Final Curtain (11 page)

‘Don't you like it?' asked a sharp voice.

Troy jumped galvanically and turned. The little girl she had seen fighting on the terrace stood in the aisle, her hands jammed in the pockets of her pinafore and her feet planted apart.

‘Where did you come from?' Troy demanded.

‘Through the end door. I came quietly because I'm not allowed. Why are you rubbing it out? Don't you like it?'

‘I'm not rubbing it out. It's still there.' And indeed the ghost of her drawing remained. ‘You take the surplus charcoal off,' she said curtly. ‘Otherwise it messes the paints.'

‘Is it going to be Noddy dressed up funny?'

Troy started at this use of a name she had imagined to be Miss Orrincourt's prerogative and invention.

‘I call him Noddy,' said the child, as if guessing at her thought, ‘and so does Sonia. She got it from me. I'm going to be like Sonia when I'm grown up.'

‘Oh,' said Troy, opening her paint box and rummaging in it.

‘Are those your paints?'

‘Yes,' said Troy, looking fixedly at her. ‘They are. Mine.'

‘I'm Patricia Claudia Ellen Ancred Kentish.'

‘So I'd gathered.'

‘You couldn't have gathered all of that, because nobody except Miss Able ever calls me anything but Panty. Not that I care,' added Panty, suddenly climbing onto the back of one of the stools and locking her feet in the arms, ‘I'm double jointed,' she said, throwing herself back and hanging head downwards.

‘That won't help you if you break your neck,' said Troy.

Panty made an offensive gargling noise.

‘As you're not allowed here,' Troy continued, ‘hadn't you better run off?'

‘No,' said Panty.

Troy squeezed a fat serpent of Flake White out on her palette. ‘If I ignore this child,' she thought, ‘perhaps she will get bored and go.'

Now the yellows, next the reds. How beautiful was her palette!

‘I'm going to paint with those paints,' said Panty at her elbow.

‘You haven't a hope,' said Troy.

‘I'm going to.' She made a sudden grab at the tray of long brushes. Troy anticipated this move by a split second.

‘Now, see here, Panty,' she said, shutting the box and facing the child, ‘if you don't pipe down I shall pick you up by the slack of your breeches and carry you straight back to where you belong. You don't like people butting in on your games, do you? Well, this is my game, and I can't get on with it if you butt in.'

‘I'll kill you,' said Panty.

‘Don't be an ass,' said Troy mildly.

Panty scooped up a dollop of vermilion on three of her fingers and flung it wildly at Troy's face. She then burst into peals of shrill laughter.

‘You can't whack me,' she shrieked. ‘I'm being brought up on a system.'

‘Can't I!' Troy rejoined. ‘System or no system—' And indeed there was nothing she desired more at the moment than to beat Panty. The child confronted her with an expression of concentrated malevolence. Her cheeks were blown out with such determination that her nose wrinkled and turned up. Her mouth was so tightly shut that lines resembling a cat's whiskers radiated from it. She scowled hideously. Her pigtails stuck out at right angles to her head. Altogether she looked like an infuriated infant Boreas.

Troy sat down and reached for a piece of rag to clean her face. ‘Oh, Panty,' she said, ‘you do look so exactly like your Uncle Thomas.'

Panty drew back her arm again. ‘No, don't,' said Troy. ‘Don't do any more damage with red paint, I implore you. Look here, I'll strike a bargain with you. If you'll promise not to take any more paint without asking, I'll give you a board and some brushes and let you make a proper picture.'

Panty glared at her. ‘When?' she said warily.

‘When we've asked your mother or Miss Able. I'll ask. But no more nonsense. And especially,' Troy added, taking a shot in the dark, ‘no more going to my room and squeezing paint on the stair rail.'

Panty stared blankly at her. ‘I don't know what you're talking about,' she said flatly. ‘When can I paint? I want to. Now.'

‘Yes, but let's get this cleared up. What did you do before dinner last night?'

‘I don't know. Yes, I do. Dr Withers came. He weighed us all. He's going to make me bald because I've got ringworm. That's why I've got this cap on. Would you like to see my ringworm?'

‘No.'

‘I got it first. I've given it to sixteen of the others.'

‘Did you go up to my room and mess about with my paints?'

‘No.'

‘Honestly, Panty?'

‘Honestly what? I don't know where your room is. When can I paint?'

‘Do you promise you didn't put paint…'

‘You are
silly
!' said Panty furiously. ‘Can't you see a person's telling the truth.'

And Troy, greatly bewildered, thought that she could.

While she was still digesting this queer little scene, the door at the back of the stalls opened and Cedric peered round it.

‘
So
humble and timid,' he lisped. ‘Just a mouse-like squeak to tell you luncheon is almost on the table.
Panty
!' he cried shrilly, catching sight of his cousin. ‘You gross child! Back to the West Wing, miss! How dare you muscle your hideous way in here?'

Panty grinned savagely at him. ‘Hallo, Sissy,' she said.

‘Wait,' said Cedric, ‘just wait till the Old Person catches you. What he won't do to you!'

‘Why?' Panty demanded.

‘Why! You ask me why. Infamy! With the grease-paint fresh on your fingers.'

Both Panty and Troy gaped at this. Panty glanced at her hand. ‘That's her paint,' she said, jerking her head at Troy. ‘That's not grease-paint.'

