Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [65]
‘I know, my dear, I know. It is a shabby dress but it is nevertheless a Patou model. It is old but it was enormously expensive. I am not trying to look rich or extravagant. I am an impoverished member of an aristocratic family. Anyone of under fifty, no doubt, would despise me. But my hostess is living and has lived for some years in a part of the world where the rich will be kept waiting for their meal while the hostess will be willing to wait for a shabby, elderly woman of impeccable descent. Family traditions are things that one does not lose easily. One absorbs them, even, when one goes to a new neighbourhood. In my trunk, by the way, you will find a feather boa.’
‘Are you going to put on a feather boa?’
‘Yes, I am. An ostrich feather one.’
‘Oh dear, that must be years old.’
‘It is, but I’ve kept it very carefully. You’ll see, Charlotte will recognize what it is. She will think one of the best families in England was reduced to wearing her old clothes that she had kept carefully for years. And I’ll wear my sealskin coat, too. That’s a little worn, but such a magnificent coat in its time.’
Thus arrayed, she set forth. Amy went with her as a well-dressed though only quietly smart attendant.
Matilda Cleckheaton had been prepared for what she saw. A whale, as Stafford had told her. A wallowing whale, a hideous old woman sitting in a room surrounded with pictures worth a fortune. Rising with some difficulty from a throne-like chair which could have figured on a stage representing the palace of some magnificent prince from any age from the Middle Ages down.
‘Matilda!’
‘Charlotte!’
‘Ah! After all these years. How strange it seems!’
They exchanged words of greeting and pleasure, talking partly in German and partly in English. Lady Matilda’s German was slightly faulty. Charlotte spoke excellent German, excellent English though with a strong guttural accent, and occasionally English with an American accent. She was really, Lady Matilda thought, quite splendidly hideous. For a moment she felt a fondness almost dating back to the past although, she reflected the next moment, Charlotte had been a most detestable girl. Nobody had really liked her and she herself had certainly not done so. But there is a great bond, say what we will, in the memories of old schooldays. Whether Charlotte had liked her or not she did not know. But Charlotte, she remembered, had certainly–what used to be called in those days–sucked up to her. She had had visions, possibly, of staying in a ducal castle in England. Lady Matilda’s father, though of most praiseworthy lineage, had been one of the most impecunious of English dukes. His estate had only been held together by the rich wife he had married whom he had treated with the utmost courtesy, and who had enjoyed bullying him whenever able to do so. Lady Matilda had been fortunate enough to be his daughter by a second marriage. Her own mother had been extremely agreeable and also a very successful actress, able to play the part of looking a duchess far more than any real duchess could do.
They exchanged reminiscences of past days, the tortures they had inflicted on some of their instructors, the fortunate and unfortunate marriages that had occurred to some of their schoolmates. Matilda made a few mentions of certain alliances and families culled from the pages of the Almanach de Gotha–‘but of course that must have been a terrible marriage for Elsa. One of the Bourbons de Parme, was it not? Yes, yes, well, one knows what that leads to. Most unfortunate.’
Coffee was brought, delicious coffee, plates of millefeuille pastry and delicious cream cakes.
‘I should not touch any of this,’ cried Lady Matilda. ‘No indeed! My doctor, he is most severe. He said that I must adhere strictly to the Cure while I was here. But after all this is a day of holiday, is it not? Of renewal of youth. That is what interests me so much. My great-nephew who visited you not long ago–I forget who brought him here, the Countess–ah, it began with a Z, I cannot remember her name.’
‘The Countess Renata Zerkowski