two.
‘Take Conradda Mendel,’ said Laura Gavin, the secretary, when Dame Beatrice showed her Basil Honfleur’s letter. ‘They’ve got another thing in common besides an interest in antiques.’
Laura meant by this that both Honfleur and Miss Mendel had once upon a time attended Dame Beatrice’s clinic for psychiatric treatment. It had happened, Dame Beatrice remembered, that she had arranged for the decorators to take over her Kensington house where, at that time, her clinic was held, and so she had fitted up a room on the first floor of her Hampshire residence, the Stone House on the edge of the New Forest, and for a few weeks she had carried on her work there. Those whose commitments did not permit them to attend had been referred to another psychiatrist in London and their case histories handed over to him.
Both Honfleur and Conradda had found the change of venue acceptable and, in Honfleur’s case, convenient, since it saved him the longer journey to London. He and Conradda had met at the Stone House on one or two occasions, owing either to unavoidable delays on the road or to the vagaries of the train services, and had taken tea together at the Stone House.
Honfleur had been in a Commando unit during the war; Conradda had suffered persecution under the Nazis. He was now well settled in an occupation which suited him. Conradda was a dealer in antiques who did a little very high-class pawnbroking on the side, although her clientele was not subjected to the sight of three golden balls above her extremely exclusive Mayfair premises. It was she who had found the Sevres for Dame Beatrice and it was her proud contention that the only collection which could match it was that at Waddesdon, the former home of Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild.
Dame Beatrice knew that this statement on Conradda’s part was a wild distortion of the truth, but she treasured her pieces and no servant was ever allowed to put a finger on them. She had seen Miss Alice de Rothschild’s collection in the enormous French-Renaissance-style mansion administered nowadays by the National Trust and had admired but did not covet it, and she had treated Conradda’s contention with mirth.
‘Conradda Mendel?’ she said, in answer to Laura’s suggestion. ‘I thought perhaps you yourself would like to come. It may be a dinner well worth eating, and you would do better justice to it than I shall.’
‘No,’ said Laura. ‘Reading between the lines, this Honfleur wants to get his hooks on to your dishes. You take Conradda and watch the fur fly when she and this Italian really go into a clinch over the price. If it isn’t an impertinent question, shall you consider selling?’
‘Oh, yes, I expect so, if Mr Honfleur wants them; I don’t at all care for the chargers.’
‘Me neither, as Fowler would hardly permit us to say. Shall I ring up Conradda, then? They do actually know one another, don’t they?’
‘Yes, they met here at the Stone House when I had that room next to mine converted into a consulting room for a while.’
Conradda, apprised over the telephone by Laura of the probable reason for the invitation, accepted it with alacrity, but warned her that if Vittorio was also ‘in the business, although I do not know anyone of that name,’ he would know her by repute if not by sight.
‘I might call myself Leah Cohen, don’t you think?’ she suggested. Laura said firmly that Dame Beatrice would not like that.
‘Besides, Honfleur knows you, even if this Italian does not. Anyway, we mustn’t go in for subterfuge,’ she said. ‘Not ethical.’
‘Business precautions, that is all,’ said the Jewess. ‘Will it be a good dinner? I do not insist upon kosher food.’
Vittorio was a tiny, monkey-like little man, sinuous and very thin. When the introduction was made, it seemed, surprisingly, that Conradda’s name meant nothing at all to the olive-skinned, shifty-eyed Italian: if he was the expert he seemed to be – there was no doubt, from the conversation over cocktails and again at the table, that he certainly knew a great deal about antiques of all kinds – it was odd, to say the least, that he had not heard of Conradda, who was a well-known figure at all the important auctions, besides being a collector in her own right. There was no obvious reason for him to dissemble. Although Conradda could drive a hard bargain, she was known to be scrupulously fair in her trade dealings, even refusing to take advantage of the ignorant beyond what she called ‘my pickings, because I have had to pay for my knowledge on my way up, so only right I should expect just a small profit, don’t you think?’
Dame Beatrice, who could always keep several streams of thought, unconnected with one another, in her mind at one and the same time, covertly studied Vittorio while conversing amiably with her host on the subject of his business. Honfleur was in charge of the main booking office of a motor-coach company which ran extended tours, as they were called in the official brochure, to the various scenic or historic parts of England, Wales, Scotland and Eire, and also to France, Germany, Austria and northern Italy. Part of his job (and the pleasantest part, he explained to Dame Beatrice), was to leave his office on occasion in order to follow up the various tours and report upon the hotels which the coaches used for overnight stops
He was a short, powerfully-built man of about fifty-five and gave the impression of being vigorous and capable. Dame Beatrice, however, having once had him as a patient, knew a good deal about him. He always sent her a Christmas card, but beyond that their acquaintanceship had not made any progress until she had received the unexpected invitation to dinner. This, however, explained itself because it was clear, she thought, that it was her delftware and not her company which was important to him.
While she was listening to his description of a trip he had made that summer to two Continental hotels on which his firm desired a confidential report since there had been adverse criticism of them from some of the passengers, she heard the tiny, olive-skinned Vittorio say to Conradda Mendel,
‘You have a personal interest in ceramics?’
‘Oh, I run a general little junk-shop,’ she replied. ‘All is grist to my mill, not only ceramics.’
‘You work in London?’
‘I also have a place in Oxford, but the students, they have no money for nice pictures and china nowadays. I think I shall sell up and perhaps go to Bath.’
‘I wonder whether there is much money in Bath, either? There might be some nice things to pick up there, though, which you could sell in London. Do you have good connections?’
‘I welcome any customers who come in, that is all.’
