The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [51]
Which meant 1926 or ’27. The glory years for Pandora Gibson-Hoare. Her golden period.
‘She arrived, late one afternoon, in full evening wear. She had on a cloche hat and a fur stole and there hung a rope of pearls around her neck heavy enough to tow a barge. She left a Bugatti, a convertible, with its engine running on the pavement outside. A Bugatti! I believe it was a Number 38. This was at dusk. The lights of the car were left on. No traffic wardens in those times, Mr Seaton. Not for the likes of Miss Gibson-Hoare. She walked in trailing perfume and pink gin and tobacco. I was in the reception area, which was bigger then. Better appointed. It was considered important in those days to maintain a grand entrance and we did, with ornamental pots and much panelled wood. All gone now, of course, in these days of utilising space efficiently. All ripped out after a visit from the time-and-motion people back in the nineteen sixties during the folly of the efficiency drive instigated by myself.’
Seaton looked at the camera on the desk. He imagined the throaty purr of an Italian roadster on the pavement outside, its headlights yellow orbs fierce with glamour as night descended on the staid city.
‘Our vestibule was quite something in those days. And she was quite something in it, shaking the snowflakes from her gray mink stole, glittering, it seemed to me, under our crystal chandeliers. She was quite tall and very slender, the very epitome of the fashion at the time, far more beautiful, my father commented more than once, than any of the celebrated models she photographed. I remember she caught my eye and smiled at me. I was at the desk, practising fair-copy, trying to perfect my copperplate just by duplicating by hand the entries into the service log we kept in those days on the front desk. She was wearing lipstick. It wasn’t red, it was wine-coloured, the stain on her mouth. And she smiled at me, revealing perfect teeth.’
‘Why was she here?’
‘She had apparently dropped a camera into the sea. She had been getting out of a speedboat or launch at a jetty and dropped her camera. The water wasn’t deep and the camera was retrieved. But it had been fully immersed in salt water and needed stripping and the parts cleaning properly to allow everything to dry out.’
‘Did she arrive driving the car herself?’
And Breene’s shoulders stiffened again. ‘What you mean is, was she alone, Mr Seaton. And the answer is that she wasn’t. There wasn’t a chauffeur. But she didn’t arrive alone. There was a chap with her, some flashy fellow in evening wear and a silk scarf and a pair of buttoned spats. Like her, he was tall. I remember he had on an astrakhan coat and carried a cane. He didn’t really look at anything, had this restlessness about him. I think they must have been on their way to a party or reception somewhere, the way they were attired.’
‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’
And now, finally, Young Mr Breene turned around. And Seaton really could see him as the alert and curious child he’d been.
‘She really was very beautiful. She had pale skin and dark eyes and auburn hair with the gloss of silk about it when it shook and caught the light. She was a remarkable creature, even to a child such as I was. But you’re right, it’s something else I remember most vividly. As they left, the fellow winked at me. It was a wink full of lasciviousness, a look almost entirely lost on a little boy. And he stuck out his tongue. And his tongue convulsed and cavorted between his teeth like some chopped pink eel, unaware of its death. And then he walked out with her across the parquet. Except that