Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [46]
‘Sometimes it presents no difficulties,’ said Sir Stafford Nye.
‘And you? You are not rich?’
‘I wish I was.’
‘The Foreign Office nowadays, it is not, shall we say, very rewarding?’
‘Oh well, I would not put it like that…After all, one goes places, one meets amusing people, one sees the world, one sees something of what goes on.’
‘Something, yes. But not everything.’
‘That would be very difficult.’
‘Have you ever wished to see what–how shall I put it–what goes on behind the scenes in life?’
‘One has an idea sometimes.’ He made his voice non-committal.
‘I have heard it said that that is true of you, that you have sometimes ideas about things. Not perhaps the conventional ideas?’
‘There have been times when I’ve been made to feel the bad boy of the family,’ said Stafford Nye and laughed.
Old Charlotte chuckled.
‘You don’t mind admitting things now and again, do you?’
‘Why pretend? People always know what you’re concealing.’
She looked at him.
‘What do you want out of life, young man?’
He shrugged his shoulders. Here again, he had to play things by ear.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Come now, come now, am I to believe that?’
‘Yes, you can believe it. I am not ambitious. Do I look ambitious?’
‘No, I will admit that.’
‘I ask only to be amused, to live comfortably, to eat, to drink in moderation, to have friends who amuse me.’
The old woman leant forward. Her eyes snapped open and shut three or four times. Then she spoke in a rather different voice. It was like a whistling note.
‘Can you hate? Are you capable of hating?’
‘To hate is a waste of time.’
‘I see. I see. There are no lines of discontent in your face. That is true enough. All the same, I think you are ready to take a certain path which will lead you to a certain place, and you will go along it smiling, as though you did not care, but all the same, in the end, if you find the right advisers, the right helpers, you might attain what you want, if you are capable of wanting.’
‘As to that,’ said Stafford Nye, ‘who isn’t?’ He shook his head at her very gently. ‘You see too much,’ he said. ‘Much too much.’
Footmen threw open a door.
‘Dinner is served.’
The proceedings were properly formal. They had indeed almost a royal tinge about them. The big doors at the far end of the room were flung open, showing through to a brightly lighted ceremonial dining-room, with a painted ceiling and three enormous chandeliers. Two middle-aged women approached the Gräfin, one on either side. They wore evening dress, their grey hair was carefully piled on their heads, each wore a diamond brooch. To Sir Stafford Nye, all the same, they brought a faint flavour of wardresses. They were, he thought, not so much security guards as perhaps high-class nursing attendants in charge of the health, the toilet and other intimate details of the Gräfin Charlotte’s existence. After respectful bows, each one of them slipped an arm below the shoulder and elbow of the sitting woman. With the ease of long practice aided by the effort which was obviously as much as she could make, they raised her to her feet in a dignified fashion.
‘We will go in to dinner now,’ said Charlotte.
With her two female attendants, she led the way. On her feet she looked even more a mass of wobbling jelly, yet she was still formidable. You could not dispose of her in your mind as just a fat old woman. She was somebody, knew she was somebody, intended to be somebody. Behind the three of them he and Renata followed.
As they entered through the portals of the dining-room, he felt it was almost more a banquet hall than a dining-room. There was a bodyguard here. Tall, fair-haired, handsome young men. They wore some kind of uniform. As Charlotte entered there was a clash as one and all drew their swords. They cross them overhead to make a passageway, and Charlotte, steadying herself, passed along that passageway, released by her attendants and making her progress solo to a vast carved chair with gold fittings and upholstered in golden brocade at the head of the long table.