Johnson Johnson 04 - Dolly and the Doctor Bird by Dorothy (as Dorothy Halliday Dunnett Page A
Authors: Dorothy (as Dorothy Halliday Dunnett
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personable middle-aged man in a neat dark suit, with strong deductive powers: he had us singled out in a moment, and taking my medical bag, drew us through the heavier socializing to the back of the hall, which was on a lower level. On the way Lady Edgecombe, I noticed, acquired a glass of champagne, while I lifted a tumbler of iced water. I had just noticed, through the throng, that the back wall of the big room was a gallery, on which some forty large paintings had been hung against velvet drapes, when I became aware of a tall, cool, scented presence, blocking my way like a single tree trunk in a mill race.
“Don’t tell me,” an English voice said with amusement — I swear with amusement, “that you’re Beltanno MacRannoch?”
“I am Doctor Douglas MacRannoch,” I said automatically. She was five foot ten inches at least, although her shoulders had rounded with age, giving her tallness and thinness an extreme of dry elegance. Her hair was still black mixed with gray, and expensively dressed over the prominent bones of her face. Her eyes in particular were extremely fine and heavily made up: she also wore a bright lipstick. Her head and all of her body were shrouded in blue and silver silk voile, caught with a large sapphire brooch on one shoulder. None of her rings, I should judge, was worth less than five thousand pounds. “The Begum Akbar?” I added.
To rent Castle Rannoch — its staff, its shooting and fishing, season after season at James Ulric’s price — requires, I have always known, a very special kind of bank balance. The kind that comes with deceased Indian princes, for example. The Begum, I had heard, had spent her brief married life in north India, far from the fields of her native Huntingdonshire, and on her husband’s death had not remarried, but had amused herself acquiring houses in different parts of the globe, and surrounding herself with neurotic idiopaths like my father, whose excesses appeared to amuse her.
I had kept well out of her way. I thought of the files on James Ulric’s desk and positioned myself to follow in Mr. Timpson’s closing wake. “How nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m afraid I must rush. Mr. Johnson is expecting us.”
“I know. He told me,” said the Begum. She smiled at Lady Edgecombe. She had small, irregular teeth and a firm chin, which gave her smile a strong element of attraction. Lady Edgecombe’s trim eyebrows lifted and she smiled back. The Begum said, “I’m hoping you’ll both come and look at my portrait. I’m the Begum Akbar, known as Thelma usually.”
“I know. I’m Denise Edgecombe. I live on Great Harbour Cay. May I say,” said Bart Edgecombe’s wife, “how perfectly lovely your sari is.”
I didn’t say anything at all. I was brooding over the dishonesty of Johnson Johnson. He had said nothing to me about the Begum being here. Or of having painted the Begum for that matter. I began to wonder what else he had neglected to tell me.
“Come,” said the Begum. “It is the third portrait on the left, between the duchess and the governor. The press came a short while ago to photograph us all standing beside our commissions. It’s a kind of club, isn’t it? The sitters of Johnson.”
I was silent, and so was Lady Edgecombe beside me. I don’t suppose either of us had realized what a big name he was. Presumably all the paintings here had been lent back for the exhibition, and the subjects had come too, to drink champagne and be photographed and meet Johnson again. He had disappeared again in a welter of spectacle frames; Timpson equally had vanished. The Begum, exchanging smiles and waves and snatches of conversation as she swayed through the crowd, arrived with a certain iron persistence before her own portrait and tapped the silk shoulder of a long-haired young man standing before it. “Krishtof, I won’t have you study it. It gives too much away,” said the Begum. “You have met Beltanno and Lady Edgecombe, have you not?
“Don’t tell me,” an English voice said with amusement — I swear with amusement, “that you’re Beltanno MacRannoch?”
“I am Doctor Douglas MacRannoch,” I said automatically. She was five foot ten inches at least, although her shoulders had rounded with age, giving her tallness and thinness an extreme of dry elegance. Her hair was still black mixed with gray, and expensively dressed over the prominent bones of her face. Her eyes in particular were extremely fine and heavily made up: she also wore a bright lipstick. Her head and all of her body were shrouded in blue and silver silk voile, caught with a large sapphire brooch on one shoulder. None of her rings, I should judge, was worth less than five thousand pounds. “The Begum Akbar?” I added.
To rent Castle Rannoch — its staff, its shooting and fishing, season after season at James Ulric’s price — requires, I have always known, a very special kind of bank balance. The kind that comes with deceased Indian princes, for example. The Begum, I had heard, had spent her brief married life in north India, far from the fields of her native Huntingdonshire, and on her husband’s death had not remarried, but had amused herself acquiring houses in different parts of the globe, and surrounding herself with neurotic idiopaths like my father, whose excesses appeared to amuse her.
I had kept well out of her way. I thought of the files on James Ulric’s desk and positioned myself to follow in Mr. Timpson’s closing wake. “How nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m afraid I must rush. Mr. Johnson is expecting us.”
“I know. He told me,” said the Begum. She smiled at Lady Edgecombe. She had small, irregular teeth and a firm chin, which gave her smile a strong element of attraction. Lady Edgecombe’s trim eyebrows lifted and she smiled back. The Begum said, “I’m hoping you’ll both come and look at my portrait. I’m the Begum Akbar, known as Thelma usually.”
“I know. I’m Denise Edgecombe. I live on Great Harbour Cay. May I say,” said Bart Edgecombe’s wife, “how perfectly lovely your sari is.”
I didn’t say anything at all. I was brooding over the dishonesty of Johnson Johnson. He had said nothing to me about the Begum being here. Or of having painted the Begum for that matter. I began to wonder what else he had neglected to tell me.
“Come,” said the Begum. “It is the third portrait on the left, between the duchess and the governor. The press came a short while ago to photograph us all standing beside our commissions. It’s a kind of club, isn’t it? The sitters of Johnson.”
I was silent, and so was Lady Edgecombe beside me. I don’t suppose either of us had realized what a big name he was. Presumably all the paintings here had been lent back for the exhibition, and the subjects had come too, to drink champagne and be photographed and meet Johnson again. He had disappeared again in a welter of spectacle frames; Timpson equally had vanished. The Begum, exchanging smiles and waves and snatches of conversation as she swayed through the crowd, arrived with a certain iron persistence before her own portrait and tapped the silk shoulder of a long-haired young man standing before it. “Krishtof, I won’t have you study it. It gives too much away,” said the Begum. “You have met Beltanno and Lady Edgecombe, have you not?
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