A Prospect of Vengeance

Indian restaurant-cum-takeaway just across the road behind them.

Ian decided to acknowledge the smell by wrinkling his nose back at her. 'If you could spare a few minutes of your time, Mrs Champeney-Smythe — on a matter which really only involves you indirectly — ' This was important, he remembered: ordinary folk always felt threatened by strange solicitors on their doorstep ' — in fact, in a legal sense, doesn't involve you at all ... But you could be of great help to one of my clients. So ... perhaps I might step inside, for a moment — ?' He sniffed again, and glanced deliberately over his shoulder at the source of the nuisance, which must be wafting in through her open front-door even now.

She considered him through her spy-glass for a moment, and he was glad that he had selected his best charcoal-grey pin-striped Fielding-ffulke, Robinson suit and Bristol University tie. Then she drew back, leaving an opening for him into the darkness beyond. 'Yahss . . .'

dummy2

That was the first hurdle. Long before, in the old days, he could well remember trying to get past the porter of a minor Oxford college to interview the Master about an alleged sex-and-drugs scandal for the Daily Mail, only to be rebuffed by the loyal college porter with ' You just fuck off! We know your sort!' (And, actually, he had been wearing a decent suit and his Bristol tie on that occasion, also.) The darkness dissolved slowly, and the curry-smell was repelled by a mixture of furniture-linoleum polish, Mrs Champeney-Smythe's face powder and the steak-and-kidney-pie-and-cabbage, which had presumably been the Elstree Guest House residents' lunch not so long ago.

'If you would be so good as to ascend the stairs,' Mrs Champeney-Smythe indicated his route, but then pushed ahead of him after closing out the Indian invasion.

Ian followed her dutifully, up the stair and across the landing, into what was obviously the best room in the house; which, in commercial terms, meant that she wasn't down on her uppers for money, if she could keep it as her own sitting room.

And the tall windows let in the light, so that he could instantly make out all Mrs Champeney-Smythe's lifetime accretion of memorabilia and bric-a-brac, which was consciously arranged around him on occasional tables, and sideboards, and bookcases, and windowsills: silver-framed pictures, and little boxes, and brasses, and paperweights, and dummy2

innumerable meaningless objects which meant so much to her.

It was the pictures which always told the most, and quickest: no children, naked on rugs, or self-conscious in shirts-andties and party-dresses, or gowned for graduation; only an extremely handsome man, posed again and again in carefully-lit situations, always immaculate and cool, and once with a cigarette in hand, the smoke curling up past his nonchalant profile, in a Noel Coward pose.

'You may recall my late husband.' Mrs Champeney-Smythe observed his interest with satisfaction as he bent over the cigarette advertisement. 'That is my favourite — the one Gabby Pascal gave me. But he always preferred Arthur's favourite — ' She pointed, ' — that one . . . which was taken for The Dark Stranger . . . Basil had only a small part. But he had all the best lines, Arthur said — J. Arthur Rank, of course.'

' Basil Champeney as Harry de Vere' , Ian read dutifully. So he was in the presence of late pre-war and early postwar British cinema, not in 1978, but over forty years — maybe even half-a-century — ago!

'Yes!' He lied enthusiastically. 'Yes — of course!'

'Indeed?' She frowned at him suddenly, as though she had seen through his enthusiasm, to its insincere foundation.

'But that was . . . before you were born, Mr Robertson — ?'

'Robinson.' He smiled at her desperately, and played for time dummy2

while he took out his spectacles again, peering through them round the room. 'Yes. But those were the great days of British cinema, Mrs Champeney-Smythe — ' He saw her more clearly now: the ancient remains of past splendour, plundered and weathered by time, like the Parthenon: or, if not an old Bluebell Girl, she had the height for the front row of the chorus, certainly. So all he had to remember now was the list of those old films, hoping for the best. ' The Private Life of Henry VIII. . . and Things to Come . . . and Rembrandt — ' He cudgelled his brains, between Gabriel Pascal, and Alexander Korda, and J. Arthur Rank ' — and The Four Feathers, with Ralph Richardson . . . and Pygmalion . . . and, after the war — I have many of those films on video now, Mrs Champeney-Smythe: those were the great days — ' He bent towards Basil's picture, as though to a shrine ' — I never expected . . . The Dark Stranger — of course!' He sat back, nodding at her, and terrified lest she quiz him further. 'But — I am imposing on you — ' At all costs, he had to get away from the Great Days of British Cinema ' — you see, it's about one of your former . . .

guests ... a young lady — a young lady—?'

'A young lady?' She had sat down, into her favourite chair, beside the table which carried the Radio Times and the TV

Times, and her copy of the Daily Mail. 'Which young lady, Mr Robertson?'

He adjusted his spectacles, solicitorly. 'It was some years ago

— nine or ten, perhaps ... a Miss Francis, Mrs Champeney-dummy2

Smythe — Miss Marilyn Francis — ?'

She frowned at him again. And in that second he threw away all his planned explanations, on instinct. And put nothing in their place.

The frown cleared slightly. 'I remember Miss Francis —

yahss . . .'

Yahss: they all remembered Miss Marilyn Francis. And, at a guess, Mrs Champeney-Smythe had once disapproved of Marilyn's appearance quite as much as Mrs Simmonds . . .

Or, with her own chorus-line memories, maybe not quite as much? Mrs Champeney-Smythe in her time must have seen other bright butterflies and moths fluttering around flames; so