you and Oliver and my brother were holding. I would have counselled waiting.”

  “Yes, I know. Turn down the gas.”

  “Certainly, and then the pot won’t boil over. You have to meet temperament with patience and calm—when am I going to succeed in teaching you that? You have to learn the technique of banking down the fires. For example, if people shout at you, what you must do is say you’re sorry, but you didn’t quite catch. That means they have to shout it all over again, and by the time they’ve had to do that several times, the grievance has lost its force. Let Madame simmer for a few days.”

  Rodney patted her shoulder.

  “Excellent advice,” he said. “I’ll make a note of it. But now I’ve got to carry out the boss’s orders. See you later.”

  He left the office and walked to his car; getting in, he glanced at the paper on which Phoebe had written the secretary’s address, and found to his annoyance that it was in a district well beyond Pimlico—in this traffic, it would take him nearly an hour to get there. When he did, he was further annoyed to find that he had insufficiently studied the spidery scrawl before leaving the office; it could be Alderman Place, Alderman Grove, Alderman Terrace or Alderman Street, all of which radiated from Alderman Square. He tried Number 15 in the Place, the Grove, the Terrace and the Square; nothing now remained but the Street. He mounted the steps of a dreary-looking house with crumbling brickwork, an open front door and an inner hall decorated with innumerable cards pinned to a board or stuck on the walls. He went twice along the line, but found nothing to indicate that Miss Nicola Baird lived there. He went outside again and pressed long and insistently a bell marked Caretaker. After an interval, he heard a sound below him and looked down to see a woman with a towel round her head leaning out of a basement window and pointing to the area steps, to indicate that he should descend. Descending, he found her waiting for him in a narrow doorway.

  “Come in, quick,” she ordered. “I’ll catch my death.”

  As well as the towel, she was wearing slippers, a striped blouse and tight trousers over which was tied a grease-spattered apron. She had a heavy cold, and when Rodney entered a kitchen almost as cold as his own, he saw on the table a basin from which rose steam and a strong odour of balsam. She bent over it and spoke from under the towel.

  “No wooms bacant, sobby.”

  “I’m not after a room,” Rodney told her. “I’m looking for a Miss Baird.”

  “Bom.”

  “Gone?”

  “Ah. Bom this borning.”

  “I see. Do you happen to know where she went?”

  “Hob.”

  “Home?”

  She emerged from under the towel and through streaming eyes glared at him.

  “I told you—she went this morning. She gave up her room, and that suited me because somebody was waiting for it.”

  “Didn’t she leave an address?”

  “Of course she left an address. How would you expect her to get her letters sent on, if she didn’t leave an address? I’ve got it somewhere, but I can’t look now. I can’t let this steam go off. Come back in ten minutes.”

  Her head disappeared under the towel, and he thought it useless to argue; he went out, bought a newspaper and sat in the car. When fifteen minutes had elapsed, he made his way once more down the area steps. Given permission to enter, he went in and found the woman opening drawer after drawer, turning over crumpled papers and muttering curses. Banging the last drawer shut, she turned her steam-flushed face to Rodney and was about to speak when her eyes fell on a piece of paper protruding from a vase. She snatched it.

  “There’s the blasted thing,” she said. “Here you are. Shut the door quick when you go.”

  He drove to Oliver’s office and gave him a brief report.

  “That’s her home address in Brighton—we already had it,” Oliver told him. “Pity you went to all that trouble for nothing.”

  “As well as catching that woman’s cold, probably. Do you think it’s worth pursuing?”

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  “No. The girl’s told her story. If she was involved, if the row had anything to do with her, if it was something she said or did t
o make Madame Landini break into hysterics, she’s not likely to admit it, is she? What do you expect her to say that she didn’t say to old Armstrong yesterday?”

  “Nothing—but all we’ve got is a second-hand account, the girl’s efficient and, I’d say, observant. You could ask questions and find out—”

  “Why don’t you go down?”

  “This is your pigeon. I would have thought you’d be only too keen to get a detailed account of what happened.”

  “I’d much rather see Madame Landini—if they’d let me. In fact, that’s what I’ll try first. If I don’t get in, I’ll go down to Brighton. Tomorrow. And I only hope it won’t prove a damned waste of a day.” He paused, staring moodily at the desk. “Have you considered the kind of fools we’ll look if she really has come to a halt?”

  “We’ll be where we were before.”

  “That’s right—we will. You’ll go back to acting for authors anonymous, and poor old Claudius will lose the chance to retire with dignity. Apart from those two considerations, we’ll lose a book that might have been the success of the century. It’s a history of our times, told by a woman who was born in a golden aura and kept it round her all her life. Princess, petted by the Tsar. Paris, and the Russian nobility on their beam ends. A consummate artist dedicated to her art. A revolution and two world wars. Kings and princes as lovers, and every lover a lever to raise her higher in her profession, which hasn’t the profession it would have been if she’d been a lesser or a less gifted woman. A foreground of glittering success—once her career got under way—and in the background, like drumbeat, work, work, work, work. She . . . Damn it, are you listening?”

  “I was. I told you some time back that I agreed with every word, but you didn’t hear me. I never really knew what a publisher’s blurb was; thank you.”

  Rodney began to speak, broke off in disgust and went out to his car. He drove to Park Lane; if Madame Landini was unable to see him, he would be no worse off. If they let him in, he might learn enough to save him the trip to Brighton.