Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [64]
Near the desk, by the stove of period porcelain, were paperback editions of certain preachings and tenets by the modern prophets of the world. Those who were now or had recently been crying in the wilderness were here to be studied and approved by young followers with haloes of hair, strange raiment, and earnest hearts. Marcuse, Guevara, Lévi-Strauss, Fanon.
In case she was going to hold any conversations with golden youth she had better read up a little on that also.
At that moment there was a timid tap on the door. It opened slightly and the face of the faithful Amy came round the corner. Amy, Lady Matilda thought suddenly, would look exactly like a sheep when she was ten years older. A nice, faithful, kindly sheep. At the moment, Lady Matilda was glad to think, she looked still like a very agreeable plump lamb with nice curls of hair, thoughtful and kindly eyes, and able to give kindly baa’s rather than to bleat.
‘I do hope you slept well.’
‘Yes, my dear, I did, excellently. Have you got that thing?’
Amy always knew what she meant. She handed it to her employer.
‘Ah, my diet sheet. I see.’ Lady Matilda perused it, then said, ‘How incredibly unattractive! What’s this water like one’s supposed to drink?’
‘It doesn’t taste very nice.’
‘No, I don’t suppose it would. Come back in half an hour. I’ve got a letter I want you to post.’
Moving aside her breakfast tray, she moved over to the desk. She thought for a few minutes and then wrote her letter. ‘It ought to do the trick,’ she murmured.
‘I beg your pardon, Lady Matilda, what did you say?’
‘I was writing to the old friend I mentioned to you.’
‘The one you said you haven’t seen for about fifty or sixty years?’
Lady Matilda nodded.
‘I do hope–’ Amy was apologetic. ‘I mean–I–it’s such a long time. People have short memories nowadays. I do hope that she’ll remember all about you and everything.’
‘Of course she will,’ said Lady Matilda. ‘The people you don’t forget are the people you knew when you were about ten to twenty. They stick in your mind for ever. You remember what hats they wore, and the way they laughed, and you remember their faults and their good qualities and everything about them. Now anyone I met twenty years ago, shall we say, I simply can’t remember who they are. Not if they’re mentioned to me, and not if I saw them even. Oh yes, she’ll remember about me. And all about Lausanne. You get that letter posted. I’ve got to do a little homework.’
She picked up the Almanach de Gotha and returned to bed, where she made a serious study of such items as might come in useful. Some family relationships and various other kinships of the useful kind. Who had married whom, who had lived where, what misfortunes had overtaken others. Not that the person whom she had in mind was herself likely to be found in the Almanach de Gotha. But she lived in a part of the world, had come there deliberately to live in a Schloss belonging to originally noble ancestors, and she had absorbed the local respect and adulation for those above all of good breeding. To good birth, even impaired with poverty, she herself, as Lady Matilda well knew, had no claim whatever. She had had to make do with money. Oceans of money. Incredible amounts of money.
Lady Matilda Cleckheaton had no doubt at all that she herself, the daughter of an eighth Duke, would be bidden to some kind of festivity. Coffee, perhaps, and delicious creamy cakes.
III
Lady Matilda Cleckheaton made her entrance into one of the grand reception rooms of the Schloss. It had been a fifteen-mile drive. She had dressed herself with some care, though somewhat to the disapproval of Amy. Amy seldom offered advice, but she was so anxious for her principal to succeed in whatever she was undertaking that she had ventured this time on a moderate remonstrance.
‘You don’t think your red dress is really a little worn, if you know what I mean. I mean just beneath the arms, and, well, there are two or three very