‘Do you deny,' Cedric pursued, shaking his finger at her, ‘do you deny, you toxic child, that you went into your grandfather's dressing-room while he was sitting for Mrs Alleyn, and scrawled some pothouse insult in lake-liner on his looking-glass? Do you deny, moreover, that you painted a red moustache on the cat, Carabbas?'

With an air of bewilderment that Troy could have sworn was genuine, Panty repeated her former statement. ‘I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't.'

‘Tell that,' said Cedric with relish, ‘to your grandpapa and see if he believes you.'

‘Noddy likes me,' said Panty, rallying. ‘He likes me best in the family. He thinks you're awful. He said you're a simpering popinjay.'

‘See here,' said Troy hastily. ‘Let's get this straight. You say Panty's written something in grease-paint on Sir Henry's looking-glass. What's she supposed to have written?'

Cedric coughed. ‘Dearest Mrs Alleyn, we mustn't allow you for a second to be disturbed…'

‘I'm not disturbed,' said Troy. ‘What was written on the glass?'

‘My mama would have wiped it off. She was in his room tidying, and saw it. She hunted madly for a rag but the Old Person, at that moment, walked in and saw it. He's roaring about the house like a major prophet.'

‘But what was it, for pity's sake?'

‘ “Grandfather's a bloody old fool,” ' said Cedric. Panty giggled. ‘There!' said Cedric. ‘You see? Obviously she wrote it. Obviously she made up the cat.'

‘I didn't. I
didn't
.' And with one of those emotional
volte-faces
by which children bewilder us, Panty wrinkled up her face, kicked Cedric suddenly but half-heartedly on the shin, and burst into a storm of tears.

‘You odious child!' he ejaculated, skipping out of her way.

Panty flung herself on her face, screamed industriously and beat the floor with her fists. ‘You all hate me,' she sobbed. ‘Wicked beasts! I wish I was dead.'

‘Oh, la,' said Cedric, ‘how tedious! Now, she'll have a fit or something.'

Upon this scene came Paul Kentish. He limped rapidly down the aisle, seized his sister by the slack of her garments and, picking her up very much as if she was a kitten, attempted to stand her on her feet. Panty drew up her legs and hung from his grasp, in some danger, Troy felt, of suffocation. ‘Stop it at once, Panty,' he said. ‘You've been a very naughty girl.'

‘Wait a minute,' said Troy. ‘I don't think she has, honestly. I mean, not in the way you think. There's a muddle, I'm certain of it.'

Paul relinquished his hold. Panty sat on the floor, sobbing harshly, a most desolate child.

‘It's all right,' said Troy, ‘I'll explain. You didn't do it, Panty, and you shall paint if you still want to.'

‘She's not allowed to come out of school,' said Paul. ‘Caroline Able will be here in a minute.'

‘Thank God for that,' said Cedric.

Miss Able arrived almost immediately, cast a professionally breezy glance at her charge and said it was dinner-time. Panty, with a look at Troy which she was unable to interpret, got to her feet.

‘Look here…' said Troy.

‘Yes?' said Miss Able cheerfully.

‘About this looking-glass business. I don't think that Panty…'

‘Next time she feels like that we'll think of something much more sensible to do, won't we, Patricia?'

‘Yes, but I don't think she did it.'

‘We're getting very good at just facing up to these funny old things we do when we're silly, aren't we, Patricia? It's best just to find out why and then forget about them.'

‘But…'

‘Dinner!' cried Miss Able brightly and firmly. She removed the child without any great ado.

‘Dearest Mrs Alleyn,' said Cedric, waving his hands. ‘Why are you so sure Panty is not the author of the insult on the Old Person's mirror?'

‘Has she ever called him “Grandfather”?'

‘Well, no,' said Paul. ‘No, actually she hasn't.'

‘And what's more…' Troy stopped short. Cedric had moved to her painting table. He had taken up a piece of rag and was using it to clean a finger-nail. Only then did Troy realize that the first finger of the right hand he had waved at her had been stained dark crimson under the nail.

He caught her eye and dropped the rag.

‘Such a Paul Pry!' he said. ‘Dipping my fingers in your paint.'

But there had been no dark crimson laid out on her palette.

‘Well,' said Cedric shrilly, ‘shall we lunch?'

By the light of her flash-lamp Troy was examining the stair rail in her tower. The paint had not been cleaned away and was now in the condition known as tacky. She could see clearly the mark left by her own hand. Above this, the paint was untouched. It had not been squeezed out and left, but brushed over the surface. At one point only, on the stone wall above the rail, someone had left the faint red print of two fingers. ‘How Rory would laugh at me,' she thought, peering at them. They were small, but not small enough, she thought, to have been made by a child. Could one of the maids have touched the rail and then the wall? But beyond the mark left by her own grip there were no other prints on the rail. ‘Rory,' she thought, ‘would take photographs, but how could one ever get anything from these things? They're all broken up by the rough surface. I couldn't even make a drawing of them.' She was about to move away when the light from her torch fell on an object that seemed to be wedged in the gap between a step and the stone wall. Looking more closely she discovered it to be one of her own brushes. She worked it out, and found that the bristles were thick with half-dry Rose Madder.

She went down to the half-landing. There was the door that she had fancied she heard closing last night when she went to bed. It was not quite shut now and she gave it a tentative shove. It swung inwards, and Troy was confronted with a Victorian bathroom.