Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh Page B

into his face. Mandrake, who was nearer to them than the rest of the party, distinctly heard her say: “Jo, what are you up to?” and caught Jonathan’s reply: “Come and see.” He took her by the elbow and led her towards the group by the fire.
    “You know Madame Lisse, Hersey, don’t you?”
    “Yes,” said Hersey, after a short pause. “How do you do?”
    “And Dr. Hart?”
    “How do you do? Sandra, darling, how nice to see you,” said Hersey, turning her back on Dr. Hart and Madame Lisse and kissing Mrs. Compline. Her face was hidden from Mandrake, but he saw that her ears and the back of her neck were scarlet.
    “You haven’t kissed me, Hersey,” said Nicholas.
    “I don’t intend to. How many weeks have you been stationed in Great Chipping and never a glimpse have I had of you? William, my dear, I didn’t know you had actually reached home again. How well you look.”
    “I feel quite well, thank you, Hersey,” said William gravely. “You’ve met Chloris, haven’t you?”
    “Not yet, but I’m delighted to do so, and to congratulate you both,” said Hersey, shaking hands with Chloris.
    “And Mr. Aubrey Mandrake,” said Jonathan, bringing Hersey a drink. “How do you do. Jonathan told me I should meet you. I’ve got a subject for you.”
    “Oh, God,” thought Mandrake, “she’s going to be funny about my plays.”
    “It’s about a false hairdresser who strangles his rival with three feet of dyed hair,” Hersey continued. “He’s a male hairdresser, you know, and he wears a helmet made of tin waving clamps and no clothes at all. Perhaps it would be better as a ballet.”
    Mandrake laughed politely. “A beguiling theme,” he said.
    “I’m glad you like it. It’s not properly worked out yet, but of course his mother had long hair and when he was an infant he saw his father lugging her about the room by her pigtail, and it gave him convulsions because he hated his father and was in love with his mother, and so he grew up into a hairdresser and worked off his complexes on his customers. And I must say,” Hersey added, “I wish I could follow his example.”
    “Do you dislike your clients, Lady Hersey?” asked Madame Lisse. “I do not find in myself any antipathy to my clients. Many of them have become my good friends.”
    “You must be able to form friendships very quickly,” said Hersey sweetly.
    “Of course,” Madame Lisse continued, “it depends very much upon the class of one’s clientele.”
    “And possibly,” Hersey returned, “upon one’s own class, don’t you think?” And then, as if ashamed of herself, she turned again to Mrs. Compline.
    “I suppose,” said William’s voice close to Mandrake, “that Hersey was making a joke about her subject, wasn’t she?”
    “Yes,” Mandrake said hurriedly, for he was startled, “yes, of course.”
    “Well, but it
might
be a good idea, mightn’t it? I mean, people do write about those things. There’s that long play, I saw it in London about four years ago, where the brother and sister find out about their mother and all that. Some people thought that play was a bit thick, but I didn’t think so. I thought there was a lot of reality in it. I don’t see why plays shouldn’t say what people feel in the same way as pictures ought to. Not what they do. What they do in their thoughts.”
    “That is my own contention,” said Mandrake, who was beginning to feel more than a little curious about William’s pictures. William gave a rather vapid laugh and rubbed his hands together. “There you are, you see,” he said. He looked round the circle of Jonathan’s guests, and lowered his voice. “Jonathan has played a trick on all of us,” he said unexpectedly. Mandrake did not answer, and William went on: “Perhaps you planned it together.”
    “No, no. This party is entirely Jonathan’s.”
    “I’ll bet it is. Jonathan is doing in the ordinary way what he does in his thoughts. If you wrote a play of him what