Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [45]
‘You have come very punctual to time, child.’
It was a hoarse, asthmatic voice which had once had an undertone, he thought, of strength, possibly even of beauty. That was over now. Renata came forward, made a slight curtsy. She picked up the fat hand and dropped a courtesy kiss upon it.
‘Let me present to you Sir Stafford Nye. The Gräfin Charlotte von Waldsausen.’
The fat hand was extended towards him. He bent over it in the foreign style. Then she said something that surprised him.
‘I know your great-aunt,’ she said.
He looked astounded, and he saw immediately that she was amused by that, but he saw too, that she had expected him to be surprised by it. She laughed, a rather queer, grating laugh. Not attractive.
‘Shall we say, I used to know her. It is many, many years since I have seen her. We were in Switzerland together, at Lausanne, as girls. Matilda. Lady Matilda Baldwen-White.’
‘What a wonderful piece of news to take home with me,’ said Stafford Nye.
‘She is older than I am. She is in good health?’
‘For her age, in very good health. She lives in the country quietly. She has arthritis, rheumatism.’
‘Ah yes, all the ills of old age. She should have injections of procaine. That is what the doctors do here in this altitude. It is very satisfactory. Does she know that you are visiting me?’
‘I imagine that she has not the least idea of it,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘She knew only that I was going to this festival of modern music.’
‘Which you enjoyed, I hope?’
‘Oh, enormously. It is a fine Festival Opera Hall, is it not?’
‘One of the finest. Pah! It makes the old Bayreuth Festival Hall look like a comprehensive school! Do you know what it cost to build, that Opera House?’
She mentioned a sum in millions of marks. It quite took Stafford Nye’s breath away, but he was under no necessity to conceal that. She was pleased with the effect it made upon him.
‘With money,’ she said, ‘if one knows, if one has the ability, if one has the discrimination, what is there that money cannot do? It can give one the best.’
She said the last two words with a rich enjoyment, a kind of smacking of the lips which he found both unpleasant and at the same time slightly sinister.
‘I see that here,’ he said, as he looked round the walls.
‘You are fond of art? Yes, I see you are. There, on the east wall is the finest Cézanne in the world today. Some say that the–ah, I forget the name of it at the moment, the one in the Metropolitan in New York–is finer. That is not true. The best Matisse, the best Cézanne, the best of all that great school of art are here. Here in my mountain eyrie.’
‘It is wonderful,’ said Sir Stafford. ‘Quite wonderful.’
Drinks were being handed round. The Old Woman of the Mountain, Sir Stafford Nye noticed, did not drink anything. It was possible, he thought, that she feared to take any risks over her blood pressure with that vast weight.
‘And where did you meet this child?’ asked the mountainous Dragon.
Was it a trap? He did not know, but he made his decision.
‘At the American Embassy, in London.’
‘Ah yes, so I heard. And how is–ah, I forget her name now–ah yes, Milly Jean, our southern heiress? Attractive, did you think?’
‘Most charming. She has a great success in London.’
‘And poor dull Sam Cortman, the United States Ambassador?’
‘A very sound man, I’m sure,’ said Stafford Nye politely.
She chuckled.
‘Aha, you’re tactful, are you not? Ah well, he does well enough. He does what he is told as a good politician should. And it is enjoyable to be Ambassador in London. She could do that for him, Milly Jean. Ah, she could get him an Embassy anywhere in the world, with that well-stuffed purse of hers. Her father owns half the oil in Texas, he owns land, goldfields, everything. A coarse, singularly ugly man–But what does she look like? A gentle little aristocrat. Not blatant,