‘So there are only two years between them?’
‘That is so. People are usually surprised when they find that out. They are very — how do you say? — thick together, and it has always been so. Opal leads and plans, and Ruby faithfully follows. There was a time when I thought Ruby might get married to another bulb-farmer whose fields march with mine on the Haarlem side, but nothing came of it. I always believe that Opal talked Ruby out of it, but I was never told the inside story. Now Opal has this unhealthy fixation on Florian. One would be excused for thinking that he was her son. It irks the boy a good deal, but there is no doubt that he also basks in her love and admiration, although he has, at times, a very unsatisfactory way of showing it. Ruby, I think, is jealous of him, but she is too meek and too much under Opal’s dominance to translate her feelings into any form of action.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Dame Beatrice, with a kindly leer. ‘You interest me very much. There are, surely, not many mothers who can take so objective a view of their children?’
‘Oh, well, I did not love my husband,’ said Binnen, in matter-of-fact tones, ‘and the girls in many ways take after him. Opal is like him in looks, Ruby in character. I dislike a spineless man, but I felt bound to marry him for my father’s sake.’
‘Indeed?’ (Surely not the old, old Victorian melodrama of a daughter marrying money to save her father from ruin, thought Dame Beatrice).
‘Yes, for my father’s sake,’ pursued Binnen. ‘Bernard, my brother, early went into the diamond business, encouraged thereto by an uncle in South Africa. That left me as the representative of the bulbs. (I do not think that is very good English, but you understand me). The bulbs, you see, are family matters and the fields pass in inheritance, so I inherited ours. It was inevitable. Then comes trouble. Two bad years in succession. We need capital. My father borrows it. Comes a good year and we have success. Bad weather again, and we are not sufficiently recovered, so — I marry Francis Colwyn-Welch, who has money, and I put the bulbs on their feet again. My son Frank, father of Florian and Binnie, married the hotels, so I do not leave him the bulb-fields. Like his father and his sisters, he has no interest, and to do well with the bulbs it is necessary to love them very much. So Florian shall have them when I am gone. Is it true, think you, that nothing but the asphodel blooms in Heaven?’
Dame Beatrice made a reference to Mr P. G. Wode-house’s Madeleine Bassett, who contended that the stars were God’s daisy-chain, and Binnen broke into slightly throaty laughter. ‘Daisies, to me, are not as attractive as asphodel,’ she said. ‘But I am to tell you about the visit of Florian to us. Well, there is so little to say. He comes, he gives the rest of the sittings, then, at my request, the sculptor agrees to paint his hand holding that hyacinth which we call, for your English trade, the Delft Blue, a lovely colour and a fine inflorescence. The sculptor dabbles also only a little in painting, and the hand with the flower is done quickly, but I shall like it. It will be, I think, very good. When it is completed Florian tells us that he goes to continue his study of caves. We say goodbye, but he says, “Not goodbye. With permission, I leave my suitcase and return after I have been in Maastricht, Valkenburg and so on.” I ask, “What about money?” He says he has money for hotel bills and Opal tells me later that she has lent him money for his fare. I do not believe her. Where would
‘So you fully expected Mr Florian to come back because he had left his suitcase with you?’
‘Indeed, so. But he did not return and then we had this news of my brother, so ill, so like to die. We come here, over to Norfolk, and still no word of Florian. What is to be done? He could not have money to last all this time. What may have happened? He is lost, one thinks, in a cave. He was so much devoted to caves.’
‘Did you make any enquiries?’
‘Many enquiries, but with no result. Perhaps you will fare better. How much I hope! He is a strange boy. Find him for us, that is what I ask. He comes to us, he goes away and there is no news. He knows, maybe, that my brother has taken away his inheritance and has given it to Bernardo. It is a mistake sometimes, these inheritances. Bad things are done because of them. First one young man to inherit and then another. Much riches. Much disappointment. Who knows what may happen?’
‘And that is all you can tell me,’ said Dame Beatrice. She said it in a tone of finality which did not brook any disclaimer. She felt certain that Binnen had told her everything she could.
CHAPTER TEN
Maastricht and Valkenburg Revisited
‘In a cavern, in a canyon,
Excavating for a mine,
Dwelt a miner, forty-niner.
And his daughter Clementine.’
« ^ »
Opal and Ruby, questioned separately by Dame Beatrice, (Laura cut off each sister in turn from the other by a pre-arrangement), added nothing to their mother’s report. Ruby was certain that Florian was lost in one of the labyrinths at Maastricht or Valkenburg, Opal stated the opinion that he had gone to the Dolomites and was not lost at all. She had lent him enough money for the journey, she declared, and it was known that a young man could live very cheaply among peasants.
‘Maastricht and Valkenburg first, then, as we had planned,’ said Dame Beatrice to Laura on their return journey to London and the tall house in Kensington. ‘You had better get on to the travel agents and arrange for hotel bookings.’
‘For how long?’
‘Three days in Maastricht and a week in Valkenburg should give us ample time to find out that Florian is in neither.’
‘Oh, you think that, do you? Why?’
‘I think Opal knows where he went, and I do
‘Then why on earth can’t she say so, and put an end to the family’s anxiety — not to mention the waste of our
