‘Of course,’ cried Mrs Griegon. ‘Of course I remember you perfectly, and I’m sure Archie does too.’ She looked at her husband, but her husband was listening carefully to Dr Oath.
Raymond smiled. ‘It looks even better now that the initial shine has gone. I’m terribly pleased with it.’ As he spoke, he saw the figure of Mrs Fitch’s husband entering the room. He watched him glance about and saw him smile at someone he’d seen. Following the direction of this smile, Raymond saw Mrs Anstey smiling back at Mrs Fitch’s husband, who at once made his way to her side.
‘French polishing’s an art,’ said Mrs Griegon.
What on earth, Raymond wondered, was the man doing back at the Tamberleys’ party? And where was Mrs Fitch? Nervously, Raymond glanced about the crowded room, looking for the black-and-white dress and the lean aquiline features of the woman who had tormented him. But although, among all the brightly coloured garments that the women wore there were a few that were black and white, none of them contained Mrs Fitch. ‘We come to these parties and everything’s a sham,’ her voice seemed to say, close to him. ‘Nobody can be trusted.’ The voice came to him in just the same way as Nanny Wilkinson’s had a quarter of an hour ago, when she’d been telling him that he had a tea-leaf on his tooth.
‘Such jolly parties,’ said Mrs Griegon, ‘The Tamberleys are wonderful.’
‘Do you know a woman called Mrs Fitch?’ said Raymond. ‘She was here tonight.’
‘Mrs Fitch!’ exclaimed Mrs Griegon with a laugh.
‘D’you know her?’
‘She’s married to that man there,’ said Mrs Griegon. She pointed at Mr Fitch and sniffed.
‘Yes,’ said Raymond. ‘He’s talking to Mrs Anstey.’
He was about to add that Mr Fitch was probably of a social inclination. He was thinking already that Mr Fitch probably had a perfectly sound reason for returning to the Tamberleys’. Probably he lived quite near and having seen his wife home had decided to return in order to say goodbye properly to his hosts. Mrs Anstey, Raymond had suddenly thought, was for all he knew Mr Fitch’s sister: in her mentally depressed condition it would have been quite like Mrs Fitch to pretend that the woman in yellow was no relation whatsoever, to have invented a fantasy that was greater even than it appeared to be.
‘He’s always up to that kind of carry-on,’ said Mrs Griegon. ‘The man’s famous for it.’
‘Sorry?’ said Raymond.
‘Fitch. With women.’
‘Oh but surely –’
‘Really,’ said Mrs Griegon.
‘I was talking to Mrs Fitch earlier on and she persisted in speaking about her husband. Well, I felt she was going on rather. Exaggerating, you know. A bit of a bore.’
‘He has said things to me, Mr Bamber, that would turn your stomach.’
‘She has a funny way with her, Mrs Fitch has. She too said the oddest things –’
‘She has a reputation,’ said Mrs Griegon, ‘for getting drunk and coming out with awkward truths. I’ve heard it said.’
‘Not the truth,’ Raymond corrected. ‘She says things about herself, you see, and pretends she’s talking about another person.’
‘What?’ said Mrs Griegon.
‘Like maybe, you see, she was saying that she herself is a bore the way she goes on – well, Mrs Fitch wouldn’t say it just like that. What Mrs Fitch would do is pretend some other person is the bore, the person she might be talking to. D’you see? She would transfer all her own qualities to the person she’s talking to.’
Mrs Griegon raised her thin eyebrows and inclined her head. She said that what Raymond was saying sounded most interesting.
‘An example is,’ said Raymond, ‘that Mrs Fitch might find herself unsteady on her feet through drink. Instead of saying that she was unsteady she’d say that you, Mrs Griegon, were the unsteady one. There’s a name for it, actually. A medical name.’
‘Medical?’ said Mrs Griegon.
Glancing across the room, Raymond saw that Mr Fitch’s right hand gripped Mrs Anstey’s elbow. Mr Fitch murmured in her ear and together the two left the room. Raymond saw them wave at Mrs Tamberley, implying thanks with the gesture, implying that they had enjoyed themselves.
‘I can’t think what it is now,’ said Raymond to Mrs Griegon, ‘when people transfer the truth about themselves to others. It’s some name beginning with an R, I think.’
‘How nice of you,’ said Mrs Tamberley, gushing up, ‘to put that notice in The Times’ She turned to Mrs Griegon and said that, as Raymond had probably told her, a lifelong friend of his, old Nanny Wilkinson, had died a few months ago. ‘Every year,’ said Mrs Tamberley, ‘Raymond told us all how she was bearing up. But now, alas, she’s died.’
‘Indeed,’ said Mrs Griegon, and smiled and moved away.
Without any bidding, there arrived in Raymond’s mind a picture of Mrs Fitch sitting alone in her house, refilling a glass from a bottle of Gordon’s gin. ‘In vino veritas,’ said Mrs Fitch, and began to weep.
‘I was telling Mrs Griegon that I’d been chatting with Mrs Fitch,’ said Raymond, and then he remembered that Mrs Tamberley had very briefly joined in that chat. ‘I found her strange,’ he added.
‘Married to that man,’ cried Mrs Tamberley. ‘He drove her to it.’
‘Her condition?’ said Raymond, nodding.
‘She ladles it into herself,’ said Mrs Tamberley, ‘and then tells you what she thinks of you. It can be disconcerting.’
‘She really says anything that comes into her head,’ said Raymond, and gave a light laugh.
‘Not actually,’ said Mrs Tamberley. ‘She tells the truth.’
‘Well, no, you see –’
‘You haven’t a drink,’ cried Mrs Tamberley in alarm, and moved at speed towards her Maltese maid to direct the girl’s attention to Raymond’s empty glass.
Again the image of Mrs Fitch arrived in Raymond’s mind. She sat as before, alone in a room, while her husband made off with a woman in yellow. She drank some gin.
‘Sherry, sir?’ said the Maltese maid, and Raymond smiled and thanked her, and then, in an eccentric way and entirely on an impulse, he said in a low voice:
‘Do you know a woman called Mrs Fitch?’
The girl said that Mrs Fitch had been at the party earlier in the evening, and reminded Raymond that he had in fact been talking to her.
‘She has a peculiar way with her,’ explained Raymond. ‘I just wondered if ever you had talked to her, or had listened to what she herself had to say.’ But the Maltese maid shook her head, appearing not to understand.
‘Mrs Fitch’s a shocker,’ said a voice behind Raymond’s back, and added: ‘That poor man.’
There was a crackle of laughter as a response, and Raymond, sipping his sherry, turned about and moved towards the group that had caused it. The person who had spoken was a small man with shiny grey hair. ‘I’m Raymond Bamber,’ said Raymond, smiling at him. ‘By the sound of things, you saw my predicament earlier on.’ He laughed, imitating the laughter that had come from the group. ‘Extremely awkward.’
‘She gets tight,’ said the small man. ‘She’s liable to tell a home truth or two,’ He began to laugh again. ‘In vino veritas,’ he said.
Raymond looked at the people and opened his mouth to say that it wasn’t quite so simple, the malaise of Mrs Fitch. ‘It’s all within her,’ he wished to say. ‘Everything she says is part of Mrs Fitch, since she’s unhappy in a marriage and has lost her beauty.’ But Raymond checked that speech, uttering in fact not a word of it. The people looked expectantly at him, and after a long pause the small man said: