Eva Trout Read Online Free PDF Page B

of skyscrapers which spring up in Knightsbridge overnight. It seemed like him to operate from this area.
    The handshake done with, she settled down to facing him: aslant to evade the sun, knees crossed, handbag balanced on them. She inclined her head, but said nothing. Constantine, opening an onyx box, induced her to try an Egyptian cigarette; which, leaning across the ormolu table, he lit for her. He then, flicking his lighter shut, uttered an initiatory sigh. On the table, in addition to the cigarette box, a matching ashtray and an object which probably was an intercom, sat a box file with TROUT XIV written not only on the back but on top. This meeting across an idealised office desk gave the occasion, at least now, at the outset, the character of an interview. “Fortunately,” he added, “it is less cold today. Less bitingly cold, that is—or a little less so.”
    Iseult took a sip at the cigarette, then rested it on the lip of the ashtray in order to draw off her right-hand glove. The gloves, fairly fine black suede, were not lost on Constantine: undoubtedly they were new. There had, then, been a moment to shop on the way here? A less wise woman would also have chanced a hat bar; Mrs. Arble had kept her head and stuck to her sleek-feathered turban, which—dating back though it might by a year or two, still was in good shape (not many outings, probably?) and show-cased the forehead loyally: nothing like an old friend.
    “You’re well, I hope?” he asked with renewed concern.
    “Very. And you?”
    “So-so. This is a treacherous time of year.”
    “Though spring,” she suggested, “is more treacherous, isn’t it? In winter one at least knows what to expect.”
    “How true. Yes, that is very true.”
    “Though Eva,” she had to admit, “has a quite bad cold.”
    “You astound me—how did she manage that? She seemed very warmly wrapped up when she came here.”
    “I imagine she caught it at the vicarage.”
    “Vicarage?”
    “There, they are six-a-penny.”
    “ That should keep her quiet, at least for a while. Which, under the circumstances—you’d agree?—is something.” He glanced at the file, then away from it. “I hope, Mrs. Arble, my letter was not a shock to you ?”
    “I hope,” she returned, “her visit was not a shock to you?”
    He looked out of the window behind him, over his shoulder. So great grew his interest in the empyrean that he shifted, even, some way round on his chair. So intent was his attitude that Iseult stared also, past him, through the synthetic gauze. A helicopter, a kite, a suicide leap?—she found no answer. He slewed suddenly round again; she was caught off guard. With no particular candour, their eyes met. “Between ourselves …” he began.
    On his left, the room had a second window. The man had in consequence two existences: one rather cloudy in silhouette, the other in clear relief, side-lit. This other Iseult examined. The blond, massaged-looking flesh of Constantine’s face seemed, like alabaster or indeed plastic, not quite opaque, having a pinkish underglow. It padded the bone-structure evenly—nowhere were there prominences or hollows or sags or ridges. The features, though cast in a shallow mould and severally unremarkable, almost anonymous, none the less were distinct. Their relation to one another was for the greater part of the time unchanging; this was the least mobile face one might ever have seen. Now and then some few creases came into being, to supply their owner with such degree of expression as at that moment he chose to grant himself—or occasionally (though this was rarer) there was a calculated levitation of the eyebrows. Anything of that sort was, though, almost instantly wiped away.
    Colour entered the picture, though used sparingly. Lips, for instance, were the naive fawn-pink of lips in a tinted drawing. Less perceptibly pencilled-in were the eyebrows, lashes, the exhausted pencil employed being gold-red. And the same tone reappeared