Before dinner was served, he left Lily alone in the upstairs sitting room so that he might inspect the dining room. He found Burgess Noakes standing at an open dining-room door, his small face wrinkled in worry, his movements nervous. Burgess indicated to him that the cause of his concern lay in the dining room, and when Henry entered the room he found a large fresh purple stain on the tablecloth.
‘This should be replaced at once,’ he said.
‘She says it will do fine,’ Burgess said.
‘Mrs Smith?’ he asked.
Burgess nodded. ‘She won’t allow it be replaced, sir.’
When he opened the kitchen door, he saw Mr Smith at the large table resting his head on his arms. Mrs Smith was by the stove stirring a pot. When she saw him, she did not speak but shrugged to suggest her own powerlessness and indifference. He spoke as loudly as he could.
‘The tablecloth must be replaced instantly and the butler must resume his duties.’
Mrs Smith put the spoon down and moved towards the table. She stood stoically behind her husband and manfully grabbed his shoulders from above; she lifted him firmly and when he was standing straight she let him go. He had his usual glazed look as he acknowledged his employer’s presence in the kitchen, and then, in his stilted and forced way, he began to move towards the dresser in the corner.
‘In fifteen minutes, we will dine,’ Henry said. ‘I expect everything to be in order, beginning with the tablecloth.’
When he accompanied Lily Norton to the dining room, he saw immediately that the tablecloth had been replaced and the table reset to perfection. He situated Lily with her back to the door. He did not know whether Smith would serve their meal, or if Burgess Noakes or indeed Mrs Smith herself would take his place. When eventually Smith came in with the first course and began to pour the wine, it struck Henry more forcefully than ever that he was barely able to remain on his feet and could hardly see in front of him. It was a strange kind of drunkenness. Smith did not sway or stagger; it was rather the opposite – he walked straight as though along an invisible line; otherwise, he remained rigid. He was utterly silent. The alcohol seemed to have turned him into a block of wood.
Henry was careful not to look at Smith for too long; he attempted to make ordinary conversation even as Smith was pouring the wine. As far as he could ascertain, Lily Norton noticed nothing, yet he knew now that he would have to make arrangements for the Smiths’ departure. He had two further guests for luncheon the following day and Lily and one of the friends for dinner the next evening. Then he would take action, although he did not know how he would begin, or what form the action would take.
‘You know,’ Lily said, ‘I have not been in Venice since Constance died, but I have met others who have been there, and all of them say that there is something in that street, the place she fell. They all have to avoid it. And nobody can quite believe that she killed herself. It seems so unlike her.’
Her eyes lit calmly on him and then she glanced at the plate in front of her, as though some fresh thought had occurred to her. She looked up at him again.
‘I spoke at length to someone who knew her sister,’ she said. ‘The family are concerned that so many of her papers are lost, letters and diaries and other personal papers. And how she spent her last weeks is a mystery to everybody.’
‘It was,’ Henry said, ‘a sad affair.’
Smith opened the door and stood silently, peering into the room as though it were in darkness. Lily turned around and saw him. He was still for half a minute, his presence in the doorway a cross between a ghost and someone who has seen a ghost. Then he moved slowly towards the table to collect the plates. He picked them up in a set of muted and stylized gestures and left the room again without incident.
‘She was, of course, quite a sad person and very lonely,’ Henry said.
He knew as soon as he finished that he had spoken too quickly and brusquely.
‘She was a very talented novelist and a great lady,’ Lily Norton said.
‘Yes, quite,’ Henry said.
They waited without speaking for Smith to return. Henry realized that he could not change the subject now, Lily Norton’s tone somehow prevented that.
‘I think she deserved a better life,’ Lily said, ‘but it was not to be.’
In her last phrase there was no air of resignation or acceptance, but rather one of blame and bitterness. It struck Henry that she had planned this conversation, that what was happening in his small dining room was being quietly and effectively manipulated by her. At each moment he watched for Smith, hoping that no matter how drunk he was he would come to interrupt this strained talk between them which led so inevitably to strained silence.
‘All of us were there with her that summer,’ Lily continued, ‘she was so busy and so full of dreams and plans. All of us remember someone who was happy, despite her melancholy disposition. But it was shattered.’
‘Yes,’ Henry said.
Smith opened the door with Burgess Noakes in view behind him. Burgess was wearing a jacket which was much too large for him. He had the look of a tramp. Smith carried a plate of meat with the movements of someone who was about to expire. Burgess followed behind with other plates. Lily Norton turned and studied them, and in one second Henry watched her grasp what was happening at Lamb House. All her subtlety and self-control failed her. She seemed most sharply alarmed, and her smile when she turned away from the two servants was forced. Smith at that moment began to pour more wine into her glass but could not keep his hand steady. The other three watched him helplessly as he allowed some of the wine to spill and then, as he tried to correct himself, poured a quantity of wine directly onto the tablecloth. When he turned from the table, his movements became a set of doddering, staggering steps as he left the room, abandoning the serving of the meal to Burgess Noakes.
They ate in silence, the subject he wished to change now accompanied by another subject which could not be mentioned. He knew that if he asked Lily some particular question about her aunt or her plans, she would either laugh or become heated. He resigned himself to saying nothing; she would decide the flow of conversation.
Eventually, she spoke.
‘I do not think she would have come to Venice for solitude. It is not a place to be alone at any time, but certainly not in the winter.’
‘Yes, she might have been wiser to have moved,’ he said. ‘It is hard to tell.’
‘Of course Mrs Curtis and she both believed that you planned to take a pied-à-terre in Venice,’ Lily said. ‘I believe that they even searched for a while on your behalf.’
He saw where she was going and knew that it was essential to stop her.
‘I’m afraid they misunderstood my enthusiasm for its beauties and its pleasures,’ he said. ‘Yes, whenever I was there, I longed to hold the grand watery city, as it were, by owning a view, however modest. But these fancies can be entertained but briefly, I’m afraid. The rest is dull. It is called work and it makes demands.’
Her look was darkly pointed, but with a tinge of sympathy. She smiled.
‘Yes, I can imagine,’ she said drily.
IN THE MORNING he told Mrs Smith that he wished her husband to remain in bed where he would in the course of the day be examined by a doctor. Luncheon would be served by the parlour-maid with assistance from Burgess Noakes, who should be found a jacket which fitted him. He asked her if she could come out to the garden with him, knowing that Lily Norton was writing a letter in a room not overlooking the garden, and would not witness this scene. He wished to study Mrs Smith in clear daylight, and when he did so he saw that she could not continue in his kitchen, that she did not seem to have washed or changed her clothes in a very long time.