‘Yes, Lionel dear.’
‘What else?’
‘Now, that’s enough. I don’t think I should tell the rest.’
‘Finish it, please!’
‘Why, Lionel, don’t keep shouting at me like that. Of course I’ll tell you if you insist. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t consider myself a true friend if I didn’t. Don’t you think it’s the sign of true friendship when two people like us…’
‘Gladys! Please hurry.’
‘Good heavens, you must give me time to think. Let me see now – so far as I can remember, what she actually said was this…’ – and Gladys Ponsonby, sitting upright on the sofa with her feet not quite touching the floor, her eyes away from me now, looking at the wall, began cleverly to mimic the deep tone of that voice I knew so well – ‘“Such a bore, my dear, because with Lionel one can always tell exactly what will happen right from beginning to end. For dinner we’ll go to the Savoy Grill – it’s always the Savoy Grill – and for two hours I’ll have to listen to the pompous old… I mean I’ll have to listen to him droning away about pictures and porcelain – always pictures and porcelain. Then in the taxi going home he’ll reach out for my hand, and he’ll lean closer, and I’ll get a whiff of stale cigar smoke and brandy, and he’ll start burbling about how he wished – oh, how he wished he was just twenty years younger. And I will say, ‘Could you open a window, do you mind?’ And when we arrive at my house I’ll tell him to keep the taxi, but he’ll pretend he hasn’t heard and pay it off quickly. And then at the front door, while I fish for my key, he’ll stand beside me with a sort of silly spaniel look in his eyes, and I’ll slowly put the key in the lock, and slowly turn it, and then – very quickly, before he has time to move – I’ll say good night and skip inside and shut the door behind me…” Why, Lionel! What’s the matter, dear? You look positively ill…’
At that point, mercifully, I must have swooned clear away. I can remember practically nothing of the rest of that terrible night except for a vague and disturbing suspicion that when I regained consciousness I broke down completely and permitted Gladys Ponsonby to comfort me in a variety of different ways. Later, I believe I walked out of the house and was driven home, but I remained more or less unconscious of everything around me until I woke up in my bed the next morning.
I awoke feeling weak and shaken. I lay still with my eyes closed, trying to piece together the events of the night before – Gladys Ponsonby’s living-room, Gladys on the sofa sipping brandy, the little puckered face, the mouth that was like a salmon’s mouth, the things she had said… What was it she had said? Ah, yes. About me. My God, yes! About Janet and me! Those outrageous, unbelievable remarks! Could Janet really have made them? Could she?
I can remember with what terrifying swiftness my hatred of Janet de Pelagia now began to grow. It all happened in a few minutes – a sudden, violent welling up of a hatred that filled me till I thought I was going to burst. I tried to dismiss it, but it was on me like a fever, and in no time at all I was hunting around, as would some filthy gangster, for a method of revenge.
A curious way to behave, you may say, for a man such as me; to which I would answer – no, not really, if you consider the circumstances. To my mind, this was the sort of thing that could drive a man to murder. As a matter of fact, had it not been for a small sadistic streak that caused me to seek a more subtle and painful punishment for my victim, I might well have become a murderer myself. But mere killing, I decided, was too good for this woman, and far too crude for my own taste. So I began looking for a superior alternative.
I am not normally a scheming person; I consider it an odious business and have had no practice in it whatsoever. But fury and hate can concentrate a man’s mind to an astonishing degree, and in no time at all a plot was forming and unfolding in my head – a plot so superior and exciting that I began to be quite carried away at the idea of it. By the time I had filled in the details and overcome one or two minor objections, my brooding vengeful mood had changed to one of extreme elation, and I remember how I started bouncing up and down absurdly on my bed and clapping my hands. The next thing I knew I had the telephone directory on my lap and was searching eagerly for a name. I found it, picked up the phone, and dialled the number.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Mr Royden? Mr John Royden?’
‘Speaking.’
Well – it wasn’t difficult to persuade the man to call around and see me for a moment. I had never met him, but of course he knew my name, both as an important collector of paintings and as a person of some consequence in society. I was a big fish for him to catch.
‘Let me see now, Mr Lampson,’ he said, ‘I think I ought to be free in about a couple of hours. Will that be all right?’
I told him it would be fine, gave my address, and rang off.
I jumped out of bed. It was really remarkable how exhilarated I felt all of a sudden. One moment I had been in an agony of despair, contemplating murder and suicide and I don’t know what, the next, I was whistling an aria from Puccini in my bath. Every now and again I caught myself rubbing my hands together in a devilish fashion, and once, during my exercises, when I overbalanced doing a double-knee-bend, I sat on the floor and giggled like a schoolboy.
At the appointed time Mr John Royden was shown in to my library and I got up to meet him. He was a small neat man with a slightly ginger goatee beard. He wore a black velvet jacket, a rust-brown tie, a red pullover, and black suede shoes. I shook his small neat hand.
‘Good of you to come along so quickly, Mr Royden.’
‘Not at all, sir.’ The man’s lips – like the lips of nearly all bearded men – looked wet and naked, a trifle indecent, shining pink in among all that hair. After telling him again how much I admired his work, I got straight down to business.
‘Mr Royden,’ I said. ‘I have a rather unusual request to make of you, something quite personal in its way.’
‘Yes, Mr Lampson?’ He was sitting in the chair opposite me and he cocked his head over to one side, quick and perky like a bird.
‘Of course, I know I can trust you to be discreet about anything I say.’
‘Absolutely, Mr Lampson.’
‘All right. Now my proposition is this: there is a certain lady in town here whose portrait I would like you to paint. I very much want to possess a fine painting of her. But there are certain complications. For example, I have my own reasons for not wishing her to know that it is I who am commissioning the portrait.’
‘You mean…’
‘Exactly, Mr Royden. That is exactly what I mean. As a man of the world I’m sure you will understand.’
He smiled, a crooked little smile that only just came through his beard, and he nodded his head knowingly up and down.
‘Is it not possible,’ I said, ‘that a man might be – how shall I put it? – extremely fond of a lady and at the same time have his own good reasons for not wishing her to know about it yet?’