Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [44]
‘No. They’re all gone and done with. Swept away.’
‘And who lives here now then?’
‘Someone who has present-day power,’ said Renata.
‘Money?’
‘Yes. Very much so.’
‘Shall we meet Mr Robinson, flown on ahead by air to greet us?’
‘The last person you’ll meet here will be Mr Robinson, I can assure you.’
‘A pity,’ said Stafford Nye. ‘I like Mr Robinson. He’s quite something, isn’t he? Who is he really–what nationality is he?’
‘I don’t think anybody has ever known. Everyone tells one something different. Some people say he’s a Turk, some that he’s an Armenian, some that he’s Dutch, some that he’s just plain English. Some say that his mother was a Circassian slave, a Russian Grand-Duchess, an Indian Begum and so on. Nobody knows. One person told me that his mother was a Miss McLellan from Scotland. I think that’s as likely as anything.’
They had drawn up beneath a large portico. Two men-servants in livery came down the steps. Their bows were ostentatious as they welcomed the guests. The luggage was removed; they had a good deal of luggage with them. Stafford Nye had wondered to begin with why he had been told to bring so much, but he was beginning to understand now that from time to time there was need for it. There would, he thought, be need for it this evening. A few questioning remarks and his companion told him that this was so.
They met before dinner, summoned by the sound of a great resounding gong. As he paused in the hall, he waited for her to join him coming down the stairs. She was in full elaborate evening dress tonight, wearing a dark red velvet gown, rubies round her neck and a ruby tiara on her head. A manservant stepped forward and conducted them. Flinging open the door, he announced:
‘The Gräfin Zerkowski, Sir Stafford Nye.’
‘Here we come, and I hope we look the part,’ said Sir Stafford Nye to himself.
He looked down in a satisfied manner at the sapphire and diamond studs in the front of his shirt. A moment later he had drawn his breath in an astonished gasp. Whatever he had expected to see it had not been this. It was an enormous room, rococo in style, chairs and sofas and hangings of the finest brocades and velvets. On the walls there were pictures that he could not recognize all at once, but where he noted almost immediately–for he was fond of pictures–what was certainly a Cézanne, a Matisse, possibly a Renoir. Pictures of inestimable value.
Sitting on a vast chair, throne-like in its suggestion, was an enormous woman. A whale of a woman, Stafford Nye thought, there really was no other word to describe her. A great, big, cheesy-looking woman, wallowing in fat. Double, treble, almost quadruple chins. She wore a dress of stiff orange satin. On her head was an elaborate crown-like tiara of precious stones. Her hands, which rested on the brocaded arms of her seat, were also enormous. Great, big, fat hands with great, big, fat, shapeless fingers. On each finger, he noticed, was a solitaire ring. And in each ring, he thought, was a genuine solitaire stone. A ruby, an emerald, a sapphire, a diamond, a pale green stone which he did not know, a chrysoprase, perhaps, a yellow stone which, if not a topaz, was a yellow diamond. She was horrible, he thought. She wallowed in her fat. A great, white, creased, slobbering mass of fat was her face. And set in it, rather like currants in a vast currant bun, were two small black eyes. Very shrewd eyes, looking on the world, appraising it, appraising him, not appraising Renata, he thought. Renata she knew. Renata was here by command, by appointment. However you liked to put it. Renata had been told to bring him here. He wondered why. He couldn’t really think why, but he was quite sure of it. It was at him she was looking. She was appraising him, summing him up. Was he what she wanted? Was he, yes, he’d rather put it this way, was he what the customer had ordered?
I’ll have to make quite sure that I know what it is she does want, he thought. I’ll have to do my best, otherwise…Otherwise he could quite imagine that she might raise a fat ringed hand and say to one of the