I don’t think I need say any more. I have been very frank. You should know me well enough by now to judge me fairly – and dare I hope it? – to sympathize with me when you hear my story. You may even decide that much of the blame for what has happened should be placed, not upon me, but upon a lady called Gladys Ponsonby. After all, she was the one who started it. Had I not escorted Gladys Ponsonby back to her house that night nearly six months ago, and had she not spoken so freely to me about certain people, and certain things, then this tragic business could never have taken place.
It was last December, if I remember rightly, and I had been dining with the Ashendens in that lovely house of theirs that overlooks the southern fringe of Regent’s Park. There were a fair number of people there, but Gladys Ponsonby was the only one beside myself who had come alone. So when it was time for us to leave, I naturally offered to see her safely back to her house. She accepted and we left together in my car; but unfortunately, when we arrived at her place she insisted that I come in and have ‘one for the road,’ as she put it. I didn’t wish to seem stuffy, so I told the chauffeur to wait and followed her in.
Gladys Ponsonby is an unusually short woman, certainly not more than four feet nine or ten, maybe even less than that – one of those tiny persons who gives me, when I am beside her, the comical, rather wobbly feeling that I am standing on a chair. She is a widow, a few years younger than me – maybe fifty-three or four, and it is possible that thirty years ago she was quite a fetching little thing. But now the face is loose and puckered with nothing distinctive about it whatsoever. The individual features, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the chin, are buried in the folds of fat around the puckered little face and one does not notice them. Except perhaps the mouth, which reminds me – I cannot help it – of a salmon.
In the living-room, as she gave me my brandy, I noticed that her hand was a trifle unsteady. The lady is tired, I told myself, so I mustn’t stay long. We sat down together on the sofa and for a while discussed the Ashendens’ party and the people who were there. Finally I got up to go.
‘Sit down, Lionel,’ she said. ‘Have another brandy.’
‘No, really, I must go.’
‘Sit down and don’t be so stuffy. I’m having another one, and the least you can do is keep me company while I drink it.’
I watched her as she walked over to the sideboard, this tiny woman, faintly swaying, holding her glass out in front of her with both hands as though it were an offering; and the sight of her walking like that, so incredibly short and squat and stiff, suddenly gave me the ludicrous notion that she had no legs at all above the knees.
‘Lionel, what are you chuckling about?’ She half turned to look at me as she poured the drink, and some of it slopped over the side of the glass.
‘Nothing, my dear. Nothing at all.’
‘Well, stop it, and tell me what you think of my new portrait.’ She indicated a large canvas hanging over the fireplace that I had been trying to avoid with my eye ever since. I entered the room. It was a hideous thing, painted, as I well knew, by a man who was now all the rage in London, a very mediocre painter called John Royden. It was a full-length portrait of Gladys, Lady Ponsonby, painted with a certain technical cunning that made her out to be a tall and quite alluring creature.
‘Charming,’ I said.
‘Isn’t it, though! I’m so glad you like it.’
‘Quite charming.’
‘I think John Royden is a genius. Don’t you think he’s a genius, Lionel?’
‘Well – that might be going a bit far.’
‘You mean it’s a little early to say for sure?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But listen, Lionel – and I think this will surprise you. John Royden is so sought after now that he won’t even consider painting anyone for less than a thousand guineas!’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes! And everyone’s queueing up, simply queueing up to get themselves done.’
‘Most interesting.’
‘Now take your Mr Cézanne or whatever his name is. I’ll bet he never got that sort of money in his lifetime.’
‘Never.’
‘And you say he was a genius?’
‘Sort of – yes.’
‘Then so is Royden,’ she said, settling herself again on the sofa. ‘The money proves it.’
She sat silent for a while, sipping her brandy, and I couldn’t help noticing how the unsteadiness of her hand was causing the rim of the glass to jog against her lower lip. She knew I was watching her, and without turning her head she swivelled her eyes and glanced at me cautiously out of the corners of them. ‘A penny for your thoughts?’
Now, if there is one phrase in the world I cannot abide, it is this. It gives me an actual physical pain in the chest and I begin to cough.
‘Come on, Lionel. A penny for them.’