The Cherry Blossom Corpse Read Free Page A

we went out into the garden, Amanda was wafting back in.
    â€œSuch heaven!” she said. “Such utter, perfect heaven!”
    She let the words float magically on the clear air. So, at any rate, I felt she might have put it.
    Around on one of the shadowy little paths I saw the man who I thought must be Arthur Biggs, deep in a discussion of practicalities with Mary Sweeny. We took the path down to the fjord, where we found a simple little boathouse perched on a rock, and a rowing-boat. I took Daniel for a row, while Jan and Cristobel lay in the early evening sun on the wharf of the boathouse. This part of the fjord was quite narrow, because the boathouse looked towards a small island, with summer cottages dotted over it. I rowed some way, then put up the oars and lay there, parrying lazily Dan’s questions about Norway with answers of unparalleled ignorance. Soon it was time to go back for dinner.
    We had not been the last to arrive at KvalevÃ¥g. When we had climbed the path and reached the garden in front of the house, we saw an immense and svelte Mercedes parked immediately in front of the porch. A uniformed driver soon trotted out and drove off. Whoever it was who had arrived, the proprietress had not been there to meet her. She was marching back again from the road, with another collection of people from a bus. A jolly-looking woman wearing sneakers, a rather voluptuous one, and a thickset man, gaunt of face and bloodshot of eye, who gave the impression that he had seldom been so long between drinks. Sure enough, as the party went up the steps of the porch towards the front door, I heard him say in heavily accented English:
    â€œVair’s de bar?”
    The proprietress ignored him, and swept on into the house. We lingered behind, observing and pretending not to observe. At do’s such as this, you spend the first few hours watching the players and deciding who there is that you could bear spending a few hours in the company of.
    â€œMary Sweeny and those two jolly women who just went past,” said Jan.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œYou were wondering who you could manage to put up with for the next few days.”
    â€œSmartyboots. Know-all,” I said. One of the most demoralizing things about marriage is that it gives someone a platform ticket into your mind. Sharing rooms in Baker Street did the trick, too, for Holmes and Watson. “Anyway,” I said, “I expect there are others. Arthur Biggs didn’t look too bad.”
    â€œHmmm,” said Jan.
    We were delaying going in, to let the newcomers disperse, but as we went through the porch and into the lounge we could not avoid seeing, disappearing slowly up the stairs, a heavy form dressed in black, taking the stairs one by one, and resting on both a stick and the arm of a companion. There floated down to us, in a thick, unlovely New York accent, words presumably addressed to the proprietress:
    â€œI eat alone. I invariably eat alone. See that I have a table to myself. Give me support, Maxwell—support, for God’s sake!”
    Cristobel looked alarmed. Jan raised her eyebrows at me.
    â€œNot destined to be one of your buddy pals at this conference, I think, Perry.”
    Dinner was an hour later, at seven-thirty. The normal routine of the guest-house would have seen the main meal served much earlier, but it had been changed to take in the various times of arrival of the conference-goers. When we got down to dinner there was no mistaking the important, Mercedes-borne new arrival. Seated, vast and immobile, at a table to herself was a malevolent-looking old woman, her hair dyed an aggressive black, and dressed in a shiny black material that may not havebeen bombazine but was what I have always imagined bombazine to look like. She was smoking a small cigar while she waited for her soup, and in front of her was a half-bottle of brandy, and a decanter of water. She poured from both into her tumbler, inhaled on