Tied Up in Tinsel Read Free

ready supply?”
    “I had to wait for them, as it were, to fall in. For some time I lived very simply with only Blore and Kittiwee, in four rooms of the east wing. But gradually the supply built up: the Vale was not the only source. The Scrubs and, in Nigel’s case, Broadmoor, were also productive. In passing,” Hilary had then pointed out, “I remind you that there is nothing original in my arrangements. The idea was canvassed in Victorian times by no less a person than Charles Dickens, and considerably later, on a farcical level, by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero. I have merely adopted it and carried to its logical conclusion.”
    “I think,” Troy had said, “it’s remotely possible that Rory, my husband, you know, may have been responsible for the arrest of one or even more of your staff. Would they —?”
    “You need have no qualms. For one thing they don’t know of the relationship and for another they wouldn’t mind if they did. They bear no grudge as far as I can discern against the police. With the possible exception of Mervyn, the ex-sign-writer, you recollect. He feels that since his booby-trap was directed against a class that the police are concerned to suppress, it was rather hard that he should suffer so grievous a penalty for removing one of them. But even he has taken against Counsel for the Prosecution and the jury rather than against the officers who arrested him.”
    “Big of him. I suppose,” said Troy.
     
    These conversations had taken place during the early sittings. Now, on the fifth day of her residence, Hilary and Troy had settled down to an oddly companionable relationship. The portrait prospered. She was working with unusual rapidity, and few misgivings. All was well.
    “I’m so glad,” Hilary said, “that it suits you to stay for Christmas. I do wish your husband could have joined us. He might have found my arrangements of some interest.”
    “He’s on an extradition case in Australia.”
    “Your temporary loss,” said Hilary neatly, “is my lasting gain. How shall we spend the afternoon? Another sitting? I am all yours.”
    “That would be grand. About an hour while the light lasts and then I’ll be under my own steam for a bit, I think.”
    Troy looked at her host who was also her subject. A very rewarding subject, she thought, and one with whom it would be fatally easy to confuse interpretation with caricature. That ovoid forehead, that crest of fuzz, those astonished, light-blue eyes and the mouth that was perpetually hitched up at the corners in a non-smile! But, Troy thought, isn’t interpretation, of necessity, a form of caricature?
    She found Hilary contemplating her as if she was the subject and he the scrutator.
    “Look here,” Troy said abruptly, “you’ve not by any chance been pulling my leg? About the servants and all that?”
    “No.”
    “No?”
    “I assure you. No.”
    “O.K.,” said Troy. “I’m going back to work. I’ll be about ten minutes fiddling and brooding and then if you’ll sit again, we’ll carry on.”
    “But of course. I am enjoying myself,” Hilary said, “inordinately.”
    Troy returned to the library. Her brushes as usual had been cleaned in turpentine. Today they had been set out together with a nice lump of fresh rag. Her paint-encrusted smock had been carefully disposed over a chair-back. An extra table covered with paper had been brought in to supplement a makeshift bench. Mervyn again, she thought, the booby-trap chap who used to paint signs.
    And as she thought of him he came in, wary-looking and dark about the jaw.
    “Excuse me,” Mervyn said, and added “madam” as if he’d just remembered to do so. “Was there anything else?”
    “Thank you,
very
much,” Troy said. “Nothing. It’s all marvellous,” and felt she was being unnaturally effusive.
    “I thought,” Mervyn mumbled, staring at the portrait, “you could do with more bench space. Like. Madam.”
    “Oh, rather. Yes. Thank you.”
    “Like you was