The Hound in the Left-hand Corner by Giles Waterfield

Author:Giles Waterfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Washington Square Press

THE BOARDROOM, 12:25 P.M.

The boardroom is one of the museum’s most sumptuous apartments. Located over the entrance hall and almost as large, it is lit by a massive Palladian window. This window overlooks a road, which the founder intended as a monumental avenue leading to the river. Only a few houses were constructed and nowadays the processional route dwindles into a traffic-filtering system and a bus station. On the paneled walls of the boardroom hang portraits of the queen and the duke, the museum’s founder resplendent in the robes of the Bath, and successive chairmen. At the huge mahogany table (rescued by Auberon from the basement) innumerable committees have debated, candidates for senior jobs have trembled before panels of dignitaries seated kilometers away across the polished board, wealthy applicants for the privilege of making donations to the museum have eyed one another surreptitiously and wondered if it is a bonus to be invited to lunch here in the company of their peers. In rare moments of nonactivity, Auberon likes to sit here on his own, enjoying the room’s noble proportions, and considering the many things that worry and console him. Above all, he wonders if he is happy here, if he is wasting his talents, whether he should not be back at Oxford and setting some prints on the sands of time by writing real books as he knows he could do. . . . He would miss the glitter and the power, but doesn’t he realize how insubstantial they are? Is the great world really so great after all?

Today the table’s set for a minimal lunch, which would gladden the civil servants who oversee the museum’s finances. All these guests will get are sandwiches laid over dispirited lettuce leaves on brittle metallic trays, which bend dangerously when lifted, and own-brand mineral water from one of the dimmer supermarkets.

At twelve twenty-five precisely the room is silent. Sir Lewis Burslem is lounging, as though indifferent to any observers, in the ornate mahogany and leather armchair designed for the chairman. In front of him lie papers which he is studying carelessly, one arm drooping languidly beside his chair. Auberon, resembling a smoldering volcano rather than a man of the world, is rising from his seat on the chairman’s right, perhaps to move toward the principal door, which is opening. Among the muted tones of the half-shadowed rooms, Emma, wearing white linen, crisp and startlingly light, provides a higher accent as she enters the boardroom through a side door. She carries a pile of papers, apparently architect’s drawings. Outside, the warm morning has been growing hotter, and at this moment the sun fills the room with the heady radiance of flaming (but frustrated) June.

Through the door walk three of the trustees, then another, then two more. It is well known that Sir Lewis requires exact punctuality for the meetings he’s chairing, with only a moment or two for amiable preliminaries. As they come in, the men all in dark suits, except Trevor in

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