The King of the Rainy Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

olive-green and silver-grey.
    â€˜Sorry – I was staring admiring.’ She had his card in her hand, which she gave back to him, with a careful slow look of appraisal.
    â€˜That does not matter in the least. Perhaps we will go in here, shall we?’ She opened a door beyond the stairs and waited for him.
    â€˜Please sit down, Mr Van der Valk, and be quite comfortable. You have plenty of time? Good. So have I. Would you like some port?’
    â€˜Not just by myself.’
    She gave him a slight smile. ‘Oh no. I like port.’ She did not ring, but went to do it herself.
    It was a small formal sitting room looking out on the orangery; a sort of morning room. Walnut furniture, grave, simple and pure, that was certainly English and he was fairly sure must be eighteenth-century. His father would have known – the old man had been a cabinet-maker – he wished he were here to see this and tell him. The chairs and sofa were in a rusty rose brocade: there was no carpet, the room didn’t need one. The floor was plain polished oak boards.
    The label on the bottle said ‘Smith Woodhouse’. He couldn’t see the year. Did it matter?
    â€˜Your good health,’ said Mrs Marschal, sitting down.
    He took a sip of port and thought, furiously, ‘Now why did that halfwit run away from this?’
    Perhaps it might be the woman; he studied her. Clear skin: clear classic features, but cold for some tastes. Dark noisette eyes, a lot of dark hair held at present in a velvet bandeau. Figure looked quite full; one couldn’t tell in a housecoat. Manner polite, evenwarm. There was a foot in a leather slipper; a glimpse of neat instep and neat ankle. Lot of blood, lot of race, lot of breeding. Sat very upright – convent trained.
    â€˜You liked the statues,’ reflectively. ‘You like this room?’
    â€˜Very much. English? Eighteenth-century?’
    â€˜Hepplewhite. That piece there is William and Mary.’ She sipped her port. He drank his, feeling slightly tipsy already, and it wasn’t only Smith Woodhouse.
    â€˜We are going to get along, I do believe,’ she said to the floor, ‘I really do believe.’ He said nothing – what was there to say? ‘It would make things a lot easier … Did you know that the naked girl is by Rodin?’
    â€˜I didn’t, but I did think it might have been.’
    â€˜We are going to get along … You’re plainly enjoying that, have some more. Get it yourself.’
    Pouring, he had a crafty peep at the year. Nineteen forty-five!
    â€˜Mr Van der Valk, what do you know about your errand in this house?’
    â€˜That your husband is missing. That I have been asked to find him. Beyond that, absolutely nothing.’
    â€˜Was that really all Mr Canisius had to say?’
    â€˜He gave me a brief superficial sketch of a life and a character.’
    She pushed her lower lip out a scrap.
    â€˜He has not a high opinion of either, and he isn’t necessarily right. He is only a business man after all. One day – before I knew him better – he was drinking tea here from Sevres china. I told him it was Sevres, since he asked. His immediate reaction was to tell me that three isolated Sèvres dinner-plates had just brought an unheard of sum at Drouot. Soul of an auctioneer. My husband knows about such things and loves them. There’s a strong Jewish streak in that family, though they get furious if you suggest any such thing.’
    â€˜You want him back?’
    â€˜That is a fairly complex question. It might be for everyone’s good if he came back. Since he has gone deliberately, I am not sure.’
    â€˜You don’t think, then, he’ll come back on his own, eventually?’
    â€˜That is hard to say, even for someone that knows him as well as I do. I don’t think he will. I could be wrong.’
    â€˜He got sick of being in leading strings?’
    â€˜No, Mr Van