Birth Marks by Sarah Dunant

Author:Sarah Dunant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 1992-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘He is not in.’

Whooppee, ‘I see, then I wonder if you’d tell Madame Belmont that I’m here.’

‘Who are you?’

You could tell even from the way she had opened the door that they didn’t get many uninvited visitors. Not surprising really, considering the dogs. I had sprinted the distance between the stables and the front and arrived mercifully unsavaged. We had already taken a cordial instant dislike to each other, she and I. For her part no doubt it was my dress sense: too much denim and decidedly muddy boots. For me it was her face, long and thin with a mouth that probably hadn’t smiled since the suppression of the student riots in 1968. I gave her my brightest little grin, usually reserved for traffic wardens. ‘If you just say I’m a friend of Carolyn Hamilton, from England.’

I suspect if it hadn’t been such obvious gross bad manners she would have shut the door in my face and left me on the doorstep. As it was she told me to wait in the hall, while she pitter-pattered her way off down the corridor, disappearing off through a door at the end like the white rabbit in search of the queen. I admired the decor, counted to ten then followed her.

Where I had anticipated eighteenth-century chintz I found greenery, acres of it. I was standing just inside a large conservatory, the sun streaming in through glass panels on to a jungle of plants. In the middle like a temporary safari camp was an elegant white cane three-piece suite and wrought-iron table on which stood a pot of coffee and a satisfyingly large cup. The air was heady with that sticky warmth that comes from too many plants and too few people to use up the oxygen. The word sanatorium came to mind. I caught sight of the housekeeper, a flash of dark hair amid the foliage, talking intently. Somewhere in the tropical rainforest the mistress was listening. I cleared my throat. The housekeeper turned, shot me a murderous look and hurled herself in my direction. I was getting ready to step aside, when a woman’s voice, cool and commanding, stopped her in her tracks.

‘Leave it be, Agnes. Since the lady has come all this way, of course I will see her.’

When she stepped out from the jungle I had trouble keeping my eyes in my head. If money can’t buy you love it can certainly get you beauty. Tall, maybe five nine or ten, with long slender limbs and a cap of short shining fair hair, Madame Belmont was a real stunner. She was also, I realized with a shock that was almost physical, very like somebody I already knew. Or at least felt I knew. Grow the hair, stick her in a pair of ballet shoes and an acre of tulle and what would you have but a second Carolyn Hamilton. Funny Belmont hadn’t seen fit to tell me. But then, of course, he wasn’t intending us to be introduced.

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